ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED UX5304 Review

The ASUS Zenbook S series is known for its combination of having a thin and light body and also to provide the power and efficiency that you need for your everyday needs in work or in school. I have been using it for weeks now and honestly, I’ve been enjoying this notebook.

It’s SUPER light

Again, the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED is thin and light. It’s 0.46-inch thin and only at 2.2lb. It isn’t the thinnest laptop that I’ve seen or tried but everyone would really appreciate its lightweight and thin design.

The laptop comes with a ceramic aluminum body called ceraluminum which makes the laptop durable but still light. According to ASUS, this has resistance to color fading and it is friendly to the environment. During my use, I was impressed with the material’s lightness and its resistance to flexing when pressure is applied to the laptop’s body.

There’s also a black keyboard well similar to ones that we have seen on the Macbook Pro and it does look clean to me. As for the hinge, the laptop goes up to 180-degrees and the hinge does elevate the keyboard which will give the notebook a little bit of airflow which is essential especially if you’re working on your bed or not on a flat surface.

As for the lid of the notebook, I do like the slightly rough feel of it along with the minimal ASUS Zenbook logo at the back. There are random lines in here but it does resemble the 30th anniversary logo of ASUS. It’s a nice touch and branding for the notebook. 

Average webcam and audio for calls

The webcam of the ASUS Zenbook S13 OLED is a decent one. It’s wide but definitely not the best one out there. It will work just fine for most calls even at a not so decent lighting conditions but I don’t expect that you’ll use it for vlogging. The microphone is just decent but again, not the best one. The ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED also supports Windows hello for Face unlock but for privacy concerns, there’s a button that can deactivate the webcam of the notebook. 

As for the audio, the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED comes with Harman/Kardon speakers and for its quality, it’s just average for me. The Harman/Kardon might attract some consumers who loves the brand but in my experience with the laptop, the audio quality is just average but I am not surprised as we got here a thin and light body anyway.

Not complete, but decent ports

The ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED doesn’t have all the ports but for its size and thickness, I’m pretty happy with what we got on the notebook. The ASUS Zenbook S13 OLED comes with a HDMI 2.1, 2x Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, 1x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, and also an audio combo jack.

Notably, it’s missing a microSD or an SD card for extended storage and it uses a USB-C cable for charging. The notebook utilizes a USB-C PD with a maximum output of 100 watts. Basically, I can use my GaN chargers that I’ve been using on my gaming laptop and smartphone on this notebook. Oh and did I say that the charger of this notebook is small as well? I like that ASUS has also minimized the footprint of their chargers.

A tactile keyboard with a large trackpad

So far in my experience with ASUS laptops, they do have a tactile keyboard but the feel is a little bit soft compared to other notebooks in the market. But the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED is probably the best keyboard that I’ve experienced on a Zenbook device. It has a pretty good tactile response and the size is just perfect except for the function keys which are a bit small. Nonetheless, we rarely used those keys anyway.

Unfortunately, there’s no fingerprint scanner on this notebook but no worries, the Windows Hello for the Face Unlock is already pretty reliable for me. There’s a dedicated Copilot button as well which launches the Copilot anytime. A pretty cool key to help you most of the time but I wish they could integrate Copilot with even more features with Windows.

As for the trackpad, it’s large and very responsive. Clicking on it was responsive and I like the size of it as I can easily navigate through anything with it even without my mouse sometimes. The texture feels just right as well when gliding my finger through it.

It’s OLED and it’s beautiful

One of the biggest selling points of this device is the OLED Panel. There’s a 16:10 aspect ratio with 550 nits of brightness. As expected the black on the panel is really good and the colors are just popping on the display. There’s a glossy panel on this one too which shows some light glares sometimes but unfortunately, this one doesn’t have a touchscreen display. 

The colors are perfect for watching movies or checking out photos as they are vivid and colorful. While this might be perfect for video editing, the laptop isn’t really made for that as this one is thin and light and as a laptop for productivity or for school, not really on the heavy side. 

It’s a 2.8K display which is why the display is crisp and watching movies on this one is really great. But aside from the lack of the touchscreen, the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED is also up to 60Hz only which is disappointing as we would love to play some light and casual games at a higher framerate on the laptop and also to have a smoother display experience on day to day usage.

Decent for day to day usage

The ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED comes with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155U processor and also a 16GB of RAM and then there’s a 1TB SSD inside as well. That’s a decent specification for those people who are looking for a notebook that they can use for school or for work. Most people would find the processor of the notebook enough for most daily tasks on on school and for work

In my case, the 16GB of RAM would be enough to do some of my assignments and running a single virtual machine on VMWare and playing some games on Steam like Horizon Zero Dawn but of course, it has to be set at the lowest settings to enjoy the game at 1080p.

In our benchmarks, we find the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED just capable enough for most of the basic tasks. However for 3D-heavy apps or some games, I wouldn’t recommend the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED

In terms of thermals, I find the Intel Core Ultra 7 155U pretty good at handling the temperatures despite the heavy load on the notebook. 

We’ve tried different games on the laptop. Latest games such as Horizon Forbidden West would not run on the laptop but older but still popular titles such as GTA V and also Horizon Zero Dawn would run just fine. Overwatch 2 is definitely playable on the laptop as well but I wished we had a higher frame rates on this. 

LOOOOOONG Battery life

The ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED does perform really well in the battery department as we’re getting a long battery life on the laptop thanks to efficiency of the processor and also the hardware of the laptop. In our usage, we were getting up to 9 to 10 hours for our battery on the laptop for doing productivity stuff including typing this review, writing blogs, checking out a little bit of social media and opening different apps on the laptop on 50% brightness.

Basically, this laptop can last up to a work day usage without the need of a charger and sometimes, I just bring my 100W Powerbank with me to charge this laptop. 

Verdict

The ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED is not a perfect laptop but it does come with a lot of features that a lot of consumers would love including its thin and light profile and also its vivid OLED display.The performance of the laptop would be great for day to day usage and it is very capable for office work and also for school as the Intel processor is just powerful enough for most usage.

But again, it is not a perfect laptop. The display’s colors might be awesome but the refresh rate is still at 60 Hz and it doesn’t have the best GPU for heavier gaming, but again this one is made for productivity on the go and not gaming.

Overall, the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED is a great notebook for productivity purposes. The battery is good, it’s very portable so you can work anywhere, and it has an excellent display. However, the lack of a high refresh rate and also a more powerful GPU means that you won’t get to play the latest games on the notebook. Nonetheless, this is a great notebook especially for those people who want to use it only for school and office. 

The ASUS Zenbook S13 OLED UX5304 is now available in Canada.