A true MacBook Air rival
The Asus Zenbook A14 is a lightweight marvel of a laptop that pile in fantastic survival , a enough port pick and a solid OLED display . operation is a little off against key challenger such as the MacBook Air M3 though , perhaps owing to its slimmer form factor . Nonetheless , it ’s a capable choice in a lightweight chassis that ’s a potentially compelling MacBook Air alternative .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
If ever there was a laptop designed to take it to the MacBook Air , it would be the new Asus Zenbook A14 .
Even a cursory glance of the specification sheet would suggest that , as it comes with a sub-1 kg chassis , Arm - base Snapdragon X chip , 14 - in OLED display and immense efficiency thanks to a 70Whr cell .
With this in mind , the £ 1099.99/$1099.99 monetary value tag is also free-enterprise against Apple ’s ownMacBook Air M3 , as well as other Snapdragon - powered choices we ’ve liked in the past such as theDell Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 ( 2024 ) .
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I ’ve been testing the Zenbook A14 for the last few weeks to see if it ’s one of thebest ultrabookswe’ve tested , and as to whether it ’s a lawful MacBook Air - baby buster .
Design and Keyboard
The Zenbook A14 force no punches when it comes to the design , coming with its own typical look , not least with the beige colourway I have here . It ’s cheerily left - field of the grey and fatal slabs that modern laptops have become , and looks splendid . I should say that it is also useable in inglorious if you want something more ceremonious .
What ’s also unlawful here is the fact it tips the exfoliation at just 980 g. That ’s ridiculously unaccented for a 14 - in laptop and makes this Asus Zenbook A14 one of the most portable laptop . There is a certain Apple - like tone to the rounded corners and small essence in the center of the chassis , too .
The reason for this being so lightweight is because of Asus ’ use of their own innovativeceraluminiummaterial . This was first go through on theZenbook S 16 ( 2024 ) , the premium AMD - powered ultrabook , so it ’s rather dainty to see it trickle down to another model .
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As the singular name suggests , ceraluminium is an alloy that blends ceramic and aluminium for a rugged , yet lightweight finish . The former cloth is quite uncommon in laptop computer , and is one I ’ve see more in the public of watches in bezel , sheath and watch bracelet for fantastical durability and lightness .
At just 13.3 millimetre dense , the Asus Zenbook A14 also cuts down on its thickness against the current MacBook Air by 2 millimeter while offering a good overall port option . Whereas the M3 MacBook Air add up with a pair of USB - blow embrasure , headphone Jack-tar and MagSafe charging , this Asus laptop sport a full - size HDMI , earpiece jack and a pair of USB4 - capable character - C ports on the left side , and a USB - A on the right wing . That ’s more Pro than Air .
Being a more compact laptop computer , the fact there ’s a smaller layout keyboard here is n’t a surprisal . It ’s a 65 percent option complete with pointer Key , function row and amazingly deep change of location . The 1.3 mm of total travel mean value keypresses have a sure meat to them , as opposed to feel like hair triggers on a controller .
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It ’s a satisfying typing experience , and I had no issues with it for daily productiveness tasks , type out thousands of words . The white backlighting is also vivacious and crisp , with a strong white radiance that is excellent for after - dark working .
Even with its smaller form , the Asus Zenbook A14 still manage to slap in a huge , MacBook - rupture trackpad . It ’s positively huge for a laptop computer of this size of it , devote my fingers a mass of real estate of the realm for cause and gesture . The action and movement is super slick too , owing to its glass airfoil .
The publicity here seems to be entirely plastic - free , with the laptop coming in a cardboard box and paper bag , along with the cable television service and power brick .
Display and Sound
The Asus Zenbook A14 opts for an OLED panel to allow for bass black , exact color and most innumerable contrast . To be a bit more specific , this is a 14 - inch sieve with a 1920×1200 resolution for seemly item and uncloudedness with a standard 60Hz refresh rate .
