Asus Zenbook A14 review: This Windows laptop is gunning for the MacBook Air 13
Our Rating: 9/10
We like:
Light and compact
Colourful OLED display
All-day battery life
We don't like:
Unimpressive speakers
60Hz display
Webcam could be better
£1,099.99
Buy now
Price at
Asus
What is the Asus Zenbook A14?
In my view, the Asus Zenbook S16 is one of the most attractive and capable laptops currently on sale in the UK. It's also great value but of course, that's not the same as saying that it's affordable. In the Zenbook A14, Asus has attempted to distil the essence of the S16 into a laptop with a price that's closer to £1,000.
Asus clearly had the latest M4 13.6-inch MacBook Air in its sights when it designed and priced the A14. In size, they are almost identical and the MacBook only has the edge in terms of pricing if you are prepared to put up with a small 256GB hard drive. Specify a basic M4 MacBook Air with the Zenbook A14's 1TB SSD and the price jumps from £999 up to £1,399.
JUMP TO:
How we test laptops
I have been a technology journalist for over 15 years, testing everything from laptops and electric cars to tablets and audio systems. Over the years, I've used and tested devices running all of the major operating systems, settling these days with Windows, Linux and Android.
When I test laptops here at the Telegraph, I focus on five testing metrics: design and usability, keyboard and touchpad, display and audio, performance and configurations and battery life. However, I don't just look at scores on a spreadsheet.
I use the laptops I'm testing as my primary device, which in my case means a lot of typing, using them on the go, general web browsing, emails and other basic productivity, as well as gaming – the latter especially if the laptop has a graphics card. This gives me a good idea of what the laptop is capable of, how long the battery lasts and how it can handle intense tasks.
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Our tech experts continuously conduct in-depth, independent, real-world tests, scoring devices against pre-set testing metrics and industry benchmarks, so we can deliver definitive and comprehensive buying advice.
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Design and usability
Score: 8/10
The Zenbook A14 is impressively light and compact, even for a 14-inch laptop. At 860g, it makes the 1.24Kg MacBook Air feel almost leaden. It measures 311 x 214 x 13mm, which makes it a similar size to the Apple machine.
Yet despite the low weight, the A14 doesn't feel flimsy or bendy. The body is made from Asus' bespoke 'Ceraluminium' material like the Zenbook S16, though it lacks the slightly matte-effect finish and chrome pinstriping that makes the more expensive machine such a design classic. There are two colours available: Zabriskie Beige and Iceland Gray.
I wouldn't dare say that the A14 is an ugly machine but it's obviously been designed to be just a little less pretty than than the S16. The good news is that the A14's shell is equally good at keeping fingerprints at bay and it still meets the US MIL-STD 810H military-grade standard for resistance to particle ingress, shock and extreme temperatures.
For a skinny compact laptop, the A14 has a decent range of ports with two USB-C 4.0 data/video sockets on the left, along with an HDMI 2.1 video output and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the right, you'll find a solitary 10Gbps USB-A port. Unlike the MacBook Air, which has two Type-C ports and a MagSafe charge port, you'll need to use one of the A14's Type-C ports to connect the 65W power supply.
Wireless communications are handled by a Qualcomm 6900 card that supports 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
Removing the base panel from the A14 is a straightforward job but there's little point because once inside, all you can do is swap out the battery and the 2280 M.2 SSD.
Speaking of the SSD, the 1TB Crucial card in the A14 proved to be nippy, recording impressive sequential read and write speeds of 4,700MB/s and 2,250MB/s respectively.
Keyboard and touchpad
Score: 9/10
I can't imagine anyone finding fault with the A14's keyboard. The slightly rubberised keys are pleasant to the touch and their action is nigh on perfect, the 1.3mm of travel ending in a precise but well-cushioned end-stop. The white-on-grey keycap graphics are easy to read with or without the three-position white backlight turned on.
The keyboard deck is unusually solid for a slim and compact laptop, with even hard presses on the central keys only causing a small amount of movement in the keyboard base.
At 130 x 80mm, the touchpad is on the larger side for a 14-inch laptop and it feels smooth. The mechanical click-action that works across the lower 80 per cent of the pad is perfectly calibrated and also quiet. You can use it in a library with no fear of getting disapproving looks from other patrons.
Early samples of the A14 were criticised for having a webcam that misbehaved when a strong light source was in shot, but Asus seems to have fixed the problem because it wasn't something I could replicate.
Generally speaking, the A14's 1080p camera does a decent job. Video looks sharp and colourful even in less-than-ideal lighting conditions and there is support for Windows Hello facial security along with the usual raft of Windows Studio Effects image enhancements.
That said, the 1440p webcams that Acer currently fits to some of its compact laptops and the 12MP Center Stage camera Apple uses on the MacBook Air are better.
Display and audio
Score: 8/10
The Zenbook A14's 14-inch display is a detuned version of what you'll find on the S14, so you have to make do with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 rather than 2.8K, a 60Hz refresh rate rather than 120Hz and no touch interface. Otherwise, it's every bit as good as the S14.
