ASUS needs no introduction, it is certainly very well known to readers and today’s review is a departure from the company’s more usual gaming products. On the face of it, I have to admit that I personally am not a big fan of small, thin and light laptops, because in my opinion they are rather uncomfortable for work. But of course it depends what you need to do on such a machine, a thousand people, a thousand tastes.
Intel came up with the term ultrabook sometime in 2013, and even though this term has faded slightly, it can still be used to describe very light mobile notebooks. They are typically characterized by low weight, size and also thickness.
The ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED is no exception in this regard, on the contrary, the notebook itself weighs only one kilogram and the thickness of the entire notebook when closed is only one centimeter. This is a very compact notebook, with which ASUS can attack machines such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, but ASUS offers its Zenbook at a much more affordable price.
The tested model is currently sold for around 36,000 CZK including VAT (there is an even cheaper model with a Core i5-1335U and 512GB SSD, which costs around 31,000 CZK including VAT), which is approximately half the price of the cheapest ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen11.
The test configuration looked like this:
Intel Core i7-1355U 10C/12T – 1,7GHz, Turbo až 5GHz, 12MB L3 cache, 6~20W TDP, 10nm16GB RAM LPDDR5-5200 CL60-48-48-112 1TIntel UHD Graphics 96EU13,3″ Samsung SDC417B, 2880×1800, OLED, 60 Hz, 100% DCI-P3, 550 nit jasSamsung PM9A1 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe Gen4 x4Intel AX211 WiFi 6E (802.11ax + Bluetooth 5.2)65W DC adapterWindows 11 Home v22621.1848
ASUS sent me the Zenbook S 13 OLED in standard packaging, including a little magic box on the side, but more on that in a moment.
The box is made of various recycled materials and there are practically no plastic parts, which is nice from ASUS. Likewise, the notebook itself uses recycled aluminum, the magnesium alloy of the palmrest, and reportedly some plastics are also recycled.
In the box we find a smaller box that contains a very compact 65W USB-C power adapter, which also has a detachable power cable. The adapter is two-pin, so it is very convenient for traveling all over the world and fits easily everywhere.
The notebook itself is in its own box, apart from it we also find an information sticker and information leaflets and brochures. There is also a bonus in the box in the form of a leather cover to protect the Zenbook while carrying it.
ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED has a top cover made of recycled aluminum, instead of a boring silver color, we find here a dark gray with a Zen-like logo and the inscription ASUS Zenbook.
The lower part of the display lid also serves as a stand, when opened, the notebook will be raised, which improves ergonomics and the suction of the fans in the lower part of the notebook.
On the left side of the laptop we find a large HDMI 2.1 output, two USB-C ports that provide ThunderBolt 4, power and DsiaplyPort. Next to the USB-C ports, there is also an LED indicating the battery status.
On the right side of the notebook we find a USB-A 10Gb/s port and a 3.5mm combo audio jack. This concludes the laptop’s port equipment, I’m glad that ASUS installed at least a large HDMI and one USB-A port, it improves the user experience.
After opening the laptop, we are greeted by the keyboard, which has a classic standard ASUS layout, and there is also a power button next to the Delete key. The keyboard has backlighting through white LEDs and three levels of backlighting. Below the keyboard we can find a large all-click touchpad, which of course also supports gestures.
The cooling vents blow hot air into the gap between the laptop and the display, which has been standard for many years.
One of the main attractions of the Zenbook S 13 OLED is its display, which surprisingly uses an OLED panel. Specifically, it is a Samsung SDC417B panel with a resolution of 2880×1800 pixels. The display also supports HDR and the maximum brightness reaches 550 nits.
Now comes the ugly blue light. ASUS boasts that the Zenbook S 13 OLED emits almost no ugly blue light. That’s why ASUS sent a magic box with the laptop, which contains a filter that only lets blue light through. With this filter, I looked at the Zenbook S 13 OLED display at different brightness levels, as well as several other laptops with IPS and TN panels.
I would like to point out in advance that I do not have a camera on which I could somehow fix this filter, so I improvised with a Samsung Galaxy S22 mobile phone. I took several different laptops with different displays out of the closet and tried to take pictures of them all in the dark to see how much blue light they generate at different brightness levels. I tested with brightness at 100%, 50% and 20%. The ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED has the highest maximum brightness of all the models tested, up to 550 nits, while the DELL Latitude 5590 has an amazing 220 nits and a TN panel.
