Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Intel are back, and so are ASUS. This is the brand new ZenBook S14 and this is a big one.
00:06Not literally, it's actually a very small 14-inch laptop and we'll talk about the design and everything else in a second,
00:11but the reason why this is a big deal and actually a bit of a special video,
00:14this is the first laptop out of the gate, or at least the first one that I've tested, with one of these.
00:19The brand new Intel Core Ultra Series 2 chip.
00:24So this is like the update to Meteor Lake that we had beginning of this year.
00:29Now we're on Lunar Lake, that was a codename, but for everyone going into stores or buying one of these new laptops,
00:34you will see it as the Intel Core Ultra Series 2.
00:38And Intel is making some big claims about performance, about AI, and also crucially, battery life.
00:43So I'm putting this up against rivals from AMD, Qualcomm, and also the previous generation Intel chips,
00:48to see if this really is as good as we're all hoping it is.
00:51So a big thank you to ASUS for sending this out for me to test,
00:54and I'm going to show you a ton of my own results, benchmarking this later in the video,
00:58and the results are actually very surprising.
01:00But also, full disclosure, this video is made in partnership with ASUS.
01:04No input on script, no input on the tests I run, and no input on the competing devices I'm using.
01:09Bottom line, all my results are my own.
01:12But before we dive into performance and battery tests, let me give you a bit of context.
01:15Because about a month or so ago, I reviewed the ZenBook S16, the bigger brother to this ZenBook S14,
01:21which was available in both Intel and AMD configurations, although the one I tested was the AMD.
01:26However, this S14 is all-in on Intel.
01:29It's only coming with the new Core Ultra Series 2 processors.
01:33Well, I say processors, I should really say system-on-a-chip, because it's more than just the CPU.
01:37You've got the integrated graphics, the second-generation Intel Xe2 Arc graphics,
01:43we've got the MPU, a much more powerful neural engine,
01:45and we've also got the memory actually on the chip now.
01:48So that does mean you can't upgrade it yourself.
01:50You either get 16 or 32 gigs, but it's much more responsive, much more efficient,
01:54and we'll dive into that stuff in a second.
01:56So you've got the CPU, the GPU, the MPU, the memory, all the media encoder stuff.
02:01There is a lot on this little chip,
02:03and it's probably the most radical redesign of Intel's mobile architecture in years.
02:08And with these new chips, in these new laptops, it is all about efficiency.
02:12It's about maintaining performance while also boosting your battery life,
02:15because these are designed for these kind of premium, thin and light laptops,
02:18and hopefully, finally, give some proper competition to the MacBooks.
02:23So right now, with these new processors, there are nine different versions
02:26in Ultra 5, Ultra 7, and Ultra 9 SKUs.
02:29I've got the top dog here, the 288V, along with the 140V integrated graphics,
02:35and this Ultra 9 has a 28W TDP, which is significantly lower than last year's Ultra 9,
02:40which was around 45W, but also appreciably higher than the 17W that you'll get on an Ultra 7.
02:46However, on the face of it, it doesn't all appear to be good news,
02:48because Intel's actually dropped the number of cores down to 8 cores.
02:52From 16, they've halved the number of cores, and they've removed hyper-threading.
02:55So on this Ultra 9 288V, which is the top-end chip, it is an 8-core, 8-thread processor,
03:02which, compared to AMD's 12-core, or, as I say, even Intel's previous 16-core chips,
03:06it's fair to say this new architecture needs to be pretty incredible
03:09to actually make up for that drop in core count.
03:13Then there's the faster integrated graphics, the XE-2, as well as a much beefier MPU,
03:17the Neural Processing Unit, with 48 tops of AI compute power,
03:21meaning this does meet Microsoft's spec for a Co-Power Plus AI PC,
03:24so you'll get Co-Creator and Live Translations, and, when they eventually release it, Recall.
03:29But before we no doubt about the benchmarks, first, we need to talk about Ceraluminum.
03:34Ceraluminium? Ceraluminum? Ceramic Aluminium Ceraluminum.
03:41I bet the marketing team over at ASUS are very happy with that one.
