[Video Review] ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED (UX3402) – Luxury, style, and a touch of performance
ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED (UX3402) in-depth review
The Zenbook family has always been synonymous with elegance. If you are in the market for a Zenbook laptop, you are either a business person, or you really like to look after your image. Regardless of that, the Zenbook 14 OLED (UX3402) is a laptop, which will try to elevate your game, even before you turn it on.One thing is undoubtedly true, and it is that the display is one of the key selling points here. But this is not only because it has found its way to the name of the laptop. Instead, the reason for that lies both in the hardware and the software, provided by ASUS.Speaking of ha[...]
Pros
- Great performance from a ULV chip
- Fantastic input devices
- Strong aluminum chassis
- 100% sRGB and DCI-P3 coverage + HDR support
- High resolution and 16:10 aspect ratio
- True blacks and virtually infinite contrast ratio
- NumberPad
- 90Hz refresh rate with fast pixel response times
- Fingerprint reader + MicroSD card slot + 2x Thunderbolt 4
Cons
- Uses PWM below 95 nits (but offers a flicker-free function)
- Soldered memory
- HDD/SSD
- up to 2000GB SSD
- M.2 Slot
- 1x 2280 M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 See photo
- RAM
- up to 32GB
- OS
- Windows 11 Home, Windows 11, Windows 11 Pro, DOS, No OS, Windows 10 Home
- Battery
- 75Wh, 4-cell, 70Wh, 4-cell
- Body material
- Aluminum
- Dimensions
- 313.6 x 220.6 x 16.9 mm (12.35" x 8.69" x 0.67")
- Weight
- 1.39 kg (3.1 lbs)
- Ports and connectivity
- 1x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps)
- 2x USB Type-C
- 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Thunderbolt 4, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
- HDMI
- 2.0
- Card reader
- MicroSD
- Ethernet LAN
- Wi-Fi
- 802.11ax
- Bluetooth
- 5.2
- Audio jack
- 3.5mm Combo Jack
- Features
- Fingerprint reader
- optional
- Web camera
- HD/FHD
- Backlit keyboard
- optional
- Microphone
- Microphone with Cortana and Alexa voice-recognition
- Speakers
- Speakers by Harman Kardon
- Optical drive
- Security Lock slot
All ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED (UX3402) configurations
ZenBook laptops are the epitome of style and elegance, being some of the best-looking devices that money can buy. The new ZenBook 14 OLED UX3402 is a staple model from the brand, combining powerful hardware with a quality display while maintaining very good portability.
[Intro]
The laptop uses aluminum for its entirety, which provides excellent durability, passing the 810H military tests for survival in harsh environments. At 14 inches, it remains portable, weighing just 1.39 kg and having a profile of 16.9 mm.
You can choose between two beautiful colors – Aqua Celadon and Ponder Blue. We’ve chosen classic blue. The Japanese art of Kintsugi inspires the lid with stylish lines which actually make up the new ASUS Zenbook logo.
[Input devices]
You can open it with one hand, revealing the keyboard and touchpad. Of course, it has the ErgoLift mechanism, propping up the rear end of the laptop for better airflow and a more ergonomic position of the keyboard. Plus, it can get all the way down to 180 degrees. The screen bezels are pretty thin while managing to house a webcam with HD or FHD resolution. Despite the thin chassis, the keyboard provides long key travel and clicky feedback, plus there’s a NumberPad hidden in the trackpad and a fingerprint sensor for one-touch login.
[Ports]
We’re pleasantly surprised by the number of ports on the sides given the size of the notebook. It’s equipped with two ultra-fast Thunderbolt 4 ports with fast charging capabilities, and a full-sized USB 3.2 Gen 2. Somehow ASUS has managed to find space for a full-sized HDMI too but you could also use the DisplayPort feature of the Thunderbolts for connecting two external displays. There’s also an audio jack, and a MicroSD card reader.
[Display quality]
The 2.8K OLED HDR panel is our favorite feature of this Zenbook. It’s super smooth with its 90Hz refresh rate and it feels better at night thanks to the greatly reduced blue light compared to LCD screens. The 16:10 aspect ratio makes it suitable for content creation, and it has amazingly vivid colors thanks to the 100% coverage of both the sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts. As with every OLED panel, it has true blacks, thus an infinite contrast ratio.
The good display is accompanied by a high-quality Dolby Atmos sound system certified by Harman Kardon. More interesting is the AI noise-canceling though, for filtering the unwanted noise in meetings. Check it out, with and without the ClearVoice feature enabled.
[Battery]
Despite its small stature, the laptop comes with a large 75Wh battery pack, which lasts for 11 hours and 31 minutes of Web browsing, or 11 hours and 29 minutes of video playback when paired with the Core i5-1240P, a 12-core, 16-thread CPU.
[Performance]
There are also configurations with the more powerful Core i7-1260P. Both CPUs are suitable for office tasks or photo editing, while we’d recommend getting something beefier for professional video editing or 3D rendering.
[Cooling]
It is because it has just one heat pipe and one fan, along with one heat spreader over the VRM modules. While the Core i5 doesn’t really spike up in the first seconds of our stress test, it is competitive in prolonged loads.
Comfort is alright, with low temperatures on the base. The one fan does get a bit noisy in the Performance preset, but it only happened in the torture test. In every other scenario, the ZenBook 14 OLED ran quietly.
[Teardown and upgradeability]
The device comes with up to 16GBs of soldered memory, while the storage can be upgraded by replacing the drive on the M.2 PCIe x4 slot. Ultra-fast Gen 4 SSDs are supported.
For a detailed disassembly process, we’ll leave our teardown video in the description.
[Verdict]
The ZenBook 14 OLED is a luxurious piece of technology that’s both portable and well-performing. The OLED panel is stunning to look at while allowing you to express your Creativity. That, plus all the features in the new UX3402, makes this notebook one of the best ultra-portable models on the market.
We’d be happy to find one more heat pipe and bumped up wattage in the next generation but we’re still awarding this Zenbook with our Editor’s Choice medal.