Asus Zenbook 14 Review (2024)

last year the Zenbook 14 was one of our favorite laptops heck it was our number one pick for people who just wanted a good all round laptop for light tasks you know school work office work consuming content and that sort of thing it had a really good display a great keyboard very long battery life and for that use case very little fan noise and it never got annoyingly warm to the touch but what made the Zenbook 14 so special was that you could regularly find it on sale for around $600 which was a complete steal well the new Zenbook for 2024 is pretty much a 180 it now has the latest Intel meteor Lake processor and a lot of changes from the 2023 model but its price is now well over $1,000 in fact at the time I filmed this video this laptop is being sold for 1,300 around double the price so the big question is is this new Zenbook 14 still a must buy laptop in this completely different price bracket but first a quick word from our sponsor you ug green ugen makes a range of Premium laptop 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areas now have more defined angles and the cheap s looking power button has been replaced with a regular one our unit is the Ponder blue color which looks nice but it picks up fingerprints just like our Jade black model from last year the lid itself is much more rigid it's extremely sturdy and it now includes a physical privacy shutter for the webcam unfortunately the keyboard deck has a bit of flex to it most noticeably around the top left and right corners of the trackpad it's certainly not the worst we've seen but it does flex more than last year's model lastly the hinge has been redesigned the laptop no longer lifts off the table where the screen is open what's weird is that the redesigned hinge isn't as sturdy as last year this is especially noticeable when you use the laptop's touchcreen the 2023 model feels very firm when you touch the screen the 2024 model though not as much when it comes to portability this new laptop is around 100 G lighter which is definitely a welcome change on the display this year's model has a slightly improved OLED panel it now supports 120 HZ with Dynamic switching down to 60 if the laptop is running on battery power last year model mod only supported a 90 HZ refresh rate and did not offer Dynamic switching that was something you would have to manually do anyway just like last year's the brightness is around 350 nits that is good enough but I definitely wouldn't call it a bright display in 2024 for example in a bright room I definitely notice Reflections while using the laptop which I don't tend to notice on laptops with brighter screens and I am of course referring to those with glossy panels just like in this laptop color accuracy continues to be fantastic as does the resolution which is high enough for text to look very crisp on screen looking at how much content I was comfortably able to see without needing to squint I was able to see 29 rows in Excel this is not as much content as I'd like to see on a display this size and the main reason for it is due to the Zen book's lower brightness like many OLED panels that we've tested pwm flickering was present at all brightness levels that being said I wasn't bothered by it and my eyes are sensitive for that sort of thing the keyboard is a bit of a step back which is a Pity as the last year's model had an excellent one the key press now feels mushier and you can feel your fingers bottoming out it still has the same simple layout though which I like as there are just no special keys that I accidentally mispress like last year the keyboard has a three-stage backlight the trackpad is one of the best I've used gliding is perfectly smooth and feels natural as does the click I'd say the trackpad is a little better than last year's funly enough this year's model no longer has the option of converting the trackpad into a number pad like most Asus laptops which I personally like as I found a bit gimmicky this year's model has the same port layout as last year but it drops the micro SD card radar our model from last year had an AMD processor which meant that the USBC ports didn't support Thunderbolt transfer speeds USB 4 was only rolling out back then so it only supported 10 gbits our model this year has an Intel processor and both USBC ports support Thunderbolt 4 40 GB other than that the HDMI port continues to be 2.1 and there is a headphone Mark combo Jack and a usba port on paper this year's model actually has slower usba speeds with 5 gbit rather than 10 gbit the speakers on this year's model are much improved the sound is loud powerful clear and it has a decent Sound Stage that being said there really isn't much base at all and that's what separates this laptop from the top performing laptop in the category the MacBook Pro [Music] 14 let's talk performance as that's really the biggest change with this year's model the Intel 7 core Ultra processor inside from Intel's media leg generation is a big step up in performance from last year's model which by the way had a ryzen Z3 U series processor just using these two laptops side by side I could straight away tell that the newer Zenbook felt snappier in geekbench which tests common performance tasks the Zenbook 14 performs on par with Intel's 13th gen H series processor in the larger Zenbook 14x from 2023 that's the one with the 14.5 in display by the way it also bid out almost every other common processor for thin and light laptops the only processor that beat it is the MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro 11 core chip by the way people keep asking me why do I include the M3 Pro chip in comparisons with media Lake and not just the Basse M2 or M3 the M3 Pro 11 core is the lowest end M3 Pro and really Apple's middle-of the range processor same is where the ultra 7 H series sits in Intel's lineup U series below it and HX above it so that's why and yes the Mac costs more but I'll talk about that at the end of the video switching to cinebench 2024 which tests how the laptop performs when maxed out you can now see that there is a jump in single core performance over last year's model but last year's model as I mentioned used a zen3 processor built on amd's older architecture but you'll notice that Al zenok performs worse than our HB Spectre with the same processor that laptop draws more power though to achieve its score now I am aware that fellow reviewer Matthew monus updated the bias of his Zen book and got a much higher score even beating our Spector to 14 we updated our Zenbook bars too but we actually got lower scores and we ended up delaying this review for a month as we investigated but try as we may we never got scores higher than our original run so we know the processor itself is capable of more performance on par with Intel's 13th gen H series from last year however right now our Zenbook feeds its processor a more frugal 28 wats of power and therefore delivers more modest performance and F Yi just like in geekbench in cinebench