CES 2025: Asus’ Zenbook A14 is the MacBook Air killer we’ve long been asking for

–The Windows laptop landscape is littered with the graves of so-called MacBook Air killers, but recent developments in the battery life space mean the likelihood of one appearing is becoming increasingly likely. I think the Asus Zenbook A14, which was launched at CES in Las Vegas, could be that very product.

It’s a shame the name is so dull; it certainly doesn’t help the laptop stand out amongst the blizzard of other laptops launched this CES by Asus and rival manufacturers. But examine the specifications, take a look at the pictures, and you’ll see why it is this laptop that I’m getting a little excited about.

Asus Zenbook A14: Specifications, price, availability

• 14in OLED Full HD 60Hz display, 600 nit peak brightness, 100% DCI-P3
• Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor
• Up to 32GB of RAM
• Up to 1TB SSD
• 70Wh battery delivering up to 32 hours of video playback
• Dimensions: 311 x 214 x 13.4-15.9mm (WDH)
• Weight: 980g
• Price: £999
• Availability: From now

Asus Zenbook A14: Design and key features

First up, is the design of the thing. In my opinion, this is the most attractive laptop to emerge from the Taiwanese manufacturer’s design studios yet. It’s also the best-looking Windows laptop I’ve seen since the Microsoft Surface Laptop first appeared, and (whisper it) it clearly owes some of its good looks to a certain slim-and-light laptop from Apple’s stables.

It has a touch more of a wedge profile than the MacBook Air does, if anything to stave off the lawyers, but the minimalist approach is the closest to Apple’s designs as I’ve seen a Windows manufacturer get. If anything, it’s better looking.

It’s finished entirely in the smooth, matte fingerprint-resistant “Ceraluminum” material we’ve seen on the company’s premium ultraportables in recent years, and it comes in a choice of either grey, black or what Asus is calling “Zabriskie beige” – a sort of khaki – which I think is a fantastic colour for a laptop.

Some might not like the fact that Asus has dropped the geometric patterning, seen on recent Zenbook machines, but I think it makes for a more elegant sophisticated appearance. The laptop’s large touchpad, which stretches to occupy much of the height of the wristrest, looks the part, too, and the whole thing weighs a mere 980g. That’s a quarter of a kilogram lighter than the equivalent MacBook Air and with a larger display as well.

The Zenbook A14 isn’t just a good looker, though, it ticks plenty of other boxes. With prices that start at £999, it’s competitively priced, and the specifications are right up there. As with most of the Asus range, its 14in display is an OLED unit, although at this price you’re not getting the top end of what Asus offers on its other laptops – resolution is a mere Full HD and the refresh rate is limited to 60Hz. Peak brightness is decent, though, hitting a claimed 600 nits, and it’s capable of reproducing 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut.

You might not care about that, however, when you read Asus battery life claims. With a large 70Wh battery hidden inside the Asus Zenbook A14’s lightweight chassis, Asus is quoting a huge 32 hours of “continuous video playback on a single charge”, presumably courtesy of the fact that the laptop runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor.

Now, I’ve seen some pretty outlandish battery life claims from Windows laptop manufacturers over the past year, Asus among them, but this is the longest I can remember seeing. I can’t imagine for a moment the laptop will deliver anything like those numbers in normal use – and it won’t in our testing because Asus runs its tests with the screen set to a lower 150cd/m2 brightness level than our tests at 170cd/m2 – but even if it gets close, the phrase MacBook killer will not be far from the truth.

Elsewhere, there’s a decent selection of ports and sockets, and given how slender the Zenbook A14 is, it’s much more comprehensive than you’d expect. With a pair of USB-C 4 ports, one USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, a single HDMI 2.1 output and one 3.5mm audio jack, the only thing I’d want to see here is an SD card slot. The laptop comes with “up to” 32GB of RAM and “up to” a 1TB SSD, which would seem to indicate that the base £999 model will be available with somewhat less.

Nevertheless, even with 16GB of RAM and a far smaller SSD, the Asus Zenbook A14 would represent astonishingly good value and you’ll be able to buy one straight away in the UK. Assuming the battery life gets even close to the manufacturer’s claims, this could well be the best laptop of 2025, and we’ve only just got started.

Asus Zenbook Duo, Zenbook 14 and Vivobook updates also unveiled

This being CES, Asus didn’t just drop one laptop announcement – it also announced updates to several of its other key laptop ranges. The Asus Zenbook Duo, which debuted at CES 2024, gets an update with Intel’s latest Core 7  9 Ultra (Series 2) chip to deliver faster performance across the board.

Not much else changes about the new Duo (model number – UX8406CA), which is okay because it remains one of our all-time favourite laptop designs. It still has those twin 14in OLED displays, the built-in kickstand and removable keyboard and touchpad, making it usable as both a regular laptop and a dual-screen desktop workhorse. The new Duo will be available from £1,699 from the end of February.

Meanwhile, the Asus Zenbook S16 (UM5606KA) also gets an update with the latest AMD Ryzen silicon. It comes with a Ryzen AI 350 with a super powerful 50 TOPS NPU and a 16in 3K 120Hz OLED screen. The Zenbook 14 (UM3406KA) also gets the new AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 and couples that with a 14in 3K 120Hz OLED screen.

Asus also announced it would be refreshing its value Vivobook lineup with updated Copilot+ enabled 14in and 16in models: the Asus Vivobook 14 (X1407QA) and the Asus Vivobook 16 (X1607QA). These models, which are both equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips, boast up to 19 hours of battery life, come with 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of SSD storage.

If they look tempting, though, their displays look disappointing – both have basic 1,920 x 1,200 60Hz IPS displays with 300 nits peak brightness, which is a long way from the OLED screens found on the company’s premium machines. The two new Vivobooks will be available from February in the UK.