ASUS Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) Review

The Zenbook has always been one of the most popular ASUS laptops for those who love to work on the go. It’s small, light, practical, and can handle most of your everyday productivity needs and more. That said, it wasn’t really the best for gaming, but hey at least you get work done.

In late 2024, ASUS updated the Zenbook lineup with the new Zenbook 14 S. It featured a new processor and a slight redesign on the outside but still retained most of the aspects we loved about the Zenbook series. The biggest change would be the addition of AI features with CoPilot+.

Given how much I enjoyed using the old Zenbook models, I had high expectations for this laptop. After using it for a while, it certainly did, and even exceeded it in some aspects.

Design and Construction

First, let’s talk about the visible changes on the new ASUS Zenbook S 14. Perhaps the first thing your eyes will notice is the new design and material used which ASUS calls Ceraluminum. It’s most obvious on the lid which features some minimalist lines along with the ASUS logo, which I like. For reference, our unit is in the Zumaia Gray color, but there is a white color available.

The lid feels nice to the touch, and it feels premium too. None of that plasticky feel here. It doesn’t attract fingerprints that much either. The rest of the laptop is made out of the same material.

Despite the slight redesign and use of a different material, the Zenbook S 14 is still very light. Weighing in at just 2.65 lbs (1.2kg), you can easily carry it around without being tired. Like before, it’s also slim measuring just 1.29cm thick when closed. Together with its light body, I could easily fit it in my camera bag, and I wouldn’t feel a difference.

As for ports, you get one USB-A 3.2, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5mm audio port. Some might find it enough, but if you need to plug in multiple SSDs and charge at the same time, you will find it lacking. With that, I recommend you bring a USB hub with you.

For those of you wondering, you can open this laptop with just one hand. However, I noticed that the screen tends to shake a bit when you try to adjust it. But still, at least it passes the one-handed opening test.

Once you’ve opened the laptop, you’re greeted by the 14-inch OLED display and the webcam at the top, which we’ll talk more about later on. Instead, let’s move on to the keyboard and trackpad.

The keyboard takes up a lot of space on the Zenbook S 14 with minimal space left on the sides. The keys are a bit cramped together, but they feel nice to the touch. There is some backlighting too, making it easier to distinguish the keys. I didn’t make any typing mistakes while using this laptop to write reviews and scripts.

My only complaint is that the key travel is a bit shallow. As a result, my fingers weren’t as comfortable after writing for extended periods. I’m guessing this is one sacrifice ASUS made to make the laptop as thin as it is.

Moving on to the trackpad, it’s one aspect I really liked about the Zenbook S 14. It’s easy to use and nice to the touch. More importantly, it’s very accurate and even comes with edge gestures to change volume and brightness.

Display and Multimedia

The display of the ASUS Zenbook S 14 is one of its strong suits, and that’s because it uses an OLED panel. As the name suggests, it comes with a 14.0-inch screen with a 3K (2880 x 1800) resolution. Though it may not seem like it, it’s also a touchscreen. Best of all, it comes with a 120Hz refresh rate.

Thankfully, the times of having 60Hz and IPS panels on productivity laptops are long gone. As such, you can enjoy watching videos and content on this laptop. The colors are vivid, and you get the deep blacks as expected from an OLED panel. I enjoyed binge-watching my favorite series on this laptop when I had no work to do.

With the 120Hz refresh rate, the screen was smooth too. This made it enjoyable to play games on this laptop. And yes, it can game, but we’ll get to that later.

However, the screen isn’t that bright with only 500 nits of peak brightness. This made it a bit difficult to use directly under the sun. But when you’re in a cafe or somewhere with shade, it isn’t that big of a deal.

As for the speakers, ASUS somehow managed to squeeze four into the Zenbook S 14. The speakers are tuned by Harman Kardon, but they’re not the best compared to other laptops on the market.

Thankfully, they are loud when you need them to be. Similar to most laptops on the market, they lack bass, but at least there is some separation between the mids and highs. Overall, it’s decent given how compact this laptop is.

Performance, Software, and Benchmarks

Powering the ASUS Zenbook S 14 is the second-gen Intel Core Ultra chipset. Our review unit came with an Intel Core Ultra 7 chipset and 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM. Since the Zenbook has always been touted as a productivity laptop, don’t expect to find an NVIDIA or AMD graphics processor here. Instead, you only get an Intel Arc GPU, which I think is fine.

