ASUS - Zenbook S 14 - 14" 3K OLED Touch Laptop - Copilot+ PC - Intel Core Ultra 7 - 16GB Memory - 1TB SSD - Zumaia Gray

Immediately, I've had great impressions with the S14. It has great stand-by/sleep battery performance. Over the course of 20 hours, the battery only decreased by 1% from full charge. This is great as I'm constantly moving between classrooms or around my workplace, and now I can do so without worrying about shutting down the laptop down. During real world usage at 80% brightness, I had the S14 at 100% battery at 10AM and it decreased to 7% at 6PM, so a 93% decrease over 8 hours. During this period I was working heavily and switching through multiple Chrome tabs, programming in Android Studio, emulating Kali in VirtualBox, and participating in Zoom lectures. I was very impressed by the laptop holding up, generally I would need to find an outlet in the middle of the day. I am certain if it was a less hectic day, I could easily push around 12 hours usage under casual use. One helpful feature that Windows has been pushing with any device with an IR camera (S14) with presence sensing where the screen dims when you look away or locks itself when you step away helps reduce battery drain as well. As for the components, realistically the only upgradeable/replaceable parts would be the battery, the NVMe SSD (M2280), the fans, and the WiFi card. Everything else seems to be soldered down so 16GB DDR5 is all you'll be getting. Some further context about my stance on this laptop is in contrast to my experiences with the Zenbook S16 that I exchanged for this. I had issues with upgrading the storage from 1TB and driver issues where the WiFi adapter would not properly work after waking from sleep requiring a restart. Also I found the lid to stain very easy with the Scandinavian White, just sliding it in and out against my felt pocket in my backpack had black stains on the corners. Whereas the S14 took my 2TB 980 Pro upgrade without issue and I've yet to run into any driver issues with it. The S16 would fail to complete the drive upgrade no matter whether the data was cloned, installed from asus cloud reecovery, or clean installed (would BSOD). To be clear, this may have been patched for the S16 already, but right away the launch for the S14 has been far better without issue. The Intel Arc APU has decent performance, nothing great but good enough you would be able to play games. I found that Deadlock could be run ~55-70 FPS on low settings, Helldivers on steam deck graphics settings on performance rendering ~60 fps, and Cyberpunk ~29fps on low with xess on performance. Ultimately, I'm very happy with the S14. It's portable, has solid power, and its resolution is large enough that coding is not an issue despite being 14".

This is an ultraportable laptop with impressive battery life. The 3K OLED screen delivers vibrant visuals. The Core Ultra 7 processor excels in single-core tasks and graphics performance but, falls behind in multi-core tasks compared to its competitors.

