ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX3404 Review: “H” in it’s Core for Better

In our Initial Impressions or First Look, whichever you want to call it – we talked about the new Ceramic PEO coating, design and other improvements – which you can click here to read. However, the performance aspect was the one thing missing. So, in this ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX3404 Review, we are solely going to focus on that aspect alone.

ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX3404 Review

Performance

Let’s talk about the performance of the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX3404. Under the hood, the laptop is powered by the following:

• Intel Core i7-13700H Processor with 14-cores, 20 threads
• 16GB LPDDR5 RAM
• 1TB M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD

Now immediately, you can tell that the specification you see here is an upgrade from the last year’s Zenbook 14 which had a 12^th Gen P series processor, which honestly wasn’t too shabby but it did have its limitations. With an H processor, keeping up with more heavy tasks is more feasible and easier to handle. The variant we review here has Intel Iris Xe Graphics under the hood. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to review the NVIDIA-powered variant, which is the one I was truly excited about. Having a dedicated GPU elevates the experience. That doesn’t mean that the Iris Xe isn’t bad, but it has its shortcomings.

Taking a look at the scores from the benchmarks we have performed with this laptop – it falls right where we thought it would. In Geekbench 6, we see a nice 2377 points in the single-core score and 10853 points in the multi-core score. Testing the Iris Xe ability on both OpenCL and Vulcan is decent – as it scored 16360 with OpenCL and 18868 with Vulcan.

Moving onto PCMark 10, the laptop hits a nice 5699 total points. Immediately you can see where the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX3404 has its strong points – with essentials, which is your usual browsing, and consuming content, followed by productivity and finally Digital Content Creation. If you do happen to use Lightroom on this laptop, it shouldn’t be too shabby as the app relies on more CPU processing than GPU – hence the higher score on photo editing. Video is where the laptop is bound to struggle due to the lack of a much more capable GPU.

3DMark scores tell pretty much the same story of how it does alright but nothing too intense with the CPU Profile, Time Spy, Night Raid and Wild Life. You can check out the benchmark scores for these.

Finally moving on to the SSD, ASUS has equipped laptops with Samsung SSDs and this is one of the few times we have encountered where they have gone for Micron’s SSD – specifically the Micron 2450. Speed-wise, I wouldn’t say it is too appealing as the sequential Reads are at 3605MB/s and Sequential Write is at 3455MB/s. The reason why we say this is because we have seen a much faster SSD under a Zenbook. But to the average user, you won’t be able to tell a single thing in the speed and performance as it is blazing fast anyway.

I/O and Connectivity

In terms of I/O – the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX3404 has 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports which double as Power Delivery ports, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack, and 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A respectively. My personal gripe with the ports is that it would have been nice to have the Thunderbolt 4 port, one on each side, making it easier to connect the charger in whichever way possible.

Connectivity-wise, it isn’t too shabby either as you get to experience the latest WiFi 6E with Bluetooth 5.

Charging and Battery Management

Charging the laptop is done with the help of the 60W USB-C Power Delivery charger which works just the way it should. Now the battery consumption of this laptop with the brightness set at 100% with muted speakers and connected via WiFi, the consumption is heavy of course.

So, from 100% to 74%, the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX3404 offered a good 2 hours 23 minutes of Screen on time with 4 hours 25 minutes of screen off time. I would say it is not too shabby. But given that this laptop uses an H series Intel Core I Processor – the power consumption is going to be heavier. We managed to get a decent 7 hours+ with a full battery – which is okay in my books.

Other Highlights

The keyboard has a much more rigid typing experience despite it being a chiclet-style keyboard, and the trackpad has gotten a whole lot bigger – making it easier to use with comfort. It still hides the number pad discreetly under it.

The display is a 14.5-inch 2.8K OLED in a 16:10 aspect ratio. It’s very nice to have vertical real estate to have more space and therefore have a claustrophobic-less display. The OLED still shines bright with its good colour production, viewing angles and more importantly, emitting very less blue light which has improved from its previous OLED display.

Conclusion

The ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX3404 – while the one we reviewed doesn’t come with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU under the hood, it sure still is a delight to use because of the upgraded performance from its predecessor, which used a P Series processor. If you want that extra edge in performance and a surprisingly good thermal solution, this laptop just might be it. Although personally, I feel like getting the one with the GPU is much worth every penny over the NVIDIA-less variant.

The one we reviewed which has the Intel Iris Xe Graphics cost RM 5,999 whereas the NVIDIA RTX 3050 version is priced at RM 6,999. This also leads to a whole other conversation if getting a Gaming laptop with a better GPU is a better idea – but if you are looking for something more business-oriented, this ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX3404 is a better option.