For example, ASUS has been experimenting with OLED screens in its laptops for a long time in the ZenBook Pro Duo line. Now we have on review – a much more affordable model ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED (UX325), as the name implies, with a 13-inch OLED screen.
Click here to purchase the ZenBook
What’s inside package?
In the box with the laptop, you will also find a charger, a fabric envelope case for carrying, and two USB Type-C adapters for connecting a wired headset and an Ethernet cable.
Design and Layout
ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED is an ultraportable model that is very compact and lightweight. With a screen diagonal of 13.3″, its dimensions are 30.4 × 20.3 × 1.39 cm, and its weight is only 1.14 kg. The body is completely metal, except for the frame around the screen. The main color is dark gray (Pine Gray). The lid has a proprietary barely noticeable texture in concentric circles with a silvery ASUS logo in the center – you can see it mainly by the highlights on the lid, and even then, not always. The case is matte. It collects fingerprints well.
The lid opens easily without holding the base. The bezels around the screen are thin (about 5 mm on the sides and 9 mm on the top – the “eye” of the webcam is located above the screen). As a result, the screen occupies 88% of the body area.
The desire to make the case as thin as expected has affected the number of connectors: so, on the right, you can find one full-size USB 3.2 Gen 1 port and a card reader for Micro SD memory cards, on the left – HDMI 2.1 video output and two Thunderbolt 3 ports with support for image output/power supply.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard is a slightly shortened TKL (tenkeyless, without an additional digital block), 29 cm wide. The travel is traditionally short for a laptop keyboard (1.4 mm). Pressing is light and quiet, with noticeable punching. When typing, the body does not bend. It can be minimally squeezed in the keyboard area only if you specifically press on it with a tangible effort.
The keyboard has white backlighting, three different intensity levels, and the option to turn it off completely. When viewed from an angle, a backlight leak between the body and the base of the “caps” is noticeable, especially in the upper row of function keys.
The touchpad is large, unusually “elongated” (the aspect ratio is about 2: 1). At work, he is fast and responsive. We did not have any complaints about him. Interestingly, in addition to traditional functionality, the touchpad of the ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED can also act as a calculator: a virtual “keyboard” is applied to it, a swipe in the upper left corner launches the calculator, and pressing in the upper right turns on the keyboard backlight – after which you can perform mathematical calculations by clicking the lined “sectors” on the touchpad.
Screen
The ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED (UX325) is equipped with a 13.3-inch OLED display Samsung ATNA33XC11-0 (SDC4158) with a 1920 × 1080 pixels resolution a refresh rate of 60 Hz. Like other screens made using this technology, this display uses PWM to adjust the brightness – however, flickering starts to appear only at a brightness of 40% or less (~ 80 cd / m2).
Thanks to the OLED panel, the laptop demonstrates an extensive color gamut – tests confirm the claimed 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 space (88% Adobe RGB and, of course, a significant overlap of sRGB). The brightness is adjustable in the range from 5 to 395 cd / m² (with 100% white filling of the screen), while the color temperature throughout the entire brightness range ideally corresponds to the standard value of 6500K, the gamma value is also as close to 2.2 as possible (deviation is literally 0, 01). We also note excellent color temperature uniformity across the entire display area and just excellent brightness uniformity.
For ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED, Pantone certification is declared, and the measured color accuracy confirms that these are not empty words: the average deltaE value of this display is at the level of one, the maximum is less than 2.5; this is an excellent result even for those desktop monitor models that are factory calibrated.
As a result, the ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED screen makes a charming impression: it has very high brightness and contrast, the deepest blacks possible without the slightest hint of gray “patina” that appears in conventional displays due to residual backlighting, very bright and saturated colors and maximum viewing angles – the picture on this screen practically does not fade or fade even when looking at the screen almost in profile, only a slightly bluish tint, characteristic of all OLED displays, appears on white.
FIND THE BEST DEAL ON AMAZON HERE
Hardware platform, ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED performance
The laptop uses an Intel Core i5-1035G4 processor. This is an energy-efficient quad-core eight-thread processor based on the Sunny Cove architecture (Ice Lake U family) introduced in the first half of 2019. The base frequency is 1.2 GHz, Turbo Boost for one core can reach 3.7 GHz (under load all four up to 3.3 GHz). The processor is equipped with 6MB of L3 cache and is targeted at a 15W thermal package (manufacturers can change TDP in the range of 7.5 to 25W). Featuring Gen 11 Integrated Graphics called Iris Plus Graphics, the processor is significantly faster than its 9th Gen predecessor. In addition to the UX325, the ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED line also includes the UM325, which uses AMD Ryzen processors.
