The Asus Zenbook A14 is likely going to be my favorite laptop of 2025 — packing Snapdragon power and 32 hours of battery life into a shell that is smaller, slimmer and lighter than the MacBook Air.
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00:00So it's 2025 and it's time for round two of the Copilot Plus PCs.
00:04At the moment the AI features might be a little bit rough around the edges,
00:08looking at you Microsoft Recall, but it's led to some absolute bangers of laptops that are
00:13managing to do what the MacBook has done well for so long. Pack a lot of performance with
00:19great power efficiency into super sleek, lightweight shells. Now we're seeing ASUS
00:24get involved a lot with Copilot Plus PCs. Chief amongst all of those is the ASUS ZenBook A14.
00:32Let me talk to you about it. This is the first ZenBook from ASUS to pack this new ARM architecture
00:38chip from Qualcomm. And just like you've seen from anything packing Snapdragon X Elite,
00:43Snapdragon X Plus, you're getting a super sleek machine that comes in at under one kilogram.
00:49It gave me serious picking up a MacBook Air for the first time vibes. It just feels so featherweight.
00:56So how did they do that? And how many compromises did they have to make along the way? The reason
01:01for its light weightness actually comes down to the material that they use on it. Something that
01:05ASUS likes to call seraluminum. You're getting a super lightweight material that feels premium in
01:12the hand and has a texture almost like paper in a way. It's very original to ASUS laptops and it's
01:19something that your fingertips are going to love. But then I got around to flipping it open and this
01:24is the bit where I realized that ASUS has not made compromises to make this impossibly thin laptop
01:31work. Up top you've got a 14 inch OLED panel, 16 by 10 aspect ratio so you can see a lot more of
01:38your work as you get it done. And on the bottom you've got a full size keyboard with plenty of key
01:42depth so it has a nice tactile feel to it. And you see a generously sized trackpad that comes with all
01:50of the edge smart gesture controls. Looking a bit deeper inside and as I said at the top Snapdragon is
01:55taken over the party here. And new for 2025 you have Snapdragon X which is the base level chipset that is
02:03chasing that lowest possible price that you can pay to get into the AI laptop space. Pretty cool.
02:09And even better if you do go with a Snapdragon X Elite that super lightweight construction and
02:13everything doesn't get in the way of getting all of the heat from that chip out. So the dual fan
02:20system means that you can run it full speed 45 watts TDP meaning that you can get the maximum power out
02:28of it which I don't know if you've seen the benchmarks. It's gonna make Apple a little bit
02:33nervous with their MacBook Air. Ports wise you've got USB-A, USB-C, HDMI and a 3.5 millimeter headphone
02:40jack. Pretty respectable amount of ports. Obviously you can ask for more but it's pretty skinny.
02:45It turns out it's now newsworthy to say that a laptop comes with a headphone jack. And then top it
02:50all off with Wi-Fi 7, Dolby Atmos tuned sound, a 1080p webcam with Windows Hello built into it,
02:57and a 70 watt hour battery which ASUS promises you can get over 29 hours of video playback on.
03:05Hmm, I think I'll save that for the testing to see whether that's true or not. But either way,
03:10this is all building up to be a pretty stellar laptop. A solid notebook that is a cinch to carry
03:16around with you at all times and available at a variety of prices too. To whip through the rest of the
03:21Zenbooks, you'll see in a couple of them get some spec bumps. Anything that was released over the past
03:27couple of months or so is not being touched. What is getting a welcome upgrade is the Zenbook Duo
03:33is taking the jump up to Intel Core Ultra 200 series. That should hopefully help with the battery life
03:40problems because I do miss that dual screen laptop. Meanwhile, moving our way over to the cheaper end,
03:45the Vivobooks is getting a bit of a rethink in terms of what you can get with it. So now you've got two
03:52lineups, you've got the Vivobook S, which is their slightly more pricier models, let's call it the
03:57mid-range. That has a lot of the specs that you'd see in the Zenbook just without the build quality,
04:04and then you've got the Vivobook. Also sports pretty respectable specs but just comes in like cheaper
04:09materials and then comes in at cheaper prices. So for example the Vivobook S14 and S16 are sticking with
04:16the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series chips. They're so confusing. And then the Intel Core Ultra 200 series
04:23CPUs as well, alongside the OLED version and an IPS display too. Just for the laugh, they're going to
04:30make an 18 inch version as well. As for what could possibly be my favourite budget laptop of the year,
04:37provided issues play their cards right, the standard Vivobook S14 comes with the Snapdragon X chipset.
04:45It's a little bit chunkier in the hand, a little bit heavier and you can tell it's made from plastic,
04:50but if it has all of that co-pilot plus PC goodness in it, this could be a pretty great low-cost option
04:56to get into the world of AI PCs. And ASUS really wants to take a lead on it and they have a lot going
05:04on. So what do you think? Do you see yourself pretty interested in a Zenbook A14? Go ahead and let me know
05:09in the comments. And if you enjoyed this video and you want to see so much more, don't forget to
05:13click that subscribe button. And of course, keep it locked onto tomsguide.com for all of your latest
05:19coverage and the Zenbook A14 review when we've given it some proper testing. I've been the awfully
05:26English Jason England and I'll talk to you soon.