What if we have the efficiency of the Snapdragon X Elite chips on an x86 chip? That might not sound possible – but that is exactly what Intel did with the latest Intel Core Ultra Mobile Processors Series 2. Yes, that is the official name of this new generation of Lunar Lake chips. This is the 15th Gen Intel Core processor but Intel doesn’t use that nomenclature anymore.
Anyway, I’ve done quite a lot of tests – and today, we’re going to show you what this chip can actually do. It’s quite good, honestly – and I’m impressed in many ways.
Now, let’s talk about some specs. This ASUS Zenbook S 14 UX5406S comes with the new Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, which has the new Intel Arc 140V integrated GPU too.
This new Lunar Lake architecture actually brings a lot of new benefits and upgrades – like new P-cores and low-powered E-cores but they also removed HyperThreading for this generation. So, this Intel Core Ultra 7 258V has 8 cores and 8 threads.
The new Intel Arc 140V integrated GPU is based on the new Xe2 architecture. It has 8 Xe cores and I won’t get into the specs of the GPU since I’m only interested in the result.
The laptop also has 32GB of RAM at 8533MT/s. Half of the system memory could be allocated to become the VRAM for the integrated graphics as well.
We’re testing this laptop with the highest performance possible – and we can toggle this on ASUS laptops by hitting Fn+F keys. The full performance mode will literally let the fan run as fast as possible whenever needed.
Let’s head straight on and give you a recap on the gaming test that we did. First comes Genshin Impact. This game is surprisingly taxing for a laptop with integrated graphics and we can actually play the game with medium graphical settings at 1080p resolution and still get about 60fps throughout the entire gameplay.
However, there is a problem when it comes to one particular part of the game that I realized. You see, in this desert area, it will crash. 100%. Without fail. I don’t know what’s happening as I have updated Windows and the Intel Arc GPU driver to the latest version, and tried it on another laptop with the exact same chipset and the same thing happened.
We’ve tested on another laptop with the exact same Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, and the result is identical. I can conclude that this is definitely an issue from either Intel or Microsoft, and it’s not the laptop manufacturer’s fault.
Then comes Zenless Zone Zero. This is the one game that I enjoy a lot these days and it runs pretty good though. It’s mostly above 60fps though sometimes it can dip below 60fps, and there are some frame dips here and there.
For Black Myth: Wukong’s benchmark, I tried two combinations. The first one is with FSR, and the other one is with XeSS. Surprisingly, the XeSS just ran consistently worse compared to the FSR counterpart. Yes, AMD’s FSR is working better on an Intel chip. This could be due to the game using an older version of XeSS – but we can’t confirm since the game doesn’t tell us what version it’s using.
I’m not talking about the overall image quality, though. I’m just talking about the pure frame rates achievable.
Either XeSS or FSR still yields above 30fps at the lowest settings at 1080p, so that’s definitely sufficient. If you want to play the game on this laptop, then you actually can.
As for GTA V at the lowest settings, we can get very high average frame rates of around 120 but the frame rate can drop to about 33. While the frame dips are huge, you can still get through the entire game with the lowest settings and still get a very good overall experience.
This is only a quick recap of the gaming test video that we’ve uploaded – so you can check out the full video if you want to know more about it.
Even the fan isn’t exactly that loud too, since the temperature is hovering somewhere around 78°C on average, but can spike up to 90°C. Still way below the temperatures we had before.
Now, after doing all of these tests, I can tell you one thing – this chip is just impressive. Intel put a heavy emphasis on efficiency this generation and I think they managed to improve the performance and improve the efficiency at the same time.
When we play games on this laptop, the wattage can go up to 28W and sometimes spike up to 37W, but the idle wattage can go down to as low as below 1W. Yeah, below a single watt – but only for a split second. It does hover around 1 to 3W most of the time.
That also translates to an amazingly good battery life. I use this laptop for scripting and research while listening to music, and also some YouTube videos in the mix. Honestly, I can’t finish the battery in one day of work. If I extrapolate my usage data, I think the battery life lasts for around 10 hours.
We also locked the brightness of the laptop to 100 nits at 120Hz refresh rate and did the PCMark 10’s Modern Office battery life benchmark – and this laptop lasts for 17 hours. Seriously, that is just amazing.
By the way, the included charger for this laptop is a GaN charger. It’s very tiny and portable – and we can swap out the cable into something longer if we want to. Just make sure the cable is compatible.
Okay, enough about the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V chipset. Now, let’s talk about the laptop itself. This is the ASUS Zenbook S 14 UX5406S. It’s a 14-inch laptop with an amazing OLED screen – 2880×1800 pixels to be exact. It’s a 16:10 aspect ratio and it goes up to 120Hz as well.
The color accuracy is as great as before – it covers 100% of both sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts. The maximum DeltaE number should be an outlier since the average is so slow. Its maximum brightness is at around 400 nits in SDR mode and around 600 nits in HDR mode. So, very good colors overall.
However, this is not a touchscreen – so keep that in mind.
The design of this laptop is as usual. It is available in two colors – Scandinavian White or the Zumaia Gray that we have. The laptop is really thin and sleek and also lightweight – that’s amazing.
As for the keyboard, it’s the same as the Zenbook S 16 that we reviewed recently. The travel distance is a bit short but otherwise still is great to type on. It’s still responsive and bouncy.
As for the trackpad, it’s the same as well. The palm rejection is okay. There is a new feature to swipe either the top, left, or right edges to trigger different things and this feature though, is something where the palm rejection isn’t that great. Many times while I was typing, the volume just went up for no reason.
As for the ports, we have double Thunderbolt 4 ports, a HDMI 2.1 TMDS – which is actually HDMI 2.0, and also an audio jack on left side. There is only a singular USB-A 10Gb/s on the right side – and I think this is a good position. It does lack an SD card reader when compared to the larger 16-inch variant, though. That is particularly important for people like me who deals with SD cards day in and day out.
As for the upgradability, there is none. Everything is soldered onto the motherboard and the only thing that we can change is the M.2 2280 SSD. There’s nothing else of interest here other than maybe servicing the fans when it eventually gets clogged with dust.
Should you buy the new ASUS Zenbook S 14 UX5406S?
And that’s about it. The Lunar Lake architecture is an amazing step forward for Intel. Finally, they realized that pushing for maximum performance is not the way to go and put an emphasis on efficiency. They proved to the world that x86 can last as long as an Arm-powered laptop – and we don’t have to deal with the app incompatibility issues.
The laptop itself is priced at RM6,999 and you can buy it now – and I think this is an amazing laptop paired with an amazing chip from Intel.
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