Asus ZenBook 14 UX433 Laptop Review - Good and a bit special

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Industrial giants like HP and Dell continueAdvance by offering your own aesthetic devices with outstanding features. But Asus is not retreating, the newest line of ZenBook laptops is an excellent example of its competitiveness. Asus ZenBook 14 UX433 - the first model in the line that I happened to test.

Asus has focused on findingas large a display as possible in the smallest possible package. But, does the ZenBook 14 with a cost of $ 1200 ($ 80,500) offer something that will make it competitive among many other superb ultrabooks?

Design and construction

Ports and connectors

Keyboard and touchpad

Ultrabook display

Performance and SSD

How is he in the games?

Autonomy

Alternatives

Should I buy?

Design Asus ZenBook 14

ZenBook 14 is a compact notebook on whichinstalled a 14-inch display with very small frames on the sides (2.9 mm) and at the top (6.1 mm), where the webcam is located. The dimensions of the ultrabook are 319 × 199 × 16 mm, and the weight is 1.20 kg.

For reliability and durability Asus ZenBook 14The UX433 conforms to the military standard MIL-STD-810G, as can be seen from the cover and the bottom of the case, which perfectly resist bending. However, the keyboard flexes when pressed, and this is clearly seen when typing.

Aesthetically, this ZenBook looks like his brothers.and sisters. The colors of Royal Blue with rose gold trim are also attractive, and with proper lighting you will notice Asus thin concentric circles on the lid. A hinge that raises the back of the case at an angle of 3 degrees also contributes to better cooling. In addition, the sound quality of the speakers located on the bottom is also improved. Laptop cover opens at 145˚.

Ports and connectors

Despite its size, the Asus ZenBook 14 UX433 hasdecent set of ports. There is a USB-A 3.1 port, USB-A 2.0, USB-C 3.1 Gen 2, full-size HDMI, a combined 3.5 mm audio jack and a microSD card reader. The only thing missing is Thunderbolt 3.

Wireless communication is provided by the module 2 × 2 MU-MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0.

Keyboard and touchpad

Keyboard ZenBook 14 UX433 has the usual black keys and three levels of illumination. The keyboard itself is soft, typing text on it is convenient, the key travel is 1.4 mm with a pleasant tactile pressing.

The touchpad of Asus ZenBook 14 UX433 is quite large andoccupies most of the free space under the keyboard. There is support for all gestures Windows 10. In the upper right corner of the touchpad there is an icon that when pressed includes NumPad. NumPad is a backlit virtual numeric keypad with several mathematical symbols that can be turned on and off.

Artificial intelligence is built into ZenBook 14,which allows the system to guess when you want to enter numbers, and when to control the cursor. Support for logging into Windows 10 Hello without a password is provided by an infrared camera and a face recognition function. The system works well in different lighting conditions, which is very convenient.

Ultrabook display

Ultrabook Asus ZenBook 14 UX433 is equippedglossy 14-inch Full HD display (1920 × 1080 or 157 PPI). According to the colorimeter, the screen quality is average, and the brightness is 312 nits with a contrast of 820: 1. The panel covers 71% of the AdobeRGB gamut, which corresponds to the average in the segment.

In games, color accuracy is 2.24 (less than 1.0considered excellent), which is a good indicator. In reality, the ZenBook 14 UX433 display was quite pleasant and with sufficient brightness. The video on the screen looks great thanks to the gamma 2.2, which accurately displays the brightness of the scenes.

Non-touch display that will disappoint some. The sound here is not as good as the brethren. At higher volume levels, serious distortion is heard. The speakers are loud, but at the highs it is unpleasant to listen. I recommend using headphones or Bluetooth speakers.

Performance and SSD

The ZenBook 14 that I see is equipped with a processorWhiskey Lake 8th generation Intel Core i7-8565U, 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB PCIe solid-state drive. In the multi-core Geekbench 4 test, the result reaches 14 353 points, which corresponds to the Core i7-8550U processor. Single core performance is slightly better - 5248 point. In the video encoding test of 420 MB in H.265, the ZenBook 14 performed well - 237 seconds.

Despite the confusingly lowGeekbench's performance, in real use, the laptop turned out to be pretty fast. This is quite a productive laptop that can handle any everyday tasks. The SSD drive is not even the fastest here, but I did not notice any slowdowns.

Asus does not offer ZenBook 14 in the setconfigurations that disappoints. The only alternative is to switch to Core i5-8265U, with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB SSD-drive. It will save some money, but I would really like to have the opportunity to customize the configuration when buying. For more options, it’s better to choose either the ZenBook 13 or the ZenBook 15.

How is he in the games?

ZenBook 14 is equipped with integrated graphicsIntel UHD 620, so its gaming performance is limited. In the 3DMark synthetic test, the results were only slightly higher than other laptops with similar hardware.

Thus, this Asus ultrabook is best suited only for old games. If you need a gaming station, it is worth looking at other options.

Battery autonomy

Asus ZenBook 14 UX433 is equipped with a 50 batteryW / h, which is the cheapest option for this class. The battery life of the device is good, but not impressive. In the most demanding web test Basemark, the device lasted just under 4.5 hours.

When browsing the web, ultrabook ZenBook 14UX433 again showed average results - 8 hours. In the looped video playback test, it reached over 10.5 hours. If you don’t overload the processor and video card too much, the battery will last for a whole day.

Alternatives to Asus ZenBook 14 UX433

There is a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon with a similarconfiguration, but it costs about $ 2,000 ($ 134,000), which is quite a lot. Nevertheless, it is very thin and light, and also offers an excellent keyboard and iconic design of the ThinkPad.

Dell XPS 13 with a smaller display, good performance, nice design, got the same battery life and hardware configuration. But, it is also more expensive - $ 1440 (97 000 rubles).

The Apple MacBook Air for $ 1,800 ($ 120,450), although not so small, offers the best build quality, the 8th generation Core Y processor with low power consumption, 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB PCIe SSD.

You can look at fellows. The ZenBook 13 with a cost of $ 850 ($ 57,000) is equipped with a Core i5-8265U processor, 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB SSD. In the near future, it will receive a discrete Nvidia GeForce MX150 video card, which will increase performance.

ZenBook 15 for $ 1,400 ($ 94,000) is also the smallest and most compact in class and includes Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q graphics, a Core i7-8565U processor, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB SSD.

Total

Asus ZenBook 14 UX433 - a good compactgadget Asus completed the task of placing a large amount of equipment in a small building, without any compromises. But the performance of the ultrabook and battery life is average here. Besides its small size, this laptop does not offer something special.

Should I buy?

The absence of discrete graphics will not allowZenBook 14 stand out in terms of performance. Build quality and appearance here are excellent, but some already offer longer battery life and better displays. Therefore, the choice, as always, is yours.