Test Ordinator Portable ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED

Asus continues to expand its range of premium ultraportables “Zenbook” and continues to rely on OLED for its screens. A while ago we talked to you about the Zenbook 13, an excellent, very compact PC that you can take anywhere. This time the format is a bit larger as we are going to 14 inches. The Zenbook 14 Flip OLED also features a hinge that allows the screen to be tilted 360 degrees for different uses. It is therefore a versatile ultraportable that bets heavily on its screen and its modularity.

Features of the Zenbook 14 Flip OLED

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Design, construction: a luxurious and comfortable ultraportable

With its 1.3 kg and its thickness of less than 1 cm, the Zenbook 14 Flip OLED is certainly a PC to take anywhere. So we’re dealing with a true ultraportable that benefits from the build quality and build quality you’d expect from a product in Asus’ Zenbook lineup. The all-aluminum chassis is of superb craftsmanship, particularly with a very nice lid embellished only with the brand’s logo and benefitting from a very accomplished brushed strapping effect.

Opening is easy, thanks to a notch under the touchpad. Then we d iscover a large keyboard that occupies the entire width of the case and a good-sized touchpad. The surrounding area is again made of aluminum and benefits from a matt finish that repels fingerprints very effectively.

The keyboard is, shall we say, of excellent quality. The keys are of good size and spacing between them, while benefiting from fairly long travel for an ultraportable. You won’t feel any fatigue while typing a long text and typos are rare. As for the touchpad, it again incorporates the famous “Numpad”: by pressing in the upper right corner, a virtual numeric keypad appears, very handy when you’re juggling numbers. And it doesn’t prevent using the mouse. Also note the presence of a fingerprint sensor under the “Power” button, which you can use to unlock your session with Windows Hello.

The connection is quite complete and modern. There are two USB-C ports that are Thunderbolt 4 compatible and capable of charging the device, a USB-A port, an HDMI output, and a jack for headphones or earphones. A microSD card reader is also included, handy for easily expanding storage or offloading photos. Finally, connectivity is provided by WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5. There’s also a 720p webcam above the screen.

The Zenbook 14 Flip OLED is therefore a very beautiful technological object. The build quality is excellent, the ease of use is there, and the “premium” aspect we’ve come to expect from Zenbooks is definitely there.

Screen: A superbly calibrated OLED panel

The main selling point of the Zenbook 14 Flip OLED is of course its screen. We’re not just dealing with a tactile OLED panel here – with the accompanying “infinite” contrast rate – but also with a refresh rate of 90 Hz. OLED is now very common in Zenbooks, but a refresh rate above 60 Hz is still rare. This panel, manufactured by Samsung Display, looks particularly appealing at first glance. So the 90Hz refresh rate makes a real difference, bringing an undeniable sense of fluidity compared to 60Hz, especially on a “small” 14-inch screen. The displayed resolution is also quite high as it goes up to 2880 x 1800 pixels.

When we put our probe on the screen, this good first impression is confirmed: The screen of the Zenbook 14 Flip OLED is excellently calibrated. The only small flaw that OLED often has is a somewhat tight maximum brightness, which peaks at 365 cd/m2. This does not prevent the screen from being easy to read, especially with an anti-reflective treatment that seems effective.

As expected from an OLED panel, the contrast ratio should be “infinite” and we therefore benefit from “perfect” black and brilliant color reproduction. The risk could have been having an overdone colorimetry with a rendering that was too bright and unfaithful. This is not the case at all with this Zenbook 14 Flip OLED as we see exemplary calibration.

This sets the Delta E to 1.4 and raises the color temperature to 6680K. Excellent figures that reflect ultra-accurate colors (a good Delta E must be below 3) and a very balanced rendering – close to the standard at 6500K – between warm and cold tones.

In use, therefore, the Zenbook 14 Flip’s OLED touchscreen is a real pleasure to use, and it’s arguably one of the best laptop PC panels we’ve seen.

Performance: a next-to-last generation processor that keeps up

As an ultraportable, the Zenbook 14 Flip OLED is unsurprisingly equipped with a processor of the “low consumption” type. It is therefore an Intel Core i7-1165G7, 4-core/8-thread CPU with a TDP of 12 watts. It offers a turbo frequency of up to 4.7 GHz. Add to that 16GB of RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD—in short, a great machine for productivity and nomadism. On the graphics chips side, we find an Intel Iris Xe iGPU, which will be far too fair to play demanding games, but we’ll still be running older or “indie” titles. For example, we were able to start a part of Lost Ark in Full HD on the “Medium” detail level without worrying.

A pretty honorable score on Cinebench

The Zenbook 14 Flip OLED will therefore be very fast in most office tasks and you will have no problem with advanced office automation, website consultation and video streaming. Video editing and advanced photo editing will quickly reach their limits, but are still possible.

In short, if we appreciated the presence of a 12th-gen processor, the generous amount of RAM and 1TB of storage make the Zenbook 14 Flip OLED a high-performance, ultra-portable PC. It also has the advantage of only heating up a little, even under pressure (photo above, taken during a Cinebench benchmark) and maintaining a very acceptable level of ventilation. For example, we hear a slight breathing during a difficult task, but this remains below 38 dB and is therefore audible in a “quiet” room.

Autonomy: on the small average

On the autonomy side, Asus announces about 8 hours of office use. The PC comes with a 100-watt charger that allows for fast charging. It took us 1 hour to fully charge the battery.

In practice, the advertised 8 hours are confirmed and it is possible to go to around 9 hours by adjusting the energy saving function or by setting the screen to 60 Hz at 77% and refresh rate at 90 Hz), which ran for 7:47.

The balance on autonomy is therefore rather positive, but we still remain in low territory. Some competitors do in fact fare significantly better, some with 12 to 15 hours of battery life. Not to mention the MacBooks with M1 chip that reach 20 hours. However, we benefit from a working day’s use, and that’s the main thing.

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Conclusion