While Copilot+ laptops still have their compatibility issues, if you’re after an incredibly portable laptop then it’s hard to look past the Asus Zenbook A14.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| It’s very light indeed | Windows on ARM isn’t for everybody |
| Excellent battery life | Bland design |
Score: 3/5
 |
Buy The Asus Zenbook A14! | Buy On Amazon |
In this review
Asus Zenbook A14 Design
Asus Zenbook A14 Performance
Asus Zenbook A14 Battery
Asus Zenbook A14 Conclusion
Ethical disclosure: The Asus Zenbook A14 used in this review was loaned to me by Asus Australia for the purposes of review.
Which means it gets reviewed the same as any other product that passes over my test bench. Asus gets no editorial input, oversight or favouritism, because I strongly believe that’s the way it should be amongst an Internet of reviews that are often (ahem) compromised by other financial relationships, to put it politely… and without naming names, because I can’t really afford the fancy lawyers that would involve.
For more on ART’s ethics and disclosure position, see here.
Design
The Asus Zenbook A14 is built around a 14 inch 1920×1200 16:10 aspect ratio OLED display. It’s a nice bright unit with more bezel real estate top and bottom than on the sides, though with a fixed refresh rate of just 60Hz, this is clearly a laptop built for more general purposes, not for gaming.
Asus does pitch it as being part of its consumer-centric range – it would rather you purchased an Expertbook if you’re in the business space – but it could work in design terms in most office spaces as well.
It’s very easy to pick up the Asus Zenbook A14
It’s also built for portability, because it weighs in at a scant 980 grams. Asus is far from the first to deliver a sub-1kg notebook, but even I was somewhat surprised at just how light the Zenbook A14 felt every time I picked it up. If you do have to lug around a laptop all day long, there’s a lot to be said for lightening your load.
The Zenbook A14’s keyboard has decent travel and response, though here the light weight of the entire unit ever so slightly works against it.
I found that if I was using it for typing on my lap, the very light nature of the A14 meant that it was prone to moving more than I expected, which meant that my keystrokes sometimes didn’t land quite right. That may just be a question of adjusting my lap position and a little muscle memory work, of course.
Onboard meeting duties are handled by a 1080p capable camera that works well enough – but not brilliantly — for videoconferencing purposes, though I would have liked to see a mechanical privacy shutter built into it. It also represents the one biometric security method you’ve got to log in via Windows Hello, as there’s no onboard fingerprint reader on the Zenbook A14.
The one aspect of the Asus Zenbook A14 that I don’t really like is the visual design. There’s nothing absolutely wrong with it per se… but I did find it just a little dull, quite generic in presentation. The unit I tested was in the “Iceland Grey” finish, with an option for “Zabriskie Beige” finish your other choice.
I’ve worked as a tech journo long enough to recall when most PCs came in beige, and that was largely because it was a utilitarian colour that was easy to mass produce at low cost. I don’t think Asus has taken the cheap route here, but beige was always, and will always be bland to me, but honestly the Grey version doesn’t look a whole lot better.
It is a slightly different story when you consider feel, however. It’s wrapped in a soft material that Asus calls Ceraluminum, a toughened composite mix of aluminium (see, I can spell correctly even if Americans cannot) and ceramic materials that’s pleasant enough to the touch, though who really spends all that much time fondling their laptop?
On second thoughts, don’t answer that question. I really don’t want to know.
Performance
Asus sells the Zenbook A14 with a variety of processor choices, though they’re all based around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processor family.
At the entry level you get a model with a Snapdragon X Plus X1P42100 CPU, but this isn’t what Asus loaned me for review. The model tested is effectively the top tier of the lineup, featuring a Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100 CPU, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. At the time of writing, that model officially retails in Australia for $2,599.
Performance on these Copilot+ ARM machines is always tricky to gauge, because only a selection of benchmarks will actually run – and notably while it will install, most of PCMark 10’s benchmarks will not, even though the current run of Windows on ARM is hardly new now.
