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Asus Zenbook A14 Review
Tom's Guide
Follow
01/07/2025
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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Tech
Transcript
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00:00
So it's 2025 and it's time for round two of the Copilot Plus PCs.
00:04
At the moment the AI features might be a little bit rough around the edges,
00:08
looking at you Microsoft Recall, but it's led to some absolute bangers of laptops that are
00:13
managing to do what the MacBook has done well for so long. Pack a lot of performance with
00:19
great power efficiency into super sleek, lightweight shells. Now we're seeing ASUS
00:24
get involved a lot with Copilot Plus PCs. Chief amongst all of those is the ASUS ZenBook A14.
00:32
Let me talk to you about it. This is the first ZenBook from ASUS to pack this new ARM architecture
00:38
chip from Qualcomm. And just like you've seen from anything packing Snapdragon X Elite,
00:43
Snapdragon X Plus, you're getting a super sleek machine that comes in at under one kilogram.
00:49
It gave me serious picking up a MacBook Air for the first time vibes. It just feels so featherweight.
00:56
So how did they do that? And how many compromises did they have to make along the way? The reason
01:01
for its light weightness actually comes down to the material that they use on it. Something that
01:05
ASUS likes to call seraluminum. You're getting a super lightweight material that feels premium in
01:12
the hand and has a texture almost like paper in a way. It's very original to ASUS laptops and it's
01:19
something that your fingertips are going to love. But then I got around to flipping it open and this
01:24
is the bit where I realized that ASUS has not made compromises to make this impossibly thin laptop
01:31
work. Up top you've got a 14 inch OLED panel, 16 by 10 aspect ratio so you can see a lot more of
01:38
your work as you get it done. And on the bottom you've got a full size keyboard with plenty of key
01:42
depth so it has a nice tactile feel to it. And you see a generously sized trackpad that comes with all
01:50
of the edge smart gesture controls. Looking a bit deeper inside and as I said at the top Snapdragon is
01:55
taken over the party here. And new for 2025 you have Snapdragon X which is the base level chipset that is
02:03
chasing that lowest possible price that you can pay to get into the AI laptop space. Pretty cool.
02:09
And even better if you do go with a Snapdragon X Elite that super lightweight construction and
02:13
everything doesn't get in the way of getting all of the heat from that chip out. So the dual fan
02:20
system means that you can run it full speed 45 watts TDP meaning that you can get the maximum power out
02:28
of it which I don't know if you've seen the benchmarks. It's gonna make Apple a little bit
02:33
nervous with their MacBook Air. Ports wise you've got USB-A, USB-C, HDMI and a 3.5 millimeter headphone
02:40
jack. Pretty respectable amount of ports. Obviously you can ask for more but it's pretty skinny. It turns
02:45
out it's now newsworthy to say that a laptop comes with a headphone jack. And then top it all off with
02:51
Wi-Fi 7, Dolby Atmos tuned sound, a 1080p webcam with Windows Hello built into it and a 70 watt hour
02:59
battery which ASUS promises you can get over 29 hours of video playback on. Hmm I think I'll save
03:06
that for the testing to see whether that's true or not. But either way this is all building up to be
03:11
a pretty stellar laptop. A solid notebook that is a cinch to carry around with you at all times and
03:18
available at a variety of prices too. To whip through the rest of the Zenbooks you'll see in a couple of
03:23
them get some spec bumps. Anything that was released over the past couple of months or so is not
03:28
being touched. What is getting a welcome upgrade is the Zenbook Duo is taking the jump up to Intel Core
03:35
Ultra 200 series. That should hopefully help with the battery life problems because I do miss that dual
03:42
screen laptop. Meanwhile moving our way over to the cheaper end, the Vivobooks is getting a bit of a
03:49
rethink in terms of what you can get with it. So now you've got two lineups, you've got the Vivobooks S
03:54
which is their slightly more pricier models, let's call it the mid-range, that has a lot of the specs
04:01
that you'd see in the Zenbook just without the build quality and then you've got the Vivobook. Also
04:06
sports pretty respectable specs but just comes in like cheaper materials and then comes in at cheaper
04:11
prices. So for example the Vivobook S14 and S16 are sticking with the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series chips.
04:20
They're so confusing. And then the Intel Core Ultra 200 series CPUs as well alongside the OLED version
04:27
and an IPS display too. Just for the laugh, they're going to make an 18 inch version as well.
04:32
As for what could possibly be my favourite budget laptop of the year, provided this is play their
04:39
cards right, the standard Vivobook 14 comes with the Snapdragon X chipset. It's a little bit chunkier in the
04:46
hand, a little bit heavier and you can tell it's made from plastic but if it has all of that co-pilot
04:52
plus PC goodness in it, this could be a pretty great low-cost option to get into the world of AI
04:58
PCs. And ASUS really wants to take a lead on it and they have a lot going on. So what do you think,
05:05
do you see yourself pretty interested in a Zenbook A14? Go ahead and let me know in the comments and if you
05:10
enjoyed this video and you want to see so much more, don't forget to click that subscribe button.
05:15
And of course, keep it locked onto TomSky.com for all of your latest coverage and the Zenbook A14
05:22
review when we've given it some proper testing. I've been the awfully English Jason England
05:27
and I'll talk to you soon.
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