Zenbook S13 Oled
Savage Doherty
Anyone has any experience with this laptop? Was thinking of getting it to replace my 12 year old Toshiba Qosmio 17" laptop. Looking at the i5 model and think the specs are good enough for me. Wonder if the screen is usable with Asus Pen 2.0 since the Asus website says it is compatible with it but its no touchscreen. So a bit confused there.
Sorry I meant what was the screen refresh rate?
Have had my laptop for a week, upgraded from a surface laptop 3.
Very happy with it so far. Only negative was the bloatware installed but wasn't hard to uninstall
A friend has just picked up one of these today, so I'll help them switch from the old desktop PC to the laptop tomorrow. I'm looking forward to checking it out. It seems to tick the right boxes for spec/price.
It was a bit of as relief to find a suitable laptop at the right price, as I was the one making the recommendation to my friend what to buy. The main criteria was an OLED touchscreen in 14". Initially I suggested a couple of Lenovos (one for $1699 and the other for $1999) that were listed on JB HiFi's website. As it turned out, the models were no longer sold by JB HiFi, so then looked at Asus on JB HiFi, and just to make sure their pricing was sharp, I checked on Orificeworks and despite most local stores with low or no stock, my friend grabbed one. For what they want, the spec is plenty good enough and saved a few hundred compared to the yellow & black shop. I doubt that they'll ever need to upgrade it beyond the stock 512GB SSD, but if that ever happens a 1TB drive will be cheaper by then, and I've got a cloning dock for those (super nifty piece of kit it is).
None of these are deal breakers for me. I don't really have any need for a laptop myself despite being in IT, but these made me want one. I think I'll hold off and see if they come out with an AMD Zen4 refresh with a 120Hz screen. Would love something with a lower power CPU than the 13500H but with a bit more grunt than the current low power models.
I'm currently tossing up whether to get the i5 or spend a little extra for the i7. Any thoughts on whether it's worth the extra cash? Will mostly be used for study and maybe some very light gaming and media consumption
Currently using the i5 and no issues with performance. Everything silky smooth and battery life has been good even with 120hz option always on. Office use mainly.
Haven't tried gaming though, have my other PC for that.
Nice. In my case it's mainly for my wife as she's going back to study. She doesn't need it until November so debating on whether to pull the trigger now or wait and see if a better deal comes along. Tbh it seems like a great value little computer.
It's a great laptop, apart from showing fingermarks rather badly. Performance is noticebly better when the power cable is connected, so the compromise between battery life and performance is noticeable.
Starting to debate whether I stick with the 14x or grab a 15" vivobook pro for a bit less. The extra screen size and video card are tempting for a little light gaming (which my wife who this laptop is for doesn't care about at all haha!), although the 1920x1080 resolution and 60hz refresh rate are annoying drawbacks.
Everyone's needs are different. I use a laptop with 13" touch screen. If I need to zoom in to see more detail, I just do the pinch-zoom thing. The good thing about a smaller size screen is that the whole laptop ends up being much lighter (comparing 14 with 15), so great for portability.
Why is Intel Core i5-13500H better than AMD Ryzen 5 7530U?
2.13x faster CPU speed?
4 x 2.6GHz & 8 x 1.9GHzvs6 x 2GHz
933MHz higher ram speed?
5200MHzvs4267MHz
4 more CPU threads?
16vs12
46.4% higher PassMark result?
24074vs16444?
7MB bigger L2 cache?
10MBvs3MB
2MB bigger L3 cache?
18MBvs16MB
2 newer version of PCI Express (PCIe)?
5vs3
I paid $200 less than the price currently advertised online and ticketed on the in-store display, however. I don't have the store receipt nearby to break down the costs, but my card statement shows $1489.49 for a bundle that included laptop, mouse, desktop mat, case, USB 3 hub. While in the shop, I looked up the item online to take to the payment desk and found the discounted price, so I assumed it was discounted as clearance stock.
A couple of weeks ago it was $1488 from Officeworks.
The price seems to change every few days on this laptop.
The specs are quite good and I've been tempted but hoping the price gets back down to around $1488
It's also at least a year old now but Officeworks don't seem to be in any rush to stock the later models.
The 2023 model is still a good option if the price gets back down to around $1488 as it was a month ago.
The CPU still has a decent benchmark and is only 15W TDP so it should be very good for battery life.
