Pro tip: with Windows laptops I always disable Turbo Boost on battery + set to the best battery profile, that combo always gives huge battery improvements on every device I've done it on. I do most of my more intensive work at my desk so plugged in I get full performance, but on the go I'm not too fussed.
Great review! The pros define outweigh the cons for me. the negative points can be a little nitpicky, but cmon. You’re already getting a lot for its fantastic price. If you’re in the market for a great and affordable laptop, this might be the perfect one for you
I love your videos. You go into such details with screen, inside electronics view, which side the charging is on etc etc. And especially you talk to software developers which is so refreshing. You are now my go to guy for a laptop review.
I'm still waiting for a basic 14/15" laptop with a Ryzen 7 from the 6000 series and just a basic mat 1920x1200/1080 ISP panel and 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD to come along. I just don't need an OLED screen, a touch screen or a dedicated GPU. So far we almost exclusively see the gaming laptops or something with all the fancy stuff I just don't want to pay for because I don't need it.
Thanks from India for review this laptop very honestly ....the flickering issue of display of this laptop is no one dare to tell to their viewer Thanks once again sir🙂🙂
5:22 I find it odd more reviewers are not mentioning 12th gen Intel's poor efficiency. Alder Lake was supposed to improve battery life and it really hasn't, Intel instead tuned them for higher power consumption to win benchmarks at the cost of a worse user experience when it comes to heat, noise and battery life.
Yeah, more so they still keep taking the marketing at face value. Very annoying when the numbers make it so clear that the efficiency cores at shit at anything but perfomance, which destroys the point
It was always meant for performance. Even last year before it came out there were leaks on it's performance, and it was supposed to be 20-40% faster. IDK where you got that it was meant for better battery from.
I feel like Asus probably should have put a U-series chip in this computer. It wouldn't have done as well as on the benchmarks, but probably would have made more sense in a machine like this. Most likely would drastically reduce thermals and fan noise. I believe it is very possible that the E-cores could have no problem handling mundane day-to-day tasks with extremely little power usage and heat, they are apparently the successor to the tremont cores in Jasper Lake and those are often found in 6 watt passively cooled setups. I don't know if it's the SOC itself or windows power profiles or just up to manufacturers but they do not seem to be smartly utilizing the E-cores. You should be able to just browse the internet and watch some youtube without the thing turning into a small oven or blast its fan. Low power N-series chips have been doing it just fine for years.
@@villanousspyder405 isn't it kind of implicit when you include something called "efficiency cores" that the machine will be able to operate more efficiently when not under load? I don't know if Intel ever promised this in their marketing but I think most laptop enthusiasts had similar expectations for improved efficiency on battery. Anyhow, I just wish Intel would be more competitive with AMD on battery life, I personally own a 10th gen Intel laptop and the battery life is the only thing about it that I'm not satisfied with.
@@BenjaminRodriguezReyes Ecores are meant for more than just battery. Personally I'm ok with each company being in their own lanes. It just means more options for diff use cases.
Excellent review, Josh, thanks for all the effort you put into these vids. :) I got the i7/16 GB RAM version two weeks ago, and I must say I've been very happy with it so far (I mainly use it for office work). My main complaint is the soldered RAM which I'd love to upgrade to 32 gigs given the chance BUT since I am admittedly not using the laptop for any seriously demanding tasks, I think I'll be able to tolerate those 16 gigs. The screen is outstanding indeed, so apart from work, I've been (and will be) using this one a lot for watching content. Looking forward to this laptop as my daily driver for some years to come. Otherwise, love your reviews, keep up the good work! :)
Hi @@majapetric8809 :) After several months of everyday office use, I must say I'm very happy with this laptop. It does all it needs to do, and does it admirably well. So far, I've never felt limited by those 16 gigs, even when I'm running a lot of things simultaneously - like two browsers with numerous open tabs in each, several messaging apps, Office apps, Slack, Spotify etc. - all open and running at the same time. It's true that I don't use Photoshop but I have used Figma on occasion, and had no problems. Hope that helps, good luck with your choice! :)
@@tinevucko8594how are you I would like to know how much did you buy it for and have you tried some games on it and if you had tried some how does it feel and is it good for 3d modeling and coding and learning cyber security ? Thank you and sorry for bothering you
Hi! I don’t use a lot of apps. Usually just slack, discord, zoom, and multiple chrome with atleast 25 tabs running simultaneously. You think it can handle it? Planning to buy the i7/16 gb. Thank you!
