Asus Zenbook A14 Review

Tom's Guide

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.

Transcript

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. It turns

02:45out it's now newsworthy to say that a laptop comes with a headphone jack. And then top it all off with

02:51Wi-Fi 7, Dolby Atmos tuned sound, a 1080p webcam with Windows Hello built into it and a 70 watt hour

02:59battery which ASUS promises you can get over 29 hours of video playback on. Hmm I think I'll save

03:06that for the testing to see whether that's true or not. But either way this is all building up to be

03:11a pretty stellar laptop. A solid notebook that is a cinch to carry around with you at all times and

03:18available at a variety of prices too. To whip through the rest of the Zenbooks you'll see in a couple of

03:23them get some spec bumps. Anything that was released over the past couple of months or so is not

03:28being touched. What is getting a welcome upgrade is the Zenbook Duo is taking the jump up to Intel Core

03:35Ultra 200 series. That should hopefully help with the battery life problems because I do miss that dual

03:42screen laptop. Meanwhile moving our way over to the cheaper end, the Vivobooks is getting a bit of a

03:49rethink in terms of what you can get with it. So now you've got two lineups, you've got the Vivobooks S

03:54which is their slightly more pricier models, let's call it the mid-range, that has a lot of the specs

04:01that you'd see in the Zenbook just without the build quality and then you've got the Vivobook. Also

04:06sports pretty respectable specs but just comes in like cheaper materials and then comes in at cheaper

04:11prices. So for example the Vivobook S14 and S16 are sticking with the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series chips.

04:20They're so confusing. And then the Intel Core Ultra 200 series CPUs as well alongside the OLED version

04:27and an IPS display too. Just for the laugh, they're going to make an 18 inch version as well.

04:32As for what could possibly be my favourite budget laptop of the year, provided this is play their

04:39cards right, the standard Vivobook 14 comes with the Snapdragon X chipset. It's a little bit chunkier in the

04:46hand, a little bit heavier and you can tell it's made from plastic but if it has all of that co-pilot

04:52plus PC goodness in it, this could be a pretty great low-cost option to get into the world of AI

04:58PCs. And ASUS really wants to take a lead on it and they have a lot going on. So what do you think,

05:05do you see yourself pretty interested in a Zenbook A14? Go ahead and let me know in the comments and if you

05:10enjoyed this video and you want to see so much more, don't forget to click that subscribe button.

05:15And of course, keep it locked onto TomSky.com for all of your latest coverage and the Zenbook A14

05:22review when we've given it some proper testing. I've been the awfully English Jason England

05:27and I'll talk to you soon.

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