ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition Review: Sleek and Shiny, But Still The Same

The ASUS ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition is certainly a striking piece of machinery. Its sleek, space-oriented design and Titanium-G color scheme give it a truly premium feel. The design with graphs and compass-like markings make it feel like the sort of machine you’d see on a real spaceship. It also offers a truly solid gaming experience being run most games well, albeit not at their highest performance. 

The Space Edition model is a cosmetic redesign of the standard 14X to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Asus P6300 laptop’s trip to space for use on the Mir space station. While it’s great to celebrate such a momentous occasion it also means that the Space Edition has the same issues as the previous 14X models. 

More demanding games can cause it to get relatively hot and noisy like an asteroid coming into orbit and it could do with more ports. Ultimately however outside of that shiny spaceship feel, while it has its perks, it’s not too big of an upgrade from the original ZenBook 14X yet still costs more.

Design

ZenBook 14X Space Edition is similar in size and overall design to the standard ZenBook 14X model. The only changes are an all-metal build, a 16:10 touchscreen, full-size inputs, and the IO and hot-air exhausts. 

Asus used a titanium-gray color scheme called Zero-G Titanium, and a matte texture for the lid and chassis. Overall, it looks good, feels nice to touch, and hides smudges very well. The laptop is still made out of aluminum (not out of titanium alloys) but the aluminum is coated in titanium color finishing.

There are many space-inspired design elements all around the laptop. You can see a representation of the MIR Space station on the left, various morse code messages on the arm-rest and on the lid, and many engravings and markings on the back as well.

A ZenVision mini display can be found on the laptop’s lid. It’s a 3.65-inch P-OLED panel with 256 x 64 px resolution and 150-nits of brightness, with very minimal impact on the battery life. It can be customized through a unique interface in the MyAsus app and can display a couple of animations, QR codes, or text messages. It is unique, but honestly, has limited practical use in real life.

Asus also put special effort into the Unboxing experience of the Space Edition as well. They created a custom cardboard box and included a handful of accessories and stickers. In theory, the secondary box that holds the included charger and dongles also acts as a potential stand. Other than that, the Space Edition 14X is identical to the standard 14X ZenBooks.

In terms of size, the Space Edition weighs about 1.40 with dimensions (W x D x H) 31.12 x 22.11 x 1.59.

For IO, there are two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports with data, charging, and video, a 3.5 mm jack, a full-size USB-A, and an HDMI 2.0b port. The two USB-Cs are placed on the left side, but I would have liked to have them spread on either side so that I could either charge the laptop then connect an external screen on the other side. There’s also a microSD card reader, but no full-size SD.

For connectivity, there’s the latest-gen WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 on this laptop. It’s not as fast as some of the recent tech, but it’s still good enough for daily use and I haven’t run into any issues with the wireless connection during my time with the laptop (using a Bluetooth mouse).

Finally, there’s an HD camera at the top of the screen, which has (little) better quality than the normal webcams, only in fair lighting. Just don’t expect much.

Keyboard and trackpad

Another aspect to mention is the keyboard, which color-matches the overall titanium design of the Space Edition. The keys are titanium, they look fine, and the finishing feels alright to touch. The problem is that the silver keycaps with white backlighting make it hard to see in some situations compared to the standard ZenBook keyboard which has dark-gray keycaps.

Other than that, the layout and the typing experience are alright. There’s also a virtual NumberPad included in the trackpad, which you can on by long-pressing the icon in the top-right corner.

A particularity of this series is that the trackpad surface is titanium as well, color matching all the other design pieces. That means smudges won’t be as easily visible on this variant. The trackpad is a sizeable plastic surface that works flawlessly with swipes, gestures, taps, and anything other gesture required of it. 

Screen

The Space Edition has a touchscreen OLED 2.8K panel with 100% DCI-P3 color coverage, 90 Hz refresh, and 550-nits of peak brightness. Furthermore, that’s a 10-bit panel with HDR 500 certification, a Pantone validated color profile, as well as a TUV certification for low-blue light emission.

