ASUS Zenbook S14 review: A showpiece for Intel’s Lunar Lake AI PC chips

The ASUS Zenbook S14 is a solid ultraportable laptop that features Intel's newest CPUs, specifically the Core Ultra 7 258V processor. This processor is part of Intel's "Lunar Lake" lineup and is touted as the company's most efficient ever. The Zenbook S14 delivers the best battery life seen from an Intel laptop, reaching 16 hours and eight minutes in the PCMark 10 battery benchmark. However, this comes with some compromises, as the laptop doesn't score much higher than Intel's last-gen Core Ultra chips in some benchmarks and is often bested by AMD's Ryzen AI on multithreaded tasks. The Zenbook S14 has a gorgeous design, featuring a unique "Ceraluminum" material that combines ceramics and aluminum. The laptop also has a solid block of metal for its body and a geometric grille above the keyboard for enhanced airflow. The 14-inch 3K "Lumina" OLED display is impressive, with a fast 120Hz refresh rate and 500 nits of peak brightness. The laptop is also surprisingly sturdy, weighing 2.65 pounds and measuring 0.47 inches thin. The Zenbook S14 has some drawbacks, including a serviceable but unimpressive quad-speaker audio system and a 1080p webcam that looks grainy and less detailed than some competitors. The keyboard also feels merely serviceable, with little responsive feedback while typing. However, the laptop's performance is capable, thanks to Intel's Core Ultra 7 258V chip, and it feels impressively zippy from the start. The Zenbook S14 starts at $1,500 but is already discounted to $1,400 at Best Buy. This configuration gets you a Core Ultra 7 chip, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. The laptop offers far more value than Apple's MacBook Air, which costs $1,700 for a similar configuration but with a 60Hz LCD screen. Overall, the Zenbook S14 is an incredible achievement for Intel, with its excellent battery life, slick design, and gorgeous OLED display making it a great option for those looking for a solid ultraportable laptop.