Asus Zenbook S 14 Review: A Finely Crafted Home for New Intel AI PC Chips

The Asus Zenbook S 14 gives us our first look at an Intel Lunar Lake laptop, the follow-up to the first AI processors the chipmaker introduced last year under the codename Meteor Lake. Intel is sticking with the Core Ultra branding; this new generation of processors is simply labeled Core Ultra Series 2. 

Last year’s Core Ultra chips introduced a radical new chiplet architecture along with a neural processing unit to handle AI tasks. With these new Core Ultra 200V chips, Intel is promising greater efficiency for better battery life along with an uptick in CPU performance and a big boost to graphics performance from the integrated Arc GPU. The focus on x86 efficiency is no surprise, given the lengthy runtimes we’ve seen from laptops that have ARM-based processors from Qualcomm and Apple.

With this focus on efficiency, it makes sense that the first Lunar Lake laptop is a thin and light model designed for on-the-go performance. The Zenbook S 14 is a 14-inch ultraportable that’s only half an inch thick and weighs just a smidgen more than 2.5 pounds. It also boasts a gorgeous 2.8K-resolution OLED display, but its superior picture quality comes at the expense of battery life. While the Zenbook S 14 offers a longer runtime than previous-gen Core Ultra laptops, it’s still hours away from the battery life you get with a laptop based on Qualcomm’s ARM-based Snapdragon X processors or a MacBook based on Apple’s own ARM-based M-series chips. 

There is a lot to like about the Zenbook S 14 as an ultraportable, but it fails to reverse the trend of ARM offering a more optimal mix of performance and battery life compared to x86.

Asus has two versions of the Zenbook S 14 at launch. Our test model (UX5406SA-PH79T) costs $1,500 from Asus and has a Core Ultra 7 258V CPU, 32GB of RAM, integrated Intel Arc 140V graphics and a 1TB SSD. There’s also a model (UX5406SA-S14.U71TB) available at Best Buy for $1,400 that has a Core Ultra 7 256V CPU and 16GB of RAM. Both models feature the same 14-inch OLED display with a 2,880×1,800-pixel resolution and touch support. 

System RAM has been moved to the chip, so you’ll need to choose the amount of RAM you want up front because you won’t be able to add RAM after purchase. The lack of an upgrade path is similar to the trend of soldered RAM, which has become more common in recent years. However, with Core Ultra Series 2 laptops, you’re now limited to choosing between 16GB or 32GB of RAM.

The Asus Zenbook S 14 starts at £1,500 in the UK and AU$3,399 in Australia. 

First look at Lunar Lake performance

It was a mixed bag for the Zenbook S 14 in lab testing. The laptop’s Intel Core Ultra 7 258V has eight processing cores — four performance cores and four efficient cores. And with Core Ultra Series 2, Intel has done away with hyperthreading to maximize power efficiency. Just compare the Core Ultra 7 258V’s eight processing cores/threads to the previous Core Ultra 7 155H’s 16 cores (four performance, eight efficient and two low-power efficient cores) and 22 threads. 

The lack of hyperthreading combined with offering only eight total cores is likely the reason for the Zenbook S 14’s poor showing on Geekbench 6 and PCMark 10, two benchmarks that tax every physical core and processing thread to measure overall performance across mixed workloads. It finished last on both tests. It trailed a trio of laptops based on the Core Ultra 7 155H on both tests. PCMark 10 isn’t compatible with Macs or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processors, but Geekbench 6 is. And on that test, the Zenbook S 14 also finished behind the M3 MacBook Air and a trio of Copilot Plus PCs based on a Snapdragon X chip.

The Zenbook S 14 performed better with single-core performance, placing just behind the M3 Air on the single-core Cinebench 2024 test. However, it plummeted to last place on the multicore version, again showing the limits of the unthreaded, eight-core CPU. Its single- and multicore scores track closely to those of the MacBook Air, which also has an unthreaded, eight-core M3 chip.

The integrated GPU is the second-generation version of Intel Arc graphics, and the Zenbook S 14 showed modest gains on 3DMark Time Spy over previous-gen Core Ultra laptops. Snapdragon X-based laptops have to run this test through emulation since an ARM version hasn’t been released yet, leading to significantly lower scores for those systems. This is likely the Intel chip’s biggest advantage over Snapdragon processors: no emulation is required, ensuring full Windows software compatibility without issues.

With each new generation of Intel’s integrated GPU, I can’t help but wonder how much closer it gets to delivering playable 3D framerates, at least for older games. If the Zenbook S 14 is any indication, we aren’t much closer with this next version of Intel Arc graphics that are based on new Xe2 architecture. On Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it averaged 26 fps at 1080p using Highest settings. That’s a few frames more per second than the Surface Laptop 7 and its integrated Qualcomm Adreno GPU, which managed only 20 fps on the same test. Even when I dropped the quality settings to Lowest, the Zenbook S 14 averaged only 47 fps.

