Pros & Cons
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- Excellent battery life outlasts most other ultralights we've tested
- Premium OLED display
- More ports than competitors
- Featherweight design
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- Snapdragon X Plus drives limited performance
- A few Windows on Arm compatibility issues remain
Asus Zenbook A14 Specs
| Boot Drive Capacity (as Tested) | 512 |
| Boot Drive Type | SSD |
| Class | Ultraportable |
| Dimensions (HWD) | 0.63 by 12.2 by 8.4 inches |
| Graphics Processor | Qualcomm Adreno GPU |
| Native Display Resolution | 1920 by 1200 |
| Operating System | Windows 11 Home |
| Panel Technology | OLED |
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-42-100) |
| RAM (as Tested) | 16 |
| Screen Refresh Rate | 60 |
| Screen Size | 14 |
| Tested Battery Life (Hours:Minutes) | 27:55 |
| Variable Refresh Support | None |
| Weight | 2.4 |
| Wireless Networking | Bluetooth 5.3 |
| Wireless Networking | Wi-Fi 6E |
Qualcomm-powered Copilot+ PCs have spun the laptop world in a new direction, providing a potent alternative to traditional AMD- and Intel-based laptops. The Asus Zenbook A14 (model UX3407, $999 for our test model) is one such Snapdragon ultraportable, an exceedingly light, slim-bodied laptop that lasts for nearly 28 hours on a charge while still delivering decent performance, Copilot-based AI features, and a robust port selection. When we first saw and handled the Zenbook A14 at CES, we left deeply impressed with the lightweight design. Now that we've thoroughly tested the machine, we're still amazed by that featherweight chassis and Ceraluminum-covered design, but we're also sold on its OLED display and lengthy battery life. It's no performance powerhouse, but if portability is what you crave, the Asus Zenbook A14 is a satisfying ultraportable laptop and one of the strongest Snapdragon X-based efforts to date.
Design: Ceraluminum Is a Featherweight Champ
Before you pick up the Asus Zenbook A14 (UX3407), it should stand out on first glance as different, thanks to the ceramic finish that covers all sides of the slim ultraportable's aluminum-magnesium casing, from the lid and display bezels to the palm rest and underside of the chassis. This matte "Ceraluminum" finish looks and feels different from other aluminum-made ultraportables. On this review unit, it's an unusual-looking Zabriskie Beige color.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)That signature look is functional, too. Ceraluminum is a proprietary composite material, born from a high-heat electrochemical ceramization process that gives the mag-alloy chassis a ceramic-like outer layer, making it not only fingerprint- and scratch-resistant but also stronger and lighter than traditional anodized aluminum.
That added strength and lightness mean that the Zenbook A14 measures 0.63 inch thick but weighs just 2.4 pounds—lighter than most 14-inch ultraportables and even lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air despite its thicker chassis.
Display and Audio: Vibrant Visuals, Decent Sound Quality
The A14 has a 14-inch OLED display with 1,920-by-1,200 resolution. That's not spectacular (just 1080p in a 16:10 aspect ratio), but it's more than sharp enough for documents and web browsing. Despite the basic resolution, it's still a decent-looking display, with deep, crisp contrast and HDR support that makes bright colors pop without washing out deep shadows. Some models include a higher-resolution 2,880-by-1,800 panel at a 120Hz refresh rate, but this review unit features a standard 60Hz OLED.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)A pair of downward-firing speakers produces decent sound quality and volume, complete with Dolby Atmos spatial sound. Many ultraportables include anemic speakers or inconsistent sound quality, but the A14's sound is deep and consistent, with no noticeable speaker buzz or distortion at higher volume. My only real complaint is a lack of bass, which is common in slim and light laptops.
Keyboard, Touchpad, and Webcam: Class and Comfort
The keyboard's square keycaps match the laptop's overall beige finish. The low-profile keys have a standard 1.3mm depth, but their responsiveness makes them comfortable to type on. The backlight keeps the keys legible in all lighting situations, which are full-size and well-spaced. However, the arrow keys have a smaller key size. The dedicated Windows Copilot key beside the space bar lets you easily call up Microsoft's AI assistant and features.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The large, glass-surfaced touchpad is comfortable for scrolling and tapping, as well as other gestures, but Asus adds some extra functionality, with swipeable zones on the sides and top of the pad. These zones can adjust screen brightness, turn volume up and down, or scrub forward and back through media. A haptic touchpad might have provided a slightly better experience than the mechanical click for right and left button presses, but I have no complaints while using it.