Lenovo ThinkPad L15 Gen1
This Lky budget ThinkPad has an IPS panel, but it’s a budget 15.6″ 1920×1080 model with 45% NTSC coverage and a maximum brightness of up to 250 nits. As we can see, the blue light emits pretty similarly at all brightness levels.
DELL Latitude 5590
This DELL has the latest in 2018 display technology, that is a 15.6″ 1920×1080 TN panel with a brightness of up to 220 nits. Colors? Yes. Like the ThinkPad L15 Gen1, this panel emits a lot of blue light.
Lenovo ThinkPad T495
This ThinkPad has slightly higher quality IPS than lower ThinkPads with a maximum brightness of up to 400 nits and supports 95% sRGB coverage. The blue emission at 20% brightness is a little better than the two previous machines, but it’s still not a hit.
TUXEDO Stellaris 15 Gen3
This laptop uses a 15.6″ 1920×1080 240Hz IPS panel, while the blue emission is quite significant.
And now the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED, the display emits some blue at 100% brightness, but when reduced, almost no blue light is visible.
Quite a lot has been written about the harmfulness of blue light before bed, and it’s nice that ASUS is addressing it. Partly this can be solved by reducing the brightness and using various Night Light functions in the system, while this will not completely prevent the emission of blue light, but probably partially. I’m not an expert in this field, so I can’t say how much of an impact this display modification has, but it’s an interesting feature to say the least.
Above the display sits a 1080p IR webcam that can be used with Windows Hello. There is no mechanical cover for the webcam, but the camera can be turned off with the Fn+F10 keyboard shortcut.
Of course, I also had to look inside the laptop, the bottom cover is metal and is held in place by a total of eleven torx screws. The bottom cover also serves as an M.2 SSD cooler.
Most of the inside of the notebook is filled by the 63Wh battery, the rest is the motherboard, on which all the components are soldered. That is, except for the M.2 2280 SSD and the battery. We cannot upgrade RAM, WiFi. On the positive side, the CPU cooler has two heatpipes with two fans, which in theory should improve the cooling performance of the laptop.
In terms of hardware, the laptop is built on the Intel evo platform, whatever that means. So it’s something like the Intel Centrino label used to mean, it means processor, chipset, WiFi, ethernet from Intel.
The tested ASUS has an Intel Core i7-1355U processor, this processor belongs to the Raptor Lake generation, it is a ULV processor with two P-Cores supporting HT and clocking up to 5GHz. Of course, a dual-core processor in a premium device would look rather strange, which is why Intel added eight economical E-Cores to the two P-Cores, which can boost up to a frequency of 3.7 GHz.
The processor has different power limits, they can range from 6 to 35 Watts. The long-term limit can then be set to three modes, 6W (Whisper mode), 15W (Standard) and 20W (Performance). 35 Watts can be used by the processor mostly for units of seconds, even in Whisper mode, when the notebook is beautifully quiet. For a better idea of how each mode differs in performance, I tested them in Cinebench R23. You can see the results in the chart below.
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The Intel Core i7-1355U is a significantly better ULV processor than the eleventh generation Tiger Lake mobile processors. However, it will still get a run for its money from some of the older Ryzens of the Zen2 generation. But it is positive that it is a much more usable processor.
The integrated graphics core is then labeled as Intel Iris Xe and has a total of 96EU available. The operating memory is also important information, it is soldered and we can find a full 16GB of LPDDR5-5200 RAM. It is interesting that ASUS did not use faster 6400 MT/s memory, but it is possible that this is a price optimization and faster memory may not add that much extra performance. Unfortunately, ASUS doesn’t offer a 32GB RAM variant, but I’m glad they don’t sell an 8GB RAM model at the same time, that would be very sad these days.
Of course, Windows 11 was pre-installed on the laptop, as is customary with modern laptops. I updated everything and as for the power profile, I tested with the 15W Standard profile. The exception is the gaming tests, where I switched to Performance so that the iGPU and CPU could get the extra 5W and have a better chance. I then tested the battery life in Whisper mode, where the long-term limit is 6W, but the CPU is willing to boost to a higher frequency for a very short time.
As far as pre-installed software is concerned, there is practically nothing on the laptop apart from bloatware from Microsoft and the traditional McAfee antivirus, which I uninstalled.
It is worth noting the MyASUS utility, in which we can configure some aspects of the laptop, find out the warranty status, update drivers and so on.
And now hooray for the tests!
2023-06-30 16:05:08
#REVIEW #ASUS #Zenbook #OLED #1kg #ultrabook #2.8K #OLED