In real life, this is a great-looking display, with excellent contrast and punchy colors. Just make sure to enable HDR in the Display settings in Windows 11 (by default that comes ticked off). Keep in mind that opting for HDR will affect the color accuracy, so make sure to switch back to SDR for color-accurate content. The OLED panel is always a superior option for gaming and fast-paced action content to the majority of the IPS displays available in the past.

This is also a 90Hz refresh panel with response times of around 0.2m, impacting how smooth motion feels with daily use and streaming, and in games.

Since this is OLED, some may be worried about burn-in issues. For that, Asus implements default settings and technologies meant to prevent burn-in. The laptop ships in Windows Dark Mode with a default screen saver designed to kick in after 30 minutes of idle time. There’s also a Pixel refresh and Shift setting in the MyAsus app, as part of the OLED Care panel.

Benchmark & performance

Spec-wise, the laptop is based on the Intel® Core™ i7-12700H Processor 2.3 GHz (24M Cache, up to 4.7 GHz, 6P+8E cores).

Graphics are handled by the integrated Iris Xe chip, with 96 EUs and frequencies of up to 1.45 GHz. The power settings allow this to run close to its maximum potential in GPU loads and games.

Our configuration also comes with 16GB of LPDDR5-4800 memory. For storage, 1TB M.2 NVMe™ PCIe® 4.0 SSD.

With the 12th gen hardware, this ZenBook 14X is one of the most powerful ultraportables on the market for this sort of CPU-heavy load.

Game results (all played at 2K, 90Hz)

Valorant: On max settings: 40+ FPS, if u want stable, have to put medium settings. Other than that, very smooth.

Genshin Impact: High settings, 35+ FPS, game cant be played at all when many enemies attack all at once, have to lower reso to play

For the most part, you are going to get mostly solid framerates in games like DOTA, LoL, and CS GO but 30-40 fps in more demanding AAA games.

Software

As far as software is concerned, it gets the standard MyAsus app which allows control over the power profiles, battery and screen settings, updates, etc.

There are three performance/thermal profiles to choose from:

• Performance – allows the hardware to run at 35-45W in sustained loads
• Balanced/Standard – allows the hardware to run at 25-35W in sustained loads
• Whisper – limits the CPU at sub 20W to favor lower fan noise

Whisper mode is perfectly suited for daily use, and Standard is mostly recommended for demanding loads, while Performance offers some performance gains, but with much noisier fans.

Audio is still handled by a set of stereo Harman/Kardon speakers on the underside, much like the previous ZenBook lineups. The ergo lift allows the sound to bounce off the table without distortions and prevents you from easily muffling them while using the computer on your lap. The sound quality is alright for daily use, movies, or music, but not something that great.

There’s a 63 Wh battery inside the ZenBook 14x, which is larger than the norm for this class. The laptop ships with a mid-sized 100W USB-C charger. It’s a two-piece design with two long and thick cables. The battery fully fills up in about 2 hours, with quick charging for the first 50-minutes or so. Expect around 4-5 hours of real-use multitasking (while using special media and writing on docs and sheets).

Full Specs

Here are the full specs of the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition

Final Thoughts

The 14X Space Edition is my favorite ZenBook design to date and is one of the more capable ultraportables available on the market when it comes to CPU-heavy loads. The problem is the hardware is going to run quite hot on intensive work, and they don’t give you a lot of ports.

Other than that, Space Edition offers a space-oriented design and Titanium-G color scheme, as well as nicely decorated extras bundled in the box, which might attract some of you. However, with a price that starts at RM5,999, expect to pay a lot for this Space Edition series even though it has the same standard specs as a normal ZenBook 14X.

It can be somewhat hard to justify an already hefty-priced laptop when you can get more or less the same one for a bit less. While I personally love and prefer the sleek design of the Space Edition, you’ll have to ask yourself: how much am I willing to pay to see the stars.

We also got to attend the ZenBook 14X Space Edition launch event, where they even invited actual Malaysia astronaut Dato’ Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor. Awesome.

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