ASUS has a reputation for crafting sleek, premium ultrabooks, and the Zenbook S 14 CoPilot+ PC is no exception. I absolutely loved the Zenbook 14X OLED from last year, which was one of our most highly rated thin-and-light laptops of 2023. This year’s model isn’t just a refresh—it’s a showpiece for Intel’s Lunar Lake series 2 AI PC chips, marking a major leap in efficiency, battery life, and onboard AI processing. But does all that tech translate into a great real-world experience? For starters, how about double the battery life and impressive TOPS (trillions of operations per second) for AI workloads that are becoming more common? Essentially, ASUS took a great notebook and made it better—plain and simple.
Design & Build: Ultraportable Excellence
Not much has changed with the physical design of the Zenbook S 14 . ASUS keeps things stylish and ultra-light, keeping the Zenbook S 14incredibly thin at just under 1cm and weighing around a 1.2 kilos, making it one of the most portable ultrabooks on the market.
It’s wrapped in ASUS’s signature Ceraluminium, a unique plasma ceramic aluminum that feels premium while being environmentally friendly. All this is built in a rock solid chassis that passes ultra-demanding MIL-STD 810H military standards for heat, humidity, and shock. I wouldn’t play rough with this laptop but you can be sure it will easily survive trips in your bag.
Despite its ultra-thin design, ASUS manages to include a decent selection of ports, making it more versatile than many other ultrabooks in its class. It features two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support, a single USB-A port for legacy devices, an HDMI 2.1 output for external displays, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a microSD card slot. Wireless connectivity is also top-notch, with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 ensuring fast and stable connections for a seamless user experience.
The thin bezels and OLED display elevate the aesthetics, but the real star is the 14-inch 3K Asus Lumina OLED panel, boasting punchy colors, deep blacks, and a buttery-smooth 120Hz refresh rate. The panel supports 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, making it ideal for creative professionals who need accurate color reproduction. However, the glossy finish can be problematic in bright environments, as reflections become a distraction, and the screen doesn’t get quite bright enough to combat them effectively.
The display is also touch sensitive, allowing you to interact with Windows by touching, swiping the screen. Not sure you’d want to do that though as Windows 11 isn’t well optimised as a touch interface. That said, there’s nothing stopping you from doom scrolling YouTube shorts in bed. More noteworthy is that the Zenbook S 14 supports the Asus Pen 2.0, a stylus for writing, drawing on that display.
It comes in the box with the laptop though strangely, not with the more creator focused ProArt P16. I didn’t find much application for the pen but artists and photographers who want to edit on this laptop will be pleased. The pen is pretty smooth and responsive in my testing but I can’t speak from a professional point of view.
Below the display, ASUS has fine-tuned the keyboard and trackpad experience. The keyboard is comfortable but features shorter key travel than previous models, which might take some adjustment for heavy typists. I personally didn’t quite get used to it, coming from my Keychron K2 HE board. The large haptic trackpad, however, is smooth, precise, and supports a wide range of gestures for an intuitive navigation experience. You can slide along the side to adjust volume or along the top to adjust brightness.
As for the speakers, ASUS has partnered with Harman Kardon to deliver surprisingly loud and clear audio for an ultrabook of this size. While bass response is limited, it doesn’t sound thin or tinny. Mids and highs come through crisp, making it great for media consumption and video calls. ASUS also includes an AI noise-canceling microphone to improve call clarity, though its effectiveness varies depending on background noise.
Performance: Intel’s AI Push Begins
Under the hood, ASUS packs in Intel’s Lunar Lake processor, a next-gen chip built on a radically new low-power architecture. With a focus on power efficiency and AI acceleration, Lunar Lake integrates a dedicated NPU (Neural Processing Unit) for handling AI workloads natively, ensuring smoother AI-assisted features like Windows Studio Effects for background blur and noise cancellation in video calls. The processor also features revised P-cores and E-cores, improving multitasking efficiency while keeping power consumption in check.
The NPU unlocks new AI-driven enhancements, including real-time background noise removal, smart cropping, and on-device generative AI tools. However, these features still feel early in development, and their usefulness will increase as software catches up. Surprisingly, the Zenbook S14 doesn’t include ASUS’s suite of AI apps like Muse or StoryCube, which were featured in the ProArt P16.
Impressively, performance remains consistent whether plugged in or on battery, which is exactly what you want in a thin-and-light laptop. The integrated Arc GPU, leveraging Intel’s latest Xe2 graphics architecture, delivers a noticeable boost in media rendering and light gaming, though it’s still not a replacement for discrete GPUs. 1080p gaming at low to medium settings is possible, with some titles hitting 60fps.
That said, light content creation, like photo editing and 4K video playback, runs seamlessly, and thanks to Intel’s improved media engine, hardware-accelerated AV1 encoding and decoding are also onboard, making it a strong choice for streamers and video editors on the go. Editing a few 4K Shorts in CapCut, which leverages the NPU for AI-powered features, runs smoothly. Asus is also confident enough that the S 14 will run Adobe Creative Suite with ease which is why you get 3-month subscription with your purchase.
Battery Life & Efficiency: A Step Forward
One of Intel’s biggest promises with Lunar Lake is better efficiency, and it delivers in a big way. ASUS claims over 10 hours of real-world use, and in my benchmarks, I managed over 14 hours on a single charge. With light usage—writing, emails, web browsing, and some light video editing in CapCut desktop—I could go for a few days without needing the power brick. Standby time is excellent, meaning the battery won’t drain while the laptop sits closed in a drawer. The Zenbook S14 competes favorably with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Elite-powered Copilot+ PCs, which are known for their efficiency.
Thanks to improved power management, even AI-driven tasks don’t drain the battery as quickly as expected. Fast charging is another plus, juicing up the 75Wh battery in about an hour. I also love that the Zenbook uses USB-C to charge, so you aren’t limited to the bundled charger if you’re on the go. Battery life is excellent, but it’s still far from the 20-hour mark of the M4 MacBook Pro or the recently announced ASUS Zenbook A14, which promises 30 hours on a single charge.
Verdict
The ASUS Zenbook S14 is an impressive AI-powered ultrabook with a lot going for it—a gorgeous OLED display, ultra-portable build, strong battery life, and Intel’s AI innovations. However, AI features are still in their infancy, and for most people, they remain more of a gimmick than a game-changer. Real-world performance gains will depend on software catching up, though more apps are incorporating AI-powered features.
Still, with prices starting at $2,299, the Zenbook S 14 is a fantastic option for professionals who want cutting-edge tech in a super-sleek form factor. Students, however, might be better off waiting for the ASUS Zenbook A14, which promises up to 32 hours of battery life and weighs less than a kilo, making it perfect for carrying to lectures. Not sure when that model will arrive in Australia, but until then, the Zenbook 14 OLED remains a thing of envy.
Asus Australia kindly loaned the Zenbook S 14 to PowerUp for the purpose of this review.