The Asus Zenbook S 14" OLED 3K AI Copilot laptop is a premium portable ultra-thin laptop. I stress the word "Premium." It can compete with any laptop in this category. With its smooth ceraluminum finish, it's ultra-thin design, premium sound, vapor chamber cooling, and AI hardware capabilities, it's everything that a working professional could want in a laptop. I would highly recommend the S 14 for work productivity, creative professionals, and students. Let's start with the build quality and design. The Zenbook S has a sleek ceraluminum finish that most of us haven't seen before. Ceraluminum is ceramic bonded with aluminum that is lightweight, scratch-resistant and also recyclable. It also looks like a brushed matte finish. The surface inside and out also manages to avoid those aggravating fingerprints and smudges. The S 14 weighs in at an ultralight 2.65 lbs with dimensions of 12 x 8.5 x .5 inches. There are 2 thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a 2.1 HDMI port and a 3.5mm jack on the left side. On the right there's a lone 3.2 Gen A USB port. As mentioned before there's a vapor chamber for cooling. Air is drawn under the bottom of the laptop and up through the top vent just below the display. Speaking of the display the OLED 3K screen has no screen wobble and the hinges feel sturdy. *Tech Specs* The Zenbook S 14 has the long awaited Lunar Lake 8 Core Intel Ultra 7 Series 2 256v with a base clock frequency of 1.6 GHz and a boost clock of 5.1 GHz. There's an NPU capable of 47 TOPS, and Intel Arc integrated graphics. It features an even smaller SOC. There's a 1 TB NVME SSD and 16GB of LPDDR5X 8533 MHz RAM. The 72Wh battery shines, delivering over 20 hours of life. With demanding tasks, I was able to get over 15 hours. The battery can also give you 50% charge in about 30 to 45 minutes if you need it. The Zenbook S 14 comes equipped with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 too. *Hardware* CPU - Lunar Lake Intel Core Ultra 7 Processor Series 2 scored 8022 Multi and 1660 Single core scores on Cinebench R23. It also scored 10591 Multi and 2514 Single core scores on Geekbench 6. The CPU gives you plenty of power but all while prioritizing battery life. Battery - 72Wh, Power cable is a 65W slim. Battery life is outstanding due to the hardware efficiency. Graphics - Intel Arc Integrated Graphics 140V 8GB can handle all your productivity tasks with ease. It breezed through Creative Suite and zipped through a few AI tasks as well. It can absolutely handle light to medium gaming at 1080p and still look beautiful. I ran Minecraft at 116 FPS with a CPU temp averaging around 66 degrees Celsius. Overwatch 2 played at 75 FPS and ran the CPU temp up to about 75 degrees Celsius peaking at 87 on load. While gaming the keyboard was a little warm but comfortable, mousepad and adjacent areas were cooler, and the top vent was warmer than both. TimeSpy score: 4240 (Graphics 3969, CPU 6933) Performance Fan Profile Night Raid w/Integrated Graphics: 27198 (Graphics 36129, CPU 11329) Performance Fan Profile Display - The 14" 2880 x 1800 Lumina OLED touch screen is Pantone Validated, HDR True Black Certified, and Dolby Vision Certified. It has a 16:10 aspect ratio and a 120Hz refresh rate making it easy on the eyes. There is 100% sRGB 94% AdobeRGB and 99% DCI P3 coverage. Amazing coverage that makes it the perfect screen for creative, photo, or graphics oriented production. The OLED has beautiful vibrant colors and deep blacks. I tested a few movies out and it doesn't get much better on an OLED. Peak brightness is 500 nits. The touch screen is responsive and the display opens up to about 130 degrees (does not lay flat.) Frankly, I haven't found much use for a laptop that lays flat, although I'm sure it has its purpose. Cooling - There is an even better vapor chamber in the Zenbook S 14. Fans rarely come on but when they do they're quite, peaking at about 45 decibels on performance mode. On standard mode I was seeing about 30 to 35 decibels. This is very impressive. You won't feel anything warm unless you're really pushing the machine. The cooling technology on the Zenbook S is top-tier. Keyboard and trackpad - The first thing I noticed is how easy it was to read the keys. They're well lit and slightly larger than normal. The keyboard and the trackpad both feel great. You won't think about them much while using and that's how it should be. The trackpad supports Windows Gestures. You should use these features. If you swipe up and down on the left side of the trackpad you can adjust the volume, side-side at the top is rewind/fast forward through videos, up/down on the right side adjusts your brightness, and a diagonal swipe down from the upper right corner will open up ASUS Screenxpert. Keyboard travel is 1.1 mm and it feels just right. Audio - The Zenbook S 14 has Harman/Kardon speakers that really surprised me. I've had a ton of laptops and these are the best sound I've heard from external speakers on a PC laptop. There's an adequate amount of mids and lows that I just haven't heard yet on my previous laptops, and the fact that they managed to squeeze this sound into a 14" chassis is even more impressive. If you need the external speakers for a movie, music, or a conference call you won't be disappointed. In fact, you might not need the headphones. Camera - Video is 1080p 30fps with IR. AI does a great job canceling out background noise and focusing on the speaker during conference calls. AI also blurs the background. This camera also supports Windows Hello mode and detects quickly. *Software* Windows Hello makes logging in and entering passwords easy. The My Asus App included helps you monitor your system performance, but it also allows you to adjust a few important settings. You will have access to your CPU load, CPU Temp, Memory Usage, and Hard Disk space usage on your main dashboard. You also have product registration and warranty info here. A few changes I would recommend in Device Settings: 1. Under Battery Care I set the max charge at 80%. This will help lengthen battery life. 2. Fan Profile can be set to 4 different modes. If you're working with creative, ai, or gaming I would choose Performance mode which will boost cooling performance. Otherwise, I would use standard or whisper mode to quiet the fans. Even with fans on Performance Mode I was around 35 to 40 decibels. In standard mode you will dip down to 28 to 33 decibels. 3. Set the Sound Mode under Audio/Visual to Dynamic. This will let Dolby Atmos identify the Audio and adjust accordingly. 4. Turn Volume Booster on if you need a little bit more volume using external speakers. 5. Turn on "Automatically hide Windows taskbar in desktop mode. This will help prevent static images on your OLED screen. 6. Also under Color Gamut (in Audio/Visual settings) you can adjust your monitor from Native to sRGB or DCI P3 if you need it for creative editing. 7. Under Input Device Settings you can lock the Fn so that your Function keys will trigger the event automatically. For Example, instead of typing Fn + F1 for Mute Volume Key. You would just type F1 and the volume will mute. 8. Last recommendation, you can lock in 120 Hz by clicking on the Fixed Refresh Rate. Otherwise it will default to dynamic which will lower it down to 60Hz when you're on battery to preserve battery. The system diagnosis option is a comprehensive intuitive tool if you're having issues ranging from blue screen to a slow system. *Performance* The Zenbook S handled the Creative Suite with every task I threw at it. The Office Suite was a breeze. All the while, it rarely needed fans. Browsing the web, I counted 23 tabs open and not one bit of lag or slowdown. I had a variety of apps open as usual and you'll barely notice the Zenbook having to work. AI tasks happen quickly. I believe the longest I waited on AI might have been about 10 seconds when generating graphics. *Pros* *Beautiful 3K OLED screen *Sleek Design *Powerful AI *Quiet *Long Battery Life *Top Tier Cooling *Needs Improvement/Suggestions* *Video Camera is good, but it would be nice to go QHD for conference calls *Would like to see more AI software bundled The Zenbook S 14 OLED 3K is made to perform. It checks every box for a premium Ultrabook for a work professional. It's portable, powerful, and classy. You can work all day with it, but also enjoy a great looking/sounding movie with the OLED and Harman Kardon speakers. As mentioned in the beginning of this review, I highly recommend the Zenbook S 14. It's hard to find a weakness. 5 Stars. Asus delivered.