Zenbooks of this dimension are all often a reasonably related deal — in case you’ve used one, you’ve used all of them. Two traits try and make the Zenbook 14X OLED, slated for launch in early 2022, distinctive. The first is its OLED show, which is without doubt one of the first 90Hz OLED panels to seem in mass manufacturing. (Asus’s Vivobook Pro 14 OLED, which I reviewed earlier, is one other.) The second is that the touchpad can be a display. Like, it’s actually a tiny touchscreen. You can put home windows down there and navigate them as you’d with some other touchscreen gadget.

A little bit of a spoiler: each of those options are cool however not fairly as cool as they sound, particularly contemplating their affect on battery life. Ultimately, if the Zenbook is a package deal you’re concerned about, you’re higher off going for the Vivobook Pro 14 OLED, which has the identical OLED display with an eight-core processor and a greater GPU for a pair hundred {dollars} cheaper. The Zenbook’s audience is actually of us who need one thing out of the atypical and are keen to pay for it.

To begin with the OLED display — it’s neat. It’s 16:10, it’s 2880 x 1800, and it’s a step up within the visible expertise from a normal 1920 x 1200 panel. Colors are vivid, and blacks, the trademark of OLED expertise, are very, very black. It makes textual content only a bit extra placing, which is enjoyable for me as somebody who reads and writes all day. It nearly maxes out our colorimeter, masking 100% of the sRGB gamut, 99 % of Adobe RGB, and 100% of P3, and reaching 395 nits of brightness. Some glare is seen in a vibrant workplace setting, however nothing that interferes with work.

The 90Hz refresh charge is kind of good — scrolling is noticeably smoother — however, once more, I’m undecided it’s well worth the battery life affect. (More on that in a bit).

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Second, the touchscreen touchpad. This is an analogous concept to Asus’s Zenbook Duo, Zephyrus Duo 15, and different varied dual-screen laptops that the corporate’s tried. The touchpad primarily features as a tiny exterior show — you may drag home windows forwards and backwards between it and the first panel.

When you don’t have a window open on the touchpad and also you’re not really utilizing it as a touchpad, it’s primarily a secondary desktop with a grid of apps and shortcuts. The most helpful one, to me, is the Group button, which lets you “capture” no matter group of tabs and apps you have got open on the time and pull it again up later. You can pull up a quantity pad and a calculator (which you too can do on the Vivobook’s screenless touchpad, although it doesn’t look as cool). There are shortcuts to open Voice Recorder, Solitaire, and the like on the first display (and you’ll add your apps and webpages of alternative). There’s a Handwriting app — scribble on it, and the phrases will seem as textual content wherever your cursor is (e-mail, Slack message, no matter).

This expertise may be very cool, and Asus has accomplished a pleasant job making its interface enticing and straightforward to make use of. I’ll additionally admit that I nonetheless haven’t actually discovered a use case for it. For some time, I attempted sticking Slack or Twitter down there to look at once in a while whereas I labored. But neither was usable on such a tiny display. This touchpad is similar dimension as many smartphones, however apps and webpages that you just use in your smartphone are designed to be navigated on a tiny display — apps on the Zenbook will not be. Text was tiny, and clicking was clumsy (and I’ve small fingers).

The Handwriting app is definitely spectacular, and the gadget interpreted my horrible handwriting completely. That mentioned, you need to perceive that this can be a text-recognition app, not a full note-taking app — you may’t draw photos or diagrams and count on the Zenbook to breed them. (And it couldn’t acknowledge Chinese and Korean characters I wrote, no less than not with my language set to English.) As a pure handwriting-recognition software, it’s enjoyable, nevertheless it does appear principally to be enjoyable — I’m undecided who really wants one thing like this for his or her job (and people that do can get fine Wacom tablets for beneath $100).

As I famous earlier, probably the most compelling element for me of the touchscreen touchpad is the grouping characteristic, particularly for the reason that numpad and calculator features can be found in loads of different Asus laptops. But I don’t suppose that’s price a a number of hundred greenback premium over the Vivobook.

It additionally appeared to confuse my exterior show a bit — home windows I introduced over had been usually too huge by default and wanted to be resized manually. I’m guessing the Zenbook is contemplating the touchpad as an extension of the first display (somewhat than a secondary display), and that’s someway throwing off its sizing. Regardless, this isn’t a catastrophe, however it’s one thing I hope Asus can work out earlier than this ships.

Elsewhere, that is Zenbook via and thru. It’s a fine-looking gadget with a pleasant lustrous lid which you can simply open with one hand and no display wobble. A warning about Zenbooks, typically, is that the lids are fingerprint magnets — my unit was consistently smudged. The construct is a bit plasticky — there’s a small quantity of flex within the display and keyboard, and I noticed one small dent within the backside of the deck after battering the gadget round in my full backpack for a number of days — however a step above price range fodder. There’s a darkish grey futuristic-y end. It’s 0.67 inches (16.9 mm) thick and simply over three kilos (1.4 kg) — not a featherweight however moveable sufficient.