That is probably a good bet if you are dead set against a touch screen (I have read that the digitiser dulls the brightness slightly on touch versions).
Take their 'savings' with a grain of salt, the Asus RRP from your link is $2199, still, $200 more in your pocket is a good deal especially as it is out of stock on the Asus site.
Just be aware if there is any hardware issue and you need to swap it out, the license is attached to that motherboard (OEM). I had an issue with hardware with a different brand and had to jump through alot of hoops with Microsoft and they eventually decided to refund me the upgrade after I kept nagging and complaining why it can't use something I purchased and doesn't state it's locked.
Fyi, I could not use the upgrade on the replacement machine, even though it's a digital license in my MS account. Didn't even detect it.
I bought a pro retail copy after getting replacement machine (actual license key) in the event I need to replace or upgrade next time and that too also has a home version. OW price match umart special, $240
I'd been holding out on buying my own Zenbook (have setup several of varying configs) since last year hoping to see a new AMD option. Then JB's had their sale so picked up the cheapest one ($1299) with the Intel 1340P CPU. Couldn't pass on it at that price. Will flip it if new AMD models come out eventually and turn out good.
Would have liked more RAM and a 120Hz screen, but not essential since battery life was really the only priority. My use case for this machine is really minimal. Just general office tasks and to demo to clients.
I must say, I really hate Bing. Maybe I just need to learn and acclimatise to the Microsoft ecosystem. Anyhoo, the battery life on this thing is awesome! I'm getting a solid 8 hours on an 80% charge. The keyboard is much better and so too, the speakers and the webcam. To be fair though, 5 years will see an improvement in specs.
I am not a huge user of computers, but with my new voluntary role at work, I needed a Microsft laptop and overall I would give this an 8/10 for the price I paid ($1600) to what I have seen being advertised recently. It came reasonably well recommended and I was in a hurry to buy something, so overall, although being a newbie to the Microsft world, I would give it an 8/10.
The good points: Good keyboard; variable keyboard backlight brightness; one touch on/off calculator/numerical touchpad and very good speakers. Bad points, not too sure as I mentioned, coming from a 5 year old Chromebook, I don't have anything to compare it to.
Bought an i5-1340P Zenbook a couple weeks ago and just flipped it thanks to jbhifi putting their prices back up lol. Allowed me to upgrade to the current model with the Core 9 Ultra CPU for only a little extra.
First impressions as I'm still setting it up is the older model feels slightly more solid and has a nicer keyboard. The new one's keyboard is a little squishier. The added ventilation holes make the bottom plate feel a little more flexible. But the new chassis feels nicer overall due to the curvier edges. I do love the 120Hz screen which is something I knew I'd miss when I originally bought the older model with its 90Hz screen.
I've got a feeling that both the Core Ultra 7 and Core Ultra 9 still have a way to go with optimization.
There have been several Bios updates already to try and address this but I still feel they're slower than they should be.
My 10 year old Toshiba i7 boots up faster and installs specific Windows Updates faster than my Asus Zenbook Core Ultra 7
Many reviewers have also mentioned similar findings.
Yeah I've heard a little bit about it. I forgot to run some benchmarks before and after I updated the BIOS unfortunately. Whatever the case, I don't mind waiting for any potential optimizations to come. So far, haven't had any issues with my usage which has minimal power requirements. I've mentioned in a previous post that I was hoping to see what this years AMD Zenbooks turn out like and get one of them, but at the end of the day, I saved $1K on the Ultra 9 so it is what it is.
Can see a difference in performance on battery vs on power in benchmarks. But realistically, I'm only ever going to keep a laptop on balanced power mode for 99% of the time so will never really take advantage of the full performance it can achieve anyway. I guess maybe if I decide to play a game I might turn it up.
Coincidentally I've got a couple old laptops I'm transferring to new ones right now and one of them is a cheap HP with some SSD corruption but boots up fast. Not sure if it's actually booting faster than any of the new laptops I have on hand, but it certainly feels like it. Different story once in Windows though.
So, I'm looking at this as part of helping my child choose a laptop that can run Adobe Premiere Pro: -14-oled-ux3405ma.html Can someone explain about Intel Arc GPU? To borrow a line from a film I recently watched, explain to me like I was a small child or a golder retreiver.
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