ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED Review – A Lightweight Working Companion With Vibrant Visuals

The ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED is an ultra thin laptop that features an Intel Core i5 and 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM that’s perfect for working on the go.

Specs

Design

Without mincing words, I love the overall design of the Zenbook S 13 OLED. Despite being a 13.3 inch laptop, its thickest point is still just 11.8mm, which is very surprising. With the S 13 OLED weighing at only 1kg, it makes for a portable working companion that you can bring in just about anywhere and everywhere.

The back of the laptop has this straight and silver-ish line design with the ASUS Zenbook branding located on the bottom left side, which fits the overall look of the device. The surface of the laptop however, doesn’t quite have a matter finish, but there’s no need to worry about leaving fingerprint smudges since it’s fingerprint resistant.

The entire chassis of the laptop is made out of metal, with a combination of post-industrial and post-consumer recycled aluminum, making the S 13 OLED a relatively sturdy laptop, despite being lightweight.

Connectivity

The Zenbook S 13 OLED houses one USB Type-A port and a 3.5mm audio jack at the right, with two Thunderbolt 4 and a full size HDMI 2.1 at the left.

While the S 13 OLED doesn’t have a wide selection of ports available, it’s totally understandable considering this device is mainly a work laptop, so you wouldn’t necessarily need to plug in external mouse or keyboard.

Arguably, the lack of an SD or even a microSD card slot is a tad bit inconvenient, but it’s nothing a card reader nor dongle can’t solve. As for wireless connection, there’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 which is pretty nice and fast.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Although the laptop is really thin, there isn’t much flex when you type on it, and the feedback you get with this keyboard is pretty satisfying. The distance between each key is spaced out nicely, and I barely need time to grow accustomed to it. On top of the key travel distance being at 1.1mm, it works surprisingly well for typing.

In terms of ergonomics, the palm rest area of the laptop is pretty big, and it makes the experience using the laptop so much better in my opinion since I can rest my palm comfortably. There’s also white backlight on the keys, with 3 levels of brightness that you can adjust. It makes working in the dark doable.

The touchpad is pretty huge too and honestly very convenient for those who tend to work on the go, since you won’t need to bring an external mouse with you.

Display

The Zenbook S 13 OLED has a 13.3 inch 2880×1800 (16:10 ratio) OLED panel, with a 0.2ms response time, 60Hz refresh rate, 550 nits peak brightness, 100% DCI-P3 colour accuracy, and is VESA certified Display HDR True Black 500. The laptop also has a 180° hinge, which strength is pretty durable, even allowing you to open the laptop with just one hand.

The colour the screen manages to display out is just really vibrant and beautiful. However, given that it’s an OLED panel, it does mean that the display won’t be as glossy, which also means that it’s a fingerprint and smudge magnet, so you’ll have to clean it up fairly regularly.

Audio

There’s two speakers on the S 13 OLED, one on the left and right sides and it’s fairly loud. It’s pretty decent to watch videos with, and there’s not much to it aside from that, which is perfectly fine if you don’t use it for any audio mixing work. It doesn’t have much bass, but there’s a little bit of treble.

Considering the laptop has such a thin chassis, you can feel the vibration of the driver when it’s on full volume.

Battery Life

The Zenbook S 13 OLED comes with a 63WHrs battery, and testing it under 100% brightness and 50% volume, it got me an entire evening from me doing work while consuming media content. It took around 5 hours for it to go from 100% to 20%. While it might not seem impressive for a work laptop with a low power consumption CPU in it, you have to keep in mind that this device runs an OLED panel at full brightness. It can last a lot longer if you lower the brightness or have it on battery saving mode.

As for charging, it uses a 65W USB Type-C charging, making it super convenient since I can charge it with a phone’s charger that supports fast charging up to 65W. Charging it from 20% battery, it took around an hour to charge it up to 92%, which is fairly decent.

Benchmark

Packing an Intel Core i5-1335U and 16GB of soldered down RAM, the S 13 OLED will have no upgradability down the road, and it doesn’t have a dedicated GPU in it.

3DMark – 1,279 which is expected considering it only uses Intel Iris Xe, which is an integrated GPU.

PCMark 10 – 5,243 which is above average in terms of working laptop performance.

Cinebench R23 Multi-Core scored 5,169 which placed it in 9th place. While the Single-Core test scored 1,598, making it 1st place by a small margin.

Game Test

DOTA 2 – Default Lowest: Avg 66FPS, 1% Low is 30FPS

The Wandering Village – Default High: Avg 32FPS, 1% Low is 17FPS

Thronefall – Default Medium: Avg 58FPS, 1% Low is 27FPS

Cooling

The Zenbook S 13 OLED has this ErgoLift design where when you open up the display lid, it raises the chassis up to an angle, making typing much more comfortable and allows for more air flow overall.

While an Intel Core i5-1335U is not really a high power consumption chip, the laptop does heat up a little bit when it’s plugged in, even though you’re not doing anything high intensity.

You’ll feel a little bit of heat when you’re typing, but the most noticeable change is the fan noise, which goes up and down, and that’s constant throughout the rest of your day. I don’t actually mind the noise though, and when yo use it unplugged, it’s practically silent while the laptop doesn’t heat up which is really nice.

Verdict

Overall, the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED is amazing work laptop that’s really thin and lightweight, meaning that you can carry it around with ease. It’s got a great keyboard typing experience that you don’t normally get from.

The display is really bright with its 550 nits peak brightness, along with its vibrant colours. Not to mention the battery life of this laptop is really good. The only slight nitpick I had was that it might feel a little weird using the S 13 OLED on your lap because of the ErgoLift design, but that’s just a very minor gripe.

For more details on the Zenbook S 13 OLED, do check out ASUS’ official website here.

Join Us!