Home Review Laptop Review – ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3402: Near perfection

Review – ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3402: Near perfection

May 27, 2022

If you’re interested in this video… Then lemme tell you this – the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3402 that we have here, isn’t that much different from the Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition UX5401 that we have reviewed recently. There are a few differences, though – and that is what makes this laptop a more logical purchase compared to the Space Edition.

Why do I say that? Well, let’s find out in today’s video.

Okay, we’ll start with the obvious – the looks. Since this is a “standard” edition laptop, there is no fancy design on this laptop. However, this laptop also commemorates the 30th anniversary of ASUS.

Yea, we have a Star Trek-looking logo and I honestly prefer this design over the concentric circles that we’ve been seeing so far. Better yet, this new matte design doesn’t catch any fingerprints too.

There is another thing that’s new – the hinge. This supremely shiny, glossy hinge is a combination of old and new technologies. Firstly, opening it up beyond 90º will cause the ErgoLift to engage, lifting up the laptop at a slight angle to provide a better typing experience and also some cooling airways – and the hinge also allows the screen to open all the way to 180º flat.

But it doesn’t have a touchscreen… and that is one of my biggest complaints about this laptop, honestly. Speaking of the screen, this is an OLED screen with a resolution of 2880×1800 pixels and 90Hz refresh rate. Sure sounds amazing on paper, right? And rightly so – because this specific laptop comes with what I assume to be a higher grade of OLED panel?

You see, in the past, when we reduce the brightness below 55%, it becomes DC dimming. For this laptop, it doesn’t. It seemingly maintains that DC dimming all the way to 1% brightness – which is a huge plus point.

As for color accuracy, when we tested it at 100 nits of brightness, it can reach 100% sRGB and 99.96% of DCI-P3 – but that’s not surprising since all ASUS OLED laptops we tried in the past have really good color accuracy.

What’s different here, is the maximum brightness. Our colorimeter reported more than 400 nits of brightness – which means it is still not bright enough to be used under direct sunlight but should do fine under shade.

Then comes the keyboard. I was typing the entire script of this review in complete darkness because there was an electricity outage in my house at that time and I thought that was a fantastic time to test the battery life of this laptop.

I think it is only recently that ASUS has changed to this new big-sized and centered but thin legends on the keycaps. I like this look. The keys also feel very springy and have a good travel distance. It also feels great to bottom out as it does have some bounceback, making it kinda fun to type on.

There is one thing that I personally like – and that is the placement of the power button. It’s one column to the left of the rightmost key. I think those who have muscle memory of mashing the top right corner for delete will appreciate this keyboard layout. And yes, there is a dedicated print screen key too.

The trackpad is fairly basic. It does what it needs to do and has good tracking, good palm rejection, and it also comes with the NumberPad feature too. I mean, you can use that if you want to.

As for the specs – this laptop comes with the new family of mobile processors, the Intel Core i7-1260P. We’ve talked more about the 3 families within the 12th Gen Intel Core Processors in another video – so check it out here.

Here are some quick screenshots to show you what the Intel Core i7-1260P is capable of. Combined with 16GB of DDR5 at 4800MHz – and I’ve also tried some gaming on this laptop too. The performance is… still bottlenecked by the Iris Xe GPU. I mean, this is pretty much the same Iris Xe GPU from 11th Gen U-series processors. The new P-series chip is even the same as last generation’s high-powered U-series processors too!

You know, it’s funny that this morning, I read an article by NotebookCheck stating that the Core i5-1240P can outperform the Core i7-1260P. I find that to be amusing because we’ll surely revisit this point later in the video.

So what’s new with the 12th Gen chips, in general, is the separation of P-cores and E-cores, which are aptly named Performance cores and Efficiency cores. This definitely plays a role in prolonging the battery life as we can easily get more than 8 hours from a single charge while using it in silent power profile and at 55% brightness while typing this script and with a few Chrome tabs opened.

One more thing that I realized is that this laptop comes with a 65W USB-C charger. I have not used this charger at all and just left it in the box because I just use the Ugreen 100W GaN charger. It’s more convenient and declutter my desk.

And let’s talk about the ports available now. I’d say the ports are well-rounded as it has USB-A and USB-C, and also a full-sized HDMI port. I think this is what most people want when it comes to ports on a laptop.

Upgradability and serviceability are two more things that I need to highlight here. Opening this laptop is another problem as it uses Torx screws, and there are two more hidden screws underneath the rubber padding at the two corners at the hinge side. I really hate this.

Once we’ve opened up, like many other ASUS laptops that were released recently, nothing can be upgraded. We can only swap out the SSD and WiFi chip if we want to. Both fan and heatsink can also be serviced easily.

Then, we have nothing else to see in her, so let’s close it back.

Should you buy the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3402?

So, at the end of the day, should you buy the ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3402? Well, there are two different versions available:

i7-1260P/16GB RAM/1TB SSD (Ponder Blue) – RM5,599
i5-1240P/16GB RAM/512GB SSD (Aqua Celadon / Ponder Blue) – RM4,399

I’ll say, the Core i5 model is actually very good in terms of the value that it offers. This is ultimately still a thin and light laptop with supremely long battery life – it’s just that ASUS added a magnificent high-resolution OLED screen to it and we can still play some games at the side.

The only thing missing on this laptop is a touchscreen. Other than that, I think it’s a fantastic laptop in its own league.