The Asus ZenBook Pro 14 OLED is for the pro-creatives and artists who need something powerful that can compete with the best gaming laptops out there, but find the gaming aesthetics a little busy for the office environment. It’s a beautiful and compact computer that, despite its slim profile, packs lots of power under the hood.
There’s a higher-tier configuration – the Asus ZenBook Pro UX6404VI-DS96T – that tops out with an Intel Core i9-13900H CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, and 32GB RAM and can rival beefy gaming laptops in pure brute force. Our review unit is the modestly specced Asus ZenBook Pro UX6404VV-DS94T, which features an Intel Core i9-13900H CPU, a GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD storage.
The model in this review isn’t the most powerful configuration, but it still bears all the marks of a powerful, small laptop. It won’t hesitate firing up Adobe Premiere Pro and color grade a 4K film in multiple layers, surf through photo libraries at lightning speed, and adjust 3D objects in a blender. However, you should avoid the temptation of doing all three simultaneously due to the limited RAM. But still, all that is possible with the powerful CPU and graphics driver.
Asus ZenBook 14 Pro OLED: Specifications
- CPU: Intel Core i9-13900H
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 with 8GB VRAM
- RAM: 16GB
- Storage: 1TB SSD
- Display: 14-inch, 2.8K (2800 x 1800) 16:10 aspect ratio at 120Hz
- Battery: 6:51
- Size: 12.67 x 8.79 x 0.70 inches
- Weight: 3.5 pounds
Design and Features
Most of these professional laptops are about portability and muted design; that’s what separates them from gaming laptops. With the Asus ZenBook Pro 14 OLED laptop, you’re getting an insanely sleek laptop, very portable at only 3.5 pounds, making it easy to lug around in a backpack without much effort.
Asus never disappoints in design, and that premium finish and feel are out of this world. You’re getting an all-metal construction, and that goes into balancing the ZenBook’s portability and signature sturdiness.
Not often do you come across a laptop with a solid build, but still not overly heavy, and in the case of the Asus UX6404VV-DS94T, the slim aesthetic is helped majorly by the laptop’s super-thin bezel. The frame is so thin, that it sometimes appears like you’re viewing content mid-air. The only issue I have with this design is that it’s an absolute fingerprint magnet… so can attract pet air easily.
Keyboard, Touchpad, and Ports
The Asus ZenBook Prop 14 OLED has a comfortable keyboard, not surprising for a ZenBook, though. The keys have marvelous snappiness, meaning anything you type is bolstered by an incredible tactile quality, no matter how lazy you press the key, and key travel is just right.
The UX6404VV-DS94T’s touchpad is great too – very responsive with a satisfying level of near-haptic feedback each time you click on it. Still, for your creative tasks, you might need an external mouse since laptop trackpads don’t provide the level of accuracy of one of the best mouse options on the market.
Port selection on the ZenBook Pro 14 OLED is fine, though not particularly stellar. There’s a lone HDMI 2.1 port that provides some future-proofing, and it’s great to see Asus include a pair of Thunderbolt 4/USB-C connections, sadly there’s only one USB-A port.
Display
With OLED in the name, the ZenBook Pro14’s 14.5-inch screen with a native 16:20 screen resolution of 2880 x `1800 and a 120Hz refresh rate impresses right out of the box. It delivers perfect contrast down to the smallest pixels, deep colors with superb control and color accuracy, and even short response times when you decide to run AAA games.
For professional tasks, the color gamut goes up to at least DCI P3 level, and the screen delivers both display p3 and SRGB almost perfectly and is even so close to AdobeRGB that’s not very noticeable that it misses by a few percent. All that is for SDR images, but the brightness goes up to about 350 cd/m2, if you want peaked dynamics you can switch to HDR mode in Windows screen settings, and then you can get over 500 cd/m2 in spot brightness.
The screen has touch support, which gives you good direct control. That said, the screen is not completely flawless. Several comparable laptops outshine the Asus ZenBook Pro 14 OLED (347 nits) including the Asus ZenBook 14X OLED (360 nits), MacBook Air 15-inch (2023, 473), Dell XPS 15 (371 nits) and Razer Blade 14 (464 nits).
