Asus Zenbook Pro 14 OLED laptop review: MacBook Pro rival with 120 Hz OLED display

[Redaktion]

Asus is relaunching the 14.5-inch Zenbook Pro and has equipped the fast multimedia notebook with a Raptor Lake Core i9-13900H and the new GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU. The 120 Hz OLED panel with 2.8K resolution is also new, but has a negative impact on battery life.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-Zenbook-Pro-14-OLED-laptop-review-MacBook-Pro-rival-with-120-Hz-OLED-display.725187.0.html

[ecki]

this but with 13700h cpu+ 4060 or g14 with 7940hs +4060 ? (miniled version). Love the size of this and so many aspects, but hate the ring on the touchpad. Except for losing touchscreen, will the g14 compare for creative purposes?

[Iguana Divergent]

I get that you are using the Macbook Pro 14 as a standard of comparison, but the SKU reviewed here is quite overpriced and you could easily upgrade the SSD and add memory to one sodimm which you cant with a Macbook Pro 14. As a salesman in an electronic store and as a video editor I can say that the Zenbook Pro does many things better than the Macbook Pro 14 even when comparing your reviews; better screen (much better motion and colour handling without blooming), better single and multi core scores, upgradeable ram/ssd, GPU is way beyond of the Macbook Pro, outstanding GPU temperatures. Build quality I'd give a notch to Macbook Pro 14, the brightness while nice is not really necessary in most use cases and the screen has blurry motion and terrible response times, the 32gb variant is way more expensive and is completely soldered. 8 hours of video play on battery is fine and they perform the same when the hardware is pushed on battery. This laptop easily deserves a 90% rating honestly, so much tech and performance in such a small and well build package.

[Iguana Divergent]

Also lack of PWM flickering above 50% brightness and the touch screen are huge wins for the Zenbook. Honestly the Macbook Pro 14 and Zenbook Pro 14 are both best in class 14 inch laptops, should receive the same score especially considering the performance advantage on both cpu and GPU, the touch OLED advantage, and much cheaper way of getting 48 ram or 4tb installed by simply buying the cheaper SKU in the Zenbook Pro 14. Battery life and build aren't everything yet the weigh much heavier when scoring both according to your reviews :D

[Datvu]

God damn 3k5€. It's only 2100$ in the us. My country have 4060 vesion ~2300$ and i thought that's expensive. Just bought from us, no reason to buy with that price. It's very good for the price. To be fair it's main weaknesses like battery life, bad hdr are coming from intel and window, not asus. Expexted better keyboard though, 1.4mm is quite shallow. Is it build more solid than the g14 i wonder?

[DavidS]

Ah, this didnt make it any easier. Thanks for a good review of this laptop! This zenbook with its compromises or hold out for a potential updated Razer 14" later this year?

Im on a mbp m1 max and just cant stand the apple way of doing things any more :D

Would prefer amd, proper good build quality and the new mini-led panel floating around...!

[24 Mp Smartphone 👍]

Price reflects expensive H series CPU, but it can only run 35W for long tasks. Glossy 350 nit screen. When it first came out, it was 1700€, now the cheapest model is 2500 €. Not for me.

[rp32002]

I am interested in this or the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i as they seem to occupy this space well. Does the reviewer have thoughts on how this model compares to the 14" models from last year (Slim 7/7i pro X, Vivobook Pro 14) that tried to put 3050s and H processors in a similar package

[Buzzz]

I wonder how UX8402VV (with 4060@35W and same proc) gives 143FPS in Witcher3 @Ultra while UX6404VI (4070@75W) provides only 105. TimeSpy score (8500 vs 11600) seems to be more objective.
Folks, I really appreciate your work, but check the facts please.

[Buzzz]

I wonder how UX8402VV (with 4060@35W and same proc) gives 143FPS in Witcher3 @Ultra while UX6404VI (4070@75W) provides only 105. TimeSpy score (8500 vs 11600) seems to be more objective.
Folks, I really appreciate your work, but this fact needs some explanation.
Actually the questing is: is it worth buying the more expensive 4070 model, or 4060 provides the same performance due to thermal throttling? Some of your readers would benefit from knowing this answer..

[pkPerf]

Also lack of PWM flickering above 50% brightness and the touch screen are huge wins for the Zenbook. Honestly the Macbook Pro 14 and Zenbook Pro 14 are both best in class 14 inch laptops, should receive the same score especially considering the performance advantage on both cpu and GPU, the touch OLED advantage, and much cheaper way of getting 48 ram or 4tb installed by simply buying the cheaper SKU in the Zenbook Pro 14. Battery life and build aren't everything yet the weigh much heavier when scoring both according to your reviews :D

Are you out of your mind FANBOY?? The m2max beats out desktop class CPU's the like of 5950x, 13700k, and in some cases 13900k/7950x. And that's proven by the M1MAX SPEC article written by Anandtech. Intel is holding on dear life with its SIMD acceleration, but once apple silicon gets real advanced SIMD pool, this Intel dogshit game is over. AMD too better be switching to RISC! First get educated and intelligent before you make such ridiculous statements!

[pkPerf]

I get that you are using the Macbook Pro 14 as a standard of comparison, but the SKU reviewed here is quite overpriced and you could easily upgrade the SSD and add memory to one sodimm which you cant with a Macbook Pro 14. As a salesman in an electronic store and as a video editor I can say that the Zenbook Pro does many things better than the Macbook Pro 14 even when comparing your reviews; better screen (much better motion and colour handling without blooming), better single and multi core scores, upgradeable ram/ssd, GPU is way beyond of the Macbook Pro, outstanding GPU temperatures. Build quality I'd give a notch to Macbook Pro 14, the brightness while nice is not really necessary in most use cases and the screen has blurry motion and terrible response times, the 32gb variant is way more expensive and is completely soldered. 8 hours of video play on battery is fine and they perform the same when the hardware is pushed on battery. This laptop easily deserves a 90% rating honestly, so much tech and performance in such a small and well build package.

Just no no no no and no! Go f*** your Cinebench mainstream dogshit benchmark you scum, I'm so tired of ignorant arrogant people making statements with this fcking clown benchmark! STOP!

[Neenyah]

Who rattled your cage, pkPerf?

[Andrzej Bem]

Hello,

how can I benchmark My brand new unit that on factory settings w/o any apps running depletes after less then 2 hours ?
what can be wrong as seems You data are not realistic for power consumption and battery performance.

does ASUS provide any information of minimum battery performance , means e.g. factory settings and no load shall work minimum 4 hours or similar ?

best regards,

[Toomuch_]

What Bios version was the laptop on when the review was made?

I feel like the latest bios releases have reduced the overall CPU performance in exchange for less fan noise. I understand that the maximum RPM for the two fans is 7000rpm and unless I'm doing a MyAsus fan diagnostic test, in a Cinebench R23 run, I barely get them to reach 5500rpm. That is with the Full speed profile in the ProArt app. I could never break a score of 17200.