ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED (2024) Laptop Review

The ASUS UX3405 is available in a Ponder Blue or Foggy Silver color scheme. See the bottom of the laptop here.

The ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405's build quality is outstanding. Its full-aluminum chassis feels very sturdy, exhibiting only a small amount of flex on the lid and keyboard deck. The finish doesn't scratch easily. It picks up fingerprints and smudges, though that's likely less of an issue on the Foggy Silver model. The feet feel solid and stick firmly to the bottom.

The hinge is outstanding. Its wide range lets you lay the screen flat on the table, which is handy when you need to show the content to someone opposite you or want to write with a stylus in a more comfortable position. It feels smooth when opening and closing the lid and is very stable, exhibiting almost no wobble when typing vigorously.

The ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED 2024's internals are easy to access; you only need to remove a few Tr5 screws and undo the clips holding the bottom panel with a prying tool. Unfortunately, the RAM isn't user-replaceable. There's only one storage slot—it supports M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 SSDs.

See the service manual here.

• 65W power adapter
• Documentation

Note: Depending on the region, you may get a laptop sleeve, a USB-A to RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet adapter, and/or an ASUS 2.0 (SA203H) stylus included in the box.

The ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED laptop is available with the following displays:

• 14" OLED 1920 x 1200 60Hz
• 14" OLED 2880 x 1800 120Hz
• 14" OLED 2880 x 1800 120Hz (touch and stylus support)

The 2.8k displays look very sharp and provide just enough screen real estate for split-screen multitasking. The FHD+ display (1920 x 1200) isn't as sharp (162 PPI), though the difference might not be immediately noticeable at typical viewing distances. All three are 16:10 displays. This aspect ratio is great for productivity, as it gives you slightly more vertical space than a standard 16:9 display, allowing you to see more information when reading a document or website. There's a permanent burn-in risk on the OLED panels, especially with static elements like Windows' taskbar; however, it's unlikely to be an issue for those viewing varied content. If you want an ultraportable with a larger screen for multitasking, check out the LG gram Pro 16 (2024).

While not entirely necessary for productivity, the 2.8k OLED display's 120Hz refresh rate does provide a better user experience than a standard 60Hz refresh rate. It makes motion look smoother, like when scrolling through a document, and it also improves responsiveness when moving the cursor and using touch or pen input. That said, the higher refresh rate will take a toll on battery life. You can set it to 60Hz to save battery, and there's also a setting that automatically switches the refresh rate to 60Hz when running on battery and 120Hz when plugged in. The FHD+ display is limited to 60Hz and likely has a slower response time.

The display's contrast ratio is effectively infinite since OLEDs can turn off individual pixels to produce perfect blacks. The posted contrast ratio is low due to the limitations of our measuring tool.

The display gets bright enough for use in most indoor settings but not outdoors in broad daylight. It gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which is great for dark room viewing because it causes less eye strain. The FHD+ display has the same advertised brightness. If you need a laptop with a brighter display, check out the Apple MacBook Air 13 (2024).

The display's reflection handling is decent. Its glossy finish mainly struggles with bright light sources, like a lamp or open window during the day. The reflections are visible even with the screen at maximum brightness.

The display's horizontal viewing angle is decent. Like most OLED panels, colors shift fairly quickly as you move to the side.

The display's vertical viewing angle is decent. Again, color shift is the main issue when viewing from above or below. It isn't too bad if you're only viewing documents, but you'll have to look at the screen more or less straight on if you need perfect accuracy for color-critical work.

The display's out-of-the-box accuracy is good. The white balance is outstanding, but the average color dE is high because the default color profile targets a wider color space, resulting in oversaturation. Some people may like this punchier, oversaturated look; it just isn't very accurate. The color temperature is only mildly warmer than the standard 6500K target, giving the image a slight, almost imperceptible reddish tint. The gamma follows the sRGB curve relatively well; dark scenes are a little too dark, while bright scenes are a bit too bright.

