The Asus Zenbook S14 is an ultraportable laptop that's powered by Intel's new Lunar Lake CPUs. It boasts impressive battery life, reaching 16 hours and eight minutes in the PCMark 10 battery benchmark, outperforming even AMD's Ryzen AI-powered competitors. However, there are some compromises, as it doesn't always match the performance of last-gen Intel chips or AMD's Ryzen AI in multithreaded tasks.
Engadget has been testing and reviewing consumer tech since 2004. Our stories may include affiliate links; if you buy something through a link, we may earn a commission.we reviewed last December, is a solid ultraportable with one major selling point: It's among the first laptops to use Intel's newest CPUs. In this case, it's the Core Ultra 7 258V, a processor that sits in the mid-range of the company's"Lunar Lake" lineup.
Based on my testing, I can confirm that the Zenbook S14 delivers the best battery life we've ever seen from an Intel laptop. It reached 16 hours and eight minutes in the PCMark 10 battery benchmark. In comparison, the Zenbook S16 powered by AMD's new Ryzen AI 9 365 chip only hit 12 hours and 47 minutes.
The Zenbook S14 is surprisingly sturdy for a 14-inch laptop that weighs 2.65 pounds and measures 0.47 inches thin. It's slightly lighter and a hair thicker than, and feels similarly polished. Notably, it also offers many more useful ports than Apple's ultraportable. The S14 includes two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C connections, a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port, a headphone jack and even an old-school USB Type-A port. The only thing it's missing is Ethernet and an SD card slot.
Unfortunately, ASUS couldn't get everything right with the Zenbook S14. Its quad-speaker audio system is serviceable, but the sound loses any sort of depth and detail as you ramp up the volume. And while it's nice to have a Windows Hello-compatible webcam for fast logins, the 1080p sensor looks far grainier and less detailed than Dell's XPS line and the MacBook Air.Its keyboard also feels merely serviceable, with little responsive feedback while typing.
Unfortunately, there still aren't a ton of AI features to test at the time of this review. Microsoft's Copilot+ Windows 11 update for Intel and AMD systems isn't arriving until November, and even that will only include a beta version of the controversial Recall feature. It's also hard to find apps that take advantage of a local NPU — most entries in the Windows Store"AI Hub" rely on cloud AI processing., which Intel developed to show off its AI PC hardware.
Asus Zenbook S14 Laptop Review Intel Lunar Lake Cpus Battery Life Performance Ultraportable
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Intel Core Ultra 200V Luna Lake Lands: Huge Gaming, Battery Life BoostAntony is a PC hardware enthusiast and full time reviewer and technology journalist and has written for Forbes for over 10 years, most of this a as a senior contributor. He’s also written for prominent PC hardware websites and magazines and also runs the CrazyTechLab YouTube channel, which features guides, reviews and interviews.
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