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Asus Zenbook S14 OLED Review
A sharp-looking portable laptop that can face off with any model you might see advertised
In This Article
Verdict
The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED is a great vehicle to demonstrate the chops of the second-generation Intel Ultra chipsets. They combine good general performance with solid gaming ability, including on battery power. Battery life is the real highlight, nipping at the heels of 20 hours in some scenarios. Keyboard snobs might want to wait for something with more meaty keys, though.
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED is a sharp-looking portable laptop that can face off with any model you might see advertised on a big billboard. But one aspect of this model eclipses everything else.
It’s the first laptop, alongside the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i, with a “Lunar Lake” second-generation Intel Ultra 7 processor.
On a retailer website these look just like the Ultra 7 processor laptops we had early in 2024. The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED is nothing like those in reality, though.
The battery lasts far, far longer. It can play more demanding games far better. It’s quieter too. The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED’s raw processor power doesn’t impress in the same way as these upgrades. But for the average, or even more picky, laptop buyer? It’s a dream PC, and makes you wonder why Intel didn’t get here earlier.
The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED starts at £1299 online, or costs £1499 for the same sort performance level seen in this review. But the actual review model has 32GB RAM, upping the cost to £1599.
Design and Keyboard
The design goals of laptops in the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED’s class are simple. They’re meant to seem elegant, look expensive and yet feel tough enough for a life on the road.
These aren’t conducive to actual personality. But Asus has at least tried to give the Zenbook S14 OLED a statement rear.
Across its lid, bright silver lines are carved into a “Ceraluminum” surface. The grey bits are ceramic-based, the silver is where the aluminium underneath is revealed. It’s a bold look, but not a too-bold one.
Inside the Zenbook S14 OLED everything is typical Asus. There are more severe and stark lines than you might expect from other manufacturers.
It also has a more serious and less minimalist appearance than some of thebest laptopsout there. I can’t picture Apple stuffing a great big heat grille above the keyboard in a laptop that barely needs to use its fans.
It is an admirable design, though, and the Zenbook S14 OLED is built to the usual high standards expected in this class. The lower casing is all-metal, and there’s very limited flex to the keyboard.
The hinge only lets the display move back to around 130-odd degrees. It’s no hybrid. But as is often the case, this limited hinge movement leads to an almost zero-wobble display. This is highly desirable for working on the go.
The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED’s inputs are solid, but not good enough to avoid criticism.
There’s a classic ultraportable laptop keyboard here. The keys feel as though some effort has been put into their feel. Typing does not have a hollow ring, and the way the backlight shines through the lettering on the attractive (and Asus signature) typeface is pleasant.
For my preferences, though, the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED keyboard sits a little too far to the shallow side of the key action spectrum. Depth feels similar to that of aMacBook Air M3.
I have found the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED fast to type away on, and the size of the laptop means Asus has not had to cut down any secondary keys so much you end up having to spend time bedding into the key layout.
The touchpad is similar, but again the feel is a little off my recent faves like theMicrosoft Surface Laptop 7.
The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED’s touchpad resistance is a touch too high. The opposite of the keyboard, it leads to a slower and slightly leaden feel — at least until your pointer finger gets used to the clicker.
The rest of the touchpad is great. This is a textured glass surface, not a plastic one. It’s a good size and while I’d tone down the clicker action given a chance, the underlying clicker style is great. It’s smooth and dark, not the bright and clicky style that can often cheapen an otherwise good touchpad.
Display and Sound
The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED has an excellent screen. It’s onlynottop of the game in one area. Like other OLEDs, while it’s bright it can’t match themini LEDdisplays of the topMacBook Pro.
I measured 600 nits when displaying HDR content, but you’ll only see up to 400 nits in normal apps (380 nits when HDR is turned off completely). This is enough to get by working outdoors for productivity apps, although it’s a shame there’s not a more effective anti-reflective layer on the display glass.
The green sheen to reflections suggests it may have some reflection-countering treatment here, but it doesn’t do too much.
Everything else is grand. First up, like other OLEDs, the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED has unbeatable contrast and very deep colour. According to my colorimeter it fulfils 99.9% of DCI P3, and can display colours far outside the gamut too.
Calibration is superb, and there was no visible difference before and after performing a manual calibration of the screen.
The 3K resolution (2880 x 1800) looks sharp across the 14-inch panel and, like most others these days, this is a 16:10 aspect screen. It’s matched with the now-common 120Hz max refresh rate.
And while the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED does not have hybrid-like flexibility, it has a touchscreen and supports a stylus. You don’t get one in the box, though.
The laptop also has a powerful quad driver speaker system. This gives off a great first impression, but on playing music I found it doesn’t play too well with the Dolby processing mode turned on by default. The dynamic loudness enhancement is way too obvious. You can turn it off completely for a more even experience, though.