03:44It's ASUS's new lightweight, high-tech material for the chassis of the S14,
03:48and it comes in either Scandinavian White or this Zumaia Grey.
03:52I mean, it looks and feels like aluminium, which is great and very, very lightweight,
03:56but it also has this sort of extra hardness, toughness, because of this ceramic process material.
04:02I don't know how it all works. But anyway, it's very nice-looking.
04:04It doesn't pick up any fingerprints, barely any screen wobble.
04:07It can go that far back. Would have been nice if it could go flat, but there we are.
04:11Very comfortable backlit keyboard. Huge touchpad.
04:14They could not squeeze a bigger one in there, which is really nice and responsive,
04:17and also has gesture support.
04:19So if you scroll your finger up and down the left side, it changes the volume.
04:22On the right side is the brightness.
04:24It's actually quite a nice shortcut, rather than having to find the F key.
04:28And you can customize what this does or even turn it off if you prefer.
04:31Plus we have dual mics for AI noise cancellation and also quad Harman Kardon-tuned Dolby Atmos speakers.
04:37And as for ports, we get ultra-fast USB-Cs with Thunderbolt 4, a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A,
04:44an HDMI 2.1, and an audio combo jack.
04:46And obviously, we get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 as well. Very nice.
04:51And just look how thin these bezels are. It's pretty nuts, actually.
04:54And they've squeezed in a 1080p webcam up there with Windows Face Unlock support.
04:59As for the quality, well, you be the judge.
05:01This is the 1080p webcam up here.
05:03I've got my studio lighting there.
05:04But if I spin around, give you, well, a bit of a tour of what I'm looking at behind the scenes there.
05:10So this also supports Face Unlocking, Windows Face Unlocking.
05:14And it's got a 3D IR sensor, so it works well in low light.
05:17We've got 3D noise reduction as well.
05:19And because it's a Copilot Plus PC, I can turn on all the fancy Windows Studio effects like auto-framing,
05:24eye contact, so I can actually look at the screen, but then it juts my eyes up to make it like I'm looking at you.
05:30Also background effects.
05:31And all this is run on the MPU, so actually it uses a lot less battery life than it would on other laptops
05:37using these kind of features running on the GPU or CPUs.
05:40And this S14 weighs just 1.2 kilograms.
05:43And it's slightly lighter and a touch thinner than a MacBook Air 13, despite this having a bigger screen.
05:50In fact, if I pop that there, let me show you the difference between the 14 and the 16.
05:54Here's what I made earlier.
05:55This is the AMD-powered ZenBook S16.
05:58This is the new Intel-powered ZenBook 14.
06:01And except for the chip inside and also the different color,
06:04we've got the Zamiya gray and the Scandinavian white and also the screen size.
06:08They are brothers, essentially.
06:10Although I'm curious, if you were going to pick one of these up,
06:12would you go for the 14 or the 16?
06:14And also which color would you go for?
06:16Let me know in the comments below.
06:17My only complaint, and we need to have a serious talk about this,
06:20is whoever puts the stickers on these laptops.
06:23But look how wonky that HDMI sticker is.
06:26I'll tell you what, though.
06:27This ASUS Lumina OLED 16x10 3K 120Hz touchscreen more than makes up for a wonky sticker.
06:34Brightness tops out at 400 nits in SDR or 500 nits in peak HDR,
06:39which is good, although not class-leading.
06:41Plus, we get Dolby Vision support.
06:43And because it's OLED and because it hits the 500 nits,
06:45this meets the DisplayHDR 500 True Black spec.
06:49In my tests, this hit 100% of the sRGB and the P3 color gamut.
06:53So I would be more than happy to use this for editing my photos and videos,
06:56for everyday office tasks, and maybe even playing a couple of games.
07:00Now, specs-wise, this test sample I've got from ASUS has the top-end Ultra 9 288V
07:05with 32GB of integrated LPDDR5X RAM.
07:09We've also got 1TB of storage and a 72Wh battery with a 65W power adapter.
07:15I think you can probably tell I really like this laptop.
07:17But it's all going to come down to how fast is it, how long does it last, and also how much is it?