In the model we have visited, 16 GB of LPDDR4X memory was installed, operating in dual-channel mode (without the possibility of its expansion). M.2 NVMe SSD Samsung MZVLQ512HALU-00000 512 GB is used for data storage. The CrystalDiskMark test shows not outstanding but quite decent results: almost 2300 MB / s for reading and slightly more than 1200 MB / s for writing. The Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 module, which supports the IEEE 802.11ax protocol and Bluetooth 5.0, is responsible for wireless communication in the laptop.
No one expects outstanding performance from energy-efficient processors, and the results in synthetic benchmarks on the ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED are quite expected. In real operation, the speed of the Intel Core i5-1035G4 turns out to be more than enough for typical office tasks, which this ultrabook is aimed at, but you can only play something completely undemanding to hardware.
In the AIDA64 stress test, the processor first “overclocked” to a maximum frequency of 3.3 GHz (the temperature rose above 90 degrees), but almost immediately dropped it to 1.8 GHz, at which it continued the test; the temperature was at the level of ~ 63 degrees, trotting by the utility was not formally recorded.
The work of the cooling system under a long-term serious load is audible, but it turns out to be quite moderate, no more than 40 dB at a distance of one and a half meters from the case. When idle, the ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED is quiet, with little or no noise under typical office workloads.
Autonomy
ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED (UX325) has a 67Wh battery. In battery tests in the PCMark 10 benchmark, it showed excellent results: with a screen brightness of 120 cd / m2, the laptop lasted more than 12 hours in an office simulation (and about that the same – when watching a video), and as much as 15 hours in an idle state. In general, we can confidently state that a full charge of this laptop is more than enough for a full working day.
Pros:
Excellent image quality; outstanding autonomy; lightness and compactness of the case; quiet under load; moderate cost, as for a model with an OLED screen
Cons:
No particular flaws
Conclusion: Should you buy ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED?
ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED is a compact and lightweight laptop with sufficient performance for office tasks, excellent battery life, and a high-quality OLED screen. Moreover, if earlier such a display was the prerogative of flagship models with a corresponding price tag, then this laptop is available in official Ukrainian retail at a price of less than UAH 30 thousand.
Amazon is offering the Zenbook for sale now
ASUS ZenBook 13 OLED: Complete Specifications
 | |
|---|---|
| A type | Ultrabook |
| Design | Classical |
| Operating system | DOS |
| Diagonal, inches | 13.3 |
| Matrix type | OLED |
| Cover type | Matt |
| Permission | 1920×1080 |
| Sensory | – |
| HDR | – |
| Refresh rate, Hz | – |
| Other | – |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-1135G7 |
| Base clock frequency, GHz | 2.4 |
| Maximum clock frequency, GHz | 4.2 |
| Number of processor cores | 4 |
| Chipset | No data |
| RAM, GB | 8 |
| Maximum RAM, GB | 16 |
| Memory type | LPDDR4X |
| Hard disk, GB | – |
| SSD, GB | 512 |
| Optical drive | – |
| Graphics adapter, memory size | Intel Iris Xe G7 |
| External ports | 1 x HDMI, 1 x USB 3.2 Type-A Gen 1, 2 x Thunderbolt 3 (USB 4) |
| Card reader | + |
| WEB-camera | + |
| Backlit keyboard | + |
| Passive cooling system | – |
| Fingerprint scanner | + |
| Numeric keypad | – |
| Intel Evo Certification | + |
| Network adapter | – |
| Wi-Fi | 802.11 ax |
| Bluetooth | 5 |
| 3G / LTE | – |
| Weight, kg | 1.11 |
| Size, mm | 304 x 203 x 13.9 |
| Body material | Aluminum |
| Cover color | Lilac |
| Body-color | Lilac |
| Rugged laptop | – |
| Capacity, mAh | No data |
| Number of cells | 4 |
| Power, W * h | 66 |
| Battery voltage, V | No data |
| Battery type | Li-Ion |
English