Product test
Lenovo Premium Notebook: Can it do more than look pretty?
by Martin Jud
Robust, compact and innovative: Asus ZenBook 14
21.12.2018
Translation: machine translated
An almost borderless display allows the ZenBook with a 14-inch display to fit into a 13-inch case. But the design of the small notebook is also impressive in other respects and it even comes with a unique selling point.
What's inside the small ZenBook 14:
Design and connections
The chassis of the ZenBook 14 is made of aluminium and the display lid has a brushed look. The thin display edges of the 1090 gram notebook are immediately noticeable when you open it for the first time. These measure just 2.9 mm at the sides, 6.1 mm at the top and 3.3 mm at the bottom. The ZenBook itself is 19.9 cm long, 31.9 cm wide and measures 1.59 cm in height. Thanks to a screen-to-body ratio of 92 per cent, it has the dimensions of a 13" laptop.
When it comes to connections, Asus has you covered. On the right-hand side, you'll find a micro SD card reader, a USB 2.0 port and a jack connection. The power connection, an HDMI and one USB 3.0 Type-A and one USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C are installed on the left-hand side.
NanoEdge display
Keyboard with annoying Enter key and NumberPad
Asus calls the mechanism that slightly lifts and tilts the keyboard when the notebook is opened the "ErgoLift hinge". In addition to the ergonomic function, which suits my taste, this function is also necessary for cooling. This is because raising it increases the distance between the bezel and the display, where the ventilation slots are located. This should also improve the sound reproduction.
The keyboard has a three-stage illumination and, as has unfortunately become increasingly common recently, has a shortened Enter key. Above it is the dollar key, which is a must in Switzerland (for reasons) and I often press it instead of Enter. On the other hand, I like the key travel, which at 1.4 mm is slightly higher than the 1 mm trend. You feel a clear trigger point when typing and the keyboard is also suitable for the office as it is one of the quieter models.
Harman Kardon sound
Battery performance
Youtube continuous streaming: What does the battery do in reality?
When working in the office, the battery has always lasted long enough. Depending on the work tasks, I can achieve 9 hours or even a little more.
Heavy load stress test
When I run the stress test, which pushes all the hardware to its limits, with the screen at maximum brightness, the battery dies after 1 hour and 49 minutes. That's a good value. If I compare it again with the five Ultrabooks tested, only the Acer Spin 5 had more endurance and managed 1 hour and 58 minutes.
A word about the noise emission:
The notebook is barely audible when working. Under full load, I measured around 43 decibels from a sitting position. Directly behind the notebook, it's 50. However, my measurement method doesn't provide exact results because I use a Huawei smartphone for this purpose.
CPU
The 64-bit quad-core x86 Intel Core i5-8265U microprocessor was launched at the end of August 2018. It is based on an improved version of the Whiskey Lake microarchitecture and is manufactured using the extended third generation of the 14 nm process, known as 14 nm++. It employees at a clock speed of 1.6 GHz and has a TDP of 15 W. The turbo boost is up to 3.9 GHz.
The chip also features Intel's UHD Graphics 620, which runs at 300 MHz and has a maximum dynamic frequency of 1.1 GHz.
Graphics card
The entry-level mobile GPU Nvidia GeForce MX150 is based on the GP108 chip with Pascal architecture. The version installed here (device ID: 10DE 1D12) has 2 GB GDDR5 video RAM. It is manufactured using the 14 nm process and operates at a frequency of up to 937 MHz (boost up to 1038 MHz). The TDP of this card is said to be less than 10 watts. The performance of the card is very modest and also depends on the cooling system and housing used.
Performance
To test the performance, I used Cinebench R15, Geekbench 4 and 3DMark Fire Strike.
Cinebench R15, Geekbench 4 and 3DMark Fire Strike.
Cinebench R15
With Cinebench R15 from Maxon, you can test how your PC performs when rendering Cinema 4D content. The benchmark is focussed on floating point performance. Processors with more cores will always deliver a better result here. If you want to compare processors with Cinebench R15, this is only possible if both processors have the same number of threads.
How the ZenBook 14 performs:
The Asus ZenBook 14 performs similarly to the Huawei Matebook X Pro, which with a better processor (Intel Core i7-8550U) and also a dedicated graphics card achieves 534 points and 90.91 fps were achieved. However, the Huawei device with a 13.90-inch display costs a lot more.
Geekbench 4
Geekbench results of the ZenBook 14:
If you want to see the benchmark results in detail:
3DMark Fire Strike
The Fire Strike benchmark from 3DMark can be used to test and compare gaming PCs. It is therefore not really made for this notebook. It renders in 1080p using DirectX 11.
A measly 2640 points are achieved in the gaming benchmark. An average gaming notebook achieves 10,000 to 11,000 points here. You can also view the result online here.
Conclusion
Other than that, there's not much to criticise. With the ZenBook 14, you get a robustly built notebook with enough ports at a fair price-performance ratio. It provides you with enough power to satisfy almost all needs apart from gaming.
You may have noticed that this notebook comes with military standard "MIL-STD 810G". I will be testing what the technical military standard actually brings in the coming year. I'm curious to see whether the ZenBook 14 will survive a fungal attack or a ballistic shock. <p
Martin Jud
Senior Editor
martin.jud@digitecgalaxus.chI find my muse in everything. When I don’t, I draw inspiration from daydreaming. After all, if you dream, you don’t sleep through life.
Computing
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