This is the Asus zenok A14. the first in this a series uh where the a definitely does not stand for air because that would be much too close to a certain fruit-based rival but it would be appropriate because this is in fact Asus’s lightest Zen book ever and it’s very nice the depending on the model.
We’re talking just 899 G which is about a third less than the smaller Macbook A 13. Entitled ASUS Zenbook A 14 – The Ultimate 2025 Travel Laptop, the ASUS Zenbook A 14 boasts unparalleled portability and durability. Weighing just 899 grams, it outperforms the smaller Macbook A 13 in weight and battery life. Additionally, as the first Snapdragon-powered Zenbook and ASUS’s initial all-aluminum laptop, it combines lightweight design with robust construction. Entitled ASUS Zenbook A 14 – The Ultimate 2025 Travel Laptop, the ASUS Zenbook A 14 stands out for its exceptional portability and endurance. Weighing a mere 899 grams, it surpasses the Macbook A 13 in weight and battery life. Serving as ASUS’s inaugural Snapdragon-powered Zenbook and first all-aluminum laptop, it marries a lightweight structure with sturdy build quality.
Not only is it their lightest Zenbook ever but this is also the longest lasting Zenbook they’ve ever made it’s also the first Snapdragon powered Zenbook it’s their first all Ser aluminum uh laptop which we’ll talk more about later on but b Titled ASUS Zenbook A 14 – The Ultimate 2025 Travel Laptop, the ASUS Zenbook A 14 is renowned for its remarkable portability and battery life, making it a standout choice for travelers and professionals alike. asically means it’s incredibly light and also pretty tough and I think the best part actually is the fact that this is probably a good deal cheaper than you might expect in fact.
DESIGN
I’ve used a lot of laptops in my time and I honestly think this might be my favorite hinge the fact that you can just open it really easily with one finger there’s just the right amount of resistance to it but it also feels premium I don’t know I didn’t think I’d like a hinge this much very satisfying there’s also minimal screen wobble there is a little bit of Flex if you sort of twist the screen and also if you press quite firmly actually into the keyboard it’s not bad at all but there was a little bit of flex there and we do have this plastic bezel around the screen which while thin isn’t as sexy as a edge glass panel that you might get on their zenbook S14 or 16 but what really makes this A14 stand out as I’m just chucking it around as you can probably guess is the weight as I say lightest zenbook.
They’ve ever made from as little as 899 G although, I believe believe that particular model is only available in China maybe a couple of other regions in Asia and also has the smaller battery capacity this one here has the bigger 70w hour battery as opposed to 50. We’ve also got an OLED screen it’s got the entry level model Snapdragon X chip they’re all under a kilogram apparently uh regardless of the spec you go for so 974 G let Me compare that to the latest MacBook a13 which of course is a 13 in screen as opposed to 14 uh 975 1223 that’s about 250 g lighter this could be like the ultimate travel companion it really is impressively light of course other laptops have done that as well from Huawei and LG but what Asus has done is they’ve taken this magnesium Aluminium chassis.
Chemical structure making it tougher harder more scratch more smudge resistant it’s actually pretty amazing you get the benefit of being super lightweight but it doesn’t feel too cheap or plasticky and of course the sus marketing department is very pleased with themselves for coming up with Ser aluminum and it comes in two colors Iceland gray which I have here and also the one that, I actually prefer the zisy beige which has almost like a gold hint to it both very smart but if I was going to buy one. I would go for the beige they’ve also made the key caps bigger so tapping is more comfortable. And they’ve added a smudge resistant coating to it we have this huge touch pad they could literally not squeeze a big one in here which comes with the smart gestures you can adjust the volume on the left hand side the brightness on the right side in terms of I/O we’ve got two USB 4 ports these are full fat USB 4 either of which you can use with a charger a HDMI 2.1 Port 3 and 2 mil headphone jack and on the other side a single USB 3.2 type A no micro SD or SD card reader unfortunately but for the size of this not a bad range of ports.
WEBCAM
We have their 1080p AI webcam and also with the IR sensor we get 3D face face unlocking through Windows hello, so this is being recorded on The A14 1080p webcam, the quality is okay let me just sort of move you around a little bit change up the lighting what we do have though because this is a cop Power Plus enabled PC with that Snapdragon chip. I can turn on the automatic framing the portrait light eye contact so always looks like I’m looking at the camera as I’m swearing at you apologies for that background effect, So I can blur and all these effects are being run on the NPU rather than the CPU or the GPU which is much more efficient for the battery so you can have all this stuff in your teams in your Zoom meeting and it won’t destroy your battery.