Hi@@annalisettegalacgac1520, with the config you mention (i7/16 gigs) - which is the same that I have - you can be sure it'll handle the load you mention like a boss. 💪 Happy purchase! :)
Increasing/decreasing screen brightness does not have a linear impact on battery life. Battery life looks like a line that starts flat at zero brightness but develops an upward bend which gets steeper and steeper as screen brightness approaches 100%. This means that you severely underestimate battery life when you make a linear extrapolation based on decreasing screen brightness from a higher percentage (e.g., 80%) to a lower percentage (e.g., 50%). Conversely, you severely overestimate battery life it going from a lower percentage to a higher percentage. Linus Tech Tips made a video about this a few years back.
WIth OLED a lot also depends on the amount of black content you show as well as refresh rate. Black themes and dark backgrounds impact consumption severly. So yet another variable to consider :)
Nice videos and nice channel ❤️ But I personally prefer the old traditional way of reviewing. It feels more natural and I would like to know everything about the display (for example) when I am in the "Display" section or time stamp. Also negatives and positives and interests can be different from one person to another.
Great review! I appreciate your honest (and accurate) position on RAM size. The internet is now full of parrots who keep repeating that everyone needs 16GB to do ANYTHING, which is absolutely not true. 8GB remains adequate for everyday use for majority of users.
this, my mum is still using 4gb on windows 10 and she is fine with it. I can do with 4gb of ram too but need to use a very lightweight linux distribution. I upgraded my main laptop from 8 to 16gb and barely noticed a difference.
Try opening more than 6 tabs on Chrome lol (keep in mind once your memory usage reaches 75% or higher then it's maxed out and will result in aggressive paging).
I think I liked the old style more especially bc you had timestamps to all the aspects you talked about and made clear that all the necessary information is within this timespan.
Just got this open box excellent at BB for $462. Man what an upgrade from my MSI Prestige 14 Evo. The keyboard is great in my opinion and even though I have an M16 and a desktop for gaming this screen is just addicting and has so many anti burn in features. I probably watched this video 3 times before I pulled the trigger at my local BB. Thanks Josh!
none related to this particular laptop but the Asus Vivobook pro 14" OLED (AMD) R7 5800H, 16GB, 512GB SSD, RTX 3050 is it suitable for us to as a laptop for programming purpose? I'm terribly scared for the burn-in, the colors being TOO vibrant and the screen flickering as well when the nits are low. This laptop will be my laptop for my 4 years CS degree so I really don't wanna regret buying/not buying it. Do 1 need dedicated GPU if I only code / do light video editing on it? Thanks for always giving us such amazing review on every laptops you posted on RU-vid!!!
Great review as always! Josh, I was waiting for your reviews before buying a device this year. Wondering where you have been, you definitely been missed, pal!
Dear Josh, could you review and pick the best laptops for remote work for a nomad? It would need to be great on battery (8h+ on a load), have a bright screen (450nits+) and good performance (render 4k video). You could categorize them for budget, premium, and creative needs
I would definitely check out the new M2 MacBook Air! It fullfills every requirement that you listed, although it is a bit pricey. Good luck with your search.
@@ygny1116 thanks for tell me and can i askyou about the power of speakers had, is it powerfull for watching films and play some music buc i have zenbook with 4 speakers and my friend have 2019 zenbook 14 UX with 2 speakers and its so poor
I'm in Hong Kong, the zenbook I've got at USD1,000 few years ago had lots of issue with the monitor, got replaced twice still failed to function, totally give up. Years later, my husband got another Asus notebook, not zenbook thought, one day couldn't turn on at all, only after few months from purchase, got fixed now, I tell myself no more Asus
I have an option with i5, 16 GB ram, replaced 500GB pcie 3.0 ssd for 1 tb pcie 4.0. Works like a charm... Asus software gives you a choice, you can have lower performance and almost fanless operations and very long battery life on whisper mode (perfect for office tasks, internet etc), balanced settings and acceptable noise on standard and great performance (and noisy operation) on the performance mode. All this included in price £700 in the uk. PWM is being sorted out by software solutional and screen itself is great (but glossy). It easily runs network virtualization and multiple VMs, reviewer comment must be based on 8GB version. New windows installation sorts out the problem of bloatware. Most of negative opinions about this laptop come from people who don't know how to use it, but if somebody has a basic IT knowledge, might be able to fully benefit from this fantastic machine. Actually, the only thing on negative side for me is squeaky case, but in this price range, I have no reason to complain.
