Asus Zenbook S 14 review (UX5406): Intel’s back, baby
A laptop that is more than the sum of its parts, the Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406S) proves Intel laptops can be competitive in the ultraportabl
Pros
- Great CPU and GPU performance
- Superb battery life
- Very reasonable price
Cons
- Not the best webcam
- Not particularly upgradeable
The Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) might look like any old ultraportable laptop, but it’s an important machine. It’s the first laptop we’ve tested to come with one of Intel’s latest Core Ultra 200V chips, the latest salvo in 2024’s laptop battery life wars.
It comes off the back of Intel’s global launch of the new chips prior to IFA 2024, where a lot of big claims were made. This new “Lunar Lake” silicon would be the first generation to properly focus on longevity and stamina for an age; the first to help Windows laptops to match Apple’s MacBooks in the battery life arena since late 2020; and a ripost to Qualcomm and its hyper-efficient X-series chips for Windows laptops, launched earlier this year.
Despite these seemingly outlandish claims – and I must admit, I had my doubts – Intel finally looks to have delivered. This Zenbook can’t quite match the best Qualcomm laptop we’ve seen this year but it’s the longest-lasting non-ARM laptop I’ve tested in recent years and it’s a brilliant all-rounder.
Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) review: What you need to know
This isn’t a review of Intel’s latest CPU, though. It’s a review of the first laptop with a Lunar Lake chip inside, so let’s focus on that for a while, before getting to the nitty gritty.
Currently, there are four versions of the new Zenbook S 14 and I have the top-of-the-range model in my hands for testing. That comes with the 5.1GHz 8-core Intel Core Ultra 9 288V. This is accompanied by 32GB of quad-channel LPDDR5 RAM and a 1TB SSD for storage. You can also get the laptop for less with either a Core Ultra 7 258V (4.8GHz, 32GB), a Core Ultra 7 256V (4.8GHz, 16GB), or a Core Ultra 5 226V (4.5GHz, 16GB) CPU.
Each of the Core Ultra 7 machines comes with an eight-core Intel Arc GPU, while the Core 5 model has a seven-core GPU. And all the laptops have an NPU that reaches the threshold of 40TOPS (trillions of operations per second) to be certified a Microsoft CoPilot+ (for what it’s worth); it’s rated at 48 TOPS.
Elsewhere, it’s fairly standard Windows laptop fare. This machine comes with a 14in touchscreen display, which, as with most Asus laptops, is a wide-gamut OLED unit. The resolution is a sharp 2,880 x 1,800, it refreshes at up to 120Hz, and comes with flicker-free dimming, although you do need to use Asus’ own settings software to enable that feature.
Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) review: Price and competition
Configuration tested: 14in 120Hz 2,880 x 1,800 OLED touchscreen, Intel Core Ultra 9 288V CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD. Price: £1,749
In my opinion, £1,749 for the Core Ultra 9 Asus Zenbook S 14 is a little on the pricey side, even taking into account the fact that it has 32GB of RAM on board and a 1TB SSD. However, you can get hold of the Core Ultra 7 model for £1,500 with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, while the Core Ultra 5 variant is £1,299 and comes with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.
Here are some alternatives you could consider
- M3 Apple MacBook Air 13.6in (Apple M3, 24GB RAM, 1TB SSD) – £1,899: Although the most expensive Asus Zenbook is pricey, the equivalent MacBook Air is even more expensive … and you get less RAM. The 15.3in model is even pricier at £2,099
- Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 13.8in (Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, 32GB, 1TB SSD) – £2,049: Again, a great laptop with wonderful battery life but this is more expensive for the equivalent specification of the Asus, cosing £300 more for the model with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD and £400 more for the 15in model
- Acer Swift 14 AI (Qualcomm Snapdragon Plus 10-core, 16GB, 1TB) – £1,200: Not as nice to look at as the Asus or as well made, but this machine comes with the a generous allocation of RAM and storage, delivers the longest battery life we’ve seen from a modern laptop at a smidge over 24 hours and costs £550 less
Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) review: Design
- Rigid, unyielding chassis
- Comfortable, spacious keyboard with a couple of small flaws
- Easy access interior for servicing
As with a lot of Asus’ Zenbook laptops, this S14 is an absolute beauty. The ceraluminum finish on the lid looks and feels great, and it resists fingerprint smudges nicely. I love the look of the grille that sits above the keyboard and Asus claims that the way its perforations sit within larger holes will cut down on air noise. What I’m not convinced by is the longevity of the finish on the lid – even with careful use, a small scuff had appeared on my review sample, in the back left corner of the lid.
