ASUS ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition review: Worth the premium? (Updated)

Note: This review was first published on 22nd April 2022. We are republishing it now as ASUS has upgraded it with a 4K display, but has maintained the same price for the notebook. The review is still based on the earlier display resolution.

Ready for prime time

ASUS has finally sent me a retail-ready version of the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition. It’s a notebook made to commemorate the P6300, ASUS’ first ever notebook. The space connection is because the P6300 actually spent over 600 days onboard the now-defunct Mir space station. ASUS is very proud of the fact that during its time in space, the P6300 notebook reported zero issues.

On the outside, it’s mostly the same as the pre-production unit that I received. So for this article, I’m going to focus on the performance. For my thoughts on how this notebook feels and handles, check out my hands-on here. That said, let’s go through some key points and features of this notebook.

Key features

Though the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition is based on the ZenBook 14X OLED which I reviewed earlier, it has a number of differences.

The most obvious is the finish of the chassis. It comes in a colour that ASUS calls Zero-G Titanium, which, to my eyes, seems like a mix of gunmetal titanium and gold. Then there are the various space-inspired motifs and printed on the lid is the Morse code representation of the popular Latin phrase “per aspera ad astra” – which translates to “our aspirations take us to the stars.”

Of course, the star is the small digital display that ASUS calls the ZenVision display. Essentially, it’s a 3.5-inch OLED panel that can be customised to show system status, a personal message, a fun animation, or anything you want. Customisation is done through the MyASUS app which comes with four preset options. Though the display is quite low in resolution – only 256 x 64 pixels – the end effect is that it has the look of 8-bit graphics which many would surely find charming.

Another highlight of the notebook is the display. ASUS has been pushing OLED displays in their notebooks hard and the premium is well worth it. Here, we have a 14-inch screen with a resolution of 2,880 x 1,800 pixels and it covers 100% of the DCI-P3 colour space. Because it’s OLED, the contrast ratio is a stunning 1,000,000:1. It also has Pantone validation and VESA DisplayHDR 500 True Black certification. Some readers might be concerned about burn-in, but ASUS has technologies in place to prevent that. The important thing, however, is that it looks great. Colours look natural, but they are also vivid and punchy. It’s hard to go back to a regular LCD display after this.

(Updated on 9th December 2022): While the notebook launched with a 2,880 x 1,800 pixels resolution OLED screen, in Singapore, it's now updated with a 4K OLED screen (3,840 x 2,400 pixels) at no extra cost.

Connectivity is excellent in this notebook. On the left, you have two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports and a full-size HDMI port. On the right, you have a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, a 3.5mm audio combo jack, and a microSD card slot. You cannot ask for any better on an ultraportable notebook.

Performance analysis

The ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition is the first notebook I’ve tested to use Intel’s new Alder Lake mobile processor. We’ve written about it in greater detail here so you might want to check that out first.  But the long and short of it is that these processors feature Intel's big-core + little-core implementation – something that Arm processors have had great success with. So like Arm processors, Intel’s Alder Lake processors have performance cores and efficient cores.

The unit is powered by the Core i7-12700H, which is a mid-range H-series part with 14 cores – 6 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores. The base clock speed of the performance cores is 2.3GHz and it’s capable of ramping up to 4.7GHz during intensive workloads. Likewise, base TDP is 45W but the chip can go as high as 115W. Graphics is the integrated Iris Xe with 96 execution units. The notebook also has 16GB of memory and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD.

It will be interesting to see how it compares against the bunch of ultraportable notebooks that I recently tested like the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon, HP Spectre x360 14, and of course ASUS’ very own ZenBook 14X OLED.

Performance for the most part was good. I didn’t see big gains in PCMark 10, though its storage scores were good thanks to the fast PCIe 4.0 SSD. Where the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition really took off was on the CPU-intensive benchmarks like Geekbench 5 and Cinebench. On these benchmarks, we can really see the prowess of the new Alder Lake CPU. Single-core scores were up around 15% while multi-core scores nearly doubled in most cases. Even the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon and its Ryzen 5000 series mobile chip were no match in the multi-core stakes, which really shows how far Intel has come with this new architecture.

Graphics performance

The graphics performance, however, wasn’t so great. Though CPU performance has improved, the use of the same integrated Iris Xe GPU meant graphics performance was more or less the same.

Battery life

Note: Battery tests were conducted using PCMark 10's battery benchmark with display set to 100% brightness.

The ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition lasted 43 minutes longer than the ZenBook 14X OLED in the Modern Office workload and nearly 30 minutes longer on the Gaming workload. Seeing that the two are nearly identical apart from the processors, I think it’s safe to say that the Alder Lake processor is a more efficient than its predecessor (Tiger Lake). However, its battery life was still the shortest compared to its rivals. The HP Spectre x360 14, Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Carbon, and Microsoft Surface Pro 8, all lasted well over 8 hours. And if we look at the power consumption figures, it’s easy to see why. The ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition consumes quite a bit more power. Even on the Modern Office Workload, it consumed over 10W, which is nearly 40% more than even its closest rival. Still, considering it has superior CPU performance, I'd consider this a small win for the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition.

Worth it?

At S$2,698, the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition is a rather pricey notebook. Especially when you consider that ASUS has other models with similar capabilities and specs that cost less. That’s a hefty premium for some cosmetic changes.

Ultimately, whether the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition is right for you will come down to how much of a ZenBook fan you are or how much you really like the space-inspired design and that somewhat gimmicky but admittedly very funky customisable OLED display on the front. 

If you like it enough to cough up the extra dough that ASUS is asking, this is a fine notebook. The build quality, display, and performance are all good. The keyboard and trackpad are great, and it has a good offering of ports. The only bad thing you could say about it is that it’s a little chunky and heavy, and battery life isn’t the greatest. 

(Updated on 9th December 2022): While the notebook launched with a 2,880 x 1,800 pixels resolution OLED screen, in Singapore, it's now updated with a 4K OLED screen (3,840 x 2,400 pixels) at no extra cost. Perhaps this makes it easier to swallow the price tag of the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition.

If you need us to recommend alternatives, check our great ultraportable notebook shootout.

 

The ASUS ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition goes on sale on 29 April and will be available exclusively on the ASUS Online Store and at the ASUS Exclusive Store for S$2,698.

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