ASUS sent through their brand new 2025 model Zenbook A14 for us to check out. This eye-catching little device is officially named as the ASUS Zenbook A14 OLED UX3407 and is designed to cater to the needs of modern working professionals and tech-savvy users alike. First and foremost, upon unboxing the laptop, you’ll notice that it’s incredibly light. Upon checking the specs sheet, I saw that it weighs only 980 grams. This is amazing news for those of us out there that will be using a laptop daily while on the go.
The rest of the laptop’s official specs are as follows:
• Model: ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3407
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100 chip, 12-core, 3.4GHz, 42MB cache
• Graphics: Qualcomm Adreno GPU
• Display: 14-inch OLED, 1920 x 1080 resolution, 60Hz refresh rate, HDR support
• Memory: 32GB RAM
• Storage: 512GB SSD
• Battery: 70Wh, up to 32 hours of usage
• Weight: Under 980 grams
• Build Material: Ceraluminum™
• Ports: HDMI, USB-C, USB-A
• Connectivity: Windows Phone Link, Snapdragon Seamless
• Security: Adaptive Lock, Adaptive Dimming, Microsoft Pluton processor
• Operating System: Windows 11
Moving on to the laptop’s design and overall build quality, Asus have done something different this time around. The Zenbook A14 OLED UX3407 is crafted from Ceraluminum™, a lightweight yet durable material that's “30% lighter and three times stronger than traditional aluminium” and has a ceramic look and feel. The Ceraluminum™ chassis feels great to touch, is resistant to fingerprints and also gives the laptop a gorgeous almost matte gray look. If you pulled this laptop out in a meeting somewhere, people will definitely be amazed by its sophisticated aesthetic. It doesn’t have RGB lighting and it certainly doesn’t scream “GAMING!” at you but it still looks beautiful and will attract compliments. The Ceraluminum™ also gives off a premium feel that instils confidence that the laptop’s chassis can take a few bumps and knicks inside a bag without getting to scuffed over time.
The Ceraluminum™ chassis feels great to touch, is resistant to fingerprints and also gives the laptop a gorgeous almost matte gray look.
The laptop’s overall profile is rather thin and the narrow screen bezels means that you have plenty of screen real estate despite the compact 14-inch size. The display is thankfully an OLED and is colour accurate with 100% DCI-P3 coverage. This is great news for people who want to do some light photo editing on the laptop or want to watch videos in crisp, vivid detail.
The laptop also has HDR support and at max brightness, the display is fantastic for viewing content. Surprisingly, the laptop’s screen is WUXGA (1920 x 1200) and not 2K like some of the other Asus laptops available on the market. The screen’s refresh rate is unfortunately capped at 60Hz and it would have been nice to see a higher refresh rate like maybe 100Hz or 144Hz as seen in competing laptops in its price range.
Asus have opted to coat the laptop’s screen with anti-glare and this helps to reduce screen reflections and allow for better viewing even in brightly lit environments. I cannot stress enough how beautiful the OLED display is though. It’s right up there in terms of quality with the only drawback being that the maximum brightness available here is 600 nits when HDR is enabled.
The laptop features a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100 chip which is very different to the standard Intel or AMD CPU’s I’m used to seeing.
After using the laptop for various tasks while I had it, I didn’t notice any problems with its performance. It ran perfectly fine even when under load viewing YouTube content or having multiple Firefox browser tabs open. The 12-core architecture with a 3.4GHz frequency and 42MB cache means that the laptop’s processor can do quite a lot of heavy lifting when needed. The Adreno GPU and Hexagon NPU is adequate but don’t expect to be able to play graphics intensive games on this laptop.
Of course, to measure the performance more objectively I had to run a few benchmarks. The laptop performed almost exactly the same while plugged into its charger and when unplugged in Cinebench R24.
You can see the test results of these benchmark tests below and it’s pretty much self-explanatory as to where it stands in the rankings.
Plugged in
Unplugged
Single Core unplugged
I also ran 3D Mark’s Firestrike, Steel Nomad and Solar Bay tests which yielded some fairly interesting data. The laptop performed well with the Solar Bay test yielding a rough average of 40 FPS and the Firestrike test hovering around 36 FPS. Steel Nomad, to nobody’s surprise, struggled and peaked at 6.23 FPS because of the Direct X 12 requirement and high quality visuals.
I also decided to try out a brand new side-scrolling Soulslike Metroidvania on the laptop to see how it would perform. Tails of Iron 2 loaded up but trying to actually play the game caused the game to crash. After some quick Googling for solutions, I discovered that a lot of games don’t actually support the Adreno GPU paired with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100 chip. Your gaming mileage will definitely vary depending on what titles you’ll be able to play on this laptop.
This isn’t a gaming laptop though and it’s clearly meant for business and AI-focused applications. If you stick to that, you’ll have a great time since it works really well with no lag or hiccups even when numerous programs are open. The 1TB NVME and 32GB RAM helps quite a lot with this and the performance can be described as nothing less than zippy fast.
The laptop interestingly features an HDMI port next to not one but two USB-C ports! Both ports can be used for charging and display output and there’s a USB 3.2 Type-A port on the other side of the device. An additional USB 3.2 Type-A port would have been nice to have. The laptop supports Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) (Triple band) 2*2 and Bluetooth® 5.4 which is great news for connectivity to the internet and between compatible devices.
This isn’t a gaming laptop though and it’s clearly meant for business and AI-focused applications.
ASUS have opted for a backlit chiclet keyboard with1.3mm Key-travel and a large precision touchpad here. The touchpad is completely flat with no left or right buttons for clicking but it’s the perfect size for the laptop and feels very well positioned when you’re using it. Typing on the laptop is a joy but numpad fans like myself would have liked for a workaround to be included somehow. Like maybe the numpad being enabled on the touchpad like we’ve seen with other ASUS laptops.
The battery life of the ASUS Zenbook A14 OLED UX3407 is remarkably long coming in at well over 20 hours depending on what you’re doing on the laptop. However, with the processor maxed out constantly with high CPU intensive applications, the battery won’t last that long so do keep that in mind if you’re going to be running CPU intensive software. Amazingly, the laptop can charge really fast and can do up to 60% battery charge within 49 minutes of charging. The speakers are fine on the Zenbook and after listening to Crab Rave on YouTube at full volume, I can safely say that if you’re in an office and you want someone else to hear something, you can crank up the volume and they’ll hear it with satisfying audio.
Overall, the ASUS Zenbook A14 OLED UX3407 is a well-rounded serious business laptop that combines portability, performance, and durability. This is all thanks to its Snapdragon X Elite processor, hefty 32GB RAM, fast NVME and of course, the Ceraluminum™ chassis. The laptop’s incredibly lightweight design and performance makes it a great choice for working professionals wanting a more compact solution as their daily use device.
The only major drawback of the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3407 is its pricing. At a retail price of R29,999, there are other laptops out there that can deliver far better performance albeit at the cost of portability and form factor. ASUS themselves even have a range of other laptops which will easily outperform this Zenbook such as the Vivobook 14X OLED or the TUF Gaming A15. Therefore it comes down to the fact that you’re effectively paying a lot more for the added portability, stylishness and sleek form factor.