ASUS Zenbook S 14 (UX5406S) Review – The Silent Performer

ASUS’s new Zenbook series is certainly a looker, and in line with the launch of Intel’s new Lunar Lake (Core Ultra 200V) processors, the new Zenbook S 14 (UX5406S) is getting the updated internals. On paper, this should mean even better battery life as Intel claims, but we’ll verify them through this review.

Unboxing

The unboxing process is very similar to the sibling model we reviewed earlier this year, which is the AMD-powered Zenbook S 16 (UM5606). Laptop and accessories are separately packed, and beneath the laptop compartment you’ll find a brief introduction of the new ‘Ceraluminum’ (Ceramic + aluminum) material.

Here are all the items you’ll be getting in both boxes:
– Type G (UK) socket adapter
– 65W GaN charger
– USB-C charging cable
– USB-A to LAN adapter
– Laptop user guide
– Laptop quick start guide
– MyASUS leaflet
– The ASUS Zenbook S 16 (UX5406S) laptop

Walkaround

The lid of the laptop features the Ceraluminum material in Zumaia Gray colors – this new material is very smudge-resistant even if you have a particularly sweaty pair of hands. This applies on both the lid and the insides, and I’m personally a fan of this dark and subtle colors on the deck and keycaps.

Opening the laptop and you’ll see the 14-inch 3K (formerly referred as 2.8K) 16:10 HDR OLED panel with several sensors and a webcam located on the slim bezel on top, responsible for user presence detection and Windows Hello facial recognition. No physical shutters here, killswitch is done electronically via the F10 shortcut key.

The touchpad is enlarged to the bound of the chassis itself, and you can’t get any bigger than that; you also have three major functions available by swiping along the edge of the touchpad. Top edge gives you playback controls, left edge gives you volume control, and right edge adjusts brightness.

Above the keyboard is where you’ll find the first of the two intake channels for the laptop, which is entirely CNC-milled; meanwhile, the bottom side has an entire row of perforations to let in fresh air to cool the processor, and get expelled by two exhaust ports tucked right under the display hinge.

Speaking of the hinge, this only allows the laptop to be opened at 135 degrees, which barely avoided scraping the surface given the relatively tall rubber feet. Unlike the old design, you no longer have the lifting mechanism that uses the bottom edge of the display to lift the entire laptop upwards for additional intake clearance.

I/O is fairly standard, though you might need a hub if you need more than one USB-A port (which you most likely will). Since this is an Intel-powered laptop, the USB-C ports are Thunderbolt 4 ports as opposed to USB4, though both are functionally similar. Charging is done through either of the Thunderbolt 4 ports, through a 65W GaN (gallium nitride) charger which is extremely compact in size.

Specifications

ASUS Zenbook S 14 (UX5406S-APV208WS)

Full specifications available on product page.

CPU	Intel Core Ultra 7 258V (4P+4LPE – 8 cores, 8 threads)
RAM	32GB LPDDR5X-8533 (on-package)
GPU	Integrated: Intel Arc Graphics 140V (8 Xe Cores)
NPU	Intel AI Boost NPU (47 TOPS INT8)
Storage	Western Digital SN560 1TB SSD (SDDPNQE-1T00-1102 – PCIe 4.0, M.2 2280)
Display	16″ 3K 16:10 OLED 2880×1800@120Hz, 0.2ms response time 100% DCI-P3, 10-bit (1.07B colors) 400 nits SDR / 500 nits HDR max brightness Glossy non-touch panel VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification Pantone Validated TÜV Rheinland cerified SGS Eye Care Display
Audio	Downward-firing stereo speakers tuned by harman/kardon Dolby Atmos Support
Webcam	1080p IR camera Windows Hello support Electronic webcam shutter
I/O	Left: 1x HDMI 2.1 TMDS 2x Thunderbolt 4 (DisplayPort, 65W USB PD) 1x 3.5mm combo jack Right: 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 (Intel BE201)
Battery	72Wh 4-cell Li-ion
Power Supply	65W, GaN USB-C charger
Operating System	Windows 11 Home 24H2 (Copilot+ PC)
Dimensions	310.3 x 214.7 x 11.9-12.9 mm
Weight	1.20kg

Performance

Note: All benchmark data shown are measured on default power profiles unless otherwise stated.