This being a CoPilot+ PC, it is also equipped with an Intel AI Boost NPU for all the AI goodies you’ll be using. For reference, Windows 11 Home comes standard with this device.

During my time with the Zenbook S 14, I did a lot of productivity work, including writing this review. Not once did I find the laptop having a hard time with multiple applications open along with dozens of tabs open in Google Chrome. Editing photos on Lightroom was a breeze, especially with its nice OLED display.

The AI features available with CoPilot+ were helpful, especially when I needed to research topics that I wasn’t too familiar with. Beats having to Google and browse through a bunch of random articles.

In short, you can get work done with this laptop. You may need to bring a USB hub if you plan on editing photos or transferring files to various SSDs, but it’s just a slight hassle.

While the Zenbook is mainly made for productivity, I installed Genshin Impact to see just how it would perform. Surprisingly, it handled it well even with the 3K display. I did have to adjust some of the graphics settings to medium to get smooth continuous gameplay, but it’s an impressive feat nonetheless.

The laptop did heat up a bit when running Genshin Impact, but it did not affect my gameplay whatsoever. It’s mainly the bottom part of the laptop that heated up, while the top part (where te keyboard and trackpad are located) only became a bit warm to the touch.

I wouldn’t mind playing on this laptop for extended periods. The only downside is that it only comes with 1TB of storage. So if you plan on dumping a lot of files and installing various games and applications, you might find it lacking. Fortunately, the laptop does come with an extra M.2 slot.

To give you a better idea of how this laptop performs, check out the benchmark scores below.

Battery and Connectivity

The ASUS Zenbook S 14 is equipped with a 72Wh battery, which according to ASUS is enough to last 27 hours. From my experience though, using the laptop for around 1 hour and 30 minutes drained the battery from full to just 93 percent.

Mind you I had several applications running too, including Spotify and Discord. As expected, it does drain a lot faster when you’re gaming though. After 1 hour of playing Genshin Impact, the battery dropped from full to 87 percent. Still, not bad all things considered.

With that, you can easily go out and about without having to bring the charger that comes with it. You could even charge it via a power bank provided that the cable and power bank you have supports fast charging.

When you do need to recharge the battery, it doesn’t take that long. You get a 65W USB-C charging brick that plugs into your regular wall socket.

As for connectivity, it has the latest suite available – Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

Conclusion

If you’re in the market for a new portable laptop for work (and slightly play), you can’t go wrong with the ASUS Zenbook S 14. It’s light and compact, making it easy to bring anywhere. Not to mention your shoulder or your back will thank you too.

It has great performance with its new Intel Ultra Core Ultra 7 chipset and Intel Arc GPU, which can even handle some light gaming. It’s hard to argue with its long battery life as well.

The downside with this laptop is that the keyboard does need some refinement in the comfort department. At the same time, it’s not exactly the most affordable productivity laptop either.

This specific model retails for PHP 109,995USD 1,891INR 162,067EUR 1,829CNY 13,881 which is a lot of money. For reference, there are some gaming laptops out there that are nearly at the same price point. At the same time, the Apple MacBook Air is around the same price too.

Granted there are other more affordable laptops out there for productivity, but if you want one that can do more than just work then you’re looking at easily one of the best in the market today.

What we liked:
Beautiful Design
Nice OLED display
Great Performance
Long Battery Life

What we didn’t like:
Pricey
The keyboard isn’t that comfortable

ASUS Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) specs:
14-inch 3K ASUS Lumina OLED (2880 x 1800) panel @ 154 ppi
120Hz adaptive refresh rate, 500 nits (HDR peak brightness)
16:10 aspect ratio, 0.2ms response time
100% DCI-P3, 1,000,000:1, VESA CERTIFIED Display HDR True Black 500
PANTONE validated, TÜV Rheinland low blue light certified, SGS Eye Care Display
Intel Core Ultra 7 processor
Intel Arc graphics
Intel AI Boost NPU
32GB LPDDR5X RAM
1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD storage, 1x expandable slot
FHD IR camera
Windows Hello
Quad-speaker system
Array microphone
Harman Kardon audio
Windows 11 Home
Wi-Fi 7, tri-band
Bluetooth 5.4
2x Thunderbolt 4 ports (DisplayPort, PD, 40Gbps)
1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
1x HDMI 2.1 TMDS
1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack
72Wh, 4-cell Li-ion, 65W USB Type-C charging
31.03 x 21.47 x 1.19 ~ 1.29cm (dimensions)
1.2 kilograms (weight)
Zumaia Gray