ASUS - Zenbook 14" Laptop - AMD Ryzen 5 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce MX350 - 256GB SSD - Light Gray

It is hard to not be impressed when picking up this little machine. The build quality seems quite nice (although not likely up to the “Military-Grade Quality” advertised on the sticker). It is small (around 12-9/16” wide, 7-7/8” deep, and just under 3/4” high when closed), but still gives great performance and battery life, given its size and price. The Ryzen 5 is VERY snappy, and it also has a dedicated Nvidia graphics chip that is actually better than the one integrated into the Ryzen. It even has a micro-SD card reader built-in, which is sometimes omitted on a machine this size. The touchpad is quite large too, which makes navigating without a separate mouse pleasant. The included Asus utility allows you to have the battery stop charging at 80%, which will maximize your battery life a lot (batteries wear out faster when you charge them to 100%). This thing is also pretty good for casual gaming. Running at 1920x1080, FurMark gave me 18 FPS using the Nvidia chip, and 13 FPS using the integrated graphics. This little beast can also run “No Man’s Sky” acceptably on standard setting, with lows dipping into 15 FPS, and even managed to run Fallout 3 at 1920x1080 on “ultra” settings at 60 FPS (lows in the mid 40’s)! The big limitation on graphics is that the graphics chip only has 2GB of RAM. However, when pushing this unit hard, the bottom starts to get quite toasty. Even with the fans running full power you can barely hear them, but the down side is that you do not want to game with this on your lap if you are wearing shorts. I ran Cinebench on this and got a score of 1864 (single-thread score of 451). To put this in perspective, this is a 6-core 15 Watt part. Let’s compare it to a gaming laptop that I have, which features an Intel i7-9750H that can run at up to 60 Watts (but it only hits 50 Watts before thermal throttling) and also has six cores but has hyper-threading for a total of 12 threads. This Intel CPU scored 2297, and 415 single-core. The Ryzen 5 scored 81% when compared to a CPU drawing over three times the power, and beat it in single-threaded performance! However, this laptop is not all rainbows and glitter. There are a couple of weak spots. First is that, although this features a USB-C port, it is not usable for charging. Instead, a separate barrel jack on the side is used to plug in the power. The included power supply is only 60W, which is well within the capability of USB-C to charge. The other wart is the back-lighting on the keyboard (yes, the keyboard lights up). However, the keys are silver, and the letters are dark with the light off, but glow white when the light is on. This means that using the keyboard lighting while the room is lit makes the key markings nearly illegible, since there is little contrast between silver and white. Finally, the separate GPU is faster than the integrated GPU in the Ryzen, but not by huge margins. I cannot help but wonder if it might have better to ditch the Nvidia chip and just go for a Ryzen 7 part with double the memory. Also the RAM is only 8GB, which is on the small size these days. But even with these tiny complaints, this computer is still a winner.

This is a nice little laptop at a good price point. It is perfect for a home use laptop for browsing internet, watching shows, checking emails, etc. Construction: This is a very solidly build laptop. There is no flexing, bending or creaking with this. The full HD matte finish screen sits inside extremely thin bezels which give it a great look. The backlit keyboard feels very good to type on. It is a very short keystroke, but feels solid when typing. The mouse pad is very responsive and has a nice feel to it. I used this for several hours at a time and it never got too hot to have on my lap. Features: I really like the facial recognition camera on this. Combined with the AMD Ryzen 5 4500 Processor and SSD this thing boots up extremely fast. Wifi connection is solid, but bluetooth gave me some glitches. If you are looking to pair bluetooth headphones to this, you need to make sure that they are running the same version of bluetooth as the Zenbook, or they won't work properly. Graphics are good for media streaming, but this will not pull off any hardcore gaming at all. There is one USB 2.0, one USB 3.0, one HDMI, one USCB C, one micro SD card slot, and one headphone jack. One thing that knocks this down to a 4 star for me is that it utilizes a dedicated charging plug. I would really like to see this utilize USB C charging, but it's not a deal breaker. Since the screen size is not the largest, I can easily connect to a larger monitor with and HDMI. I do also have to say that the battery life on this is great. I can get about 8-9 hours on this before needing to plug it in. Overall Value: I think at the price point of this Zenbook, it is an incredible value that has it's place as an everyday home use laptop.

