Okay, so this thing surprised me when I first opened the lid because it’s the first time I’ve actually seen an OLED display on a laptop. Granted, this thing isn’t a gaming laptop by any stretch, and in terms of productivity, its specification isn’t going to do much for your in-depth video editing needs to if you’re editing huge Photoshop files, but there are some features here which could make it a contender for the more corporate-type work, like spreadsheets and word documents and that kind of important business. Anyway, let’s discuss.
Taking at look at its design and it’s pretty easy to tell that it’s aiming at the more premium market, at those types looking for a lightweight option, and also those that might find themselves in an Apple Store scoffing at the price of a Macbook Pro. It’s got a warm brown-like colour and it’s crafted from Ceraluminium which is Asus’ own proprietary ceramic-like material which is apparently super strong and durable, but up to 30x lighter than a compatible laptop, coming in at just 980 grams. It’s actually quite nice and smooth to the touch, and it actually doesn’t produce finger smudges or marks, which is a bonus. I haven’t dropped it to test its durability because it’s not actually mine and I don’t want to break it just in case you know, and also even though they claim it to be scratch resistant, I’ve not tested that either because of the same reason. I apologise.
But the crowning feature here though, is its screen because it’s using OLED technology, and colours absolutely pop, and it has some super inky blacks. I noticed it right away when I was setting the laptop up for the first time, and it went dark when it said ‘setting things up’, you know, with the cog. It was inky., and it made me want to jump straight to YouTube and check out some content, and I wasn’t disappointed at all! It has a resolution of 1920×1200 so slightly higher than high-definition, and delivers up to 100% of the P3 colour gamut. It has a peak brightness of 600 nits, which makes it a contender for HDR content for sure, and the difference between SDR and HDR is noticeable here, but it’s not huge, so if you’re needing to save some battery life, then get the HDR turned off. You still won’t be disappointed if you keep this laptop in SDR, it’s still going to produce some wicked colours.
So, under the hood, this Zenbook A14 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X126100 according to the laptop’s spec, and 16GB RAM, though you can have up to 32GB RAM if needed. In terms of graphics processing it uses a Qualcomm Adreno X1-45 GPU, which to be perfectly honest with you, I know nothing about except that Qualcomm usually produce mobile phone hardware. Running a Geekbench 6 test saw a single core score of 2,109 and a multicore score of 10,510 so take that as you will, but I tried searching for compatible scores, and it kept giving me different results of these Asus Zenbooks, so I couldn’t give you much of a comparison of what you could have instead. But still, no heavy duty video editing here, because when I did try, and I use Davinci Resolve now to edit my videos, it was just a horrible stuttery mess of a time. Though I must say that the laptop didn’t feel like it got too hot when it was on my lap, and then there feels like there’s no fans either which means it runs pretty silent.
Asus have included some AI integrations which can help with its performance such as Recall which allows users to revisit past activities by saving snapshots of their screen. You’ve got Copilot, which is an AI assistant which aids in image generation and writing, Live Captions which provides captions on video in real-time, Cocreator which transforms your sketches into finished artwork and finally Generative Fill and Erase in Paint which is wild. This expands the edges of images, and it’s completely overkill but super funny. I’m unsure of the real practical use, because I guess photo editors or graphic designers will probably have something like Photoshop, so it would still make Paint pretty redundant, but it’s nice that it’s there, I suppose, as a way of showing off what this laptop and Microsoft are capable of. All of the AI stuff here is powered by a Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, which delivers up to 45 teraflops of AI computing performance.
For battery though it’s claiming up to 32 hours of video playback on a single charge which is huge though in realtime I suppose I could say it was more like 20 hours if I used this laptop as I would as a workhorse for every day use. Think web browsing, writing scripts and social posts, and general browsing, including watching YouTube. Even still, it’s an ideal companion if you travel for work as it’ll hopefully keep its charge all day. And with a decent lineup of ports, you’ll be prepared for whatever the day throws at you. It’s got a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and two USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C, which does support power delivery and display. You’ve got an HDMI 2.1 output and a 3.5mm Combo audio jack. And for wireless connectivity, you can find Bluetooth 5.4 and Wi-Fi 7 for super speedy internet speeds, though that means you may need to upgrade to a Wi-Fi 7 router at home, so check out this video here.
Additional features include a Full HD webcam which is nice and gives an alright image quality that’ll get you through a Zoom call.. The keyboard is alright, though a typical membrane laptop keyboard with a nice font and decent backlight. The touchpad is smooth and the clicks are okay, though they aren’t really tactile enough to feel solid. They’re a bit spongy to press down. You’ve got a decent microphone, and Dolby-Atmos certified speakers, because why not, and no, they don’t sound brilliant, they sound like laptop speakers and a bit tinny, but they’ll be okay for a Teams call with your colleagues. But to be honest with you, for a laptop with a nice OLED screen and some funky AI features, it’s actually quite a nice addition to the Ultrabook industry. It’s admittedly a bit overkill for a laptop for work, and you’re not going to to doing photo or video editing on here. But if you need a laptop with a super-long battery life and want a lovely screen, the Zenbook A14 is poised to meet and exceed expectations.
