Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405M w/ Intel Core Ultra 7 155H

Our review of the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405M is primarily aimed at the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, however things did not turn out quite the way we expected.

For one thing this brand new CPU architecture is clearly designed to deliver power efficiency and the consequence is that raw CPU performance is unimpressive. In addition we had hoped the new Intel Arc Graphics would deliver serious performance and while they are head-and-shoulders above the previous Intel Xe Graphics they continue to leave something to be desired.

The final part of the equation is the NPU that is dedicated to AI and as we show in our video this caused us a fair amount of confusion. In our test runs using UL Procyon AI Inference we saw wildly differeing results depending on whether we used the Microsoft ML or Intel OpenVINO framework. For the time being we are unable to draw any useful conclusions about the AI performance of Intel Core Ultra.

Moving on to the laptop itself, we absolutely love the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405M and fully understand why Intel chose this laptop to showcase their new CPU. It is very thin and light yet packs a 14-inch OLED screen that almost seems larger than the chassis itself. The keyboard and touchpad are perfectly decent and you get a decent selection of ports and connectors along with WiFi 6E for fast wireless connectivity. The battery life is absolutely superb and means you can forget about looking for a mains socket during your working day. The final cherry on top of this particular cake is that the price is very reasonable, and that makes it a very sensible purchase.

You can buy the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405M for £1,299.99 with Core Ultra 7 155H and 16GB RAM, or for £1399.99 with Core Ultra 9 185H and 32GB RAM.

Pros:

• Excellent battery life.
• Decent value for money.
• Impressive OLED screen.
• Good build quality.

Cons:

• AI in laptops is new so the jury is still out on this front.
• The Asus can get noisy if you ramp up the cooling.
• Intel Core Ultra 7 seems like a minor update for a brand new processor design.

KitGuru says: Usability is very good, however outright performance is mediocre.

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