A showpiece for Intel’s Lunar Lake AI PC chips

A great ultraportable

When I reviewed the Zenbook 14 OLED a year ago, I couldn’t help but notice how it looked. It was practically the same ASUS laptops from ten years ago (despite thinner screen bezels). Not so with the Zenbook S14. The moment you open it and feel the lid made of what ASUS calls “Ceraluminium,” it’s impressive. As the name suggests, a combination of ceramic and aluminumand feels almost uncanny, something between high-end plastic and smooth metal. It’s still premium, but it’s also distinctly different from most other laptops.

Combining ceramic and aluminum isn’t exactly new—ASUS notes that it’s a popular choice for aerospace and watch designs—but we’ve yet to see it featured in laptops. It’s not just for looks either. The material should also be more durable than standard metal. The rest of the body of the Zenbook 14 S is made from a solid block of metal, but ASUS has added some unique tweaks there as well. At the bottom of the case, above the keyboard, there is a geometric grille consisting of 2715 circular cooling vents. ASUS claims that this design increases airflow while protecting against dirt and dust.

An ASUS 14-inch 3K “Lumina” OLED display dominates the Zenbook S14, and it offers everything I want from a modern laptop display. It has a fast 120 Hz refresh rate and 500 nits peak brightness. While its bezels are relatively slim compared to older ASUS systems, they’re still noticeably smaller than Dell’s latest InfinityEdge displays on the XPS 13 and 14. If ASUS could shave off more of the bottom and side bezels, the system would look sleeker. Best of all, the OLED display looks great with deliciously deep black levels and pops of color.

The Zenbook S14 is surprisingly sturdy for a 14-inch laptop, weighing 2.65 pounds and measuring 0.47 inches thin. A little lighter and a hair thicker the latest 13-inch MacBook Airand feels similarly polished. Notably, it also offers more useful ports than Apple’s ultraportables. The S14 includes two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C connections, a full-size HDMI 2.1 port, a headphone jack, and even a legacy USB Type-A port. The only thing it lacks is Ethernet and an SD card slot.

Unfortunately, ASUS didn’t get everything right with the Zenbook S14. Its four-speaker audio system is functional, but the sound loses any depth and detail as you turn up the volume. While it’s nice to have a Windows Hello-compatible webcam for quick logins, the 1080p sensor looks flimsier and less detailed than Dell’s XPS line and MacBook Air.

Its keyboard also seems just fine with very little responsive feedback when typing. This is especially a shame, as this has been a constant complaint of ours with ASUS keyboards. At least the touchpad is large and responsive to scrolling and multi-finger gestures. You can also adjust volume and other settings by sliding your finger along the edges of the touchpad.

In Use: Competent, but don’t stress it

Thanks to Intel’s Core Ultra 7 258V chip, the Zenbook S14 felt impressively sleek from the start. I went through the Windows setup process in minutes, downloaded the latest updates, and installed my usual test programs. I didn’t break a sweat when I needed to switch between apps like Spotify, Slack, and Evernote, and I didn’t experience any of the lag I often see on Windows laptops bogged down with third-party bloatware. He was always ready to do the work.

In PCMark 10, the Zenbook S14 scored almost identically to the Surface Laptop 7 for Business, which uses the latest-generation Core Ultra 7 165H. It also matched the XPS 13 Copilot+ edition, which has a Snapdragon X Elite chip, in the PCMark 10 Apps benchmark. The Zenbook’s multi-threaded performance was noticeably worse than both of these machines on Geekbench 6, likely due to the reduced core count this generation.

A big selling point for Intel’s Lunar Lake chips is their dramatically improved NPU (neural processing unit), which can achieve up to 47 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) AI performance. In comparison, the previous Core Ultra chips had a significantly less powerful 11 ​​TOPS NPU, while AMD’s new Ryzen AI chips reach 50 TOPS. (The more powerful Lunar Lake chips can reach 48 TOPS.) The higher TOPS numbers mean that Copilot+ computers like the Zenbook S14 can handle demanding AI workloads more quickly without affecting overall CPU performance.

Unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of AI features to test yet at the time of this review. Microsoft’s Copilot+ Windows 11 update for Intel and AMD systems won’t arrive until November, and even then it will only include a beta version of the controversial Rollback feature. It’s also hard to find apps that use the local NPU — most entries in the Windows Store “AI Hub” rely on cloud AI processing.

At least there is Audacity’s OpenVino pluginIntel developed its AI PC hardware to demonstrate. It offers NPU-powered features like noise cancellation and transcription, but Audacity requires an involved setup process that can be confusing to the novice. Using the NPU alone, I was able to completely remove non-stop shots from a five-minute clip in one minute and eight seconds. In the world of audio editing, that’s not very fast (CPU rendering can handle a 90-minute file full of noise in three minutes and thirty seconds), but the bottom line is that the NPU handles the same job with much less power. This can be important if you’re struggling to edit on battery power on a plane or in a remote location.

I’m also impressed with Intel’s latest Arc 140V GPU, which lets me play Halo Infinite between 35 fps and 45 fps at 1080p with low quality graphics settings. It’s far from a smooth experience, but it’s impressive to see from the internal GPU. Intel’s graphics outperformed the Snapdragon X Elite, especially in the Geekbench 6 GPU test.

Price and competition

ASUS launched the Zenbook S14 starting at $1,500, but it’s slightly discounted to $1,400 at Best Buy. This configuration gets you a Core Ultra 7 chip, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. That’s not too bad considering the XPS 13 Copilot+ with Snapdragon X Elite costs $1,800 when equipped with 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an OLED display. The Zenbook also doesn’t have the compatibility issues common to Snapdragon systems, which have to emulate older Windows apps and can’t run many popular games at all.

As always, ASUS offers more value than Apple. The MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD costs $1,700, and that comes with a 60Hz LCD display.

Collection

The Zenbook S14 relies more on efficiency than raw power, but it’s still an incredible achievement for Intel, a company known for its power-guzzling mobile chips. While the Lunar Lake chip’s NPU makes the Zenbook ready for Copilot+ and AI features, its real selling points are its excellent battery life, sleek ASUS design, and gorgeous OLED display.