Storage

The SSD housed inside the new Zenbook S 14 is the Western Digital SN560 SSD with mid-range PCIe 4.0 performance, which fares pretty good on low queue depth sequential workloads. Write performance is more in the PCIe 3.0 territory, but it’s more than enough for daily usage.

CPU

There are two ways to look at the performance of Intel’s Core Ultra 7 258V processor – for single-thread workloads, the processor can still keep up with the top chips in this chart (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is outright the fastest in x86 workloads); multi-core is not a good showing for the Lunar Lake chip, however. The core count deficit to Ryzen, Snapdragon, and even its predecessor meant its trailing behind in multi-core scores pretty significantly.

GPU

On a more positive note, the Arc 140V onboard graphics fared a lot better in the GPU benchmarks. Comparing to Core Ultra 7 155H’s Arc Graphics, there’s a bit more performance gained from there; it does gain a convincing win over AMD’s current best, the Radeon 890M graphics. Full Speed gives the GPU extra power budget to work with, though this doesn’t get reflected proportionally in 3DMark Steel Nomad.

System

Moving on to Novabench, we can see there is little difference between the Standard and Full Speed power profiles of the Zenbook: both are significant behind their predecessors due to the large deficit in CPU scores, though it’s also unusual where the GPU scores of the new Core Ultra processors are falling behind as well.

Next is PCMark 10 Modern Office test. Here, the Zenbook S 14 sits in the middle of the pack, though another laptop that packs the same chip – the Acer Swift 14 AI – is leading this chart thanks to its better Productivity scores. Generally, the performance characteristics are similar to that of the Ryzen AI chip found in this Zenbook’s sister model.

Battery

Here’s where the Lunar Lake architecture truly shines, with the Zenbook S 14 lasting 17 hours and 40 minutes on a single charge. Not as long-lasting as the Acer laptop on the same chip, but plenty close, and represents a small boost over the Meteor Lake-powered Vivobook S 14 OLED. AMD’s current-best is falling somewhat behind in this matchup, while Qualcomm-powered laptops are ineligible for this comparison due to compatibility issues with the benchmarking software.

The Good

The ASUS Zenbook S 14 (UX5406S) certainly has several highlights, one of them being the GPU performance. Intel’s new Arc 140V has managed to surpass AMD’s current-best in graphics performance, which means it should be more capable in some light AAA gaming. When you do, you would barely notice the dual fans keeping the heat away from the processor as the noise level is very low compared to most laptops.

Keyboard is pretty great to type on, and the touchpad gives ample space – though in my opinion the touchpad is slightly on the stiff side. Display is another plus as well, with accurate colors, 120Hz refresh rate, and blue light protection, which tick just about every boxes I could’ve asked for from a premium laptop. Speakers is also excellent, providing good bass, mids and highs while delivering lots of volume in a thin chassis like this one.

Speaking of chassis, the redesign introduced the new Ceraluminum material which has excellent smudge-resistant properties. Zenbooks in the past has been notorious for being super attractive to fingerprints and smudges, and this new material basically allows you to clean any smudges with a simple wipe. Aesthetically, very neat!

Finally, the battery life is incredibly good thanks to the impressive efficiency Intel has been able to do with its new Lunar Lake processors. Nearly 18 hours on a single charge is more than enough for you to go through an entire day without a charging cable, but if you do, either the included GaN charger or your smartphone charger (provided it supplies 65W, but less is fine) can keep it topped up without you carrying too many cables along the trip.

The Bad

There are some downsides for this laptop, and one of them comes back to the processor we just talked about. While the Core Ultra 7 258V provide great GPU performance and excellent battery life, multi-core performance is underwhelming – it’s not competitive even against its Meteor Lake-based predecessors, so you might have to consider other options if your work involves a lot of CPU-heavy workloads.

Another quirk this laptop comes with is the hinge design. Most laptops in this class can fully open the display up to 180 degrees, but this one maxes out at just 135 degrees, which can be a slight inconvenience for some.

Verdict

With the price of RM6,999, the ASUS Zenbook S 14 (UX5406S) is by no means a cheap laptop, but it sure has a lot of bells and whistles for the price you’ll be paying. However, unlike the AMD-powered, 16-inch model we reviewed previously, this Intel Lunar Lake-powered model has some of the drawbacks that holds the laptop back from being a complete, do-it-all package. Maybe an Arrow Lake version would’ve fared better? Time will tell.

Special thanks to ASUS Malaysia for providing the Zenbook S 14 (UX5406S) laptop for this review.