Choosing a good laptop is pretty much similar to choosing your next smartphone. There are always a number of factors to consider including its pricing, processor, memory configuration, battery life, design and portability to name a few.
Most of the time, compromise needs to be made on one feature for another – so if we opt for a model with better performance, its pricing and battery life are likely to take a hit. That’s why choosing the right laptop is no small feat especially for those who’re slightly less geeky.
But don’t get me wrong, there are actually a handful of laptops that fit well into all the above criteria and among them is none other than the ASUS ZenBook 14 Ultralight UX435EGL which we’d been trying out for the past two weeks.
Priced at S$2,398, the ASUS ZenBook 14 UX435EGL is just slightly more expensive than most of the flagship phones in the market while offering you pretty much everything you are looking for in an ideal laptop.
Without further ado, let’s checkout some of our favorite features and highlight of the ASUS ZenBook 14 Ultralight UX435EGL!
Ultra Sleek, Ultra Light & Ultra Portable!
As usual, the ASUS ZenBook 14 Ultralight builds upon the philosophy of ASUS ZenBook series, sporting a sleek and elegant design. It flaunts a Pine Grey colorway which has a slightly understated Matte Grey finish that does a fine job in minimizing smudges.
The overall build of the laptop certainly feels robust and premium with its lightweight Magnesium-Lithium alloy construction which also plays a crucial role in keeping its weight under the 1kg mark – something that differentiate it from other ZenBook series laptops. Along with its compact design, the ZenBook 14 Ultra isn’t just highly portable, but also fits nicely into a medium size backpack.
Moving to its interior, we’ll be greeted by a pretty standard keyboard layout when you flip up the lid. Overall, the keys are responsive and offers an amicable key travel that doesn’t feels shallow with great tactile feedback. Although it may boils down to personal preference, but a shallow key travel seems to make typing feel slightly uncomfortable and to some extend, tiring.
The key highlight of the input setup here is definitely its trackpad which is better known as NumberPad 2.0. Basically, it serves as both a trackpad and a number pad, but you can also turn it into a calculator by swiping the top-left icon in any direction. What an intuitive feature it is!
For better ergonomic, it also provides plenty of space below the keyboard for users to rest their wrist while typing. Likewise, the ZenBook 14 Ultralight also brings along the signature ErgoLift hinge which not only tilts the keyboard to a more comfortable angle, but also helps optimize cooling and enhance audio quality as it creates extra gap between the base of the laptop and the table.
Immersive Display, Great Audio Quality
For an immersive graphical experience, the ASUS ZenBook 14 Ultralight sports a 14-inches Full HD display with 100% sRGB color gamut for accurate color reproduction.
Courtesy of those slim bezels surrounding the display, the notebook managed to offer an impressive 92% screen-to-body ratio. These extremely slim bezels, known as NanoEdge bezels help to achieve a near-frameless display to provide users a more immersive graphical experience.
Most importantly, the ZenBook 14 Ultralight’s display can get pretty bright and doesn’t scrambles under an environment with high ambient light. Therefore, you won’t have to worry when you bring it out for work in an outdoor café.
To put forward an all-rounded entertainment experience, there’s also Harmon Karon certified audio system that brings a rich and powerful surround sound which can easily fills the room.
Supreme Performance
Under the hood, the ASUS ZenBook 14 Ultralight is powered by a 10nm Intel’s Tiger Lake Core i7-1165G7 designed upon a quad-core architecture, capable of reaching a maximum turbo frequency of 4.70GHz.
On the graphical-side, its further assisted by a NVDIA GeForce MX450 graphic card for a smooth gaming experience and seamless video editing. Those worry about battery life would be glad to know that the GeForce MX450 graphic card features the NVIDIA Optimus technology which automatically optimizes the notebook to offer the best performance or battery life based on the application.
Geared with this powerful setup, the ZenBook 14 Ultra can handle pretty much every tasks you throw at it, so long you’re being reasonable and not demanding the highest graphics and frame rates when gaming. Also, there isn’t any notable heating issue despite its powerful processing chips and slim construction which some consumers might be wary of.
Long-lasting Battery Life
Despite its featherlight weight and compact build, the ZenBook 14 Ultralight managed to squeeze in a pretty hefty 63Wh battery which can easily support more than 11 hours of screen time under normal usage (productivity tasks & movie stream) at medium brightness.
This means that you can practically be using the laptop during your entire day out in a café or school without the need to recharge. Therefore, you can totally forget about the hassle of bringing along a charging brick no matter how portable it is.
I see it as an important feature that rhymes well with the idea of an “Ultralight” notebook which is to keep everything minimal and light, since there isn’t a point of having an extremely light laptop if it incurs you the need to bring an additional charger.
As such, ASUS had definitely did a splendid job here.
Verdict
Yes, there are many notebooks which are around the ASUS ZenBook 14 Ultralight UX435EGL’s asking price of S$2,398. Performance-wise, most of these notebooks are able to match up with the the ZenBook 14 Ultralight as well.
However, what really sets the ASUS ZenBook 14 Ultralight apart from other notebooks is none other than its featherlight weight and ultra-portability which we really appreciate. Furthermore, its sleek and elegant design is another huge plus point and certainly fits your professional outfit when meeting clients.
Therefore, the ASUS ZenBook 14 Ultralight checks all the right boxes as a productivity workhorse and has everything it needs to stand out of this competitive segment.
For those who’re interested, you can purchase the ASUS ZenBook 14 Ultralight via ASUS online store at just S$2,398.