Thank you for pointing out the PWM dimming. Dealbreaker for me. You make really good reviews, keep it up. Just for the record, how's the performance compared to a macbook m1 air?
Awesome vid josh ! Super as usual ! Either style of review works for me , although it was nice to see the change in this vid 😊 keep the vids coming ✌️😎
9:17 bad take, the least they could do is put in a 4800MHz sodimm slot in this model. It will be doomed in a few years when the 8G of soldered ram gets overrun regularly and begins to planned obsolescence all over itself whenever you try to do anything on it. Its especially inexcusable when other 14" OLED Zenbooks actually DO have a sodimm slot.
Thanks for the in-depth review of this laptop, especially covering the power consumption, performance and battery life. The battery life is really poor for a so called power efficient P series processor, even with a 75WHr battery. I use VivoBook Pro 14x with exact same OLED display, 5800X, 16gb DDR4, RTX 3050 ti 50W GPU but a smaller 61 WHr battery. That is substantially more powerful than this laptop, weights same 3.09 lbs and still have better battery life, despite having smaller battery. BTW, the higher end version of this Zenbook Pro 14 with 16gb ram, 1260p cpu and mx550 GPU is $1399 in Newegg which is way overpriced in my opinion.
I wish a tech reviewer would appear on RU-vid that would recommend 1) highest crisp screen with excellent true color, best trackpad, very low or no noise and heat, excellent sound, excellent keyboard, true very long lasting battery more than 15 hours and 2) fast for average home use (no photo nor video editing nor huge CAD drawings). In essence, I'm searching for the best for my physical senses (see, hear, touch, feel) and fast for average tasks. In my struggles to find this type of laptop I have repeatedly arrived at the MacBook Air but nothing with Windows.
Regarding keyboard layouts, this laptop has the worst, not the best: without dedicated home/end/pageup/pagedown keys, it's bad for fast text processing since you need to use the Fn key to access that functionality, which means it takes two hands. Having those keys in a column on the right side is ideal, not some silly and weird thing. :)
I'm lucky I don't use those, because other than that it looks like this laptop is perfect for me. I'm going for the Ryzen version, which is cheaper and has better efficiency. No thunderbolt 4 tho, but usb 3.2 is still 20gb/s so I'm not too sad about that. Never gonna use a monitor so it works out for me.
Absolutely love my Zenbook so far. Super vibrant. Only downside is that it cant stream my xbox as good as my Lenovo Ideapad or even my Samsung Tab A7 lite. Which is sad becuase the graphics are so great and vibrant. Otherwise love all the features. Would definitely recommend. Plus I got it on sale for 500 dollars at Best Buy! So glad I returned that terrible Dell Inspiron and chose this instead.
The Ryzen Version, even tho it has the 5825U and no 6000series has much better Battery life and even Better multi Core Performance. It also doesn't gets as loud. Where the 5825U really shines is the Performance at balanced Mode (15W Max power Draw, also it defaults to that when not plugged into wall Power) it outperforms even the 1260P if both are limited to 15W! It's quieter and all that while getting better Battery life. If you could buy the UM3402!!!
Thanks for the well explanation I am getting mines tomorrow since my Dell XPS 15 9560 has Blue Screen issues that randomly happens so I need a better laptop. I have a gaming PC so this is just for RU-vid, Netflix and Disney plus viewing. I have an LG OLED TV so I know how good the colors are going to be for this laptop. I cant wait and its on sale for $549 at Best Buy so I am getting it ASAP.
UPDATE: Loving this laptop for its form factor and put away my Dell XPS 15 which I may or may not sell it. Overall this is a great laptop but if you hook it up to HDMI, you have to update the graphic drivers because I was getting screen tearing in every video on RU-vid or on Disney Plus. After the driver update its perfect have it connected on my projector via HDMI. Oh and one month free of XBOX Gamepass Ultimate and streaming games looks perfect on the projector and OLED screen.