SCREEN
There’s no fingerprint reader for Biometrics you have to rely on the face unlocking uh and as I say the webcam quality is a bit average aside from that though no real complaints really comfortable keyboard and touchpad uh fully back lit Captain America you don’t even know what this [Applause] is now front and center is this 14in screen full HD well technically 1920 x 1200 because this is a taller 16 X10 aspect ratio thumbs up for that and the resolution is fine for a 14-in laptop certainly a Quad HD or high res option would have been nice but then you’re also going to compromise on battery life and also make it more expensive it’s fine for this size but certainly it’s not the sharpest out there. Now the A14 comes in both IPS and OLED flavors and also there are some differences in brightness between the IPS and the OLED the IPS tops out to a pretty average 400 nits and also because it’s a single backlight it can’t boost so you’re not really getting any Improvement in HDR the OLED screen.
I would recommend if you can is also 400 nits in SDR but can boost to about 550 nits uh with HDR contents brightness is kind of average and the other issue maybe even the bigger issue is that all variants of The A14 have a 60 HZ refresh rate there is no option for a higher 120 HZ refresh. I would have taken to be honest you can even appreciate that difference you could reasonably argue that well Tom the MacBook Air has a 60 HZ screen and nor really cares about that but we’ve kind of come to expect a bit more from the windows Rivals particularly from Aus don’t get me wrong this OLED screen is still very nice to use but 400 nit SDR 60 HZ it’s not ideal although if you do want a higher resolution 120 HZ OLED screen that’s also not powered by Snapdragon then definitely have a look at the Zenbook S Series like the S14.
PERFORMANCE
Let’s talk about what’s on the inside and I can tell you right now it’s not Intel inside for this guy this is Ausa’s first Snapdragon powered Zen book we have had Snapdragon via books but this is the first Zen book and it’s using uh Qualcomm Snapdragon brand new and most affordable uh Snapdragon X chip so in the base model which I have here this is the Snapdragon X1 12600 chip with integrated graphics and NPU of course all Snapdragon processors have the same 45 tops NPU which means regardless of which one you go for you get all the windows co-pilot Plus plus features. So the entry level model from around $ 900 is will come with the 8 core Snapdragon X and then at the top end for around $ 1,500 you’ve got the 12 Core X Elite chip with a couple of 10 and 12 core X+ models in between so four different processor options at different price points with either 16 or 32 gigs of RAM and I’ve got 32 gigs in this guy which I would love to demonstrate for you but unfortunately. As I say this is a pre-release model so I can’t actually run performance benchmarks although I am very excited to test this.
If you have been living under a rock for the last 9 months or so but last summer Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon X series of chips for thin and light laptops giving Intel an AMD and apple some proper competition and on the whole they were very good good performance excellent battery life and Efficiency they were the first with a powerful enough NPU to give us the windows copilot plus feature. However the downside of these Snapdragon chips is that they are built on arm architecture rather than x86 the more traditional Intel AMD architecture which means not all apps ran and if they did they wouldn’t necessarily run.
as well, if they weren’t as optimized now the good news is we’ve had over 6 months with these chips now and with new drivers being released and more apps being optimized by the Developers for this architecture things have got a lot better. I would say if you are considering a Snapdragon laptop such as this if you’re using a particular or very Nee piece of software app just check that it will run on Snapdragon first before you run out and buy one because otherwise it’s absolutely lovely to use it runs cool it’s quiet and Even this new entry level model feels Snappy despite the 60 HZ screen and the dual fan cooling system means it can run at the chips full 45 Watts.
BATTERY
If it needs to the best part though by far is the battery life I was told not to run any benchmarks but hopefully they’ll let me keep this in the post but I put this up against the MacBook Air 13 with M3 and also it higher end cousin shall we say The Zenbook S14 with a top Intel Core Ultra Series 2 all set to 150 nits and running in their respective efficiency modes streaming YouTube and then at just under 13 hours the S14 and the MacBook Air drop out with just 6 minutes between them but the A14 just keeps going it still has about 40% left in the tank when the other two have run out of juice and in fact at the 15h hour mark because, I literally had to stop and start shooting this video it still had 30% left of course your mileage may vary and also remember this is a pre-release non-final version of the laptop so it could even get better than that.