Performance
The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED is the first laptop I’ve used with an Intel Ultra 7 258V processor. That final string of four numbers and letters is crucial because the experience you get here is totally different to that of an Ultra 7 115H PC. Many of those are found at retailers at the time of review.
This is a newer generation of chipset, one that might come across as a reaction to the ultra-long-lastingQualcomm Snapdragon Elitelaptops released earlier this year. New chipset generations aren’t devised in weeks, though.
It’s not a revelation in all areas but the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED’s Intel Ultra 7 258V might go down as one of my most pleasant hardware surprises of 2024. But let’s start with the bad bit.
The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED’s raw CPU performance is not that good, and I’ve recorded better results from both Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite rivals and even the older last-gen Ultra 7 laptops.
Single-core perfomance is solid. But multi-core? Benchmark figures were never quite as high as I had hoped, and were also a little all over the place between runs — at least compared to the usually super-consistent Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite.
Those benchmarks suggest we’re somewhere between the Apple M2 and Apple M3 in CPU power here. That’s not to be sniffed at.
And while gaming laptop owners may scoff at this one, I’m genuinely impressed by the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED’s performance in games. I tried out a bunch of games on the laptop and found I was getting up to double the frame rates of a Snapdragon X Elite laptop, and power is 20-plus percent up over the last-gen Intel Ultra models.
You can feasibly play Cyberpunk 2077 at Full HD resolution, roughly “medium” graphics settings on the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED and have a good time. That good time can also be had unplugged, with no notable loss of GPU performance (as long as you don’t block the lower heat vents).
It settles in at around 20-22W of power draw, which isn’t bad for what you get. And the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED is very quiet while doing so. This laptop does use active cooling — fans — but even after playing a AAA game for an hour, the noise generated is minimal and the fan tone is easy to ignore.
If you want the very best PC for hardcore number crunching and video encoding, you’ll find faster out there. But there’s a compelling mainstream appeal to a laptop so good across a range of disciplines.
The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED rides the balance on connnections well. Sure, there’s not a boatload of things, but there is a full-size HDMI, a USB-A and a headphone jack alongside the two USB-Cs, which areThunderbolt 4ports.
Battery Life
That multi-disciplinary angle reaches new heights in the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED’s battery life. It has a 72Wh cell, a solid number but nothing out of the ordinary for a more aggressively-designed ultraportable.
Just like the Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite crew, though, its stamina blows the old guard out of the water. For video streaming, you can expect up to 19 hours. It lasts a similar amount of time during PC Mark’s Modern Office battery benchmark.
This is actually slightly better than the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptops I’ve reviewed so far. That continues in gaming too.
The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED lasts 2.5 hours when playing Cyberpunk 2077, pipping the two hours of my personal favourite all-rounder Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptop, theLenovo Yoga 7X Slim.
What else is there to consider? The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED has a 1080p webcam, but it’s a pretty weak one whose image turns sloppy and soft in the average home’s lighting, during the evening.
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Should you buy it?
Buy if you want an ultraportable all-rounder
Great battery life, solid everyday performance and standard-setting light gaming performance for this class make the Zenbook S14 OLED a top all-rounder and a barrel of low maintenance fun.
Don’t buy if you’re after a true performance PC
This laptop’s processor focuses on efficiency, and its raw CPU performance is not super-competitive. The keyboard is also quite shallow, which again may limit appeal for the serious work crowd.
Final Thoughts
The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED sets a new standard for laptops, if only for a certain kind of buyer. Are you the kind of person who thrashes their laptop CPU with batch processing jobs? You’ll likely be disappointed by the lack of real gains in raw CPU power.
Everyday users who wouldn’t even consider benchmarking their PC are likely to love the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED, though. It combined strong daily performance with surprisingly good gaming and GPU power. It’s one of thebest laptopson the market and a strong rival to Snapdragon machines, including the excellentMicrosoft Surface Laptop 7, and other machines like the Honor MagicBook Art 14.
And not only can you use the full whack of that graphics power on battery, the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED battery also lasts ages for general productivity work. Laptops with these abilities and somewhat better keyboards and touchpads will arrive, but these second-generation Intel PCs are well worth investigating if you care about graphics power as well as CPU speed.
How we test
Every laptop we review goes through a series of uniform checks designed to gauge key factors, including build quality, performance, screen quality and battery life.
These include formal synthetic benchmarks and scripted tests, plus a series of real-world checks, such as how well it runs popular apps.
Used as our main laptop for over a month
Test performance via benchmark tests and real-world use
Test the screen with a colorimeter and real-world use
Test the battery with a benchmark test and real-world use
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FAQs
18 hours of light work is a reasonable expectation.
Yes, the display is touch capable, and supports a stylus (not included).
It is not a CoPilot+ laptop, but does support some AI features.
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Andrew Williams is a technology writer, who has contributed to Stuff, WIRED, TechRadar, T3, Wareable and, of course, Trusted Reviews. Here he test and reviews some of newest mobile, audio and camera d…
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Why trust our journalism?
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
