[REVIEW] ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5400 – Premium Ultrabook with 2 Screens, Kind Of

ASUS has gone all-in with OLED for all their new laptops, the same goes for their ultrabook series laptops, the ASUS Zenbook.

ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5400

The ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED that I reviewing is the top-of-the-line configurations with Intel Core i7-1165G7, 16GB of LPDDR4X RAM and paired with NVIDIA GeForce MX450 dedicated graphics card. It also features a second colour display on its touchpad.

ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5400 – Specifications

  • Processor: Intel Core i5-1135G7 / Intel Core i7-1165G7
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce MX450 2GB GDDR6
  • Display: 14″ 2.8K (2,880 x 1,800) 16:10 90Hz OLED Touch Display, 550 nits, 100% DCI-P3, PANTONE & VESA Display HDR500 True Black
  • Memory: Up to 16 of LPDDR4X RAM
  • Storage: 512GB NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD
  • Ports: 2x Thunderbolt 4, 1x HDMI 2.0b, 1x USB A 3.2 Gen2, 3.5mm Audio Port & microSD Card Reader
  • Connectivity: 802.11AX Wi-Fi 6 & Bluetooth 5.0
  • Battery: 63Wh 3-cell Li-ion battery with 100W Adapter
  • Dimension: 31.12 x 22.12 x 1.69 cm @ 1.4kg/3.09lb
  • Price: RM 4,999 / RM 5,999

Here’s my FastView of the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5400:

Design

We can easily distinguish ASUS Zenbook with its notable concentric circle ASUS logo back cover. There are a lot of high-gloss silver chamfer edges inside out that made the laptop look premium.

ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5400 Back Cover

Aluminium armoured Zenbook 14X OLED is robust and built to meet the MIL-STD-810H U.S. military standard for reliability and durability. It’s solidly built and exhibits zero bending or flexing on the chassis which is crucial for an ultraportable laptop like this.

The Zenbook logo is now moved off from the display chin to the top of the keyboard, allowing it to have a taller display ratio and wider screen estate. Overall the bezels are much narrower which keeps the 720p webcam on the top.

Continuing its design language, the ASUS ErgoLift hinge is still present. It tilts the keyboard upwards while raising the chassis for optimized air cooling. It even features a 180° lay-flat that makes it easy to share content with others or collaborate with a group of people around the desk.

Overall, the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED is built like a tank beside the weight. It’s portable to handle with one hand and a visually pleasant-looking laptop.

Ports & Connectivity

Zenbook 14X OLED is packed with a great amount of I/O ports; 2x USB Thunderbolt 4, a full-sized HDMI 2.0b, 3.5mm audio port, a microSD card reader and a USB A 3.2 Gen 2. The Thunderbolt 4 supports 40Gbps data transfer, fast Power Delivery Charging and 4K display output. I’ll complain again about the oddly positioned highspeed ports only on the right side. Imagine you connecting HDMI for an external monitor, highspeed SSD external drive and a headphone, there won’t be much space for your external mouse if you are using one on a small desk.

ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5400 Ports

Connectivity-wise; Bluetooth 5.0 and 802.11AX Wi-Fi 6

Keyboard & Touchpad (ScreenPad 2.0)

The keyboard layout is good with additional Page Up/Down, Home/End keys on the right. Typing is comfortable and almost silent. The fingerprint scanner is also baked into the power button for quick and breeze Windows login.

ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5400 Fingerprint Scanner

The touchpad on the Zenbook 14X OLED is not just an ordinary touchpad. The ASUS ScreenPad 2.0, which is what ASUS called, offers a secondary display that features a handful of pre-installed apps including Spotify, Evernote, Calculator, Number Key and many other apps.

ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5400 ScreenPad 2.0

The 5.65-inch IPS-level touch display has a high 2,160 x 1,080 FHD+ resolution operate just like an extended monitor where it allows you to drag windows or applications seamlessly. This makes it handy to have various tools on the side without interruption of the main display. I could have Telegram, Spotify, Calculator and many more to facilitate multitasking. In fact, it works similar to the ASUS Zenbook Duo 14 just with a lot smaller secondary display. It’s great to use the Zenbook 14X OLED with a mouse if you are utilizing the second display for multitasking.

Little to know, the touchpad (ScreenPad 2.0) can be clicked like a normal touchpad with left and right clicks. It’s responsive and the gliding is on the natural side.

Display

The cherry on top of this laptop of course its display. The 92% screen-to-body ratio 14″ OLED touch display not only sports a high 2,880 x 1,800, 3K resolution, but it also features a 90Hz refresh rate.

ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5400 ASUS OLED

The ASUS OLED panel is bright and vibrant offers 100% sRGB and 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut which is an edge for content creators who need high colour accuracy. It’s also PANTONE Validated and VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certified display.

While I’m editing a photo for my video cover, I do notice that the gradient colour are completely smooth without any banding which shows it is a true 10-bits panel as what ASUS advertised. It’s an excellent display which I can expect from ASUS OLED.

Performance

Performance was generally good with impressive benchmarks test results. It scored 5,145 on PCMark 10, excel in Essential, Productivity and Digital Content Creation categories with 9,016, 8,518 and 4,812 respectively. Coming to Cinebench R23 it scored 1,406 and 5,020 for single-core and multi-core.

While the read-write speeds on the 512GB SK Hynix at an impressive 3,524MB/s read and 2,911 MB/s write.

Running Adobe applications are relatively optimized thanks to the NVIDIA Cuda acceleration which improved the overall graphics experience on Adobe Creative Cloud applications.

Generally, the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED’s performance was fairly good for an ultrabook. Not just on productivity, it can also game like CS:GO, Genshin Impact, Asphalt and more but at medium graphics settings.

Breaking the boundaries of performance for thin and light laptops – with 11th Gen Intel® Core i7 processors.

Battery Life

On average, it lasted around 5 to 6 hours on casual use like web browsing, music streaming and some document editing. Heavy usage like editing video on Adobe Premiere Pro would only last probably 3 hours before tethering to the wall socket.

Where to buy

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ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED UX5400
  • Design
  • Built
  • Display
  • Performance
  • Features
  • Battery
4.5

Verdict

Laptops with OLED is not common but ASUS has been leading it with favourable price options including this ultraportable laptop. The ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED has an excellent display as expected and solid physique quality built. It has robust performance with the Intel 11th Gen Tiger Lake processor paired with NVIDIA GeForce MX450. The only drawback is probably the mediocre battery life.

With the starting price of RM 4,999, I would say the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED is passable especially equipped with a premium OLED display and some nice extras like the ScreenPad 2.0.