What will run is 3DMark’s Time Spy test, albeit only through Microsoft’s own Prism emulation layer, which does introduce a degree of emulation slowdown. Still, it should be the same across all Copilot+ ARM PCs, which does give room for some comparison, albeit limited.
It’s no surprise at all that the Intel-based Copilot+ laptop in this comparison bests its competition here, though it is pleasing to see the Zenbook A14 ever so slightly beat out its own similar Snapdragon toting competitors here. Don’t get too excited however, as these are still figures that point towards a middle of the road level of GPU performance. That would be fine for older gaming titles, or a little slightly slower video rendering, but this isn’t a beast of a machine in GPU terms.
The biggest potential question hanging over any of these ARM-based Copilot+ laptops is one of Windows app compatibility. Microsoft is of course all in on providing its own apps in native ARM formats as you’d expect, but then it’s been working on those ever since the days of the Surface RT – and that was back in 2012!
There are some decent resources that can help you work out if a given app that you rely on will work with a Windows on ARM PC, either natively or through the Prism emulation layer and it’s well worth doing your research before deciding whether this is an approach that’s going to work for you.
My own experiences are that apps that do have native ARM versions are (mostly) indistinguishable from their x86 counterparts, but once Prism is in play there’s more scope for slowdown.
Being a Copilot+ machine, you also get access to Microsoft’s suite of AI-driven features on board, and that will soon include Microsoft Recall, Microsoft’s somewhat delayed screenshotting/search feature. I am, for the record, still not a fan of Recall, though for the Zenbook A14 it wasn’t yet an enabled feature on the unit tested at the time of review.
Also read:
Dell Inspiron 14 Plus Review
Asus Vivoboko S15 Review
Asus Expertbook P5 Review
Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 Review
Battery
Being so thin and light, I did have concerns about the Asus Zenbook A14’s ability to keep on powering on, because batteries can be heavy beasts, and there’s only so far you can push the optimisations that ARM brings to the table.
Asus certainly isn’t shy about making some gigantic battery life claims for the Zenbook A14, stating that it’s capable of up to 32 hours of continuous video playback on a single charge. I’m quite used to manufacturers making big claims that aren’t backed up in reality unless you’re willing to watch video on very dim screens, but I did want to see how the Zenbook A14 might compare against its Copilot+ brethren.
Being an ARM-based machine, I couldn’t run my usual dual suite of battery tests, using PCMark 10’s Gaming Battery benchmark as a worst-case scenario test and then the softer local video playback test as a best case test, because most of PCMark 10’s applications won’t run, another example of where ARM still currently falls short.
The local video playback test would run, however, giving me just the one comparative figure.
So did the Asus Zenbook A14 live up to that bold 32 hour video claim?
No, it didn’t, but then I never really expected it to.
To save you the mental calculator work, it managed 21.5 hours of video playback before conking out, making it the second best Copilot+ PC I’ve tested to date for battery life. Yes, the Surface Laptop 7 does best it by four hours, but that’s in a frame that’s 40% heavier than the Zenbook A14 is, so that’s still a very good score indeed.
Charging up the Zenbook A14 is via an included 90W USB-C charger, though it will work with other USB-PD compliant chargers as well. While it is a compact GaN charger, it’s kind of wild to realise that at roughly 410g, the included charger is nearly half the weight of the laptop again… but I digress once more.
Asus Zenbook A14: Alex’s Verdict
The Zenbook A14 isn’t an inexpensive Copilot+ laptop, but then that’s not really a thing that exists right now.
Within its space it does stand out for being exceptionally light for a 14 inch laptop while having some genuinely good battery life, as long as your actual processing needs are on the lower side. Windows on ARM remains an issue for compatibility for some users – and not at all for others, to be fair – and while I don’t love the visual design, it’s a solidly built unit.
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Asus Zenbook A14: Pricing and availability
The Asus Zenbook A14 sells in Australia with a Snapdragon X Plus processor from $1,999 or (as tested) with a Snapdragon X Elite processor from $2,599.
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