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00:00Ooh, okay, okay.
00:02Hey guys, I'm Tom from TechJab,
00:03and this is the ASUS ZenBook 14 OLED.
00:07And while its predecessor may have only come out
00:09six months ago during the summer,
00:11we already have a refresh,
00:12and it's a pretty big update both outside and inside.
00:17♪♪
00:20Because this is the very first laptop I've got my hands on
00:22to come with Intel's brand-new
00:2414th generation Meteor Lake processors.
00:27And I have the new Intel Core Ultra 7 155H in this guy.
00:32And this year, it's all about the graphics
00:34with the new Intel Arc integrated GPU,
00:36and also a new NPU for the neural processing,
00:39the Intel AI Boost.
00:41So lots to talk about.
00:42But first, a big thank you to ASUS
00:44for sending this over for me to test.
00:45It is just one of a handful of review units
00:47in the world right now,
00:49and also very kindly sponsoring this video.
00:51Now, although you can actually buy this from today,
00:53well, at least in the US, Canada, and India,
00:55I think other countries are coming soon.
00:57So before Christmas, which is pretty impressive
00:59for the new generation of hardware,
01:01this actual review sample I've got here
01:02is a pre-production version.
01:04Now, I can run tests and benchmarks,
01:06all my own tests, all my own results,
01:07and I will share that with you in a minute
01:09because they are pretty interesting.
01:11But I do have to caveat
01:12that this is not a quite final retail model.
01:15But before we nerd out on some 14th gen goodness,
01:18ASUS have made some other very tasty upgrades
01:19to the ZenBook 14 OLED.
01:21And the very first thing you'll notice is the size.
01:24Now, sadly, I don't have the predecessor model here
01:27to compare it directly to.
01:27They've reduced the weight from 1.39 kilograms
01:30to just 1.2, so roughly 200 grams lighter.
01:33And they've also slimmed it down
01:35from 16.9 millimeters to 14.9 millimeters.
01:38So a couple hundred grams less,
01:39a couple of millimeters thinner,
01:41it's a lot more compact.
01:43But still keeping that lovely 14-inch OLED screen,
01:45the same 75-watt-hour battery,
01:47same 180-degree hinge and touchscreen, of course,
01:51and also the same pretty good range of ports,
01:53given the size, including two Thunderbolt 4s,
01:55a full-size Type-A USB headphone jack,
01:59and an HDMI 2.1.
02:00Obviously, an SD card reader would have been nice,
02:02but not too bad.
02:04It comes in this blue color or silver,
02:06foggy silver, as they call it.
02:07Although I do think I would prefer the silver,
02:09as I have noticed the lid on this
02:11get a little bit fingerprinty.
02:13I say a bit.
02:16Same lovely backlit keyboard
02:18with what ASUS call ultra quiet keys.
02:23Your friends and family around you
02:25when you're working on this
02:25will definitely appreciate that.
02:26And of course, the touchpad down here
02:28also doubles as a numpad with the press of a button.
02:31As for the screen, we have a 14-inch OLED touchscreen
02:34with a 3K resolution.
02:36So that's 2880 by 1880,
02:38but they have bumped the refresh rate from 90 to 120 Hertz,
02:41which makes everything feel smoother.
02:43And also it's a good deal brighter now.
02:44ASUS quoted the previous model
02:46as offering 400 nits in SDR and 550 in HDR,
02:49but I measured this at a hair under 500 nits in SDR
02:52and around 750 in HDR.
02:55My only complaint is the screen is very, very glossy.
02:58And also there's a little bit of wobble to that hinge.
03:00Up top, we have a 1080p webcam
03:02with an IR sensor beside it.
03:04So you can use the Windows Hello face locking
03:05even in low light or at night.
03:07You can also see I've got the auto framing turned on
03:09and we'll talk more about that in a second.
03:11But I also do appreciate
03:12we have a privacy shutter up here.
03:15Blah, blah, blah, blah.
03:16Let's get to the good stuff, right?
03:17Let's talk about 14th gen processors.
03:19Now on the Intel side, they've had a bit of a rebrand.
03:21We've gone from, say, the Core i5, i7, i9
03:24to the Core Ultra 5, Ultra 7, and Ultra 9.
03:27Although similarly, the higher the number,
03:29the higher the tier of chip.
03:30But just as importantly as ever is the suffix.
03:33Intel have dropped the P series,
03:34which for the last couple of generations
03:36have sat between the U and the H.
03:38So this new ZenBook 14 OLED comes in Ultra 5,
03:41Ultra 7, Ultra 9 options, all with Intel Arc graphics,
03:44albeit at different clock speeds.
03:45And this particular one I have here, as I say,
03:47has the Ultra 7 155H,
03:49which is bang in the middle of their new H series lineup.
03:51It's a 16-core, 22-thread processor.
03:54The new Intel Arc graphics packs in eight Xe cores.
03:57We also get DX12 ultimate support,
03:59hardware ray tracing, mesh shading,
04:02and it's better optimized for their XESS AI super sampling.
04:06The new chips also do support Wi-Fi 7,
04:08although this particular laptop is still stuck with 6e.
04:11I say stuck with, barely anyone even have a 6e router,
04:13but 7 would have been nice for future-proofing.
04:16But it does support AV1 encoding and decoding,
04:19which previously you'd have to have, say,
04:20an NVIDIA 40-series GPU to get.
04:22And AV1 is basically a much more efficient codec than H.264.