It is also a 16:10 aspect proportion to give more erect place for modern work load . It is a bit of a shame that it is n’t a high-pitched - res control panel for more detail and with a high refresh rate for perceivably smoother motion , as is found on the likewise - pricedLenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 9 ( 2024 ) .
yet , the Asus Zenbook A14 ’s panel impresses both on contiguous employment with its inky-black blacks and excellent color , while this is also backed up when taking out my colorimeter . Here it valuate truth outcome of over 90 percent across thesRGB(100%),DCI - P3(99 % ) andAdobe RGB(94 % ) gamuts , gain the projection screen desirable for productivity and more colour - sensitive workload .
In summation , it provide virtually perfect Shirley Temple and fantabulous colour temperature with level of 0.01 and 6600 K respectively measured both out of the box , and with luminance crank all the room up . Peak SDR brightness here beat our 300 - nit fair game , with a careful 392.5 nit . That is n’t the hopeful we ’ve tested , but is suitable for indoor and outside employment .
In addition , a measured contrast ratio of 28,700:1 is telling , and lends the Zenbook A14 to having some first-class dynamical range . There is support for HDR with HDR True Black 600 , and here Asus quotes a pinnacle smartness of 600 nits for even more punch .
The speaker here are sane , if unremarkable . They ’re downward - ignition , so you ’ll require to guarantee the Asus Zenbook A14 is placed on a harder surface such as a desk to avoid sounding muffled . There ’s a decorous mid - range , although they lack top - end precision and extension in the blue destruction . you may use them for basic chore , although I ’d suggest utilising the headphone diddly for any serious capacity consumption .
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Performance
The Zenbook A14 is quite intriguing from a performance standpoint in that it comes with one of Qualcomm ’s novel Snapdragon X chips that were first announced at CES 2025 . These are the Modern base mannikin processors for use in these Arm - base Windows machines and sit alongside the more powerful Snapdragon X Plus and Elite fleck .
For mention , the X Plus has 10 cores and the Elite has 12 ; the key difference with this new Adam model is that it only fare with 8 . Therefore , it makes sense to expect somewhat less performance in multi - threaded work load as the base theoretical account microprocessor chip has less to put to work with .
In individual - core load in Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23 , this chip go on up with its more potent brother with scores in the right kind of ballpark , proving the Zenbook A14 to be tight enough . However , the multi - core scores in Geekbench 6 are around 20 % slower than the rival . It ’s defective in Cinebench , with 35 % low scores than the medium X Plus or elect laptop computer . In addition , the multicore Cinebench results are also 40 % dull than the M3 MacBook Air .
The scores are in fact in line with theAsus ProArt PZ13 , the brand ’s own 2 - in-1 machine that perform that way due to its figure factor . I ca n’t retrieve of any reason why the Zenbook A14 would suffer from the same ill .
With this all in creative thinker , cite a load of bench mark tests does n’t tell the full story . For most work load , such as WWW browsing and working with Spotify in the screen background in my case , the Zenbook A14 execute admirably , persist quiet and speedy . It ’s only in extreme cases , such as with intensive video or photo redaction where the multicore performance deficit is probable to be an exit .
The 16 GB of RAM gives enough headroom for those tasks , while the 1 TB SSD is pretty generous . It ’s also well one of the briskest SSDs we ’ve tested in an ultrabook , with measured read and compose speed of 7001.63MB / s and 6073.20MB / s respectively .
Software
The Zenbook A14 is a Copilot+ PC , so get along with all of Microsoft ’s advertised feature and the apprehensible benefits of AI . First and foremost is a Copilot samara on the bottom quarrel of the keyboard that acts as a ‘ wake ’ push button for Microsoft ’s AI help so you could ask it questions or whatever else .
In addition , there is also generative AI find in the Photos and Paint app to do things such as tally filters to your photos or stylize any of your creations into an vegetable oil painting , watercolor or other art styles . I ’m sure these are useful for someone , although I do n’t of necessity have much utility for them .