Superb review, as always. I get a lot from your laptop reviews, and I like the new format: really sets off the good from the bad. Would really be useful if you now did a review of the ASUS VivoBook 14 OLED, so that viewers could see the comparison between the two.
I personally prefer your original style of saying the summary first before the review itself. My honest opinion. Still, you review laptops like no other. Keep it up, Josh! 😊
BestBuy in the U.S. market always have random sales throughout the year. If you're patient, I estimate that this Asus Zenbook 14 will at some point be on sale at a discount as every past Asus Zenbook has been sold at a sale price as well. Though usually many months later after launch.
Your reviews are AMAZING! I'm on the hunt for the laptop right now, and it's really helping me make the decision. On a side note, can you review the latest hp envy x360 15? It's out a few days ago and I'm considering getting this one as my major laptop.
Ahh the Zenbook 14. It never fails to be the proper affordable ultrabook. Remember the AMD 5000 Zenbook 14 with the mx450? And the 4000 series version from the year before?
I have been searching for a laptop for the past month and i finally thought i was gonna get this one. But, once i checked the after sales service experience of Asus in India, i was left with nothing but disappointment and confusion. The company is terrible at providing a smooth service once your laptop breaks down. There are frequent instances of their Motherboards and HDD crashing. I was really liking this model but i guess i will have to settle for a Hp or Dell with a higher price tag now!
imo asus has the best service for minor issues didnt have any major issues with asus laptops like this one ive had problem with heating in one of my laptops and they visited my home the next day and fixed it i dont think hp does that
GREAT REVIEW! Although, I would like to point out that for someone who will do the kind of work you are reommending for this laptop and if that person doesn't need windows for specific workflow and apps, a chromebook will suit perfectly and being less expensive, often with a touch screen and fanless. So , for a purely work point of view, other kinds of laptops could be more suitable. This is from someone who uses windows, macos, chromeOS or linux according to the needs
I'm really torn about whether to go OLED on my next laptop. I primarily code and I'm really concerned about text clarity on the OLED screens. I can't stress enough how important this is to me. Can you comment on that? Would an IPS be better? For context, I'm trying to decide between the upcoming Zenbook Pro 17 and the 16x Pro. Thanks!
i got both this laptop and a last gen slim 7i pro. Both with 2.8k 14" displays. The yoga got a beautyful IPS. Apart from color reproduction and brightness, i can't see any difference between both of them. They are non tactile and glossy screens. I think what ruins oled is the odd pixel array combined to the touch layer or the anti glare layer. If you look at a macro shot of an oled screen, the pixels are not small rice grains arranged uniformly in red, green, blue, all tight together. The oled screen on that laptop is like a square per pixel, divided in 2 vertically, on the left you got half of it as red and half of it as green. On the other side of the square you got 2/3 as a big blue pixel and the last 1.3 unpopulated(black). Placing a layer over that and not fucking up the array is impossible. But i guarantee you, the writing is as crisp as KFC.
I bought this laptop after being an avid MacBook air fan. I thought this is a great laptop for school/work at an affordable price. Unfortunately, I had to return this laptop after the sound stopped working completely. No sound through speakers or headphones. I called ASUS and troubleshot updating then uninstalling audio drivers but nothing worked!!! I was so excited but I will have to go back to Apple! LOOK UP ALL THE COMPLAINTS AND VIDEOS ON HOW TO FIX DRIVER ISSUES! none of the laptop reviews talk about this!
Mine is fine. No audio issues I have the 16GB/256GB model in the UK. Comes with touch screen and no num pad. Bought from amazon UK for £750, Intel i5 1240p
Attention !!! I got the 16 gigs variant, bought on amazon france ! And the performance/temperatures/noise are not the same ! This is the same laptop, with 16 gigs of ram and 512gigs SSD. The SSD is an expensive ultra fast PCIe gen 4 samsung 860 pro OEM variant (100$ retail). The CPU (same i5) do not perform as well as this one. My geekbench score is 1550 single core and 7300 multi cores. But is still very good compared to last gen. The CPU never go above 28w TDP, even pluged in and in performance mode. The CPU thermal throtles at 90c and very rarely hit that temperature. During full load, the fan is loud but not a turbine. In low power mode, the laptop is very quiet. The performance mode only changes the fan behavior compared to the balanced mode. I.E. balanced = performance but quieter and hotter. To achieve this, they cut down GPU power. The intel XE only pulls 7w, the GPU performance is not great in games, but benchmarks do not reflect that. I have a grief regarding your interpretation of what you should and shouldn't do with this laptop. The performance is similar to an i7 8700k. A lot of people were video editing on that chip. Having a pretty high end 2018 desktop on the go is monstruous.
