Asus ZenBook 14X OLED Review: A Showstopping Display

The ZenBook 14X OLED sports an aesthetic that’s not as minimalist as some other laptops I’ve recently reviewed. First, there’s the usual Asus concentric circle swirl on the lid that revolves around the silver Asus icon, which is typical of the ZenBook line.

Second, the ZenBook 14X OLED’s angles are more aggressive, especially along the lower edge of the lid and the side and rear edges of the chassis. Various other edges are chamfered for some additional flair. The laptop is available in two colors, Lilac Mist (lavender) and Pine Gray (charcoal), and mine was the latter.

My review unit is equipped with the 11th-gen quad-core Intel Core i7-1165G7, a productivity workhorse CPU that’s popular on thin and light laptops. That was mated with 16GB of RAM, a fast PCIe 1TB solid-state drive (SSD), and Nvidia’s GeForce MX450. As with all such laptops today, the ZenBook 14X OLED was a speedy performer while I was testing the laptop and writing this review.

The ZenBook 14X OLED enjoys a 14-inch OLED display, and it’s available in a few configurations that are all in the productivity-friendly 16:10 aspect ratio. You can choose from a 4K+ (3,840 x 2,400) panel, a WQXGA+ (2,880 x 1,800) touchscreen display, and a nontouch WQXGA+ screen. My review unit sported the latter, and it was spectacular from the moment I turned it on. Blacks were inky, and colors were dynamic without being oversaturated. While working on the review, I loved using the display, especially the sharp black text that jumped off the page.

According to my colorimeter, this is objectively as good a display as it is subjectively. It was bright at 389 nits, above our 300-nit threshold for displays that can overcome all but bright sunlight. It had wide colors at 97% of AdobeRGB and 100% of sRGB, and those colors were accurate at a DeltaE of 1.2 (less than 1.0 is considered excellent). The contrast was otherworldly as usual, coming in at 27,010:1. Compare that to the 4K IPS display on the Dell XPS 13, which came in at 420 nits, 79% of AdobeRGB and 100% of sRGB, with color accuracy of 1.21 and 1,360:1 contrast. Few IPS panels can perform as well as the ZenBook 14X OLED’s display, and you’ll find none that can provide the same true blacks.

This display will please anyone, from productivity users to creators to media consumers. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video high dynamic range (HDR) content looked great on the display thanks to DisplayHDR 500 support. OLED displays continue to impress, and while other technologies are catching up, such as the mini-LED displays on Apple’s MacBooks, you can’t go wrong choosing the technology.

For those concerned about OLED burn-in, Asus includes some utilities and  technology to provide confidence. First, there’s a warranty of 7,000 hours at 200 nits, and the display detects aging pixels and enhances the current passing through them to provide better performance.

Second, two utilities are provided to help avoid burn-in. There’s a screen saver that can be set to automatically launch after 30 minutes of idle time and a pixel shift function that moves a static image on the screen just enough to avoid consistently shining individual pixels. These can both be toggled on and off, although it’s probably a good idea to keep them turned on.

The audio is provided by two downward-firing speakers on the bottom of the chassis toward the front. I found it to provide clear mids and highs and a surprising amount of bass. The only problem: The speakers don’t get very loud, even when turned all the way up. There’s zero distortion, which is good, but you’ll want a pair of headphones to really enjoy movies and music.

Asus has been channeling HP lately when it comes to keyboards, using a layout and keycaps that are eerily similar to those on HP’s Spectre line. There is the same key spacing and row of movement keys along the right-hand side of the keyboard. That’s not a bad thing because the Spectre keyboards are excellent. At the same time, while the Asus switches have plenty of travel and a comfortable bottoming action, they’re not as snappy and don’t feel quite as precise. They’re a step behind the best, which also includes Dell’s XPS keyboards, but that makes the ZenBook 14X OLED’s keyboard very good nonetheless.