The ASUS Zenbook is small and surprisingly light weight. The display is 14" yet is still bright and sharp. The keyboard is back lit, but you can set two levels of brightness or turn that off. The track pad is large, but I find that my right palm keeps touching it while typing. The battery lasts a long time if you are just browsing, checking e-mail, or something that isn't too power hungry. The power adapter is small, but I do wish the end that plugs into the laptop had a smaller profile. I'm glad to see that ASUS went with an NVidia GPU as the performance GPU. The AMD GPU that is in it handles the laptop display just fine, but would likely be mediocre for anything that would normally tax a GPU, so it's good that the M350 is available when you need the extra GPU power. I tested rendering a 17 min. video. I used 3 different files of the same length. BRAW, ProRes RAW, and MP4. The source files were 4K 60p and were each rendered into a 1080 60p file. It took 1hr 15min for the BRAW source file to be rendered, 1hr 30min for the ProRes RAW file, and 1hr 35min for the mp4 file. During the rendering of each, the AMD CPU, AMD GPU, and the NVidia M350 were all being utilized by the NLE. As far as ports go, you have one USB A 3.2, one USB C 3.2, one USB A 2.0, one HDMI port, one 3.5mm headphone port, and one micro SD card slot. It would have been good for ASUS to have had an SD card slot instead of the micro SD. You can get adapters for SD card slots to use mircro SD cards, but not the other way around. The air flow vent is underneath the laptop towards the back. There are four small rubber pads on each corner underneath, so it raises the laptop when sitting on a flat surface. If you also have the screen up, it will raise the rear of the laptop a little more than the two rear rubber feet which allows for a little better airflow. If you are taxing the GPUs or the CPU, you will hear the fan, but this is the case with most laptops. The AMD Ryzen 5 CPU seems good for a small laptop like this. Standard applications were snappy when opening and while in use. I experienced no lag in any of the programs I've used so far including a graphics program and a NLE. The SSD is only 256GB on the model that I have which is a bit small. It would be good if ASUS would have a minimum of a 512GB with an option to go to 1TB, but I understand that this keeps the cost down. The amount of RAM in the one I have is 8GB. This is enough to run many programs, but if you are intending to use it for anything more that browsing the web/checking e-mail, I would recommend checking into getting a version that has 16GB of RAM if it is available. The built in camera, in my opinion, is good quality for a webcam. Audio is good for a laptop of this form factor. Overall, I'm pleased with what ASUS has in the 14" Zenbook. I would recommend the Zenbook if you are looking for something small and light weight that you intend to use for browsing, checking e-mail, word processing, etc.

I like everything about this laptop in the short time I've had it (since yesterday) -- speed, size, features that you can read about elsewhere, all super -- except that the keyboard is impossible to read. I got this for my mother, and the gray letters on steel keys are very hard to read. At night is fine, with the backlit keyboard, but she could simply not read the keys in the daytime. I would "recommend to a friend" only if you're ok with that keyboard. (It feels fine, btw.)

