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

01:31laptop work. Up top you've got a 14 inch OLED panel, 16 by 10 aspect ratio so you can see a lot

01:38more of your work as you get it done. And on the bottom you've got a full size keyboard with plenty

01:42of key depth so it has a nice tactile feel to it. And you see a generously sized trackpad that comes

01:49with all of the edge smart gesture controls. Looking a bit deeper inside and as I said at the top

01:54Snapdragon is taking over the party here. And new for 2025 you have Snapdragon X which is the base level

02:02chipset that is chasing that lowest possible price that you can pay to get into the AI laptop space.

02:08Pretty cool and even better if you do go with a Snapdragon X Elite that super lightweight construction

02:13and everything 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 of

02:28it which I don't know if you've seen the benchmarks. It's gonna make Apple a little bit nervous with their

02:33MacBook Air. Ports wise you've got USB-A, USB-C, HDMI and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. Pretty

02:41respectable amount of ports. Obviously you can ask for more but it's pretty skinny. It turns out it's now

02:46newsworthy to say that a laptop comes with a headphone jack. And then top it all off with Wi-Fi 7,

02:52Dolby Atmos tuned sound, a 1080p webcam with Windows Hello built into it and a 70 watt hour battery which

03:00Asus promises you can get over 29 hours of video playback on. Hmm I think I'll save that for the

03:07testing to see whether that's true or not. But either way this is all building up to be a pretty

03:12stellar laptop. A solid notebook that is a cinch to carry around with you at all times and available at

03:19a variety of prices too. To whip through the rest of the Zenbooks you'll see in a couple of them get

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

03:29What is getting a welcome upgrade is the Zenbook Duo is taking the jump up to Intel Core Ultra 200 series.

03:37That should hopefully help with the battery life problems because I do miss that dual screen laptop.

03:43Meanwhile moving our way over to the cheaper end, the Vivobooks is getting a bit of a rethink in terms of

03:50what you can get with it. So now you've got two lineups, you've got the Vivobook S which is their

03:55slightly more pricier models, let's call it the mid-range. That has a lot of the specs that you'd

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

04:07respectable specs but just comes in like cheaper materials and then comes in at cheaper prices.

04:12So for example the Vivobook S14 and S16 are sticking with the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series chips. They're so confusing.

04:21And then the Intel Core Ultra 200 series CPUs as well alongside the OLED version and an IPS display too.

04:29Just for the laugh, they're going to make an 18 inch version as well. As for what could possibly be my

04:36favourite budget laptop of the year provided this is play their cards right. The standard Vivobook 14 comes

04:42with the Snapdragon X chipset. It's a little bit chunkier in the hand, a little bit heavier and you can tell it's

04:49made from plastic but if it has all of that co-pilot plus PC goodness in it this could be a pretty great

04:55low-cost option to get into the world of AI PCs and ASUS really wants to take a lead on it and they

05:02have a lot going on. So what do you think? Do you see yourself pretty interested in a Zenbook A14? Go ahead

05:08and let me know in the comments and if you enjoyed this video and you want to see so much more don't

05:13forget to click that subscribe button and of course keep it locked onto tomsguide.com for all of your

05:19latest coverage and the Zenbook A14 review when we've given it some proper testing. I've been the

05:26Awfully English Jason England and I'll talk to you soon.

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