Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Review: The MacBook of Windows Laptops?

Since Intel released the 12th generation of its chipsets, Asus has been on a roll, launching a number of new laptops in various price ranges. Asus is also one of the few laptop manufacturers on the market that is committed to OLED becoming as mainstream in laptops as it is in smartphones.

The company has tried to keep the laptop thin and light while still being powerful enough to handle everyday tasks on Windows 11 without breaking a sweat.

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED features the latest 12th generation Intel Core i7 1260P chipset, an all-aluminum chassis, a substantial 75 Wh battery, and more.

But how does the laptop perform in real life? Is the build quality good enough? Is it the ultimate ultrabook at all? Let us find out in our Asus Zenbook 14 OLED review.

Design and Build Quality

With the Zenbook 14 OLED, Asus has introduced a completely new design language with a stripe on the back and a brand new simple but elegant Asus brand logo. The notebook is intended for professionals, and the design fits the target group very well.

The brand has tried to keep the design stylish and simple, but elegant. Apart from that, we have the notebook with us in the blue color variant, and it is a magnet for fingerprints. As a result, you have to clean the fingerprints and smudges on the back every now and then. We would recommend opting for the gray color variant of the laptop, as it should technically be more resistant to fingerprints.

As far as I/O goes, you pretty much have all the major ports. There’s an HDMI port, two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a SD card reader on the right side of the laptop. A USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Type-A) port is located on the left side of the laptop.

Moreover, the laptop has a 180-degree hinge that allows you to work from different angles. Furthermore, the build quality is sturdy and stable, similar to other Asus notebooks, and the lid and keyboard are almost impossible to bend. The Ultrabook is military certified and weighs only 1.39 kg, making it extremely portable and ideal for working while sipping a cup of steaming espresso at your favorite coffee store.

Display

Another area where Asus notebooks are quite impressive is the display. Let us take a look at the specs first: The laptop has a 14-inch OLED display with 2880*1800 and 90 Hz, which is Pantone and Vesa certified.

As you might have guessed from the specifications, the display quality of the Asus Zenbook 14 is excellent. Thanks to the OLED display, colors are quite vibrant and sharp, making for an immersive viewing experience. Also, navigating UI feels a bit smoother thanks to the 90Hz refresh rate, which is good.

All in all, it’s not the brightest display at 550 nits, but it’s enough for most people without any issues. Asus has also tried to keep the problem of burn-in at bay with the help of Pixel Shift technology and Dark Mode enabled by default.

Performance

Let us move on to one of the most important aspects of any laptop, the performance. Our unit of Asus Zenbook 14 OLED is powered by the latest Intel Core i7 1260P chipset coupled with 16 GB LPDDR5 RAM and 512 GB Gen 4 SSD.

Before we look at the overall performance of the laptop, let us talk about the Gen 4 SSD inside. Asus claims that the Gen 4 SSD is the fastest SSD on the market, and during our testing we found that claim to be true. We achieved read and write speeds of over 6 GB per second, which is incredibly fast for a laptop. Consequently, the boot speeds were also insanely fast. In fact, we also compared the boot speed with our M1 MacBook Pro, and the Zenbook 14 booted faster every time, so that says a lot about SSD speeds.

Day-to-day performance was great, as expected. We had no problems working with multiple Chrome tabs at the same time, switching between apps, and more. The Windows 11 software was also pretty good and stable, which is always a good thing.

We also tried playing some games on the laptop, and performance was pretty decent considering the Intel XE graphics inside. This is by no means a gaming laptop, and you should not buy it if gaming is your top priority. If you are a gamer, you should check out the Asus TUF F15 2022 Edition that we reviewed sometime back.

While I did not have any issues with the heat generated by the notebook, I did find that the fans were a bit too loud for my liking. For all the benchmarking geeks out there, we ran Cinebench, Geekbench, and SSD speed tests, and the results are as follows.

Keyboard and Trackpad

Another deciding factor for a laptop is the keyboard and trackpad experience, and the Zenbook 14 OLED does not disappoint. Unlike the Zenbook 14X Space Edition, which had wobbly keycaps, there are no issues on this model, which makes for a good typing experience. The keys are well spaced and have good travel, so we had no problems typing on the notebook for hours.

The good performance continues with the trackpad as well. Since this is a 14-inch laptop, you have to do without a full-size numpad on the keyboard deck, but you do not have to sacrifice functionality. As with other Asus Creator Series notebooks, you can enable a numpad on the trackpad, an excellent little addition and a party trick up your sleeve. The trackpad is quite smooth and large, so Windows 11 gestures work flawlessly.

Battery Life and Charging

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED has a considerable 75 Wh battery, which proved to be excellent in our test. The laptop easily lasted 7-8 hours under medium to heavy use without gaming, which is quite good for a 14-inch notebook. We worked with 15 tabs simultaneously in Firefox, music played through the speakers at all times, working with files in the file manager and more.

Charging speeds were also quite decent. Asus includes a 65W charger that charged the device in less than 2 hours, which is pretty decent. In addition, the laptop also supports USB Power Delivery, and you can easily use your PD charger to charge the notebook via the USB-C port.

Software, Speaker and Webcam quality ft. Connectivity

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED runs a pre-activated version of Windows 11, and there are no notable bugs or software issues since Windows 11 has been available for some time.

For the speakers, Asus has teamed up with Harmon Kardon, and the quality of the speakers is quite good. However, I would have liked them to be a bit louder; that would have improved the overall experience with the laptop.

The quality of the webcam was average at best and could have been much better considering the price of the notebook.

As far as connectivity goes, the 14 OLED laptop is very good. There is support for WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, and there is also support for Asus WiFi Master Premium technology, which the manufacturer claims increases WiFi range.

Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Review: Verdict

The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED is officially selling for Rs. 1,04,990 for the i7 1260P variant along with 16GB LPDDR5 RAM and 512GB SSD. For this price, the Zenbook 14 is a very good Windows notebook.

For this price, it competes strongly with the Apple MacBook Air M1, but this notebook runs very different software. If you are looking for a good Windows 11 laptop for business, the Zenbook 14 is a clear recommendation.

You get good performance, an excellent display, great I/O and connectivity, good battery life, and more. If you are not interested in the space theme, we would prefer the Zenbook 14 over the 14X Space Edition.

Buy Asus Zenbook 14 OLED