I tried the ridiculously light Asus Zenbook A14 at CES 2025 – and it is something special
Asus is going big at CES 2025, unveiling multiple new laptops across its various ranges – but one particular model really stood out when I got to take the new machines for a spin.
The Asus Zenbook A14 – look at that name for long enough and it starts to look very much like AIR, something I doubt is purely a coincidence – is a gorgeously svelte Windows 11 laptop, and according to Asus the lightest ever machine to pack the CoPilot+ suite of AI skills.
It really is the weight of this laptop that makes the strongest first impression. When I picked up the 980g machine, I thought briefly I was holding a demo unit – one without the actual components inside.
It’s good looking too, with a simple clean overall look constructed from Asus’ favoured ‘Ceraluminum’ material and a very large trackpad below a comfortable keyboard with 1.3mm of travel.
The Zenbook A14 isn’t all about weight though, and there’s lots more here. The display is fantastic and even though it’s not a touch panel, it ticks a lot of the boxes I look for in a screen of a device aiming to be one of the best laptops around. It’s an OLED panel, with a perfectly adequate FHD resolution, 600 nits of reported peak brightness and 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut.
Asus Zenbook A14 Specs
Inside it’s very much a Qualcomm affair, with either Snapdragon X Elite or newly-announced Snapdragon X chipset running the show. We’ve reviewed lots of Snapdragon X Elite machines, including the Surface Pro 11, and our reviewers have been consistently impressed with the performance.
These Qualcomm chips are also fantastic for endurance – Asus is claiming 32 hours of battery life for certain models and in certain tests – although we’ll need to get this machine into our labs to really know for sure. There’s also the now standard selection of CoPilot+ AI skills, with the addition of Recall when that controversial feature finally becomes available.
Elsewhere, there are RAM options up to 32GB, up to 1TB of SSD, Wi-Fi 7 and a surprisingly strong port selection including two USB 4 capable USB-C ports (both with support for Display Port and Power Delivery for charging), a USB 3.2 port, HDMI 2.1 and, of course, an audio jack. The MacBook Air M4 – arguably one of the machines Asus is looking to rival with this model – can’t compete with those ports.
The Asus Zenbook A14 goes on sale today (January 7) with a starting price of £999.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
