Iterative Refinement of a Premium Ultraportable

The 2024 ASUS Zenbook S 14 solidifies its position as one of the best Windows alternatives to Apple’s MacBook Air. With elevated performance, enhanced battery life, and solid build quality, the Zenbook S 14 culminates into a laptop that offers meaningful improvements in key areas.

Asus Zenbook S 14 (2024)

The 2024 ASUS Zenbook S 14 solidifies itself as one of the best Windows alternatives to Apple’s MacBook Air, bringing meaningful improvements in key areas. With a refined yet familiar design, it remains lightweight and portable while introducing new color options and ASUS’ durable Ceraluminum material. Despite its ultra-thin form, ASUS manages to pack in a solid selection of ports, along with an upgraded cooling system to keep thermals in check. Overall, it shows that Intel’s Lunar Lake can hold its own in a growing ARM-based market.

Pros & Cons

• Excellent OLED display
• Decent port selection
• Extremely light and portable design

• Sub-par FHD camera
• Can still be loud during heavy workloads

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Price and Availability

The ASUS Zenbook S 14 is available directly through ASUS’ website and major retailers, including Best Buy and Amazon. It is available with the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, Core Ultra 5 226V, Core Ultra 7 256V, or Core Ultra 9 Processor 288V, and in either the Zumaia Gray or Scandinavian White color variants.

Storage options include either a 512- or 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, and memory can be configured with either 16- or 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM. My review unit is the mid-tier configuration, including the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage.

A Familiar Ultraportable Design

In terms of aesthetics and build quality, the Zenbook S 14 maintains the sleek, lightweight profile that characterized the previous generation. The CNC-machined chassis is now available in an understated Zumaia Gray and Scandinavian White, which both look and feel excellent.

ASUS’ Ceraluminum material, which is a ceramic-aluminum alloy, makes a comeback, and provides an impressive strength-to-weight ratio, though the darker gray colorway remains prone to fingerprint smudges.

At 1.2 kg (2.6 lbs) and 1.1 cm (0.45 inches) thin, portability remains the Zenbook’s key strength, with the laptop being really easy to slip into backpacks and forget about. What’s more important, is that ASUS still provides a decent number of ports on this smaller laptop, with the S 14 getting two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI 2.1, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, and an audio combo jack, compared to the MacBook Air which only gives you two Thunderbolt 4 ports and an audio jack.

The Zenbook S 14’s keyboard layout remains largely unchanged from its predecessor, which isn’t a bad thing. The chiclet-style keyboard offers 1.1mm of key travel, slightly shorter than some competitors, but the subtle 0.1mm dish-shaped indentation improves key stability. The typing experience is comfortable for long sessions, though again, Microsoft’s and Apple’s keyboards still hold an edge in tactility.

The trackpad is also quite good. ASUS has added a hydrophobic and PVD anti-fingerprint coating, which helps reduce smudging and ensure smoother gliding, but honestly, it’s not something you’ll really think or worry about—what matters is, this trackpad is accurate and reliable, and it’s a decent size for this form factor.

It’s also worth mentioning that ASUS is using an FHD 3DNR IR webcam, which offers subpar performance. While it’s great to use with Windows Hello and logs in quite fast, for video calls, it falls short both in terms of picture quality.

ASUS states that they’re using “3D noise-reduction technology” to make images less grainy, especially within low-light environments, but in my testing, it’s marginally better than the typical webcams you’ll find on a sub-$1,000 Windows laptop, and nowhere near the quality of something like Apple’s MacBook Air or MacBook Pro.

A Display That Holds Its Own

ASUS continues to use its Lumina OLED panels for the Zenbook S 14, and this continues to be one of the best panels I’ve seen on a laptop anywhere. The 14-inch 3K OLED display offers a 120Hz refresh rate and 100% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage, making it one of the best displays on a Windows laptop today, not only for content consumption, but for serious photo and video editing as well. Compared to the larger Zenbook S 16, the 14-inch laptop really feels quite small without sacrificing too much in real estate.

This generation also improves upon eye comfort, with the display emitting 70% less blue light than traditional LCDs. The only drawback is that the glossy finish—while enhancing contrast—can be reflective in bright environments. The other drawback with this OLED is it still only has a peak brightness of about 500 nits, which means it’s fine for indoor use, but not outside, especially in direct sunlight. Part of it has to do with the difficulty of producing a large-screen OLED with high brightness, but we saw Apple do it with its Tandem OLED on the iPad Pro last year, so I hope this is an area ASUS can improve upon.