07:22Well, let's talk about battery life.
07:23And I put this up against last-gen Intel chips and most of its main competition right now
07:28in a full-screen YouTube streaming test running at 200 nits of brightness
07:31in their most power-efficient settings.
07:33And unsurprisingly, it was the previous first-gen Intel Core Ultra 9 that conked out first after 8 hours and 11 minutes.
07:40Then we had the AMD-powered ZenBook S16 which went on to 9 hours 44.
07:44The screen is bigger, but then so is the battery.
07:46But this is all just to give you a rough idea.
07:49And then the MacBook Air 13 with the M3 chip dropped out at 10 hours and 39 minutes,
07:53making it a two-horse race.
07:55And then after a frankly amazing 13 hours 23 minutes,
07:59it was the new ZenBook S14's turn, followed by the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th edition
08:04with its Snapdragon X Elite at a very impressive 14 hours 41.
08:08So the Snapdragon still won in that battery test,
08:11but this represents a 64% increase in battery life over the previous-gen Intel chips.
08:17But it gets even better.
08:18Switching over to PCMark10, the new ZenBook S14 lost 2% of its battery during the benchmark
08:24versus 9% lost with the first-gen Core Ultra.
08:28And when I left this for 15 hours overnight for a bit of a standby test,
08:31it was still on 100% when I woke up the next day.
08:34Okay, so it's not entirely surprising that a processor with half the number of cores
08:39without happy threading and also a lower relative TDP
08:42lasts longer than the older model.
08:45But how does that translate to performance?
08:46Are we giving up some power in favor of efficiency and battery?
08:50Well, in my Geekbench 6 test, this new top-end chip beats out its predecessor in single core by 7%
08:56and matches or gets close to its rivals.
08:58However, multi-core is a different story.
09:00That drop down to 8 cores has definitely had an effect here.
09:03In Cinebench, single core was up 18%, gen on gen, and beat everything except the Apple M3.
09:08Great.
09:09Downside? Multi-core was down nearly a third.
09:12And it was a similar story in my Blender render test.
09:15Going back to PCMark10, which is more of an everyday productivity-based test,
09:20these new Intel chips actually matched the last-gen performance,
09:23which actually is impressive given this has a much longer battery life.
09:26So it's kind of like Intel has reprioritized what we'd want out of a thin and light laptop like this.
09:33And so I think higher single-core performance and much longer battery life
09:36makes sense in exchange for lower multi-core performance.
09:41But what do you think?
09:42And it is also worth remembering, compared to its Snapdragon rivals,
09:44that being x86, this has no app compatibility issues.
09:48This will run everything.
09:50But what about graphics?
09:52Well, in my 3DMark benchmark suite, the ARC 140V was around 17% faster than last-gen Intel in Wildlife Extreme,
09:5911% faster in Time Spy, and 8% faster in Steel Nomad Lite.
10:05And while I don't know how many people are necessarily playing games on these kind of laptops,
10:10the optic and gaming performance was a lot more significant.
10:13And in my tests, I was aiming for 1080p medium settings with XDSS turned on,
10:17that's Intel's AI upscaling, where supported.
10:20And Cyberpunk ran a third faster on the new chip, averaging 52 FPS,
10:24which is by far the highest frame rate of any machine on test here.
10:27And it's kind of hard to believe this is running on integrated graphics.
10:31Spider-Man Remastered is 23% faster than last-gen, again, by far the highest of any of the alternatives.
10:37And it was the same in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which felt like I was actually playing on a discrete GPU.
10:42Siege was 21% faster as well, easily beating out the others.
10:46One thing that is clear, though, is that the Snapdragon X Elite counterparts,
10:50while impressive in single-core, multi-core, and battery life,
10:53definitely fall behind in gaming with the Adreno graphics,
10:56and also, of course, as I mentioned, have some app compatibility issues
10:59because they're based on an ARM rather than x86 architecture.
11:02But what about performance on battery?
11:04While my results were pretty similar using performance and full speed modes,
11:08though I've seen some of Intel's own numbers where this can drop anywhere from a couple of percent
11:12to more than a third when using the more balanced speed profiles.
