Asus Zenbook S 14 Review
Luxurious Clamshell LivingDisclaimer: Asus sent us a unit of the Zenbook S 14 free of charge to review, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are our own and were not discussed with the company prior to publishing.
When I first got my hands on the Asus Zenbook S 14, I was immediately overwhelmed with the elegance that exuded from the laptop. It’s a beautiful looking and an exceedingly capable portable computing device that I found myself enjoying more and more everyday. As far as modern work laptops go, I’d easily say that this is one of my favorite Windows laptops that I’ve reviewed. However, nothing is perfect right? Here are my thoughts on this luxurious Asus Zenbook.
Retail Price: $1499.99
Design and Build
Pricey laptops don’t often live up to their price tags when it comes to build quality and design. For a laptop of this price, consumers should expect a terrific user experience. Fortunately for the Zenbook S 14, I have nothing but praise for its consistently terrific design across the board. From its compact size and layout, to its gorgeous display, there’s a lot to like here.
Let’s start with the build material because it is somewhat unique to what I’ve experienced on laptops over the years. Asus apparently made the Zenbook S 14 out of Ceramic Aluminum, or what they call Ceraluminum. It’s a type of ceramic material that is more often seen used in the luxury watch industry thanks to its mixture of durability and lightness. When I first touched it, I thought it was some kind of super nice plastic material. But the more time I got to run my fingers on it to get acquainted with the body, the more unique a sensation it became to me.
The Ceraluminum material is extremely smooth but not in a slippery sense. I like how it isn’t a fingerprint magnet as it keeps its premium allure no matter how much you use the laptop. Asus sent us the Zumaia Gray color and it’s accented by geometric lined shapes on the cover to form what the company claims is a nature inspired design. I don’t feel connected to the great outdoors when I look at this, but I will say I find it to be very professional looking. If I went into a high class board meeting, this is one of the laptops I would feel confident repping at the table. If I’m being 100% honest, I think the other colorway offered, Scandinavian White, is a better match to pair with the sharp line contrast, but to each their own.
The Zenbook is also deceptively lightweight. It weighs 2.65 lbs while containing a 72 Wh battery. The main body feels like it has no substance at all behind it. Most of the weight feels divied up to the screen side of the laptop. When the word portability is thrown around, something like this is the perfect example of what it should be like. Not only are the functioning aspects of a laptop compacted into a tight form factor, the Zenbook is also extremely comfortable to store away and move around.
Performance
With the backing of the Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 2 CPU and Arc Graphics, the Zenbook S 14 has a snappy high-end performing reputation to live up to. Seeing as this is a Copilot+-ready laptop, the S 14 requires a certain amount of power to engage with the AI-centric applications built into the Asus platform.
From a day to day operating standpoint, the laptop runs everything I throw at it efficiently and quickly. There’s 32 GB of ram and 1 TB of SSD storage to support the CPU in pushing the Zenbook to quality levels that are expected at this high price point. I also was pleased to not feel too much warmth emitting from the Zenbook after prolonged periods of time running programs on here. All of the basic Microsoft 365 suite of apps can be spread open at the same time and browsers can accommodate a bevy of tabs open without seeing slowdown.
There’s no dedicated mobile GPU here so don’t expect up to date gaming performance, but if you’re not playing AAA games, this combination of specs is enough to power through popular titles of yesteryear like Grand Theft Auto 5 at high settings. I had no problem running the game periodically during my testing period during breaks in my work day. It is fair to consider that at $1500, you can find laptop options with significantly better GPU performance.
The best part about the Zenbook S 14 for me is the magnificent OLED display. As the namesake implies, the screen is 14 inches, but the OLED panel feels so much more immersive than 14 inches would seem. The bezels are negligent, especially on the left and right sides. It’s a stunning 90% screen to body ratio that when factored in with the 2880 x 1800 p resolution, makes for a terrific viewing panel. I’ve watched a lot of media content on this and I’m quite satisfied with the clarity and glaring color gamut accuracy that I was seeing. It’s short of a 4K display, but it’s nonetheless a beautiful viewing experience that I don’t foresee many people being disappointed with. In fact, I think this will be an upgrade for many people buying a new laptop coming from previous year models.
This is also a glossy touch screen display with a 120 Hz refresh rate. If I was looking at purchasing a Windows 11 laptop in a traditional clamshell form factor for work purposes, this is one I would potentially consider if viewing media is an important aspect of the job.
Fusion
The fusion of ceramic and aluminum is supposed to provide strength, scratch resistance, as well as lightness.
Amenities
As a portable premium option, the Asus Zenbook S 14 provides users with the amount of ports you’d expect to see on a workhorse computing device of this class. There’s a single Type-A USB port, 2 Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, an HDMI port, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. I wouldn’t consider this a power user’s laptop, but that’s enough ports for general business usage to get things done.
I’m also a fan of the backlit keyboard and spacious touchpad. The typing experience isn’t anything out of the ordinary here, but I do think the trackpad is a luxurious use of space. It’s seriously large. I appreciate the vast canvas of options for my fingers to operate through Windows 11 gestures.
The speaker system was also a pleasant forward facing adventure. I was not expecting to be impressed by the fullness of the sound coming out of the bar of audio above the keyboard, but here I was enjoying a few K-pop hits while typing up an article. The audio has a well-rounded array of articulation that bounces upwards.
I think the small details were also added in the right places like the Asus logo hidden on the audio bar. I guess Asus began using an arrowhead styled logo a couple years back, but I don’t recall actually seeing it integrated in any of the laptops I’ve reviewed recently until this one. I really like it. I’m usually not a fan of logo spamming integration onto products, but this one accents what is a rather plain and generic interior.
As for battery life, the 72Wh battery seems to get me by about 5-6 hours based on my usage with it. It does charge up relatively quickly up to 60% in 49 minutes.
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot to like here with the Zenbook S14. As a premium Windows laptop for business, it’s hard to come up with reasons why this laptop shouldn’t be at least on someone's shortlist for consideration if they’re looking at this type of laptop. It may not offer the best value per dollar amount that you’ll be paying to acquire this, but I also don’t think that the buyer looking at the Zenbook S 14’s way will be too displeased with the package that they pay for either. It’s hard to distinguish a brand apart from others nowadays especially in the Windows laptop space. I think Asus has done an admirable job at least attempting to carve out an identity for their flagship namesake.
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