With its sleek styling and handsome blue aluminum finish, the Asus ZenBook 13 has been a perennial Editors' Choice contender, albeit overshadowed by ultraportable aces like the extra-compact Dell XPS 13 or the Razer Blade Stealth 13 with its game-worthy Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 graphics.
Compared to the ZenBook UX333 model we reviewed in February 2019, the new UX334 ($1,149.99) offers a 10th Generation Intel Core i7 CPU, more memory and storage, and a fancy touchpad that serves as a second display or program and shortcut launcher akin to the Touch Bar of the Apple MacBook Pro 13.
It's a truly improved laptop that any business traveler would be proud to carry.
Sorry, No 4K Available
Asus is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a UX334 in white leather with gold trim, but that config uses an older 8th Generation processor.
My test unit (model number UX334FLC-AH79) combines a quad-core, 1.8GHz (4.9GHz turbo) Core i7-10510U with 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive, and a full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) non-touch screen backed by 2GB GeForce MX250 graphics.
You can't get a 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) or higher-resolution display as you can with competitors like the Dell XPS 13.
Featuring the familiar ZenBook pattern of concentric circles on the slightly smudge-prone lid, the Asus measures 0.7 by 11.9 by 7.5 inches, a hair thicker but slightly smaller than the Razer Blade Stealth 13 (0.6 by 12 by 8.3 inches) or HP Envy 13 (0.58 by 12.1 by 8.3 inches).
At 2.83 pounds, it weighs the same as the Envy and a bit less than the 3.1-pound Stealth.
There's a thin strip of rose gold above the keyboard, contrasting with the dark blue color scheme.
The ErgoLift hinge seen in previous ZenBooks props the system at a slight angle when opened, promising more comfortable typing as well as a bit more airflow for cooling and reverberation for the bottom-mounted speakers.
Asus says the ultraportable has passed several MIL-STD 810G tests for road hazards such as shock, vibration, and temperature extremes; there's no flex if you grasp the screen corners and only a little if you press the keyboard deck.
The ZenBook 13 doesn't have a Thunderbolt 3 port, which is a disappointment in an over-$1,000 laptop, though it has a suitable place for one where the obsolete USB 2.0 port is—on the right side, along with the audio jack and microSD card slot.
On the left, you'll find an HDMI port and USB 3.1 Type-C and Type-A ports, as well as the connector for the AC adapter (a pocket-size plug instead of a bulky power brick).
Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth are standard.
On the Small Screen
The keyboard is slightly crowded—the A through apostrophe span is a quarter-inch shy of the regulation eight inches, and the right Shift key and top-row keys like Escape and Delete are petite.
The UX333 used the F9 through F12 keys as Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down, but the UX334 obliges you to pair the Fn key with the cursor arrows for those maneuvers.
Typing feel is all right—Asus advertises 1.4mm of travel, though it feels a little shallower than that—with snappy, somewhat noisy or clicky feedback.
The touchpad is huge, measuring 5.65 inches diagonally; there's so little keyboard deck between the space bar and the slightly sunken touchpad that it feels like a thin ridge rubbing annoyingly against your thumb as you type.
The pad glides and taps smoothly enough, but it shows off as what Asus calls a ScreenPad (there are several ways to toggle between touchpad and ScreenPad modes).
This can be a calculator, an area for handwriting input, or a space for shortcut keys resembling Apple's Touch Bar—either for general functions such as Ctrl+C and Ctrl+Z or, in the case of the supplied Doc Xpert, Sheet Xpert, and Slide Xpert, menu and ribbon duplicates for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint respectively.
Windows can also use the ScreenPad as a second display (you can specify 1,000 by 500 or 2,160 by 1,080 resolution) on which to run programs like Spotify and Evernote, or you can save sets of keyboard macros for your favorite apps.
Getting the hang of using the ScreenPad and swapping apps can be tricky, but with practice it can be a handy gadget.
As for the main display, Asus boasts that the ZenBook has a remarkable 95 percent screen-to-body ratio.
The appearance of ultra-thin bezels all around even extends to the bottom, thanks to part of that bezel being hidden by the ErgoLift hinge.
Fine detail freaks will gripe about the lack of a 4K option, but I think 1080p resolution is sufficient for the 13.3-inch screen size—the display looks clear and sharp, with deep colors and good contrast.
Brightness is adequate though not dazzling.
I'd be happier if white backgrounds popped a little more, but that's a minor complaint.
