1 kilogram at 1 centimeter – that’s the main highlight of this laptop – the Zenbook S 13 OLED UX5304. ASUS told us that they did a lot of trimming to achieve this – but this indeed affected a lot of different aspects as well. After using this laptop for about 2 weeks, I’ll share everything that I’ve discovered about this laptop with you in this video.
Alright, so let’s get one thing clear – this laptop isn’t exactly 1 kilogram in weight or 1 centimeter in thickness. We weighed and measured the laptop – and the truth is – it’s actually around 1045 grams and 11.27mm around the midpoint of the laptop.
I mean, the reason why I don’t sound surprised is that ASUS already clarified this to us, so I appreciate their honesty in that regard. Just that it looks nicer in the marketing material to round off the numbers.
To achieve this weight and thinness, ASUS didn’t magically found a way to drastically make the laptop thin. They had to re-engineer a lot of the existing parts and shave millimeters off to achieve this cumulative estimated 1-centimeter thickness without any compromises.
For example, the entire lid – including the display – is now thinner than before. But, ASUS still manages to pack in a magnificent 13.3-inch OLED screen with 2880×1800 pixel resolution at 16:10 aspect ratio and 60Hz refresh rate.
The color accuracy of it is astonishingly high. Our colorimeter reports about 100% across all 3 color gamuts and with the maximum ΔE of only around 2.27 – and that’s super impressive.
The maximum brightness is a bit low, as our colorimeter only reports around 370 nits. This could be an issue if you want to use the laptop outdoors.
ASUS managed to fit in Windows Hello facial recognition too. And, this laptop does have a custom boot animation that I’ve not seen in any other ASUS laptop so far.
Then, the keyboard also got trimmed and this is where I worried the most about this laptop. If the keyboard is thinner than usual, that means the travel distance – and the overall typing satisfaction – will be affected too. We already know that having minimal travel distance is a bad thing. Need I remind you of the MacBook’s atrocious butterfly switches?
Thankfully, while the keyboard on the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED reminded us of that butterfly switch, this is so much better. Sure, the travel distance is definitely affected but I can still type while feeling the springiness and tactility of each keystroke.
I mean, I can still casually get 119 words per minute.
The trackpad is, as usual, good. It tracks well and the palm rejection is indeed good. I would’ve wished for a touchscreen for a laptop like this but that would be impossible since that will add a lot of thickness to the screen.
There is one more big effect of being this thin – and that is the cooling system. If it is too thin, then the laptop will not have enough space to fit in proper heatpipes and heatsink – but ASUS did have some tricks up their sleeves.
So, the specs of this laptop. This is an interesting one. The variant we have here is running the Intel Core i5-1335U, Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, 16GB of DDR5 RAM at 5200MHz, and comes with 512GB of SSD too.
I’ll just show you the entire gaming performance here. I tried Genshin Impact at the lowest graphical quality and it can’t really go beyond 30fps. That is to be expected since we’re going to strain the Iris Xe quite hard here with its 2880×1800 pixel resolution.
And let’s not forget, the lowest graphical setting preset is already at 0.8x render resolution. We can lower it down further to 0.6x and it definitely performed better and we’re getting around high 40 and low 50 fps, but it’ll definitely look more pixelated.
Since we are testing the laptop at the performance power profile, the fan noise is at full speed – and it’s also rather loud.
But, that is not all. I don’t know how to proceed because you need to know a few things at the same time to understand the product.
Let’s continue with the power draw then. One big marketing point is that this laptop can go up to 20W of sustained power. But can it actually sustain 20W of power? Well, not quite. From Genshin Impact, we can see the temperature can easily hit 90°C and that’s already thermally throttling.
The maximum sustained power draw is at around 17W, which is still 2W higher than the nominal 15W.
With that said, we’ll now talk about the cooling system. Since this laptop is so thin, they stuffed two fans into the laptop. Yes, one on each side – but they’re asymetrical. That is why when I play games and the laptop start to heat out, only right side of the keyboard is warm to the touch. Our thermal camera also showed the temperature between the two sides.
Honestly, I do think this double fan design is the right thing to do – but that’s not all. This laptop also has the ErgoLift hinge – and this laptop lifts up by a lot which helps with the air intake for those fans.
Hey, I should also mention that the laptop also has a very smooth hinge and can be opened with a single finger. Neat, I guess.
Since we already have the laptop opened, we can see that nothing is upgradable or swappable except for the M.2 SSD. I truly appreciate ASUS for not soldering it to the motherboard, honestly.
Now, the battery is also affected by its thinness. This laptop has a 4-cell battery laid flat and wired to give out a total of 63Wh. It can last about 7 hours for my usage when I set it to silent power profile, streaming music through Spotify, browsing the web while typing the script and also doing some research and fact-checking. Pretty good, honestly.
What the thinness didn’t affect is the ports. We have double Thunderbolt 4 ports, a single USB-A 10Gb/s port, HDMI 2.1 TMDS (which is not the real HDMI 2.1, you need HDMI 2.1 FRL to be able to output 8K 60Hz) and also an audio jack.
You’ll have to charge the laptop using one of the Thunderbolt 4 ports. Now, ASUS did include a 65W charger in the box but I end up never using it since the Ugreen 140W GaN charger is able to handle this laptop plus a few more devices with no issues at all. I tried gaming on both the included 65W charger and the Ugreen charger, and the performance is the same – that’s good. I can just put stock charger in my bag and use it as an emergency backup.
All of these is packed within a beautiful laptop chassis. We have it in the Basalt Grey color that is created by going through the special “plasma ceramic aluminium” process. Whatever the heck that means, I just think that this laptop feels absolutely fantastic to look at and very nice to touch. The new ASUS logo also broke up the monotonous color and that looks very tasteful.
The laptop is also available in the Ponder Blue color but that won’t have the “plasma ceramic aluminium” infusion.
ASUS also said that this laptop is made with sustainability in mind. Even the box of the laptop is made out of cardboard – including the handle. Inside the box, we also have two of these angled pieces and you can use it as a laptop stand if you want to. Since ASUS gave you two, you can put one at home or another one in the office, I guess?
Should you buy the ASUS Zenbook 13 S OLED UX5304?
So, finally – for the price of RM4,999, I think it’s a niche laptop. If you absolutely want a thin and light laptop, then consider getting this one. Its beautiful screen and actually good performance make it fantastic for those who travel a lot.
It also has another variant – RM5,999 with an upgraded processor to the Intel Core i7-1355U with double the storage at 1TB. I’m not sure how the cooling system is able to keep up with it but looking at the Intel ARK webpage, the Core i7-1355U does have a few more megahertz for the CPU and more execution units for the Iris Xe graphics.
I’d say the Core i5 version is already good enough – and that’s all we have to share with you about this laptop. I love it, it’s unique, and ASUS is very daring to actually make these unusual laptops that we can actually buy and use.
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