The difference in resolution is hard to detect in everyday use unless you have your nose pressed right up against the screen or have the eyesight of an eagle. The drop in pixel density from the Zenbook S4's 237dpi and MacBook Air's 224dpi to the A14's 161dpi sounds more precipitous than it looks.
Peak brightness is a good 395 nits and that jumps to 610 nits when displaying HDR (High Dynamic Range) content. Asus makes some of the most colour-accurate displays on the market and the A14 is no exception, with Delta E variances of 0.63 versus the DCI-P3 profile and 0.89 against sRGB. Here, a number less than 1 indicates excellent levels of colour performance.
The screen has a high-gloss finish that gives on-screen proceedings a sumptuous and limpid quality, though slightly at the expense of increased reflections, so I wouldn't describe it as ideal for use outdoors in direct sunlight.
The speaker system is a basic stereo affair without the Harmon/Kardon branding of more expensive Zenbooks. There's plenty of volume on tap, but at higher volumes, the sound is overly brittle and forward.
Performance and configurations
Score: 7/10
The Zenbook A14 comes with two processor options; the 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X X1-26-100 and the 12-core X Elite X1E-78-100. With all else being equal, I'd suggest the everyday performance difference isn't worth the extra £200 the Elite machine will set you back.
In the CineBench R24 rendering test, the A14 scored 704 points in multi-core and 95 in single-core. The M4 MacBook Air has the A14 handily beat in the single-core test, but when it comes to multi-core, there's not much in it: the Apple machine only enjoys a seven per cent advantage.
Apple's M4 is the better choice when it comes to graphics work because the GPU in the X1-26-100 is simply less powerful. The A14 scored 9,610 in the Geekbench 6 OpenCL test, which is less than a third of what you can expect from an M4-powered MacBook Air.
The dry numbers aside, the Zenbook A14 never feels anything less than quick and in 95 per cent of usage scenarios, you simply won't notice the performance giveaway to nominally more powerful machines like the M4 MacBook Air or Intel Core Ultra S2-powered Zenbook S14.
Where you will notice the difference between the A14 and the MacBook Air is noise, since the latter is fanless and the former is not. Even when under severe stress, the A14's fans are not loud or intrusive, but it's not as deathly quiet as the MacBook Air.
Battery life
Score: 9/10
Qualcomm's Windows-on-ARM chipsets continue to impress with their balance between efficiency and performance. A full charge of the A14's 3-cell 70Wh battery kept the lights on for 19 hours and 10 minutes in our battery test.
That's around four hours more than you'll get from a MacBook Air. This time last year, the MacBook Air was the acknowledged master of laptop battery life but how times have changed.
Technical specifications
The Zenbook A14's primary competition with regards to both internal specifications and price comes from Apple's corner. The new MacBook Air 13 (M4) is £100 less but this is only for the entry-level model with 256GB of storage. If you want to match the Zenbook's 512GB SSD, you'll have to pay an additional £200 £1,199).
Should you buy the Asus Zenbook A14?
The Asus Zenbook A14 is the closest thing to a Windows MacBook Air killer that I've seen.
Compared to the MacBook, the A14 is better value once you've factored in a matching SSD, has a more colourful and larger albeit lower-resolution display, a better keyboard and more ports. It's also lighter and has better battery life.
The MacBook counters this with more power, especially when it comes to graphics and a better camera and speakers. Picking between the two is difficult because it's not so much a damned close-run thing as a dead-heat. It simply comes down to whether you prefer using a Windows or Mac machine.
Yes, if
You want an ultralight laptop
You want a highly accurate OLED display
You want all-day battery life
No, if
You want a touchscreen
You want a screen refresh rate higher than 60Hz
You want a great rather than good webcam
FAQs
What is the price of the Asus Zenbook A14?
The entry-level model with the 8-core Snapdragon X processor and 16GB of RAM is £1,099, while the version with the 12-core Snapdragon X-Elite processor and 32GB of RAM is £200 more at £1,299. The cheaper version is the one to go for because, chipset and memory aside, they are identical and the performance differences are minor.
Is the Zenbook A14 better value than the MacBook Air?
In its cheapest form, the MacBook Air is £100 less but that comes with a 256GB SSD. Doubling the storage capacity costs £200 and quadrupling it costs £400. An M4 MacBook Air with a 1TB SSD and 32GB of RAM will cost £1,799 compared to £1,299 for the equivalent Zenbook A14.
What is the software compatibility for Windows-on-ARM?
The vast majority of users needn't worry about the A14 being an ARM machine. The majority of popular software will run natively on ARM chipsets, or under Microsoft's Prism emulation tool. The Google Drive desktop sync tool was a notable holdout but even that is now available in ARM form. If you need to run a piece of unusually old or esoteric software, you may encounter issues, but most don't need to worry.
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