Like many Asus laptops, this Zenbook has the Ergolift hinge — the lid folds beneath the deck and lifts the keyboard up a number of levels, conveniently hiding a number of the backside bezels. This is meant to make typing extra ergonomic and assist with cooling, nevertheless it was additionally a bit sharp on my lap.

There are two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, one HDMI 2.0, one microSD reader, and one audio jack. That’s a superb combine, although I want each USB-C ports weren’t on the appropriate aspect. The Harmon Kardon audio system sound nice however don’t get almost as a lot quantity as I’d like — I typically needed to lean far ahead to listen to my Zoom calls. The keyboard is snug with first rate journey, and there’s a fingerprint sensor within the energy button that didn’t give me any hassle.

One last factor to concentrate on: the webcam isn’t good. Colors are correct, nevertheless it’s grainy and a bit blurry at occasions — my editor mentioned it appeared like somebody had smeared Vaseline over it throughout a Zoom name. I do sufficient video requires work now that this is able to be a priority for me. I additionally respect bodily shutters (which this one doesn’t have, although there’s a kill swap on the keyboard) the extra I hear about embarrassing Zoom incidents.

Inside is a Core i7-1165G7, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage, along with an Nvidia GeForce MX450 discrete GPU. Samsung and Asus gave me a value of $1,400 for this unit however caveated that pricing could change nearer to launch. If that occurs, I’ll replace this evaluate.

These specs, to place it bluntly, confuse me. The MX450 is a really entry-level GPU that I wouldn’t even advocate for esports gaming. (Forget about hitting 90 frames per second in trendy video games with it.) 16GB of RAM (probably the most you may get on this gadget) will even not be sufficient for a lot of skilled workloads. I’m completely happy to see 1TB of storage at this value, however I nonetheless can’t see this being a good selection for professionals or for players — it nonetheless appears primarily slated to be a multimedia machine for individuals who like OLED screens and clean scrolling. For these of us, a Zenbook 14x is e-waste — the Vivobook pairs the identical display with an RTX 3050 for (allegedly) $200 cheaper.

That apart, the Zenbook did a nice job with my day by day workload, even within the silent fan profile (known as “Whisper Mode” in Asus’ management heart) with Battery Saver on. It was typically heat however by no means sizzling, and I didn’t often hear any fan noise.

But there’s a giant tradeoff for that: battery life. I’m certain the Vivobook’s longevity isn’t helped by the truth that it’s working a 90Hz high-resolution panel and additionally operating a secondary display. Still, this Zenbook doesn’t final lengthy sufficient. I solely averaged 5 hours and 38 minutes of steady workplace use with this gadget round 200 nits of brightness. That does barely beat the Dell XPS 13 OLED, nevertheless it’s lower than we’ve seen from all types of high-resolution gadgets like Huawei’s MateBook 16 or any of Apple’s M1-equipped laptops. It means I couldn’t go a workday with out plugging the gadget in. For most individuals (however particularly these looking for a 14-inch gadget), battery life goes to be extra helpful than an MX450 and a touchscreen touchpad.

My last word is on bloatware. This gadget shipped with a giant load of annoying software program preinstalled, together with a number of McAfee packages that insisted on scanning all the pieces I downloaded earlier than I might open it, and that required me to shut all my Chrome tabs and restart the pc with a purpose to be uninstalled. This stuff shouldn’t be on a laptop computer that prices $1,400 — it simply shouldn’t.

The Zenbook 14X OLED is a reasonably inexpensive method to pair a 90Hz OLED display with a GPU. Despite varied nitpicks I’ve, it really works effectively sufficient as a driver. The downside is that one other laptop computer exists — the Vivobook Pro 14 OLED, with a really related chassis, a really related display, and a greater GPU — at a considerably cheaper price. I’m really questioning if Asus and Samsung received wires crossed right here as a result of it is not sensible that the Zenbook prices a lot extra, so I’ll be preserving an eye fixed out for any adjustments as we strategy the discharge.

The major factor that might probably justify the Zenbook’s value premium is its fancy touchpad. I actually do like that Asus is doing this touchpad. I like that there’s an organization on the market attempting issues like this which can be new and totally different — and that these issues really work. I can’t let you know how refreshing it’s, as somebody whose job it’s to check one million laptops per week which can be all principally the identical factor, to know that there’s an organization on the market attempting to determine the place they will do issues otherwise.

I actually, actually hope there’s a gaggle of individuals on the market who has an ideal use for this touchpad of their life and who will end up in droves to pay further for this Zenbook as a result of it’s the primary laptop computer ever made that completely fits their wants. I’m not on this group, and I’m skeptical that it exists, however God, I hope it does.