8.1
Score

Pros

  • Good Performance with the AMD Ryzen U Series Processor
  • an impeccable battery endurance champ
  • Beautiful OLED display and colour production
  • ASUS Pen support and Touch Screen

Cons

  • The USB-C port can be a challenge to work around

The Zenbook S Series has been the laptop from the ASUS lineup that has been pretty consistent and has made it through every single year. Not to forget, this is the only thin-and-light the company manufactures. It is the ultimate thin and light laptop. But that said, after a long hiatus locally, in this ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED UM5302T review, here us out why I am glad the thin and light laptop made its return for the better.

ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED UM5302T Review

Design and Build

ASUS is no stranger to making their laptops look good – and I mean it. This ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED UM5302T is one subtle-looking thin-and-light that has a nice shade of dark blue-grey all over with a simple ASUS insignia on the back. I have said this before and in my last review of the ASUS Zenbook, I mentioned how the insignia looks like a Star Trek insignia but in reality, this emblem has existed since the 30th anniversary ASUS celebrated in 2019.

There is a nice accent on the laptop: a chrome finish joint for the display, elevating its class in how it looks.

The build of this laptop is pretty solid with good material, which seems to be magnesium-aluminium alloy based. And not only is the material good, but the laptop is incredibly thin at 14.9mm and light at just a kg. So, if you are one of the users who really loves carrying the laptop anywhere and everywhere you go and would love to do it without the hassle, you will love this Zenbook S 13 OLED.

Display

OLED has been the staple display for Zenbooks for a while – in fact, for every laptop, ASUS has made so far. It definitely is a game changer in many ways because a display makes up for a better viewing experience. That said, the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED UM5302T comes with a 13.3” 2.8K OLED display with touchscreen enabled. The display uses a 16:10 aspect ratio, so more vertical real estate. OLED has its benefits – the lower response time, better colour production and a decent peak nit brightness. It has all of that.

Generally, a good display like that would mean you could edit on this, but in this case, it probably isn’t for that. Just having a good display for many other things is already a win. For instance, watching some shows or movies, presenting a good PowerPoint deck, checking if the final draft or some KV from the designer is good the way you like it – such kinds of tasks. It does well. The glossy coating is inevitable and so are the fingerprints as you try and touch the display one too many times. So, just bring a microfiber cloth with you at all times.

The laptop supports ASUS Pen 2.0 – in our review sample, we didn’t have the pen to test it but it does work – which we did check with ASUS Malaysia.

Specification and Performance

In terms of specification, the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED UM5302T doesn’t shy away from giving a palatable experience with the processor underneath.

  • AMD Ryzen 7 6800U with AMD Radeon Integrated Graphics
  • 1TB PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD
  • 16GB LPDDR5 On-board RAM with 6400MHz
  • WiFi 6E standard

The specification you see above is pretty good for tasks that aren’t demanding but time and time again, AMD has given us a good show with its performance even if it’s a U-based processor. I have been using this laptop for more than two months or so as I could remember and there has not been a single instance where this laptop folded and gave up.

The U series processor is very kind on the battery life and you get a good 8+ hours of battery life with no issue at all. It’s been a dream come true because my personal laptop doesn’t go past 5 hours. I usually charge it about once a week and work from the café if I have to. During those times – I have managed to churn out a good amount of work, some entertainment and only to see this laptop go from 89% to 65% for a good 4:58 hours.

ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED UM5302T Review

Performance-wise, it kept up very well with my day-to-day tasks – a bunch of chrome tabs opened, Microsoft Word, some light editing software that doesn’t take too many resources and music in the background. All this with a 50-70% brightness, and no backlight on the keyboard. I wouldn’t push this laptop past further than this because it will struggle, as the thermals aren’t designed to handle intensive tasks for a long duration. Light bursts of intensive work should be alright. Gaming surprisingly is one – and we had some light gaming sessions on this laptop. It was pretty good.

The PCIe Gen 4 SSD and DDR5 RAM are definitely some of the key things that drove the cost of this laptop up as they are still in the early adopter phase. But regardless of that, to get this nice performance is really good. I’d so keep this laptop with me at all times.

I/O and Input

Get ready to purchase some accessories because since it’s thin and light, you will require dongles to be able to use a proper full-size USB device. The Zenbook S 13 OLED offers 3x USB-C with “thunderbolt-like” performance and two of those ports are capable of power delivery as the laptop uses USB-C charging. It also has a 3.5mm headphone-microphone-combo jack which is neat.

The keyboard has a backlight and is chiclet-style with decent key travel which is comfortable to type on all the time. ASUS has opted for proper-sized keys except for the small arrow keys, which don’t bother me a lot – as it is a small laptop. The power button doubles as a fingerprint sensor, so, it’s nice to have a quick unlock feature.

The trackpad is pretty huge and you have a good vertical and horizontal space to move the cursor wherever you want on the screen. And in ASUS fashion, it doubles as a number pad with a tap in the right corner.

Conclusion

It’s no surprise that ASUS has a plethora of options to choose from in this very series – and when you have other Zenbooks, while they may not be equally light but it is light in today’s world, one might wonder – if anyone should even get this ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED UM5302T. I’ll admit that while this isn’t the laptop for many, it sure is the laptop for users who want that cutting-edge thin-and-light-laptop that doesn’t compromise on performance, has a proper thermal solution, quality finishes and definitely an endurance champ.

The price is close to what the Expert book B9 falls into – and at RM 5,999, the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED UM5302T is the laptop I’d get over the ASUS ExpertBook B9 because it brings a great experience who does love a good thin-and-light laptop and I most definitely fall into that target audience.