The NPU also gets a bump with the second-core Core Ultra series. It’s capable of 48 TOPS, and the GPU adds 67 TOPS for a total of 115 TOPS. (See our TOPS explainer for more on this AI metric.) On Procyon’s AI Computer Vision benchmark that measures integer math proficiency for AI workloads, the Zenbook S 14’s score was in line with the NPU performance from Snapdragon X-based Copilot Plus PCs and a whopping 3.6 times better than a laptop with a previous-gen Core Ultra 9 processor. (We’ve just started using this test and have limited comparison numbers for it, which is why you won’t find previous Core Ultra laptops on its chart below.)

Battery from this Lunar Lake laptop is good but not great. It lasted for 15 hours 20 minutes on our online streaming battery drain test, which will get you through a work or school day on a single charge. Its a longer runtime than we’ve seen from Core Ultra laptops but still far short of the exceptional battery life we’ve seen from Snapdragon X laptops as well as Apple’s M3 MacBook Air. The M3 Air ran for roughly three more hours on the same battery test, and the longest-running Snapdragon X model offers nearly 10 more hours of runtime. Lunar Lake has arrived, but ARM still has the clear advantage over x86 with laptop battery life.

Thin yet rigid OLED ultraportable

Now that we’ve covered the Intel inside the laptop, let’s turn our attention to its exterior. The Zenbook S 14 is a finely crafted ultraportable. It is less than half an inch thick but doesn’t feel flimsy thanks to its Ceraluminum chassis, which is what Asus calls this aluminum and ceramic material. Oftentimes with laptops this thin, the shell flexes to worrisome degrees, but that’s not the case here. The tiniest amount of flex can be felt in the lid behind the display, but the keyboard deck is rock-solid. That makes the typing experience more enjoyable because the keys aren’t flexing beneath your fingertips. The keys themselves offer shallow travel but snappy feedback; I felt immediately comfortable and could type fast on the Zenbook S 14.

The touchpad is just average. While it’s decent for a mechanical touchpad, offering a firm click response, a haptic touchpad isn’t unheard of at this price. I much prefer a haptic touchpad for its consistent click response across the entire surface and the option to customize the feedback. The Zenbook S 14 includes smart gestures along the side and top edges for adjusting brightness, volume and controlling video playback. However, I doubt I’d use these gestures over the function keys or the touchscreen.

Impressively, the 14-inch Zenbook S 14 is lighter than the 13.6-inch MacBook Air. It weighs just 2.6 pounds, and the Air is 2.7 pounds. Meanwhile, the 13.8-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 and 14-inch HP OmniBook X 14 are two of the lightest Copilot Plus PCs we’ve tested but still weigh close to 3 pounds and are appreciably heavier than the Zenbook S 14.

Another advantage the ZenBook S 14 has over the Copilot Plus PCs is its display, which has an HDR OLED panel instead of a standard IPS LCD. Not only does the OLED display deliver more vivid colors with better contrast and truer black levels, but it also has a higher resolution at 2,880×1,800-pixels than any Copilot Plus PCs we’ve reviewed. Text and images look crisp, and colors pop. 

It’s a fantastic display, even if its peak brightness failed to match its 500-nit rating. I measured a peak brightness of 375 nits with a Spyder X Elite colorimeter, which is significantly lower than its rating. With its excellent contrast, however, an OLED doesn’t need to be as bright to stay visible in direct light as an LCD. Its color performance was strong with 100% coverage of the sRGB and P3 spaces and 94% of AdobeRGB

Despite the incredibly compact enclosure, Asus found room for four speakers — a pair of 1-watt woofers and a pair of 1-watt tweeters. That’s not a lot of wattage, but this quad array offers fuller sound than the typical 2-watt stereo speakers, even if the total wattage isn’t any greater. There was a hint of separation between mid and high tones, and I could also detect a bit of bass in the mix. For such a thin and compact ultraportable, the Zenbook S 14 offers impressive sound.

The 1080p IR webcam offers the only biometric login option because the laptop lacks a fingerprint reader. It also offers a sharp, well-balanced image with accurate skin tones, but 1080p is no longer top among webcams. The HP Omnibook X 14, for instance, has a webcam capable of capturing 1440p video. Still, 1080p will probably suffice for most, especially those upgrading from a 720p webcam.

With the Zenbook S 14, you get greater processing efficiency and longer battery life, along with a huge leap in AI performance from the NPU, compared with laptops based on Intel’s previous Core Ultra chips. Intel still has a ways to go, however, to catch up to the performance and efficiency of the competing ARM-based CPUs from Apple and Qualcomm. The most impressive thing about the Zenbook S 14 isn’t the Intel tech inside but the Asus design on the outside. It’s a well put together ultraportable.