This is the new ZenBook for 2024,
the Asus ZenBook 14 OLED 2024 edition. and when this arrived in our offices,
my first question was what's new in 2024? Turns out this brings upgrades
to the design, the battery, the performance with the new core ultra
CPUs, the display, so let's get into it. So let's face it, the Asus ZenBook
series has been quite popular, they have been kind of the Macbooks
in the Windows world and one of the biggest reasons
for that has been the design. I mean the design is one area where
Asus always kills it with the ZenBooks and this year things are even better. Look on first look, it looks like a usual
ZenBook design with the Asus monogram logo, the minimal Asus ZenBook text
and that's not a bad thing, this looks like a premium laptop with
the aluminium build all around with the lid or the keyboard touchpad area. Now what has changed from last year is the
fact that this is even slimmer at 14.9mm and even lighter at just 1.2kgs. I mean that is the first thing you will
notice when you unbox this laptop and I also like the sleeve Asus
bundles for carrying it around. Now the sleek and more lightweight design
does not mean that Asus has compromised on the build quality of this laptop,
this is still military grade certified and more importantly this feels solid. The 180 degree hinge here is solid,
you can open the laptop with a finger and there's
almost no wobble or flex. I also like that even in the slim design, Asus has managed to put
in the necessary ports. The right has the HDMI
2.1 port, the 3.5mm Jack and a couple of Thunderbolt 4 ports and on
the right you have the lonely USB A port. Now if you're wondering,
there's no fingerprint scanner here but the FHD webcam here is an IR camera,
so Windows Hello works and it works well. Also I like that this has a physical
privacy shutter, this indicator, dual mics with AI noise cancellation
that actually make a difference and the camera quality is good too
along with features like automatic framing, eye contact and background blur. Coming to the display,
the Asus Zenbooks are known to have great OLED panels
and this is no different. The variant we have has a 14-inch OLED
touchscreen with sharp 3K resolution, 16:10 aspect ratio, great for work, 120Hz
refresh rate, 550 nits of peak brightness, 100% DCI-P3 coverage,
Gorilla Glass protection. Ya, this display is packed
with flagship-grade features. I mean this is almost a perfect display, be it for work as it's
colour accurate, sharp, 16:10 like I said,
bright enough to use outdoors or you know, be it for entertainment
because movies and shows look awesome on this OLED screen and add to that, the stereo speakers here
are tuned by Harman Kardon and these are super linear speakers
and they're loud and crisp. There's even a volume booster option
to further increase the volume if you want. Now, coming back to the display, this is a
touchscreen and the touch response is good and this has stylus support so you can
even get an Asus pen and you know, draw or you know, just get more creative. Now, third bigger upgrade
here is the performance. This is powered by the new Intel
Core Ultra 7 155H processor which Intel is not calling
14th Gen anymore or i7, but that whole rebranding apart,
this is powerful. This has 16 cores including 6 performance
cores, 8 efficiency cores and there's 2 new low-power efficiency cores that make a huge
difference in the battery life, trust me. There's also 22 threads, new Intel Arc GPU that's by the
way, 2x faster, brings ray tracing and there's new Intel AI Boost NPU
for 70% faster generative AI performance. Also, this is an Intel Evo edition laptop, so it comes with all the features
in the latest Intel Evo standards. Look, the Ultra 7 155H
is a powerful processor considering this is a thin
and lightweight laptop. We compared the benchmarks versus
the 1360p on the Galaxy Book 3 Pro and when the difference in Cinebench single
core and multi-core score aren't that big, just look at the GPU scores. It's clear that the new Arc GPU is way more
powerful compared to the Iris Xe graphics. As for the NPU, it's still fairly early
days for the new Intel Core Ultra CPU, so when we tested out some local AI
models to you know, up scale images or even some LLMs,
tasks were not allocated to the NPU, so I guess we'll just have to wait for more
apps to support the new Intel AI Boost NPU. That apart, the ZenBook 14 OLED is
one smooth laptop, apps launch up quickly, running multiple apps
side by side is no issue and no matter how many Chrome tabs you
have open, the laptop does not slow down. We even tried some Photoshop on
the laptop doing some extensive edits with multiple layers and the
performance was what you expect from a premium work laptop like this. The multitasking is also very good,
I mean this has fast 32GB LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB of Gen 4 SSD storage,
so it's no surprise that multiple apps are
no problem for this laptop. As for some casual gaming,
games like say Rocket League or CS2 run at high frame rates even at high graphics
settings which is very good. Now in terms of thermals, this has
a big heat pipe along with this fan and there are vents on the left side, on the bottom, below the hinge and in my testing, the laptop
never got warm in day to day usage and you don't really hear the fans
but I did notice the CPU temperature being constantly high but
this is probably because this new chipset is well, very new. And if you're wondering about the
upgradability, the RAM is soldered but you can swap the SSD although
there's no additional slots. Now, I did mention that the
new low power efficiency cores make a huge difference
in battery life, right? Well this has a 75 Whr battery and you get a 65 Watt Type C PD charger along with it which is great
but what's insane is that we got a battery life of around
10-12 hours in day to day usage involving lots of Chrome, Slack, Notion, lots of YouTube and that is insane
considering Windows laptop standards. Anyway this is what makes me think
that this new insane battery life is probably due to the new
low power efficiency cores. Anyway coming to the keyboard
and touch pad, this is what the keyboard layout looks like and this is backlit with three levels to it and ya the backlit shines
through the keys, good. As for the typing experience, it's really good as it should
be on a work laptop like this. There's good travel in keys
and I like how keys have a curve in the middle that makes
the typing experience really good. The touch pad is also fairly big, it's a
glass surface so it's smooth and responsive and this is Asus' number pad 2.0, so you can easily use this
to quickly crunch numbers. Look all said and done, it's clear that the
new ZenBook 14 OLED 2024 edition builds on what is Asus' premium work
and productivity laptop. I mean it still looks very good,
in fact it's sleeker and lighter, it still has the stunning OLED display,
a very good keyboard and touch pad and the big upgrade comes in the form
of the new Intel Core Ultra processor that's faster, brings a better GPU,
a powerful NPU, amazing efficiency and honestly this will make
the experience even better once Windows, third-party apps, games start
to take full advantage of its capabilities. Anyway as for the pricing, the new
ZenBook 14 OLED starts at Rs 97K and the variant we have costs Rs 1.2 lakhs. So, I want to know from you, what do you
guys think of the new ZenBook in India? Comment down below
and thanks for watching.