Still, the build is satisfyingly rigid – give it a twist and it barely moves – and the rest of the chassis is perfectly practical. Around the edges, you have a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports on the left alongside a full-sized HDMI 2.0 output and there’s a single USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 socket on the right towards the rear. That’s a much better selection than you get with most rival ultraportables and it’s something that’s becoming a hallmark of Asus laptops.
The rest of the design is solid, if unremarkable. The keyboard, in particular, is lovely. The key action is a little on the shallow side but there’s very little rattle, plenty of space for the big flat square keys to breathe, a solid end stop to each press, and the three-stage backlight is bright and even.
I don’t like the single-height Enter key, but that aspect of keyboard design doesn’t get me as angry as it once did, and the cursor keys are, irritatingly, half-height. There’s no fingerprint reader here, but otherwise there’s very little to complain about.
The touchpad is just right, too, with plenty of surface area for performing swipe gestures, a smooth surface and reliable click action that’s just a little on the heavy side. It responds well to taps, which is how I had it set up but I do wish Asus would move to a haptic touchpad like the MacBook Air’s, as that allows you to click all across the surface, from top to bottom.
The laptop is relatively easy to get into, with all the screws you need exposed on the underside, and it doesn’t take much prying with a spudger to pry off the base plate. You won’t be able to upgrade much when you get there, however. The memory is integrated into the CPU package so that’s off-limits and there’s no extra SSD slot, so you’ll have to replace what’s there if you want more storage space.
It’s good news for maintenance, making it a relatively simple job to access the fans and innards for cleaning, though. All in all, a mixed bag on the design front, but I’m erring on the positive side with this one.
The same holds true of the 1080p (2MP) webcam. It’s fine and supports Windows Hello facial recognition login, but the image quality isn’t the best I’ve seen. It looks over-compressed and a little soft, even in good light, and can’t match the best laptop webcams.
The speakers are pretty darned good – nearly up to the standard of those in the Apple MacBook Air – though you will want to hook up a pair of wireless headphones if you want a bit more bass.
Asus Zenboom S 14 (UX5406) review: Display quality
- Bright, vivid colour palette
- Great colour accuracy
- Smooth 120Hz refresh rate
As usual, the display on the Zenbook S 14 is great. It’s an OLED touchscreen with variable 48Hz to 120Hz refresh rate, a resolution of 2,880 x 1,800 and it’s capable of reproducing enough colours to satisfy all your creative and media consumption needs.
The laptop comes with its Vivid colour mode selected but if your needs are more specific, there are three further precalibrated colour profiles to choose from in the MyAsus settings app: Vivid, sRGB, DCI-P3 and DisplayP3. I found all to be reasonably colour accurate, with average Delta E scores of 0.96, 1.05 and 0.97 respectively. Peak brightness reaches around 370cd/m2, with non-HDR content, which is plenty usable in most environments, but not the brightest I’ve come across, and gets up to 619cd/m2 with HDR playback.
It’s a great display by any measure, with HDR material looking superb on it, and decent enough accuracy for colour critical work. The glossy finish isn’t distractingly reflective, either. The only thing missing is an AdobeRGB colour profile for photographers. The panel is capable of reproducing it accurately, so why not include a profile for people to use?
Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) review: Performance
- Top battery life
- Impressive integrated GPU
- CPU performance is a tad underwhelming
The newest Intel Core Ultra 200V series of CPUs is interesting for a number of reasons and not just that for the renewed focus on efficiency. Indeed, the most notable aspect of the design is the lack of hyperthreading. These CPUs have eight physical cores capable of handling eight threads, whereas previous Intel mobile CPUs with the same number of cores might have been capable of handling double that.