It’s also worth mentioning that touch support is available, but the laptop’s 180-degree hinge prevents it from being fully convertible, which makes stylus input less practical than on a 2-in-1 device.

Intel Redeems Itself

This year’s biggest change comes in the form of the new Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 2 processor, which dramatically enhances performance, battery life, and efficiency. Built on Intel’s latest Lunar Lake architecture, the CPU incorporates a more advanced NPU for AI workloads, a new Arc-based GPU, and a redesigned core layout to improve power efficiency.

These were all promises Intel has made before, but it’s clear that they’re finally delivering on it because the Zenbook S 14 rivals ARM-based ultrabooks quite aggressively. In Geekbench 6, this laptop scores 2,460 on single-core and 10,353 on multicore.

In real-world use, applications launch quickly, multitasking is seamless, and the laptop remains mostly quiet even under moderate workloads. Web-based tasks, office applications, and media consumption run effortlessly, and make this an excellent choice for professionals and students, especially because you don’t have to worry about app compatibility on an x86 platform.

Thermal performance is another area where the Zenbook S 14 has significantly improved over its predecessor. The laptop no longer gets excessively warm during casual usage, and fan noise—while still present under heavy loads—is much better managed than before. ASUS’ Whisper Mode keeps noise levels below 25dB in light workloads, which makes this one of the quieter thin-and-light Windows laptops I’ve used.

ASUS has positioned this as an “AI PC,” and in my testing, AI-related tasks performed remarkably well. Running Llama 3.2 locally was smooth—and I think you can expect these models to run faster when you keep the device plugged in. Of course, this laptop incorporates AI features such as Windows Copilot and ASUS’ own StoryCube, which worked seamlessly, and I didn’t notice any hiccups when using AI-driven applications through Adobe’s Photoshop or Lightroom.

Battery life has seen a significant boost thanks to the efficiency of the new Intel processor. The 72Wh battery consistently delivers around 10 hours of real-world use in my testing, with mixed workloads including browsing, document editing, and media consumption. This is generally really great battery life for a laptop of this form-factor, but I will admit, I am spoiled by the M3 MacBook Air, which delivers much longer screen-on-time and insane standby time that lets me use the laptop into the next day, all with a smaller battery.

ASUS does include a 65W charger that can top up the battery to 50% in about 45 minutes though, which is quite nice when I do need to plug in to charge.

Should You Buy the ASUS Zenbook S 14?

The ASUS Zenbook S 14 (2024) is an excellent choice if you’re looking for a premium Windows ultraportable that balances portability, performance, and practicality. It refines an already great formula with better thermals, solid battery life, and a premium build, making it one of the best alternatives to the MacBook Air. If you prioritize a lightweight yet well-built laptop with a high-quality display, a decent keyboard, and a good selection of ports, the Zenbook S 14 is an easy recommendation. It’s especially compelling for students and professionals who need a sleek, dependable machine for everyday tasks.

That said, it’s still worth considering the larger landscape of the laptop market— it’ll be interesting to see where Intel and its OEMs will go, especially given that almost all the large laptop makers, including ASUS have been shifting to offering ARM-based machines, with the latest Zenbook A14 being a more direct competitor to Apple’s MacBook Air.

While ARM might be on its wind-up years on Windows, and will struggle with app compatibility for at least a couple more years, it’s only a matter of time before it takes away one of Intel’s last remaining advantages.

Overall, the Zenbook S 14 (2024) is an iterative but meaningful improvement that culminates in being one of the best ultraportable laptops on the market. If you liked the previous model or are looking for a powerful yet lightweight Windows laptop, this one should definitely be on your radar.

Asus Zenbook S 14 (2024)

The 2024 ASUS Zenbook S 14 solidifies itself as one of the best Windows alternatives to Apple’s MacBook Air, bringing meaningful improvements in key areas. With a refined yet familiar design, it remains lightweight and portable while introducing new color options and ASUS’ durable Ceraluminum material. Despite its ultra-thin form, ASUS manages to pack in a solid selection of ports, along with an upgraded cooling system to keep thermals in check. Overall, it shows that Intel’s Lunar Lake can hold its own in a growing ARM-based market.