I’m pretty impressed with my Zenbook so far. It’s Fast! It has a beautiful IPS display, a light weight Aluminum chassis clad in Aluminum shells with a brushed finish. The build quality feels pretty solid. The speakers sound good too. Nice highs. Not tinny or harsh like some laptops I’ve heard. You can change the EQ settings and effects settings to your taste. They even have a little bit of bass but not much giving the size of the laptop. I do like the lighted keyboard and the feels of the keys. However the color and contrast of the keys and the lettering could be better as they can disappear in certain lighting situations. See photos. No problems with set up, WiFi or Bluetooth. Only a couple of “hiccups” I will cover below. Overall, I highly recommend this laptop. See below for more. I discuss Photo related use first and then other observations. Now for an indepth look at it for what I will be using it for the most, Photo Editing on the go. Asus’ website states that this laptop has an 8 bit per color channel IPS display that covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut. I’ll have to take their word for that because I loaned out my Datacolor Spyder monitor calibration tool that will tell me the color gamut and couldn’t get it back in time for the review. My apologies. However, I have included some photos of this laptop compared to 6 bit displays on a couple of other laptops on hand with my x-rite color checker card. Yes, you can see the difference. The photo of the color checker is shot and lit with lighting at 5500K (98+ CRI) with a Canon EOS R and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM Lens. Shot in RAW, processed in Lightroom Classic to Canon’s Neutral color style and white balance at 5500 (daylight). No other settings altered. Photos of laptops with the same setup and settings. The mozaic is the only exception showing the keyboard in ambient lighting at apx 3750K. For those that don’t know the terminology of what TN, IPS and bits per color means, here it is as simple as I can put it. If you already know then just skip over this part. ;-) TN stands for Twisted Nematic. These are the oldest tech and cheapest display panels to produce aside from Dual Scan panels that are not used anymore. They change colors on off angles when not viewed directly. They can be sluggish compared to IPS and other types. A 6 bit display panel produces 64 shades of each primary color and can display 262,144 colors. Some companies used some dithering and frame rate control to simulate an 8 bit per color gamut. IPS stands for In-Plane Switching. These are much better then TN panels and give better color, much wider viewing angles, much faster response time and higher refresh rates. An 8 bit display panel produces 256 shades of each primary color and can display 16,777,216 colors. Also known as 24 bit True Color. Nits is the measurement of the brightness used for display panel specs. I compared the Zenbook’s display to a budget HP laptop and an Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop. Specs for each are: Zenbook: 1920X1080 full HD, 14 inch IPS display panel, 800:1 contrast ratio, 30 ms response, 60 hz refresh, 100% sRGB, 72% NTSC color gamut. 8 bits per primary color. Panel Mfg: BOE NV140FHM-N63 Acer Nitro 5 AN515-53-52F: 1920X1080 full HD, 15.6 inch IPS display panel, 700:1 contrast ratio, 25 ms response, 60 hz refresh, 70% sRGB, 45% NTSC color gamut. 6 bits per primary color. Panel Mfg: AUO B156HAN06.1 HW1A HP 14-DK0028wm: 1366x768 HD, 14 inch TN panel. 6 bits per primary color. All other info I was unable to find a reliable source for. Guessing 500:1 contrast ratio. 240 nits brightness? Response is very sluggish. Text will blur when scrolling. I set each to the default screen settings and brightness to max. Needless to say the Zenbook was the best and brightest of the three with the best color reproduction. However, the color will need to be calibrated as the green is slightly brighter than red and blue. You can see this in the yellow swatches but it’s very slight. Reds and blues look good. Also notice the white to black swatches and how fast the HP and Acer drop off in this area. As for comparing the Zenbook’s display to my Desktop’s Samsung LPS monitor, they are very close except for the green issue that I will correct when I get my spyder back. ;-) I only included the HP laptop to show the difference in screen types. As for processing speed the Zenbook and Nitro 5 (16 gb, Core i5 8300H, GTX 1050 /4gb) took apx the same time to render photos in Adobe Lightroom Classic (9.3 ARC 12.3). I took 30 RAW photos with my EOS R (30mp) and rendered them to resized JPGs (4000X2667 72dpi) Both computers took 16 seconds to do 10 photos and 46 seconds to do 30). That’s just for an example for comparison. Results can vary depending on how much editing you do per photo. Responsiveness for making adjustments and panning when zoomed in, was also the same. Fast and responsive. I didn’t include the HP laptop for several reasons. Even though it has a newer Ryzen 3 CPU I know it can’t compete in this area. The