Hey josh, I have seen several youtuber complain about bad battery life on alderlake mobile. I was wondering if you could test it with and external display to see how much power draw (HWINFO shows the battery drain value) the oled is actually drawing. I recently saw dave2D video on the xps 13 plus which has an even smaller battery size than this, and saw the battery life was good for the battery size in the xps 13 plus.
I completely disagree with the part about key placement. I absolutely need to have dedicated keys for Page Up/ Down and Home/End. Relegating this to a function button is the worst possible implementation. I'm using a ThinkPad with the same layout as the one shown at 3:07 and i have pretty much never mishit any of the keys. Having page up/down just near the arrow key is so convenient that i hope i never have to go back to any other layout.
Sound to me like all the problems with this laptop can be solved with a Vivobook S14 with AMD but there is very little spoken about that laptop. It's just not as sexy as a Zenbook I guess but arguably a better fit for more people.
Thank you for this review you had a lot of good points. Some bad points. Anyone buying this laptop knows that this is not a powerhouse or a power users laptop. I bought this laptop because of the price and I can tell you with 100% certainty. It is a very very good laptop in every aspect I’ve had it for a little over a month now, it is a very efficient. I love the battery life on a full charge. I can pretty much use it all day. I’m not gonna have user user, and I just wanted to mention those. Thank you again for this beautiful video.
@@juri_mjatlin so far with a full battery charge using RU-vid, doing python programming, watching a movie, doing my schoolwork through the use of Internet. I’m getting about eight hours 8 1/2 hours of usage which is absolutely fantastic. Even with 20% battery left it showed me I have two hours and 15 to 20 minutes left on a regular basic excuse, so for every day basic use even some lightly heavy use. This laptop is absolutely fantastic and for the price you cannot beat it. But let me tell you about the display. It is probably one of the best display you ever see on a laptop.
Hey Josh, I'm new to your channel, came from Jarrod's Tech channel! Could you please do some reviews of the newest Asus VivoBook laptops from 2022? I saw that there are so many like VivoBook 14 OLED, VivoBook S 14X OLED, VivoBook Pro 14x OLED, and many more, and it is hard to see the differences. I'm looking for a laptop for web development, and occasionally 2d Game Development, and these new Asus laptops caught my attention. Cheers!
I wonder if the only recommended use for this laptop is browsing the web, writing documents then wouldn't a chromebook be much better? It's like 6-7 times cheaper, that's a lot! This at best is making Windows applications available but if it does overheat like you've tested, then doing so will lead to premature dead device. And that is the worst, to have a brick! The affordable laptop range are a real pain to choose from!
@@johndavid609 Screen is very bright, battery life 9h - 10h office work, the notebook is silent in battery mode (with power a bit fan noise, but its normal), performance is really good (its my business machine so no games on it ^^), it gets warm but not too hot, keyboard is much better than the version before, the screen is very "glary" and the ergolift is not so good when you type on your lap.
@@AndyAksen Thanks for replying Andy. And wow sounds really promising! However, I’m in a dilemma in choosing this and the Acer Swift X-Josh gave really good reviews for both but it seems the Asus has the better aesthetics while the Acer the better performance…
Absolutely fantastic review. I thought this would be the perfect laptop for me but after seeing the cons I decided to search further. Thanks for such a detailed review!
Would just like an amoled surface laptop go2, but with a backlit keyboard. Preferably made by HP or Lenovo though as Microsoft are charging out the arse for what you get on it so far. Judging by the current market it shouldn’t cost any more than £650 realistically for the following specs. 13” tall amoled display 60hz and minimum 450 nit brightness, I5 1235u, 8gb, 256 m.2, 1x thunderbolt 4, 1x usb c 3.2, 1x, 1x and card reader, headphone combo jack, a battery that lasts at least 8 hours at 75% brightness looping video and fast charging.
Really good deal. It used to be not that many years ago any laptop below $1000 was pretty bad, that weird 720p resolution, poor battery life, etc... It's amazing how good the offerings are nowadays.