Like the display, the A14's webcam is 1080p resolution, but it gets a boost from the Copilot+ AI-enhanced image quality. The picture is crisp; the colors are bright (if perhaps a bit oversaturated); and the cam produces decent exposure even when your lighting is less than ideal. It also supports Windows Hello for easy, secure logins with facial recognition.
Ports: Comprehensive Connectivity
On the left of the laptop's base, you'll find a full-size HDMI 2.1 connector, a pair of USB4 ports (which support 40Gbps data transfer, DisplayPort output, and USB Power Delivery), and a 3.5mm combo audio jack.
On the right, you'll find a single USB Type-A port. The Zenbook A14 also has Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 radios for wireless connectivity.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Asus' overall port selection is impressive for the laptop's size and weight, including both HDMI and USB-A. Many ultraportables have already slimmed down to just USB-C, leaving it on the user to procure an adapter dongle or a USB-C hub to use common USB-A peripherals.
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Performance Testing: Reliable for Everyday Tasks, Not Big Projects
I benchmarked the Asus Zenbook A14 against various ultraportable competitors for this review. This group includes systems with similar Snapdragon processors, like the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus (7441), which was $999 as tested. I also included alternatives powered by Intel and AMD, like a Dell XPS 13 (9350) based on Core 2 Ultra ($1,699.99 as tested), and the 2025 Framework Laptop 13 ($1,627 as tested), respectively. Finally, I compared it with the 2025 Apple MacBook Air 13-Inch ($1,199 as tested), which features Apple's custom Arm-based M4 silicon.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
Our primary tests for Arm-based laptops are CPU-centric or processor-intensive. Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we see how long the freeware video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 takes to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Other tests we usually use on Windows systems, like UL's PCMark 10 and Adobe Photoshop (via Puget Systems' PugetBench utility), aren't available for Arm-based CPUs in a way that we can use, so they're excluded from this comparison. Windows on Arm has far better app compatibility than before, but it can't run everything that x86-based PCs can.
In Cinebench and Geekbench Pro, the Snapdragon-powered Zenbook A14 fell behind most competitors. Still, it wasn't at the bottom of the barrel, notably pulling ahead of the far pricier Dell XPS 13 in both tests. Similarly, the A14 completed our HandBrake video transcoding test quicker than the XPS 13, but still put up a slower time than the rest of the crowd.
Regardless of where it fell in the rankings, the overall scores indicate reliable and capable (albeit, not category-leading) performance. Outside of edge-case compatibility issues (such as with legacy apps, some printers, fax machines, and scanners), the Zenbook A14 will handle your daily productivity tasks quite well. Just don't buy one expecting to render larger projects without prolonged wait times—this laptop is for mainstream casual users and students in the humanities.
Graphics Tests
We challenge laptops' graphics with a quartet of 3D animation and gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K) use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds, while Steel Nomad's regular (4K) and Light (1440p) subtests focus on APIs more commonly used for game development, like DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. A fifth test, Solar Bay, emphasizes ray-tracing performance. This benchmark works with native APIs and subjects 3D scenes to increasingly intense ray-traced workloads at 1440p. Unlike Macs, Arm-based Windows laptops are compatible with all five of these benchmarks.
While the Snapdragon X Plus' general performance may have kept the Zenbook above water with decent scores, the chip's onboard graphics processor simply could not. The Zenbook crawled to the finish line in every test. Whether I compared it with Intel, AMD, or Apple graphics, the Snapdragon X Plus fell behind. Sure, it'll be fine for most uses, like video streaming or simple, casual games at lower settings (with supported drivers), but nothing beyond that.
Battery Life and Display Tests
We test each laptop's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation, or what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show. We also measure each screen's 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
The Zenbook A14 isn't intended for productivity or graphics, but it does deliver some of the longest battery life I've seen in an ultraportable. In our video rundown test, it lasted just shy of 28 hours—significantly longer than already impressive competitors like the latest 13-inch MacBook Air. That's nearly twice as long as the Framework Laptop 13, the shortest-lived system in our comparison lineup.
Asus' laptop display quality was also way above average here, with the glossy OLED panel producing 100% of both the sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts and 97% of the Adobe RGB space. The screen's brightness was also decent, coming in at barely less than 400 nits. Say what you will about this laptop's maximum output, but it's featherweight and lasts all day, which is all some folks need.