Zenbook has the best screen for the job in both color and brightness. The Zenbook is also half the weight and size of the Nitro 5 which is a gaming laptop. Much better build quality but different target audience too. See photos for size comparisons. The audio is pretty good on the Zenbook given the size of it and size of the speakers used. Highs are clean and according to my spectrum analyzer reach up to 20khz. As for bass, not happening with something this small but you can hear a little bass if you are in a very quiet room. The lighted keyboard is good if you are in a dim lit room and the screen isn’t too bright. But depending on the lighting the letters can almost completely disappear (See photo) regardless of the keyboard illumination setting. Poor choice in color and contrast on Asus’ part. There are three levels of brightness and off. The keys do have a nice feel and the keyboard feels sturdy overall. Not up to my Logitech G910 or my 1968 IBM Selectric but not meant to be either. ;-) The Zenbook’s Size, weight and feel are excellent in my opinion. It is indeed aluminum as stated by Asus. Machined aluminum chassis with aluminum covers for the screen and bottom. Not plastic as some have said. Just put a room temperature Zenbook on bare legs and You Will know it’s Aluminum! No bends and creeks with the screen. Hinges are smooth. As for the Military Grade “MIL-STG 810G Passed multiple tests” Asus lists a few tests but beyond that they are pretty vague as to exactly what tests were performed. The link on their site just takes you back to their home page. For more info about MIL-STG 810G and how manufacturers are open to interpret it, do a search on it. It’s interesting. I had no problems connecting my Bluetooth devices as some reviewers noted. No problems with WiFi either. Windows setup was easy to do. Only problems I have had with the Zenbook are the following with one occurrence each: It didn’t wake from Sleep mode, it completely depleted the battery with the lid shut. (It’s set to turn off after a certain amount of time. Plugged in or battery power.) I turned it on and the fan ran on high even though Task Manager and Performance Monitor showed no CPU load beyond a few percent. I had to do a hard reset to stop it. A restart had no effect. I have not experienced any of those problems again…. so far. Battery life is great. I’ve got almost 10 hours browsing with the display turned down over the span of a few days before I needed to charge it. The Zenbook has plenty of ports to connect to. 3 USB ports. Type 2, 3 and USB C. HDMI and a headphone/mic jack. There’s also a micro SD card slot. Power is provided by a plug in the wall adapter as opposed to the usual “brick” most laptops use. Operations Manual is online. Other than the part I wrote dealing with using the Zenbook for photo editing using Lightroom and Photoshop, I did not run any video programs or benchmark programs like Cinebench or Blender. Same for games. Some other reviewers have and I’m sure the review sites will follow. My conclusion is that the Zenbook is targeted at people that want a small, light, powerful and sturdy laptop with good battery life. In this regard it delivers and then some. The fan only runs under a moderate to heavy load from what I can tell and is fairly quiet compared to other laptops I have used.

The Asus Zenbook 14 is a snappy laptop that works amazingly well. Asus made a winning choice going with the AMD Ryzen 4000 Series 5 processor to save cost but not performance. Surprisingly this AMD laptop comes with a NVIDIA graphics card that is also impressive for a laptop. Is this a gaming laptop? Not really but a dabble of Steam games or Epic Games should not have too much of an issue. Using the laptop to perform work on things such as AutoCAD or any other 3D modeling program will be a breeze. The screen is really nice and clear and the close to bezel-less screen makes a 14 inch screen not much bigger than a tablet. The touch and feel of this laptop is of top notch quality and inspires confidence that this laptop will last a long time. I do wish that the keyboard keys would of been black instead of silver because in a bright room, the illuminated keys are really hard to see. Turning off back light of the keys make it easier to see, but still is difficult at times. However, in dark environments with the back light on, it is very easy to type. The laptop comes with a microSD reader which at times I wish was a full sized SD reader since most digital cameras are still using full size SD cards. HDMI output is a breeze and simple. I would be curious to see if any benefits can be gained using the on-chip Radeon graphics paired with the NVIDIA graphics can boost performance or not. The laptop also comes with an IR camera that automatically unlocks the computer by looking for your facial features, which is really nice. Overall, the only minor complaint I have with the laptop is the keyboard visibility in bright environments. Also ASUS is very responsive to any problems you might have with their products. I highly recommend this laptop.