The ZenBook 13 comes with a carrying sleeve and a USB-A-to-Ethernet dongle.
It lacks a fingerprint reader but has a face-recognition webcam above the screen for Windows Hello logins.
The 720p camera captures somewhat soft-focus but reasonably well-lit and color-accurate images; the F10 key toggles it on and off if you're worried about online Peeping Toms.
Audio from the Harman Kardon speakers doesn't get very loud but is surprisingly good, with crisp treble and noticeable bass.
It's easy to distinguish overlapping tracks.
An Ultraportable Performance Battle
For our benchmark comparison charts, I left out the most obvious competitor, the Dell XPS 13, because Daxdi has yet to run the numbers on the new model 9300 version of that ultraportable—which will soon replace the model 7390 we sampled in November 2019, whose six-core CPU would have given it an unfair advantage in some tests.
Instead, I chose all quad-core systems, led by the Razer Blade Stealth 13 (whose GeForce GTX 1650 GPU is much the strongest in the group) and the HP Envy 13.
That left two slots, which I filled with convertible rather than clamshell laptops with 10th Generation Core i7 processors: the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1, and the HP Spectre x360 13.
Both use Intel's "Ice Lake" Core i7-1065G7 with Iris Plus integrated graphics, whereas the ZenBook 13 uses a "Comet Lake" Core i7-10510U and Nvidia GeForce MX250 discrete graphics.
The Asus proved to be a strong performer for everything but gaming, staying in line with the productivity focus it shares with most ultraportables.
Its battery life was solid, too, though only good enough to finish in the middle of the test quintet.
Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark).
The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows.
We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, Web browsing, and videoconferencing.
The test generates a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.
PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the boot drive.
The result is also a proprietary numeric score; again, higher numbers are better.
Anything over 4,000 points is an excellent score in PCMark 10, so the ZenBook is a fine choice for Microsoft Office or Google Docs.
All five ultraportables' speedy SSD boot drives sailed through the PCMark 8 storage subtest.
Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads.
Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image.
The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
Two of the Core i7-1065G7 systems topped the ZenBook here, but it showed more than enough muscle for complex spreadsheets and light video editing, though not workstation-style 3D rendering or scientific calculations.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads.
In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video (the open-source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file.
It's a timed test, and lower results are better.
The travelers were evenly spread in this event, with the Asus landing in the middle of the pack again.
Pro or semipro video editors will no doubt want something with a larger screen and a six- or eight-core CPU.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark.
Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image.
We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time (lower times are better).
The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.
Photo collectors and editors might prefer a laptop with a 4K display, but that doesn't spoil the ZenBook's taking the gold medal in this race.
Graphics Tests
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting.
We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems.
Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff.
The results are proprietary scores.
The Razer proved incompatible with this gaming simulation despite its gaming-class GPU.
The remaining ultraportables all posted scores more suited to casual or browser-based games than the latest retail titles.
Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp.
Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes.
In this case, it's rendered in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess.
We present two Superposition results, run at the 720p Low and 1080p High presets.
These scores are reported in frames per second (fps), the frequency at which the graphics hardware renders frames in a sequence, which translates to how smooth the scene looks in motion.
For lower-end systems, maintaining at least 30fps is the realistic target, while more powerful computers should ideally attain at least 60fps at the test resolution.
The Stealth ran away with this event.
Both Intel's Iris Plus and Nvidia's GeForce MX250 are a cut above the Intel UHD integrated graphics of older ultraportables, but far short of what to expect from real gaming laptops.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test.
(We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the same Tears of Steel movie we use in our Handbrake trial—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system conks out.
Falling just short of the 12-hour mark in this test, the Asus should get you through a full workday plus an evening of web surfing or Netflix viewing.
First-Class for Business Class
The Asus ZenBook 13 comes very close to an Editors' Choice in the ultracompetitive ultraportable segment—if its keyboard was just a little more comfortable and it had a Thunderbolt 3 port, it'd be a winner despite formidable competition from the gamer's-favorite Razer Blade Stealth 13 and the new Dell XPS 13 with its wide 16:10-aspect-ratio display.
But the Asus costs substantially less than those machines, and its ScreenPad will tip the balance for some shortcut- and gadget-loving users.
It's well worth a look for frequent fliers and anyone looking to reduce briefcase ballast.
The Bottom Line
Asus updates its 13.3-inch ultraportable with a new CPU and an innovative touchpad that serves as a second screen for shortcuts and accessory apps.
It's a strong contender in a crowded field.
