ASUS ZenBook 14 OLED review (2023): A compelling AI PC stuck in a familiar design

But back to Intel’s Core Ultra chip. Equipped with a Core Ultra 7 155H, 32GB of RAM, and Intel Arc graphics, our review unit made some healthy gains over ultraportables powered by Intel’s 13th generation chips. It scored 1,000 points higher in PCMark 10 than the Core i7-1355U-powered ZenBook S 13, and its Arc graphics were almost twice as fast as the S 13’s Intel Xe graphics in the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme benchmark.

While it’s far from a gaming machine, the ZenBook 14 OLED’s Arc graphics also went from 30fps to 49fps while gaming. Halo Infinite 1080p with low graphics. Streaming games over Xbox cloud gaming performed better: Halo Infinite and Forza Motorsport i was playing like a dream over wifi in my office. Of course, that’s more a testament to the ZenBook’s wireless hardware than its graphics.

Intel’s Core Ultra chips also focus on more than raw horsepower (Intel’s internal benchmarks even show that it’s bettered by a 13th-gen chip in some single-threaded tasks. ). The addition of the NPU means that the ZenBook 14 OLED can handle future AI workloads; Developers such as Adobe and Audacity have announced that they are working on AI-powered features in their apps. If you’re not using these apps, Windows doesn’t have much to do with the NPU yet, except for Microsoft’s Studio Effects, which lets you blur backgrounds and automatically frame yourself during video chats. In particular, Studio Effects provides better background diffusion and person detection than the built-in alternatives in Zoom and Google Hangouts.

Buying an AI-powered computer like the ZenBook 14 OLED is more a bet on the future than a quick upgrade. But based on the industry support we’ve seen from Microsoft and other big tech firms, having an NPU-equipped PC could soon pay off. Imagine if Microsoft gave Copilot offline capabilities to make it more responsive Apple is pushing to make Siri available offline (something also powered by the company’s Neural Engine). Finally, you can speak to Copilot out loud and have it instantly find files or find a specific setting on your computer.

I wouldn’t blame you if the future of AI computers doesn’t excite you. When Macs switched to Apple Silicon chips, there were dramatic performance improvements over Intel’s older hardware, along with the added benefits of the Neural Engine and better battery life. Instead, Windows users can only hope and pray that developers actually address NPUs.

For now, you can look forward to decent battery life from Intel’s Core Ultra chips. The ZenBook 14 OLED lasted 12 hours and 43 minutes on the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery test, which was longer than any other computer we tested. On a recent visit, it stopped for about a day and a half for general productivity work (lots of web browsing, writing, photo editing, and a few video chats). ASUS still lags behind Apple – the M2 MacBook Air lasted 16 hours and 30 minutes in our benchmark. Fan noise also remains an issue: its fans spin noticeably during podcast recording, while the fanless MacBook Air is completely silent even under heavy workloads.

After spending a few weeks with the ZenBook 14 OLED, I like its OLED display more and I’m curious about the NPU capabilities of the Core Ultra chip. It’s just a shame to see these features stuck in a relatively discreet package. If you’re looking for good over style, this ZenBook is hard to beat.

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you purchase something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. All prices are correct at time of publication.