I always wanted a super thin and light machine where I can do some light gaming on the go, mainly World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, some easier to run Steam games. But my last try was with an Nvidia MX150 based machine, yes the graphics was there but it could barely run them well. To my surprise, the MX350 here is unlike the previous MX150 or MX250, but this is effectively a stripped down GTX 1050. While the GTX card is still far superior, this version of the MX graphics actually pulls ahead where the MX250 was just a name change, the MX350 is not. I can run World of Warcraft in the most busy of places on native resolution, with not the lowest settings (preset 3) and still get above 40fps, that's a win in my books. The bottom does get very toasty, so I suggest not to put it on your lap if gaming, other tasks it's fine. When stressed you can hear the fan but it is very quiet, it's no gaming laptop in the noise department at least. The build quality is what drew me to the machine at first, it has a great screen, pleasant keys and a large track pad, if I were to have a complaint, I would say the backlit keyboard could be brighter, white on grey is very hard to see. The memory runs in dual-channel, and is soldered on, the storage is upgradeable at least. It uses a barrel charger, a shame the USB C on it does not charge, as it uses a 65w adapter, which is also tiny! I got this while on sale for $549, down from the $699 price. Which I think simply can't be beaten. There were plenty of other machines in the sale price that were inferior, in both spec and build quality, 6 cores in this form and price? Yes please!

I love this laptop but I hesitate to give it 5 stars for the reason below: Pro: - Very light, at 2.65- it can easily be carried around everywhere. Solid built. - Backlight keyboard lighting - beware, when there is enough light, the light needs to be dimmed out or completely turn off, otherwise it’s hard to see the marking on the keyboard keys. And when it’s really dark, the light needs to be put in max – which probably will eat up the battery. - A big trackpad that makes it easy to navigate around. BUT depending on where you place your wrist when typing, this could be a nuisance because you might accidentally press the trackpad which happens to me all the time. - A very quick load up – as soon as you turn the computer on, the screen quickly opens up. Having a 256 SSD is probably the reason why. And based on the information from Asus, the SSD hard drive is expendable. However, with cloud storage and portable hard drive, most people are probably quite satisfied with the 256 GB storage. - Stunning 4K video I found on youtube. - 3D IR Camera that can be set up to recognize your face and log you on to the computer automatically just by scanning your face Con: - Keyboard stops working – have to restart before it finally works. Not sure what was the reason. This happens quite often after putting the computer to sleep. I recovered the computer to the previous version and re-install the update again and have not experienced the keyboard issue. So this might be a software issue, but this is one of the reasons for the 4 stars. - At price point around $700, this is not exactly the cheapest laptop. You can definitely get a lower priced laptop but might have to compromise on speed and performance. - Speaker Bluetooth connection could be a challenge. I was able to connect my Beat Solo Pro easily but not the Adidas, even though it said the paired was made. But this could be an issue with the Adidas headphone. - With 8 GB RAM that is not expandable, you are stuck BUT so far, this thing is lightning fast. For what I used it so far: browsing internet, watching videos on youtube and Netflix or typing, I am pretty happy with the speed - The sound coming out of the computer speaker is not exactly the loudest, but listening it using my Beat Solo Pro is a different story: it’s loud and full of bass. IF you are looking for a “budget” computer and not ready to pay $1000 for MacBook, this laptop is a very compatible substitute.