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00:00Hey guys, I'm Tom from TechJab and this is the new ASUS ZenBook Pro 14 OLED and I absolutely
00:07adore this thing and it might just tempt me away from my MacBook Pro. Now before we dive
00:13in properly a big thank you to ASUS for sending this out for me to have a play with and also
00:16NVIDIA for sponsoring this video because they were keen for me to test this, run my benchmarks
00:21and just see what an NVIDIA GeForce 40 series laptop GPU in one of these new 14-inch form
00:26factors is actually capable of. So what makes this so special? Well, let's talk about the
00:32screen first. 14.5 inch, 2.8K, 120Hz OLED touchscreen with Dolby Vision, top-notch color
00:39accuracy, we're talking 100% DCI-P3, it's Pantone validated and it supports the ASUS
00:45Pen 2 for all you doodlers and drawers and designers out there. Inside we have an Intel
00:5013th Gen i9, the 13900H, that's a 45-watt chip which can actually be boosted up to 75 watts
00:56together with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 laptop GPU which is actually a 90-watt TGP variant of
01:04the card but ASUS and NVIDIA have actually boosted it in here so it's a 110-watt TGP and thanks to
01:09ASUS's IceCool Pro thermal technology we actually can have up to 125-watt combined TDP between the
01:17CPU and the GPU which can dynamically shift. I also have a slightly peculiar 48GB of DDR5 RAM,
01:24that's two memory modules, one 32GB, one 16GB and that's paired with a whopping 2TB PCIe4 SSD.
01:31But what's special here is that this kind of performance in this smaller form factor just
01:35really wasn't possible until this new series of GPUs from NVIDIA. It really is thanks to the vastly
01:41improved power efficiency and performance of this new AIDA architecture that we get with the 40
01:45series cards that makes this possible and together with improved cooling and also the likes of DLSS3
01:51and other software features we've never had performance like this on a small form factor
01:55laptop whether it's for gaming or you know creative workloads and actually doing some
01:59work with it as well. This is very much a creator laptop first, I would say gaming laptop second but
02:04there's such crossover you really can use it for both. And on top of the raw performance of the GPU
02:10we have all of NVIDIA's tasty extras. For gaming you've got DLSS3 now with frame generation,
02:15NVIDIA Reflex, ray tracing which as it says on the tin generates entirely new frames not just new
02:21pixels. But then for your rendering, editing, streaming you've got the AV1 encoders, you've got
02:26their studio drivers and their NVIDIA broadcast suite just to name a few. By the way if you're
02:31wondering the difference between a game ready driver and a studio driver essentially all those
02:35game drivers are still packaged within that studio driver but they've also spent more time testing
02:39this with a wider range of professional and creative applications. So you can definitely
02:44game with the studio drivers although they may not be quite as up to date as the game ready ones
02:47but they're not far behind these days but if you are using this as a workstation then you probably
02:51want to go with studio. Why 14 inches or more specifically in this case 14 and a half inches?
02:56Well obviously portability. I mean compared to a 15, 16, 17 inch laptop this is a whole lot smaller
03:02and easier to carry around all day whether you're going to school, the office, work, whatever it may
03:06be, a gaming LAN party and also it's a little bit less obnoxious if you're bringing out in a coffee
03:11shop and also if you've ever tried to use a 15 or 16 inch laptop on a tray table on a train or a
03:16plane and actually the other day I did have a 16 inch laptop with me on an economy flight and the
03:21lady in front of me reclined and it hit the top of the screen and for a second I thought was going to
03:25shatter the whole thing. Not ideal. So there are definitely benefits clearly to the compact small
03:30and more portable size of a 14 inch form factor but then the other side of it is when you do get
03:35home or to your studio or to the office because we've got such a great range of ports HDMI 2.1
03:40Thunderbolt 4 you can hook it up to a nice big external display if you like so that way you have
03:44more of your screen real estate so it's kind of like the best of both worlds. Portable for when
03:49you're traveling but a nice little hub for when you're back at the office. Which is all great
03:53in theory but the question is especially with a laptop like this which is geared towards
03:57creators, professional workstation users and also gamers is it powerful enough? How fast is this
04:03thing? Well let's find out and to add a bit of context let's also bring in my MacBook Pro with
04:09its m.2 max and 64 gigs of memory but then more importantly some real world benchmarks. The ZenBook
04:15is on average 8% behind the MacBook in the Premiere Pro Puget Test. Sadly the DaVinci Resolve Studio
04:20Puget Test doesn't support Mac right now so I can't do that comparison but then if I bring in
04:25my Blender results firstly from the Blender benchmark you can see the ZenBook is around twice
04:30as fast as the MacBook which is pretty crazy. But what about gaming? Well I think regardless of
04:36performance there's a pretty clear advantage for the Asus because it's running Windows which
04:39obviously has access to a much bigger library of games than a Mac does. But if we fire up the
04:44classic Shadow of the Tomb Raider the ZenBook is twice as fast and actually even without DLSS if
04:50we run it again and turn it off it's still a third faster. And in fact to give you an idea of how much
04:55of an impact the 4070 has over the ZenBook's integrated Intel Xe graphics well it's about
05:00five times faster. And just for fun I also ran the Blender benchmark again the GPU makes it around 10
05:06to 20 times faster. And so if I bring in the rest of my gaming results and I'm consistently getting
05:11close to that 120 which means we're fully taking advantage of the screen's high refresh rate.