The other dramatically different architectural element with the new CPUs is that the memory is now “in package”. That is to say, the RAM is now, effectively, part of the CPU. This improves performance and efficiency, which is good, but it means no aftermarket RAM upgrades are possible, regardless of how easy it is to access the interior of the chassis.
As for performance, that, like the rest of this laptop, is a mixed bag. The Intel Core Ultra 9 288V inside my review unit is top of the line and I was hoping for barnstorming performance and incredible battery life. In the end, it didn’t quite deliver on those expectations.
I ran my usual selection of tests. Our in-house benchmarks – a selection of media conversion and multitasking tests – Geekbench 6 CPU, some tests from the GFXBench graphics benchmark and our local video playback battery test.
In our in-house media conversion benchmarks, the Zenbook performed better than the M3 MacBook Air and worse in the Geekbench 6 CPU test, particularly in multi-core. The difference is due to the fact that our in-house tests stress a laptop’s thermals more than Geekbench does, since they run for longer. The MacBook doesn’t have a fan inside, and so cannot match the actively cooled Zenbook for sustained workloads.
To test graphics performance, I ran the GFXBench Car Chase test at native resolution and 1080p and here the Asus fell behind the MacBook Air more significantly. This test doesn’t run on Snapdragon machines so I have to fall back on the Geekbench 6 Compute (GPU) test to compare across all the laptops and here, the Asus performs well – a touch behind the MacBook Air but a long way in front of the Qualcomm X Elite-based Surface Laptop 7.
Interestingly, in this test, an older Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, based on the previous generation Core Ultra 7 155H, performed better, while all of them were beaten by the gorgeous Zenbook S 16 with its Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU.
What does this mean for gaming? For this, I dug out my standard test for low power laptops – Doom – to see what it could manage at low-ish settings. At 1080p, I was pleasantly surprised to see it delivering an average frame rate of between 95fps and 100fps and even more pleased to see it manage just shy of 60fps at a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440. In the Serious Sam 4 One for the Road benchmark, meanwhile, the Asus returned a frame rate of 89.5fps – on a par with the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED from the turn of the year.
Now this is far from an exhaustive test, but it would appear that, if you want a lightweight laptop that can turn its hand to the occasional game – then this would appear to be a good candidate.
As for battery life, well that’s the Asus’ strongest suit. Not only can this machine game with the best ultraportables, it can outdo many of them on the battery life front. Indeed, in our battery life test, which we run with the screen set to a brightness level of 170cd/m2 with flight mode engaged, the Asus lasted longer than the M3 MacBook Air and even the 15in Qualcomm-based Surface Laptop 7 15in, with a result of 18hrs 28mins.
It can’t match the best laptop for battery life we’ve seen so far this year – that honour falls to the Acer Swift AI 14 with its 10-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chip – but it’s better than pretty much all the rest, significantly, a long way in front of the AMD-based Zenbook S 16 on this front.
Combine that stupendous battery life with superior GPU power, and solid all-round CPU speed and you suddenly have a laptop that is hard to beat. And remember, since this laptop’s CPU runs on the x64 instruction set, you will have fewer issues with app compatibility than you will with the ARM-based Snapdragon laptops.
Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) review: Verdict
Ultimately, it’s a combination of factors rather than just battery life, CPU or GPU performance that makes a great laptop and that’s why the Asus Zenbook S 14 (UX4506SA) can’t quite claim our top award.
For sure this is a lovely machine. Not only is CPU solid and battery life is superb, it’s also a viable occasional gaming machine – more so than a MacBook would be, simply for the greater selection of Windows-compatible titles on the market.
Combine that with a slim, lightweight and attractive chassis, a sumptuous OLED display and a price that undercuts its premium opposition and you have a laptop that it’s impossible not to be positive about. I only wish that the price had been even lower.
