Asus embraces the OLED display craze with its Zenbook 14, an almost embarrassingly affordable laptop designed to please even the most budget-conscious buyer. The centerpiece of the laptop is right there in the name, with a brighter-than-bright OLED screen that stands as the second-brightest I’ve tested in over 15 years (as far back as my screen brightness testing records go).
Pantone-validated with a customizable color gamut feature that lets you tune the screen for content creation, watching movies, reduced blue light, and more, it’s so impressive that it’s easy to forget you’re looking at a display that measures just 14 inches diagonally. The resolution, at a 2,880 x 1,800-pixel resolution (16:10 aspect ratio), is plenty for a screen of this size.
Photograph: Asus
Built around an AMD chipset, the unit sports a 2-GHz AMD Ryzen 5 7530U CPU and the usual companion of AMD Radeon integrated graphics. I received an entry-level configuration, outfitted with 8 GB of RAM and a 256-GB SSD. Despite that, performance during benchmark testing was better than expected, with exceptional results on business apps, particularly given the low price.
Graphics and gaming weren’t entirely workable, with rather pitiful frame rates throughout, though none of my tests failed to run to completion. Battery life, on the other hand, is outstanding, turning in 12 and a half hours of running time on a YouTube video playback at the max screen brightness. That’s a truly impressive number, especially considering how bright the screen is.
Despite the small size of the unit (3.1 pounds and 19-mm thick), you’ll find ample connectivity options, including two USB-C ports (one of which is needed for charging), one full-size USB 3.2 port, a full-size HDMI output, and a microSD card reader (all side-mounted).
Photograph: Asus
