ASUS Zenbook A14 UX3407 Review: A for Air, well, kind of

When ASUS showcased the Zenbook A14, we knew what it was: the ARM laptop could potentially go head-to-head with the likes of Apple’s MacBook Air. In theory, it sounds great. You could even say the “A” in “A14” stands for Air – because it’s stupid light (in a good way), well, kind of. But that theory falls apart when you boot up this specific configuration, which gets confusing. Here’s our ASUS Zenbook A14 UX3407 review.

ASUS Zenbook A14 UX3407 Review

Design and Build

Keeping it at 899 grams must have been a huge challenge to hit, after all, ASUS wants the Zenbook A14 to be practically lighter than air – and by air, we mean the MacBook Air, which weighs 1.2kg for the 13”. But do remember, the only variant of the Zenbook A14 that’s like this specification we are reviewing, and the other specification is slightly heavier, which we will get into later.

Now for the design and build, this laptop is the cleanest finish of all the ASUS Zenbooks we have seen so far, and it strays from the usual Zenbook designs. For starters, this stone-like beige colour finish is something I really love, and it’s very subtle. The Ceraluminum coating – which is a fancy word, really – does give this laptop that nice soft touch finish and smudge-free finish. However, there seems to be a major issue with the Zenbook A14 where the coating on the keyboard area is not looking great, and it turns out that a lot of A14 are affected by this defect. So, if you see this black smudge, contact your ASUS Service centre and get it sorted.

For the build, ASUS has always impressed us with their choice of hinge, material, and it’s no different here. Constructed out of alloy to keep the weight light, and a hinge that’s easy to open with just a finger is a nice one. Some users might be iffy about the lack of 180-degree opening with this hinge, but personally, the almost 140-150-degree opening works okay for me. But if you are talking about collaborative use, well, tough luck then.

Display

This variant we are reviewing does not get the coveted ASUS Luminar OLED display, which we rave about with their other laptops. Instead, it houses a 14-inch 16:10 display at WUXGA (1920×1200). Now, to keep it simple: IPS panels have matured over the years, so much so that getting a colour-accurate display is extremely common these days. And this display you see here with the anti-glare coating works well – colours are popping, the sRGB scores are at 100%, but the peak nit brightness isn’t what I want it to be, as it’s just at 400 nits.

The weird thing about this display, which we noticed, is how the 60Hz refresh rate feels sluggish – something we have not seen in a long time on a laptop display (with affordable laptops being an exception) – and this is not a good sign. While most of the users who would use it for simple tasks might go – it doesn’t bother me, but for the price you are paying, this shouldn’t be an excuse. I wish they went for a slightly better quality panel, but it could potentially be the GPU as well. After all, the Snapdragon X we see here is new and not a great one.

Specification and Performance

Let’s talk specifications because this laptop specifically is powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X, which is the entry-level ARM processor made for Windows with 30MB cache, upto 2.97GHz and houses 8 cores and 8 threads. This feels like we are in 8th Gen Intel while Ryzen was making crazy cores and threads in their laptop. Anyways, paired with this processor comes 32GB of RAM and for the GPU, you are looking at the Adreno GPU.

We are not going to get into the NPU aspect of this laptop because it behaves the same way as the past two Snapdragon laptops we have reviewed, so I’d recommend you read that by clicking here. But from a performance perspective, you are looking at the Snapdragon’s equivalent of an Intel Core i3 processor from years ago, and that statement holds for the most part, such as using productivity tools like Office Suite, browsing, watching shows and such. But factor in the ARM element in this laptop – you are not going to be happy because it is the biggest limitation.

At the time of reviewing the Snapdragon X Elite, we said, Third time’s the charm for Snapdragon. But after a year, we are slowly losing that belief. For one, app support is still a major issue and try running Davinci Resolve, Honkai Starrail, and such – this laptop either does not run at all or crashes completely. Secondly, we don’t understand why this base processor exists when the X Plus and Elite made their debut last year. The money and whatever that went into this could have gone to software-makers to build the ARM apps faster – this just feels like a waste of resources.

In fact, recently, when I got this laptop for review, I had a trip to Singapore lined up, where I ended up taking my trust Zephyrus over this because I know it will let me down in creator applications. Snapdragon has to do something about this, and that includes Windows too – Prism is good, but it needs to get better.

Ports, Keyboard, Trackpad

For ports, this laptop doesn’t shy away from offering the right ones to get you going – by now, you have to make your peace with USB-C because this laptop features two, located on one side with an HDMI 2.1 FRL and Headphone combo jack.

On the other side, you have a full-size USB-A, which is more than enough.

The keyboard of this laptop is extremely nice to type on, especially for a thin and light because a lot of brands tend to sacrifice the key travel. This keyboard offers a 1.3mm key travel, which is very nice to type on, and the backlit does help with visibility in the dark. ASUS trackpad is pretty GOATed because their precision drivers are great, which is why it does a great job in detecting gestures apart from your usual cursor use.

Battery Life

Now, one of the biggest reasons why ASUS could keep this specific variant under 899 grams – they shaved the battery capacity. A pretty major one at that. This laptop houses a 48Wh battery, whereas the X1 Elite gets a beefier 70Wh battery, which is crazy. Based on my use, this laptop here consumed about 40 per cent of the battery for 4 hours of usage. Which isn’t necessarily bad because Snapdragon’s battery consumption is pretty good, but I know that after using it for 2 days on a single charge, averaging 4-5 hours of use a day, it doesn’t last past that.

This works especially for students who want a laptop just for productivity and class work because this laptop could be it. Otherwise, spending and getting the 70Wh ASUS Zenbook A14 sounds like a much better idea. Charging happens via USB-C, and since it’s a low-powered laptop, you could use power banks like SHARGE Starship Seer to charge the laptop pretty fast.

Feature that I found Pretty Cool

ASUS improved on the presence detection, and with the new camera, which supports Windows Hello, I must say I am a fan of this. To walk away or when you’re not looking at your laptop, it dims down and locks, and look back at the laptop, it wakes up automatically, logs you in effortlessly. I want to see this on more laptops.

Conclusion

Coming from the brand who made my favourite lightest laptop, the ASUS ExpertBook B9, in fact, ASUS listed us as their Success Story on their official site (we are not even kidding, click here to check that out – and no, money wasn’t exchanged for that at all) – this ASUS Zenbook A14, and specifically this variant we received (and not the X1 Elite), the lightest laptop in the world, shouldn’t exist. I want to like this laptop, but even as an avid Zenbook user for years, I have so many questions.

At RM 4,999 – you are getting an entry level Snapdragon X processor, a super small battery capacity compared to the X1 Elite version – which doesn’t last longer than a day of use, IPS Display (great in colours, terrible in refresh rate, you can see the ghosting trail) and its only ideal for select productivity use because after a year since ARM on Windows, it’s still a work in progress.

ASUS made this Zenbook A14 the lightest laptop for the not-so-right reasons – I feel like having an Intel Core Ultra under the hood of this would have made a world of a difference. If you want the “weird flex” that you have the lightest laptop in the world… even then, I still cannot think of a reason why you should get this laptop or if it’s a good buy at all. You are better off purchasing a more capable laptop, which still weighs less than 1.5kg, from ASUS and do more with it – just saying.

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