11:17And wouldn't you know it, just as I was finishing this video,
11:19what should turn up but an identical ZenBook for this one with a Core Ultra 7 instead of the Ultra 9?
11:25So while I'll dig into the differences more in my upcoming roundup video,
11:28I ran a couple of quick tests just to give you an idea of the difference.
11:31And again, in full speed mode, the Core Ultra 9 was about 2% faster in Geekbench 6's single-core,
11:37around 2.5% in multi-core, and just 1% faster in PCMark10.
11:42Nothing to really write home about, then.
11:44Perhaps the Ultra 7 is the sweet spot.
11:47And I actually got a couple of FPS more in Cyberpunk.
11:49So I think more testing needs to be done,
11:51but so far, the differences with the Ultra 9 don't seem particularly significant.
11:56So we've talked about CPU, we've talked about GPU,
11:58then, of course, we've got the MPU, which is apparently four times faster than the previous gen.
12:03Now, AI is all a bit fluffy.
12:04Yes, we have some co-creator tools, but I don't really use them every day.
12:08I think live translation's actually the most useful.
12:10And, of course, we are going to have recall. I'm sure we'll get more over time.
12:12And there are a handful of programs and apps that have, in some way, utilized for the MPU,
12:17like auto-masking in DaVinci Resolve.
12:20There's some audio apps.
12:21But most of the time, you're not really taking advantage of the MPU.
12:24It's much more about future-proofing over time as developers optimize their programs.
12:28More tasks will be offloaded from the CPU and the GPU onto the MPU,
12:31and then either doing it faster or more efficiently, so you save more batteries.
12:35You should be absolutely fine with this as more AI features come out.
12:39But one other advantage of having this more efficient, lower TDP chip
12:43is it runs cooler and it runs more quietly.
12:45The S14 stays considerably cooler and also a little bit quieter than older Intel laptops I've tested,
12:51even after an hour of gaming.
12:53And while you can hear the fans if you're pushing it in games, they're still pretty quiet.
12:57And most of the time when you're using this laptop, you don't hear a thing.
13:00And it's not just the more efficient chip.
13:01We've also got this cooling grill here, which I believe actually is 2715 drilled vents, drilled grill,
13:08along with a dual-fan vapor chamber cooling system in here.
13:11So the actual hardware that ASUS have built around the new chip
13:15also does a really good job keeping it running cool and quiet.
13:18Internally, in my tests, the CPU tops out at around 92 Celsius in more graphics-heavy tasks and games,
13:24and around the mid-80s in CPU-focused apps.
13:26A lot better than the previous gen, which I would often see around the 100 degree Celsius mark.
13:31And that is the new ASUS ZenBook S14.
13:34What do you think?
13:35In terms of being the first Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processor—I hate that name—
13:40I wouldn't say the new chip is like a complete knock-out-of-the-park home run,
13:43and everything else is absolute garbage compared to this,
13:46but it does make Intel competitive again.
13:49I think it really does take away a lot of the USPs from going in for a Snapdragon chip,
13:53unless you can get a much more affordable laptop.
13:55These new chips are likely to be in more premium, thinner-light laptops of, you know, over £1,000,
14:01maybe sort of £1,500-ish.
14:03So, this is quite expensive, and it is just this form factor,
14:06but certainly no app compatibility issues,
14:08fantastic battery life not far behind at all the Snapdragon rivals,
14:13more AI tops than you could shake a stick at,
14:15fantastic integrated GPU performance,
14:17and decently fast as single-core, albeit with that trade-off of lower multi-core performance.
14:22But I think that is the right re-prioritization of performance and battery and efficiency for a laptop like this.
14:28As for the pricing, well, it will vary based on region, currency, and also, obviously, the model you go for,
14:32but I will put confirmed final pricing in the description below and also pin a comment,
14:37and also leave a link if you fancy checking this out for yourself.
14:39Thank you so much for watching, guys.
14:40I hope you enjoyed the video, and if you did, a cheeky little like and subscribe would be fantastic,
14:45and I'll see you next time right here on The Tech Chat.