Asus ZenBook 14 OLED review (2023): A compelling AI PC with a familiar design

Asus’ latest ZenBook 14 OLED has most of the hardware we want in a modern ultraportable: Intel’s new Core Ultra chip, a gorgeous OLED screen, and a respectable number of ports. But after years of testing Asus laptops and seeing how far they’ve come with the Zephyrus G gaming series, it’s surprising that the company’s high-end Zenbooks haven’t evolved much lately.

While the new ZenBook 14 takes a solid step into the “AI PC” era with its NPU to accelerate AI tasks, it’s also a reminder that Asus lags behind Apple and Microsoft in high-end design. It doesn’t feel as sturdy or stylish as the redesigned MacBook Air, and it lacks the refinement of the Surface Laptop. ZenBook 14 OLED appearance beautiful — It’s as if you asked artificial intelligence to produce an image of a universal ultraportable laptop.

On the plus side, Asus’s computing costs are much higher than Apple and most other competitors. You can buy the ZenBook 14 OLED with a Core Ultra 7 155H chip, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD for $1,300 at Best Buy. The similarly priced M2 MacBook Air comes with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD (and can only be upgraded to 24GB of RAM). Asus also offers a decent selection of ports, including a USB-A connection, two USB-C Thunderbolt ports, an HDMI slot, and a microSD card slot. You’ll have to upgrade to the pricier 14-inch MacBook Pro to get some of these ports on your Mac.

While Asus is touting the Core Ultra’s AI capabilities as a major upgrade this year, I’m still more fascinated by the Zenbook 14’s gorgeous 14-inch 3K OLED screen. It’s very bright and colorful when needed, and delivers the inky deep blacks we like from OLED displays. This year, the Zenbook’s OLED screen can also reach a 120Hz refresh rate, allowing for smoother scrolling, which is actually a requirement for today’s high-end notebooks.

Images and videos practically jump off the ZenBook 14’s OLED screen, making it ideal for watching Netflix or watching your YouTube queue. Because the laptop’s bezels are so thin, the display almost feels like it’s floating on air — so much so that I stopped noticing how dull the rest of the ZenBook’s design is. I also wish its keyboard had more spring and depth and its trackpad felt less stiff.

Back to Intel’s Core Ultra chips. Our review unit came with a Core Ultra 7 155H, 32GB of RAM, and Intel Arc graphics, which represents some significant improvements over ultraportable laptops running Intel’s 13th-generation chips. It scored 1,000 points higher in PCMark 10 than the ZenBook S 13 running a Core i7-1355U, and its Arc graphics card was nearly twice as fast as the S 13’s Intel Xe card in the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme benchmark. times.

While it’s far from a gaming machine, the ZenBook 14 OLED’s Arc graphics card also hit 30fps to 49fps when playing games Halo: Infinite 1080p, low graphics. Streaming games via Xbox Gaming Cloud delivers better results: Halo: Infinite and Forza Motorsport Playing it over Wi-Fi in my office is like a dream. Of course, this is more a testament to the ZenBook’s wireless hardware than the graphics card.

Photography: Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Intel’s Core Ultra chips aren’t just about raw horsepower (Intel’s internal benchmarks even showed it being beaten by the 13th-gen chips in some single-threaded tasks, which was made to deliver better AI and graphics performance trade off). The addition of an NPU means the ZenBook 14 OLED can handle AI workloads in the future; developers like Adobe and Audacity have announced they are developing AI-driven features in their apps. If you’re not using those apps, there isn’t much use for the NPU in Windows yet, aside from Microsoft’s Studio Effects, which lets you blur the background and automatically keep yourself in the frame during a video chat. Notably, Studio Effects offers better background diffusion and person detection than the built-in alternatives in Zoom and Google Hangouts.

Buying an AI PC like the ZenBook 14 OLED is more of a bet on the future than an immediate speed upgrade. But based on the industry support we’re seeing from Microsoft and other big tech companies, owning a PC with an NPU could pay off quickly. Imagine Microsoft giving Copilot offline capabilities to make it more responsive, similar to how Apple pushed Siri to work offline (which is also powered by the company’s Neural Engine). Finally, you can speak loudly to Copilot and have it instantly find files or find specific settings on your PC.

If you’re not excited about the future of artificially intelligent computers, I wouldn’t blame you. When Macs switch to Apple Silicon chips, they see significant performance improvements compared to older Intel hardware, while also gaining the added benefit of the Neural Engine and longer battery life. Instead, Windows users can only hope and pray that developers can actually take advantage of the NPU.

Photography: Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

For now, though, you can expect decent battery life from Intel’s Core Ultra chips. The ZenBook 14 OLED lasted 12 hours and 43 minutes on the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery benchmark, longer than any other PC we’ve tested. On a recent trip, it lasted about a day and a half of typical productivity work (a lot of web browsing, writing, photo editing, and some video chatting). Asus still lags behind Apple, though—the M2 MacBook Air lasted 16 hours and 30 minutes in our benchmark test. Fan noise remains an issue: Its fan spun noticeably during podcast recording, while the fanless MacBook Air is completely silent even under heavy workloads.

After using the ZenBook 14 OLED for a few weeks, I’m growing fond of its OLED display, and I’m intrigued by the possibilities of a Core Ultra chip NPU. It’s a shame to see these features trapped in a relatively dull package. However, if you’re more concerned about getting a bargain than style, this ZenBook is hard to beat.

This article was originally published on Engadget: https://www.engadget.com/asus-zenbook-14-oled-review-ai-pc-143054247.html?src=rss

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