Featherweight Asus Zenbook A14 has MacBook Air in sight, but it’s complicated

Since we first heard the terms Copilot+ PC and AI PC, things have really moved forward. If the Qualcomm chip powered Asus Zenbook A14 is anything to go by, it is clear the Taiwanese computing giant has retrained its guns on the Apple MacBook Air. More so, because the toolset is in place. Chip maker Qualcomm has a big role to play, with last year’s Snapdragon X Elite now being joined by the Snapdragon X chips for comparatively lower priced laptops. The timing may well be a coincidence, considering Apple has just refreshed the performance and portability defining MacBook Air portfolio.

That isn’t even the Zenbook A14’s party piece, considering it becomes an early mover with the Snapdragon X chips — and things stand, most other specs between the Snapdragon X and the more powerful Snapdragon X Elite variants, maintain parity. That means the Zenbook A14 (UX3407QA) carries a sticker price of ₹99,990 while the Zenbook A14 (UX3407RA) will set you back by ₹1,29,990.

As things stand with the Asus Zenbook 14, there is near perfect balance between definitively impressive performance, an ultra lightweight design (tips the scales at 980 grams; reminder of the ‘ultrabook’ era from many years ago, and close to 20 hours of battery runtime which brings it in the same ballpark as an M3 powered MacBook Air. I am yet to test how far the MacBook Air with the M4 chip has reset the benchmark, but safe to say it’ll widen a gap now that Qualcomm has achieved parity to a certain degree with the M3. But for Windows laptops, it’s a big deal nonetheless.

Even though laptop designs usually have a few colour or port placement changes sprinkled in that pursuit for looking unique, they’ve largely achieved a sort of visual baseline. That manual of familiarity, it is good to note, has been torn up and thrown into the shredder by Asus. The Zenbook A14 gets a very sophisticated and unique soft touch finish across the laptop — the lid, keyboard deck and the underside as well. This is true at least for the Zabriskie Beige which I tested.

A couple more interesting observations intersecting with how well the Zenbook A14 is built. There is no heat that gets transferred to the underside of this laptop even under fairly heavy workloads. Secondly, the fans are super silent for the most part, and you can only feel the draft of exiting air to know they’re working hard. But that has an asterix. Asus has done some serious weight reduction, and key to that has been the Ceraluminum material that now has properties of magnesium alloy. Hence, the weight reduction.

We’ve seen multiple times in the latest generation Copilot+ PCs over the past year, that Qualcomm has brought the Windows PC ecosystem the closest it has ever been to the Apple Silicon efforts which define the performance per watt statistics generation after generation. The fact that the Zenbook A14 is available with the lower priced Snapdragon X as well as the flagship Snapdragon X Elite chips, adds a width of choice to the portfolio.

The Zenbook A14 is as close as a Windows laptop has gotten to, in a long time, to matching a MacBook Air. There is 16GB RAM which is the minimum requirement for a Copilot+ PC, but to be fair, this could have done with a step up, all things considered. You can easily juggle a dozen browser tabs alongside a bunch of documents and spreadsheets, and the Zenbook A14 or the Snapdragon X Elite won’t break a sweat. That coupled with impressive battery life — close to 20 hours with our workflow, makes this a genuinely frugal laptop.

Except, you shouldn’t care much about gaming on the Zenbook A14. The reason isn’t the chip, graphics, or lack of specs to accompany it, but the very physics of a slim design. Strain this with video or photo editing, and the heat induced performance pressures becomes apparent. While I haven’t tested the Snapdragon X chip in a Zenbook A14 yet, that is expected to be a notch lower in terms of the overall capabilities.

The 14-inch OLED display is certainly a strong point, but for once, I’d point to a touchpad (comfortable dimensions, for sure) which doesn’t always respond to left or right clicks consistently (this could well be a unit specific issue). Secondly, the keyboard layout looks familiar to someone who has reviewed many an Asus laptop in the past year, but it soon becomes noticeable that the alignment is a shade more towards the left side (the fingers take some getting used to). On the brighter side, there are enough ports.

At the core of this decision would be if you can find value in parting with ₹99,990 or ₹1,29,990 for the Snapdragon X or the Snapdragon X Elite. The slim design perhaps makes you think more. If ultra-portability and a beautiful slim design are important, then you’ll probably imagine all boxes on the checklist are ticked off. The Asus Zenbook A14 is impressively lightweight, but not so in terms of performance. That’s a good balance to achieve.