05:16And as I say a huge part of it is down to these new cards with the much more efficient architecture
05:20so we're using less power but getting better performance. Now it's worth mentioning that I
05:24ran all my tests with the MUX switch set to discrete GPU by default it's on MS Hybrid so it
05:30can use the integrated or discrete based on what you're doing which is obviously better for battery
05:33life. And also in terms of the fan profile I've set it to performance you have also got standard
05:38and whisper which limits the wattage of the components and therefore also lowers the fan
05:43noise which you might want if you're using this out in public. But one thing I did note is that
05:47in the ProArt Creator Hub here you also have full speed mode for the fans in addition to the three
05:53other options that were in the MyASUS app. Now you can hear it's pretty loud although if you've got a
05:58good pair of headphones with noise cancelling it's not the end of the world. But I did find that in
06:02this mode specifically it did boost my results and my frame rates by like 10% across the board so if
06:07you can put up with that noise maybe you're rendering a video or you know you've got good
06:10headphones then I would definitely keep it in full speed mode. So that's a pretty good start but let's
06:15talk about what we get on the outside and in terms of ports we have two Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-Cs as
06:21well as a Type-A that's a USB 3.2 Gen 2, an audio combo jack, full size HDMI 2.1 and yes an SD card
06:31reader. Full size UHS-II so really fast SD card reader. Very nice. We also have a full HD IR webcam
06:38so you can have fast face unlocking and any lighting really. A huge touch pad which also
06:42includes ASUS's famous dial pad in the corner here and that is all packaged in an incredibly
06:48well-built laptop. This is one of the sturdiest machines I've used in a long time. There is not a
06:52lick of flex or screen wobble. I mean if I put some pretty serious pressure into that it does
06:58not budge at all. We also get Gorilla Glass protecting the screen because it is a touchscreen.
07:03These super thin bezels which are flush which is very nice except for this tiny lip at the edge
07:07for protection and they've crammed all that in a chassis that's just 17.9 millimeters thick
07:12and it tips the scales at just three and a half pounds or 1.6 kilograms thereabouts. My only
07:18complaint is it does get a little bit smudgy. You can see my fingerprints all over the lid here.
07:22I'm genuinely really excited about this laptop and in many ways it's kind of like the
07:26Windows MacBook Pro 14 except this can also play games as well. Going back to the MyASUS app here
07:33you've got options for everything basically from changing the screen color profiles. We also have
07:37all the OLED care settings like pixel refresh because of course you want to prevent burn-in
07:42which isn't something you really have to worry about especially with all these which is set to
07:45default and as I say on top of all that we also have the ProArt Creator Hub because this is very
07:50much a creator laptop and also we have this ASUS dial pad down here. If you're not familiar you can
07:56use this to do simple stuff like adjust brightness and volume within Windows or more app-specific
08:01stuff like scrubbing through a project timeline or zooming in and out. I also appreciate there's a
08:06subtle groove and you can kind of feel your way around the dial which means you can kind of use
08:10it without looking and what I do kind of like is unlike its bigger brother the ProArt StudioBook
08:15which has a big physical dial pad next to the touchpad and keyboard you can just turn this off
08:20if you want. The little swipe from the top right corner of the touchpad turns it on and off so you
08:24don't have to use it if you don't want to it doesn't get in the way but if you do well you
08:28have that extra option there. Quick mention of battery life and it's okay. We have a 76 watt
08:34hour cell in here which is not bad for a 14 inch form factor and ASUS claim you'll get up to about
08:4010 hours of light use. In my experience it's a little bit less than that I got around seven
08:45hours but still six and a half seven hours of light use with sort of 50 brightness whisper
08:50mode fan profile and obviously if you are doing more demanding tasks then it's going to drain the
08:53battery much faster and also you're not going to get that maximum performance so generally keep it
08:58plugged in if you're doing anything intensive but for just everyday travel light use at the office
09:02you you get about a full day if you're careful. Also while this screen is absolutely glorious
09:07we're looking at about 480 nits in SDR and 550 nits peak in HDR and that's pretty good for an
09:13OLED but you're not going to get any kind of crazy bright HDR experience that you might get on a
09:17regular TV or with a mini LED screen for example although I do appreciate this supports Dolby
09:22Vision HDR and also Dolby Atmos and actually the speakers on this are pretty good and so that my
09:28friends is the ASUS ZenBook Pro 14 OLED. Starts from around $2,100. I'll put more pricing info
09:34in the description below and also have a look at NVIDIA's full range of GeForce RTX 40 series
09:39laptops but what do you reckon? Would you be tempted to buy one of these and if you did pick
09:42one up what would you use it for? Gaming? Editing? Developing? Let me know in the comments below. Thank
09:47you so much for watching guys if you did enjoy this video a like and subscribe would be very
09:50much appreciated and I'll see you next time right here on The Tech Chap.