The OLED display's color gamut is superb. It has full coverage of the sRGB and DCI P3 color spaces and near-full coverage of the Adobe RGB color space. It's suitable for media consumption, professional photo editing, as well as for viewing and producing SDR and HDR content. The FHD+ display has the same color gamut.

The display's flicker is unlikely to be an issue for most people, as the flicker frequency is relatively high. However, it may still cause eye strain for people sensitive to display flickering.

The ASUS UX3405MA has a great keyboard. Its layout feels spacious and is relatively standard, so it's easy to adapt to. The keys have a decent amount of travel, require little force to actuate, and provide relatively satisfying tactile feedback. However, key stability isn't very consistent, as some keys wiggle more than others. The backlight is white and adjustable via the F4 hotkey.

The ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405's touchpad is excellent. It's large without being in the way when typing and feels very smooth. It tracks all movements and gestures well, and there are no issues with palm rejection. You can only click in the bottom half of the touchpad. The buttons feel a tad mushy, so it's sometimes hard to know if a click has been registered.

Like previous Zenbooks, there are two icons at the top corners of the touchpad. Touching the right one activates the number keys, turning the touchpad into a virtual NumPad. A short press on the left icon adjusts the Numpad's brightness, while a long press launches Windows' calculator app. The NumPad feature seems to be only available on select models, so check the specifications if it's important to you.

The speakers get reasonably loud with minimal compression at higher volume levels. They have a decent amount of bass but sound boxy, with an unnatural timbre. If you want an ultraportable with better-sounding speakers, check out the Apple MacBook Air 15 (2024).

The ASUS UX3405's webcam is excellent. The image looks detailed and well-exposed; however, it's noisy, and the colors look slightly washed out. Voices sound loud and clear over the microphone with almost no background noise. The webcam's privacy cover also disables the webcam at the software level.

The ASUS UX3405 has a great port selection. The USB-A port supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed of up to 5Gbps. Both USB-Cs support Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gbps data transfer speed and two external 4k displays at 60Hz), DisplayPort, and Power Delivery. The latter allows for fast charging of the laptop and other PD-compatible devices connected to the port. Regarding the HDMI port, although ASUS advertises it as HDMI 2.1, it uses the TMDS (Transition Minimised Differential Signaling) signaling method, which only supports up to a maximum output resolution of 4k at 60Hz (8-bit), not 4k at 120Hz. As such, we consider it an HDMI 2.0 port.

The ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405's wireless adapter is an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211.

The ASUS UX3405 is available with the following CPUs:

• Intel Core Ultra 5 125H (14 cores, 18 Threads, up to 4.5 GHz, 18MB Cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (16 cores, 22 Threads, up to 4.8 GHz, 24MB Cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 9 185H (16 cores, 22 Threads, up to 5.1 GHz, 24MB Cache)

All three are high-performance CPUs from Intel's Meteor Lake family. They have many changes compared to Intel's 13th Gen processors, including the addition of two low-power E-cores (LP-E) to handle light tasks, further improving efficiency, as well as an NPU (Neural Processing Units) for A.I-based tasks, like background-blurring on video calls. These processors can handle general productivity tasks, like text processing, web browsing, and video playback. They can handle more intensive tasks, like programming and video editing; however, due to this laptop's limited cooling system, they'll throttle significantly under heavy, sustained loads. Regarding core composition, the Core Ultra 5 has four performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power efficiency cores (4P+8E+2LP-E), while the Core Ultra 7 and 9 have six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power efficiency cores (6P+8E+2LP-E). All three CPUs have the same Neural Processing Units (NPU).

The ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405 is only available with Intel Arc Graphics, an integrated GPU designed to handle light tasks like web browsing and video playback. You can play some older or puzzle-like games, but you'll have to play at a lower resolution or with low graphical settings to get smooth gameplay. Check out the HP OMEN Transcend 14 (2024) if you need a similar laptop with discrete graphics.

You can configure this laptop with 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of RAM. The memory isn't user-replaceable. If you have a memory-intensive workload and need a laptop available with more RAM, check out the Dell XPS 14 (2024).

You can configure this laptop with 512GB or 1TB of storage. The SSD is user-replaceable; the slot supports M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 SSDs.

The ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405 has an outstanding overall score in Geekbench 5. The posted results are numbers obtained in the default 'Standard' mode—switching to the 'Performance' mode increases the multi-thread score to 10,007. All three available CPUs can handle general productivity tasks with no issues. For more demanding multi-threaded workloads, it's best to get a Core Ultra 7 or 9, as they have two additional performance cores. That said, if your tasks take a long time to complete, you're better off getting a laptop with a more robust cooling system, as this laptop's single fan design causes significant throttling on the CPU. Intel's Arc GPU isn't bad for integrated graphics, but it's still slow compared to discrete GPUs and isn't ideal for intensive tasks. Check out the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition 15 (2024) if you need better multi-thread performance to run more intensive applications.

The ASUS UX3405's Intel Core Ultra 5 125H scores well in Cinebench R23. The posted results are numbers obtained in the default 'Standard' mode. Switching to the 'Performance' mode increases the multi-thread score to 12,302, which is closer to the expected score for this CPU. However, thermal throttling causes the performance to drop the longer the processor is under an intense load, eventually reaching the same score as the posted result after a few consecutive runs. The Core Ultra 7 and 9 have two additional performance cores and are better suited for heavy, multi-threaded workloads.

While you can render 3D images in Blender using the CPU, getting a laptop with a discrete GPU is best, as even an entry-level GPU, like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, can render images much faster.

The Intel Arc GPU's Basemark score is unremarkable. It's a step up from Intel's own Iris Xe, but it's still far too slow for graphically intensive games. You can play some simple, puzzle-like games or older titles at 1080p, but you'll have to play at a lower resolution or with low graphics settings to get playable frame rates.

Models with an FHD+ display likely have a longer battery life. If you want an ultraportable with better battery life, consider the Dell XPS 13 (2024).

Borderlands 3 isn't playable on the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405. The gameplay is extremely choppy, even with low graphical settings. The CPU's integrated GPU can't handle such a graphically intensive game. You can expect the same performance in other similarly demanding titles.

Civilization VI runs poorly. While you can get over 60 fps by lowering some graphical settings, the game stutters regularly. Upgrading to the Intel Core Ultra 7 or Ultra 9 won't improve the performance significantly.

Counter-Strike 2 runs poorly on the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405. The Intel Arc integrated graphics can't push 60 fps at 1080p, even with the lowest graphical settings. The Core Ultra 7 and Ultra 9's integrated graphics will push closer to 60 fps, but the gameplay will still be very choppy due to frame drops.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs poorly. The gameplay is very choppy, even with low graphical settings. Upgrading to the Core Ultra 7 or Ultra 9 won't improve the performance significantly.

The right side of the keyboard gets toasty under load, but it isn't hot enough to cause discomfort. The fan is only a quiet whisper when running an intensive load in the default 'Standard' setting. Switching to the 'Performance' mode only increases the fan noise by a few dB.

The CPU throttles almost immediately upon starting an intensive load in the 'Standard' mode. There's as much throttling in the 'Performance' mode; it just takes longer to get there. Check out the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX3404 (2023) if you need better-sustained performance in demanding workloads.

The ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405 has a few pre-installed software applications, including:

• GlideX: Lets you mirror your screen's content to a smartphone, tablet, or computer.
• Intel Unison: Lets you connect your smartphone to the laptop, allowing you to send and receive messages, view photos taken on your smartphone, and transfer files, similar to Windows' MyPhone app.
• McAfee: Antivirus and anti-malware application.
• ScreenXpert: Window management utility for multi-display setups.

The ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405 has a Windows Hello facial recognition IR camera. You can use it to log into Windows, authorize Windows Store purchases, and auto-fill saved passwords on supported websites.

You can get this laptop with a QHD+ OLED display that supports pen input; however, depending on the model, region, and retailer, you may or may not get a stylus included in the box. The included stylus is an ASUS Pen 2.0 (SA203H), which uses Microsoft Pen Protocol (formerly N-Trig). The pen has 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and a built-in battery that you can recharge via USB-C.