this new Intel chip is substantially behind Apple's M3 Pro 11 core when it comes to the efficiency of the processor it is more power efficient than last year's model with amd's Z3 processor but it's still not as efficient as amd's latest zen4 U series and nowhere near Apple's M3 Pro overall if you were hoping that Intel's latest media Lake would solve Intel's issue about requiring too much power for the performance their chips deliver you'll be let down in good news looking at performance over time there is no noticeable drop on repeated cinebench 2024 runs I'm thinking about removing this test entirely cinebench 2024 is a much longer running test than the older R23 so if there is a drop in performance it occurs within the first run and it doesn't really show up in consecutive runs let me know with a comment below if you support dropping this test from our usual Benchmark Suite graphics performance is fantastic from the new Intel Arc integrated Graphics it's an absolutely massive step forward and offers significantly more performance than the 780m integrated Graphics in amd's latest Z4 processor after my initial video on media Lake several people have argue that this is heavily driven by the increase in memory speeds of these new Intel processors yes memory speeds are much faster but that alone isn't responsible for such a huge graphics performance game so you can now play some older AAA games on this laptop and you can even do some light video editing too this year's media Lake Intel chip also comes with a neural core processor which will definitely reduce fan noise and heat you feel in tasks that this kind of processor can accelerate the obvious one being that background blow effect that we all use on Zoom calls please note that the software you use may have to be updated to make use of this underload the heat you feel is fairly average for this kind of laptop a thin and light one it gets warm but nothing alarming it actually feels a good amount cooler than the HP Spectre 14 no surprises as I showed you that laptop feeds its core ultr processor more power and the hb's fan noise is significantly less than the zambuk so HB probably isn't pushing as much air through their Spectre to keep it cool in fact when under Max load this laptop gets very loud more akin to a gaming laptop than a thin and light Ultra Book please note this year Intel has upped their CPU Max temperature from 100 to 110° so that is why Asus allows this processor to run so hot taking a look at competitive processors it's scary how much hotter these Intel processors run switching to light use while I was writing the script script for this very video this laptop felt a little warm to the touch manageable but it was there however in my quiet office I could regularly hear the fans going they weren't loud but I could certainly hear them compared to last year's model with the AMD ryzen processor this year's is a little worse when performing the exact same tasks on both laptops the newer one gets ever so slightly warmer to the touch they both have similar fan noise though under light use when on battery the good news is you do get the laptop's full performance battery life itself though is decent but it's not as Stellar as the prize End Book dimming the laptop screen to 200 nits of brightness we ran cinebench 2024 on a loop for 30 minutes this year's laptop had 77% remaining versus 85% off the older one for light use we played a Netflix video on repeat over Wi-Fi for 4 hours we recorded 56% remaining indicating over 8 hours can be expected for this use case this is decent but substantially worse than the 70% remaining we recorded on last year's model and it's a lot worse than hb's new Spectre 14 especially considering that laptop has the same processor and a smaller battery like last year's model the SSD is replaceable and the memory isn't but there is a configuration this year with 32 gigs which is great now some good news Asus did change the Wi-Fi card from the awful Media Tech one in their prior model that one had some occasional Wi-Fi dropouts we even made a short demonstrating how to replace a laptop's Wi-Fi card because of that machine anyway this year model now has an Intel card but it is now solded vers replaceable like the one from last year the webcam is disappointing my skin has the complexion of a freshly dug up potato and the mic sounds heavily processed like I'm down a well all right let's wrap this up this year's mbook 14 is in a completely different price bracket to last year's model at the time of filming it was going for its MSRP of $1300 and as I showed you not everything about this year's model is better the pros are that it's a lot faster than last year's model and it has better speakers and it looks a little more premium the cons are that its keyboard is worse its screen isn't that bright and the Intel media leg processor which is the main upgrade in this year's model it's a bit of a disappointment because of that processor this laptop gets warmer to the touch it still has some fan noise and it has a lot less battery life than last year's version for the new price that this laptop is now going for it's now up against more premium laptops like lenovo's yoga 9i Dell's XPS 13 plus Apple's MacBook airs and even HP spectas for the most part I think this laptop does compete well against them but because of that price increase it's just no longer a must buy it's more of a good buy for example compared to the MacBook Air this laptop is faster and comes with a lot more memory but the air has a brighter screen no fan noise and longer battery life before I go I think one of the nice side effects of this new version is that it will make the pricing of last year's Ste excellon version even better for those buying the laptop for some more intensive tasks like say you're doing professional programming or even some light video editing you will definitely notice the increased performance of this new model and that's the one you should buy well that's all for today folks if you enjoyed this video make sure to smash the like button and get subscribed it definitely helps the channel grow which means that we can create more videos for you plus as I always say it makes my dearest mother very proud make sure to check out our website for the latest laptops that we recommend for different types of users and where to find the best deals on them till next time go do something awesome with your day and I will catch you later

Channel: Just Josh

Views: 106,009

Keywords: Asus, Zenbook 14, Zenbook 14 2024 Review, Zenbook 14 Review, Best Laptop 2024, Best Laptop for Students, Best Laptop for Students 2024, Students, Gamers, Best Gaming Laptop, Best Laptop for Programming, Programming, Computer Science, Best Laptop for University, Apple, MacBook pro, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro M3, Windows vs Mac, HP Spectre, Dell XPS, Best Thin and Light Laptop, Best Portable Laptop, Long Battery Life

Id: vQsoMhYTN1s

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2024