04:26And that's a pretty big deal for any video editors out there.
04:29The bottom line, though,
04:29is Intel are claiming double the performance per watt
04:32versus the previous gen.
04:34That's a big claim.
04:35Now, to add a bit of context,
04:36let me bring in the LG Gram Style.
04:39This has the previous 13th-gen 1360p processor,
04:42the same one used in the old ZenBook 14 OLED,
04:44and also packs in 32 gigs of RAM.
04:47Different laptop, different chassis, yes,
04:49but it should give us a decent indication
04:50of how much faster 14th-gen is.
04:52But in Geekbench 6,
04:54we're looking at a minimal change to the single-core,
04:56although an impressive 33% uptick in multi-core.
04:59Although, in Cinebench,
05:01we're seeing a 20% bump in single-core
05:03and a whopping 113% gain in multi-core.
05:07PCMark10 shows a 21% overall uptick,
05:10and in Time Spy, incredibly,
05:11it's nearly three times faster overall.
05:14And in the Blender benchmark,
05:16we're looking at 22, 36, and 55% jumps respectively
05:20for each test.
05:21That's pretty huge.
05:22Now, opening up Premiere Pro 24
05:25and timing the export of my 4K60 H.264 project,
05:28it took 4 minutes 32 seconds on the ZenBook
05:31versus 9 minutes and 13 seconds on the LG.
05:34Variables aside,
05:36the 14th-gen did it in almost half the time.
05:39But what about games?
05:40Can I finally play some AAA titles
05:42with, you know, decent settings on integrated graphics?
05:46Well, the answer is yes.
05:48In Shadow of the Tomb Raider,
05:49we're looking at almost double the performance at 42 FPS,
05:52and that's with high settings at 1200p.
05:55Rainbow Six Siege went from a jumpy 38
05:57to a super smooth 79.
05:59That's over double the frame rate.
06:01So gaming is definitely possible now,
06:03although dropping to 800p might be a better option
06:06for the most demanding games.
06:07And in most cases, including Premiere Pro,
06:10we're looking at up to twice the performance,
06:13That is ridiculous.
06:15Although under load and in performance mode,
06:17the temps did get quite high easily in the 90s
06:19while video rating or gaming
06:20and peaking over 100 degrees Celsius.
06:23So this can get hot both inside and outside.
06:26I'm also really surprised
06:27that actually the performance on battery
06:29isn't that much worse than on power.
06:31Usually we see quite a big drop,
06:33and that's one of the reasons I love MacBooks
06:35is generally you get similar performance on battery,
06:37although I found that's not really the case with gaming.
06:39But with this guy,
06:39there's a sort of 5% to 10% drop in performance
06:42going away from the charger,
06:43but that's not bad at all.
06:45So far, so good then,
06:46but we need to talk about AI.
06:48And the big push this year is for on-device AI acceleration
06:51because we've got all the things like Windows Copilot,
06:54we've got ChatGPT,
06:55you've got your Photoshop with generator fill,
06:57but that all uses cloud-based AI,
06:59which is great and generally faster.
07:01But what we're seeing now
07:02is this AI acceleration locally on device,
07:05which means A, you don't need a connection to the cloud,
07:08lower latency, so it's generally faster,
07:10fewer privacy concerns
07:11because nothing's leaving your laptop,
07:12and it is all done on your laptop.
07:14So now we've got our CPU, the processor,
07:16the GPU, the graphics,
07:17and the NPU, or neural processing unit.
07:20And you can see when the Intel AI Boost kicks in,
07:22in this case, when I'm using some webcam studio effects,
07:25but the AI acceleration we get
07:27as a result of having this dedicated NPU
07:29makes AI tasks much faster and more efficient.
07:32And as I say, it can take some of the workload
07:33off your CPU and your GPU.
07:35But it is early days,
07:36and you have to have the hardware in place
07:38to then have developers optimize their apps and games
07:41to support the AI acceleration with an NPU.
07:44So while I would not rush out and buy this
07:46purely based on the fact that it has an NPU
07:48and we have much faster and more efficient AI performance,
07:51I would consider buying this
07:52because of the improved graphics performance
07:55and also the overall upgrade to the laptop
07:57in terms of the design, the screen,
07:59and everything else as a package.
08:01The new ZenBook 14 OLED starts in the UK at 1099,
08:05and that gets you the Ultra 5 CPU,
08:0716 gigs of RAM and 512 storage,
08:08which I think is a pretty good base spec.
08:11I'm probably my pick of the bunch,
08:12although you can spend a little bit more
08:13to get the Ultra 7 or the Ultra 9,
08:15topping out with 32 gigs and a terabyte of storage.
08:18And overall, I think it's a lovely laptop.
08:20Beautiful screen, lovely design,
08:21nice and thin and light,
08:22solid performance, particularly in the graphics,
08:24thanks to 14th Gen.
08:25And I think the price is pretty reasonable
08:27for what you're getting.
08:28And if you do fancy checking this out for yourself,
08:30I will leave links in the description below.
08:32If you've got any questions at all,
08:33drop a comment and I'll do my best to answer them.
08:35And also if there's anything else
08:36you'd like me to test on this
08:38with that new 14th Gen CPU.
08:40Thank you so much for watching guys.
08:41I'll see you next time right here on the Tech Chat.
08:44I've just realized there is a cat
08:47who's been watching me the whole time.
08:50Would you go for a MacBook or a ZenBook?
08:52What do you think?