And while picture quality on the Asus ZenBook Pro 14 is generally strong thanks to the infinite black levels OLED technology delivers, the contrast is a little overblown while browsing and playing games. Still, it remains a top-notch OLED screen, and whether it’s issues due to Windows 11’s patchy HDR support or fairly misaligned color collaboration, it nonetheless lacks the wow factor you’d expect from OLED display tech.
Productivity and Gaming Performance
With an Intel Core i9-13900H CPU, a GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, 16GB RAM, and 1TB SSD storage, the Pro 14 OLED is a solid performer through and through. CPU performance is particularly strong, making this a good laptop for anyone looking to get complex things done. The Core i9-13900H ensures that this ZenBook can deliver more than respectable results in Geekbench 5 tests, and it also does well in file transfer tests.
In video editing tests, the UX6404VV-DS94T is a stellar performer, but it isn’t the most powerful video editing machine in the room. With a time of 5 minutes 41 minutes in video editing tests, that monitor how long it takes a laptop to transcode a 4K video file down to 1080p resolution using Handbrake software, it comes a full minute slower than the latest Razer Blade 14.
While not dedicated to gaming, the Pro 14 delivers concrete framerates. The laptop-grade RTX 4060 delivers average frame rates of 55 fps in Starfield, which is almost double the 30-fps cap on the Xbox Series X version. With its just-over-2K resolution and 120Hz frequency, this graphics card isn’t suited for maintaining a steady 60Hz in games but lowers the expectations and resolution and even heavy AAA titles can run smoothly. And somehow, the computer tends to throttle down performance during longer periods of maximum load.
But that’s only for the graphics card. In productivity, you can push the processor for hours without any slowdown or loss of performance. However, the underside of the laptop tends to get hot quickly due to the small space available for cooling and fans. So, it’s best to keep it on a table and not on your lap always. It only gets a little hot on the top of the keyboard when the graphics card is working at maximum speed.
Battery life is underwhelming but very good, lasting around seven hours, which is nothing compared to the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch M3 which lasts double the battery life of the Pro 14.
Overall, if you factor in the strong gaming experiences and capable productivity performance of the ZenBook Pro 14 OLED, I’d say this is a solid all-round performer that’s capable of handling both demanding tasks, and console-beating performance, especially if you go with the higher model with an RTX 4070 graphics card.
Asus ZenBook Pro 14 OLED Review: Verdict
If you need a sleek, portable, and capable content-creator laptop that can run AAA titles on the side, the Asus ZenBook Pro 14 OLED is hard to beat. It has a beautiful display that can compete with the MacBook Pro 14 performance-wise and can run games better than budget gaming laptops like the Asus TUF Gaming A15. The only place where the MBP 14 outshines the Asus UX6404VV-DS94T is in battery life, where Apple laptops dominate the market.
The ZenBook Pro 14’s 14-inch 2.8K OLED touch display is stunning; you never get a touchscreen with the Apple MacBook. Also, to get a MacBook Pro 14 with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage will set you back around two grand or more depending on the configuration you choose. If you want to save some money and get equal performance, the Asus ZenBook Pro 14 is money well spent; even the higher configuration – Asus ZenBook Pro 14 UX6404VI-DS96T – with an RTX 4070 graphics cost less than a comparable Apple MacBook. Sure, you don’t get lots of battery life, but you’ll still have some money left for other gear.
Recommended Configuration
ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 OLED 14.5” OLED 16:10 Touch Display, DialPad, Intel i9-13900H CPU, GeForce RTX 4060 Graphics, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Windows 11 Home, Tech Black, UX6404VV-DS94T
The Review
Asus ZenBook Pro 14 OLED
The Asus ZenBook Pro 14 OLED (UX6404VV-DS94T) is a stellar, capable laptop that’s speedy enough for productivity tasks and powerful enough to run modern games effortlessly.
PROS
- Clean, sturdy design
- Crisp OLED display
- Great keyboard and touchpad
- Intuitive DialPad virtual rotary controller
CONS
- Poor battery life
- Underwhelming audio
Review Breakdown
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ARS RATING