The touchpad is a wide format that doesn’t use the available space on the palm rest. Some laptops, like the Dell XPS 13 and the HP Spectre x360 14, make great use of the extra space afforded by today’s taller displays, but that’s not the case with the ZenBook 14X OLED. It’s not a tiny touchpad, but it could be larger. Fortunately, it has a comfortable surface that makes for accurate swiping, and it’s a Microsoft Precision touchpad, so multitouch gestures work well. The buttons are clicky and responsive without being loud.

Of course, you can’t judge the touchpad solely by how easily it allows you to manipulate your cursor. It also incorporates Asus’s ScreenPad 2, which provides an LED display embedded in the touchpad that enables a host of additional functionality.

ScreenXpert 2 is a multiscreen organizer that manages the interaction between the ScreenPad and the primary and any additional displays. Users can launch applications from the ScreenPad, and use the touchpad as a secondary display. You can turn the ScreenPad off entirely if you like, and the touchpad will function normally. Overall, I found the ScreenPad a useful addition, but not one I couldn’t live without.

Touch displays are available for the ZenBook 14X OLED, but unfortunately, mine didn’t include one. I missed it, as I always do.

Windows 10 Hello password-less login support is provided by a fingerprint reader embedded in a power button on the keyboard. It worked well, letting me power up and log in with one stroke quickly and reliably.

The ZenBook 14X OLED packs in 63 watt-hours of battery life, a fair amount for a 14-inch laptop. The OLED display is high-resolution and power-hungry, though, and the CPU isn’t a low-power version, so I was expecting average battery life at best.

What I got was a little less than that. In our web-browsing test that loops through a series of popular websites, the ZenBook 14X OLED lasted 7.5 hours, less than average and well under the 10 hours we like to see from thin and light laptops. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7i Pro lasted 10 minutes longer with its higher-power CPU and high-resolution display, while the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 was much stronger in this test, lasting almost 13 hours.

In our video test that repeats a local 1080p movie trailer, the ZenBook 14X OLED hit 10.75 hours, again less than average and a bit lower than we like to see. The IdeaPad Slim 7i Pro lasted two additional hours, while the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 went for a much stronger 16 hours.

I ran the PCMark 10 Applications battery test that’s the best indication of productivity longevity, and the ZenBook 14X OLED achieved eight hours, again a bit lower than average. Many thin and light laptops make it to 10 hours. The IdeaPad Slim 7i Pro hit nine hours, and the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 wouldn’t complete the test. In the PCMark 10 Gaming battery test, which shows how hard a laptop works while unplugged, the ZenBook 14X OLED lasted for just 81 minutes, the lowest score we’ve seen but close to the 90 minutes or so that the IdeaPad achieved.

Overall, the ZenBook 14X OLED probably won’t make it through an entire eight-hour workday without needing a bit of a charge. You’ll want to keep the 100-watt USB-C charger handy.

Boiled down to its essence, the ZenBook 14X OLED is a well-built 14-inch laptop with robust performance and a spectacular OLED display. It’s easy to recommend on that basis alone, but it has some nice extras like the ScreenPad 2 touchpad that comes in handy if you’re willing to take some time to learn its various uses.

It’s not perfect. Battery life is mediocre, perhaps not crossing our all-day threshold, and it’s a tiny bit expensive. But taken as a whole, it’s a solid addition to the growing herd of 14-inch laptops and is worth a place on your list.

Are there any alternatives?

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is probably the best clamshell 14-inch alternative, simply because it’s also very well built, performs well, and gets better battery life. You don’t get an OLED display, but that’s not yet so common in 14-inch machines, and you’ll spend a little more money depending on your configuration.

If a convertible 2-in-1 is of interest, then you’ll want to consider HP’s Spectre x360 14. It also has an excellent OLED display, a great-looking and well-built chassis, and of course, the flexibility of a 360-degree convertible. It’s around the same price, but you won’t get integrated graphics.