Arguably the handiest part of all of this is the inclusion body of Windows Studio effects for the Zenbook A14 ’s webcam . Here you may do everything from blur the background to enable auto framing to check you ’re always in the underframe on a call . It can even ensure you maintain eye physical contact even if you are n’t looking at the screen . That ’s especially eerie at first , but act upon in a similar way to Nvidia ’s AI tools that I ’ve receive before in webcams including theElgato Facecam MK.2
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Microsoft is still touting itscontroversial Recallfeature with these Copilot+ microcomputer , and even if it is n’t on the Zenbook A14 at the fourth dimension of committal to writing , it is labelled as ‘ coming before long ’ . The idea of it is that it takes screenshots of your screen every few seconds so you’re able to look back and remember things you ’ve attend at , even if you have n’t manually bookmarked them or used the Snipping Tool to take a screenshot . Due to privacy concerns , it continue for Windows Insiders , and it seems to ask some ironing out before it gets released into the wild .
The Windows 11 Home Install here is sensibly clean otherwise , coming with footling in the means of unwanted anti - computer virus or bloatware , block up the habitual McAfee popup that comes every now and again . There are a couple of Asus - specific apps though , such as GlideX which is where you’re able to manage tasks such as cast off or mirror the Zenbook A14 ’s screen to other machine wirelessly , or channelise file across the same mesh . you’re able to also enable remote entree to a nomadic equipment , too .
Being Arm - based , the Zenbook A14 also has the problem of bear issues with some compatibility . This is because Windows is traditionally scat on x86 - base organization , so to work on Arm , apps have had to be translated through Microsoft ’s Prism translation software . For the most part , I had trivial in the manner of issue with compatibility in run a range of benchmark software program , as well as Photoshop and similar apps .
However , 3D Mark Time Spy refused to run , erroring out with the fact that the chipping does n’t sustain SSSE3 , which is strange as it ’s work on all the other Snapdragon X Elite and Plus - powered laptops we ’ve try .
In addition , the PCMark app does n’t run to the full , but that ’s an issue we ’ve seen on other Arm - found Windows system . There have been reports that games such as Dirt 5 and some VPN apps also refuse to load from elsewhere , too .
Battery Life
Asus has talked up the Zenbook A14 ’s battery living a lot , with them formally quoting up to 32 hours of runtime with its 70Whr cell . That would make it one of the longest - running laptop computer ever made , if true .
In a video loop trial with the laptop computer ’s presentation at the requisite 150 nits , the Zenbook A14 lasted for 20 hours and 47 minutes . That easily makes it one of the well - performing laptops we ’ve had in terms of its endurance , beating out key rivals such as theDell XPS 13 ( 2024)and the MacBook Air M3 . One of the only laptops it sit down behind is theMicrosoft Surface Laptop 7,which lasted for just diffident of two minute longer .
Charging speeds are also quite brisk with the 65W USB - C charger included taking 45 minute to go from 0 - 50 percent , while going from zero to full took 92 min . That ’s not tough at all .
Should you buy it?
The Zenbook A14 has one of the lightest shape we ’ve seen on a laptop with its sub-1 kilo weight that also makes it one of the most ideal for those on the go .
The Snapdragon X chip inside the Zenbook A14 seems to lack some grunt against similarly - priced competitor , including the MacBook Air M3 .
Final Thoughts
The Asus Zenbook A14 is a lightweight wonder of a laptop computer that pack in wondrous survival , a comely port selection and a solid OLED show . execution is a little off against key challenger such as theMacBook Air M3though , perhaps owing to its slight form factor .
With this in mind , the Zenbook A14 is a capable Windows laptop that pop the question a compelling lightweight choice against the like ofDell Inspiron Plus 14 7441 ( 2024)and a likely choice to folks after a MacBook Air . For more options though , check out our list of thebest ultrabookswe’ve tested .
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How we test
Every laptop we review goes through a serial publication of uniform checks designed to estimate key factors , including form quality , performance , screen quality and electric battery animation .
These include conventional synthetic benchmark and scripted tests , plus a series of substantial - world balk , such as how well it runs pop apps .
FAQs
No , the Asus Zenbook A14 is n’t a touchscreen laptop .
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