ASUS Zenbook A14: A lightweight and thin Windows 11 ultrabook for work and entertainment on the go

The Zenbook series of laptops from ASUS have a broad range offering and now it also includes a lightweight and thin laptop named the A14. Starting at a price point of ₹99,990, this ultrabook has a lot of things hyped. Does it live up to that? Let’s try and find out:

First things first, this ASUS machine weighs under 1 kg (980 grams), which is the headline feature of it and definitely something you would notice about it first. It also measures 0.53 inches in thickness – both things make it a comfortable laptop to be carried around. Made of ceramic/aluminium hybrid material, the laptop feels smooth and nice – perhaps not the most premium we have ever seen from the company but still nice feeling and to be considered sturdy enough; it’s just that the lid itself feels so light that at times you might feel you have moved it a little too much with a pull or a push as compared to your existing laptop with the same pressure applied.

The keyboard has well mushed keys with decent travel and the trackpad size alongside is plenty big to not be a deal breaker. The 14-inch display has thin bezels around it and doesn’t catch too many smudges. On the left side, you get 2 USB 4.0 gen 3 type-C ports with power delivery and support for display out, one HDMI 2.1 port, the 3.5mm audio jack and LED indicator; the right side has one USB 3.2 gen 2 type A port. Would have been nice to have at least one of the USB type C ports on the right side, too. The laptop comes in Iceland Gray (the one I tried) and Zabriskie Beige colour options.

The 14-inch full HD+ (1920 x 1200) OLED display with 60Hz refresh rates is pretty good all things considered. It has good viewing angles, rich contrast and sufficiently bright for watching content or working outdoors. Some might say there could have been a higher refresh rate display here but this doesn’t seem like a laptop aimed at gaming at all. More on that later, but this is otherwise a really nice display from ASUS.

Coming to the performance department, the Zenbook A14 is equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X1 chip (up to 2.97Ghz octa core processor, Adreno GPU and 45TOPS Hexagon NPU) along with 16GB (or 32GB) LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB (or 1TB) and runs on Windows 11 OS. The machine can handle multiple Web browser tabs, playing music, watching content and editing spreadsheets without too much trouble. It’s well optimised with the chip to last you a full working day more often than not with the 70Whr battery lasting somewhat over 12.5 hours quite frequently with the display brightness set at 40 per cent. The battery can be charged from 1 per cent to full in about 2 hours. This isn’t the best or most powerful chip at this price nor is it Qualcomm’s most capable chip for Windows so far. If you are into heaving video editing or gaming, this isn’t the ultrabook you would be comfortable with many times. A bit of light gaming and you can hear the fans go loud (can be reproduced with multiple Web browsers, too) even with standard mode enabled. For Web browsing, work calls on the go as well as AI search and CoPilot+ related interactions, the laptop doesn’t disappoint when it comes to the chip and battery combination.

In conclusion, the A14 seems to tick many boxes for working on the go – lightweight, thin and sturdy built and great battery life to top it. A really nice (but not the best on the segment) display for the price tag and some AI chops but it’s certainly not a gaming beast nor is it meant to be, it seems, for the Snapdragon X chip handles work, multimedia playback and heavy Web browsing with battery efficiency.

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