As someone who relies heavily on a lightweight laptop to stay productive on the go, my daily routine often involves squeezing work into long cab rides. I live quite far from my office, and over the years, I’ve developed a habit of turning commute hours into quiet pockets of focus. This means that a laptop needs to be light enough to use comfortably on my lap, powerful enough to run all my apps without stutter, and efficient enough to last through at least 4 hours of commute time, along with the usual 8 to 9 working hours. So when I switched to the Asus Zenbook A14, I was curious to see whether it could truly keep up with this on-the-move lifestyle. And after using the laptop for a month, I think I am pretty convinced that it can.
Priced at Rs 1,29,990, but often available for around Rs 89,000, this laptop enters a competitive premium ultrabook space, especially with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite platform powering it. Asus promises excellent portability, long battery life, and AI-ready performance. But does it live up to those claims in real life? Let’s dive in.
Also read: 3 easy tricks to check how good your laptop display actually is
The Asus Zenbook A14 immediately strikes you with its premium, minimal aesthetic. The company has kept the design clean and refined, and the laptop feels incredibly compact once you pick it up. At just 0.9 kg, it is one of the lightest 14-inch laptops I have used, and this makes a genuine difference when you’re carrying it around all day or pulling it out in a moving cab.
The construction feels solid, and the hinge deserves special appreciation. I didn’t notice any wobble while typing or adjusting the angle, and there’s a sturdy reassurance in the way it opens and closes. As someone who has experienced flimsy hinges on thin laptops before, this stability stood out. The fit and finish of the chassis also feel premium, with a matte texture and neat curves that make the whole device look polished.
Asus still gives you one USB Type-A port, which is great, but one more would have made everyday use noticeably easier. I often connect both a keyboard and a mouse to my laptop at work, so having just one Type-A port meant depending on an adapter more than I’d have liked. On the positive side, you do get two USB-C ports, HDMI, and a combo audio jack.
The keyboard is spacious, well-spread, and comfortable to type on for long stretches. And yes, you get a dedicated Copilot key that opens Microsoft’s AI assistant instantly, which genuinely came in handy more than once. The trackpad also does its job well. It’s smooth, responsive, and sized just right. Not too large that your palms brush against it accidentally, and not too small that you feel cramped while navigating.
The Asus Zenbook A14 features a 14-inch 2.8K 60 Hz display, and in real-world usage, it looks sharp, vibrant, and plenty bright for both work and casual content consumption. During my testing with Calman, the display reached around 400 nits of peak brightness and offered 96.5% sRGB and 78.4% DCI-P3 coverage. Colour accuracy is solid too, with an average Delta E of just 1, which is impressive.
I was easily able to use the Zenbook A14 in a car during the day. Movies and YouTube videos looked crisp, text appeared super sharp, and the higher resolution made multitasking feel comfortable without needing to squint or zoom.
The speakers, however, are a mixed bag. They are loud enough for video calls and casual watching, but the richness and depth you expect from a premium ultrabook aren’t quite there. At this price, a step up in sound quality would’ve completed the multimedia experience. For the best audio, headphones are definitely the way to go.
Powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processor and 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, the Asus Zenbook A14 felt snappy and fluid in real-world tasks.
Whether I was juggling multiple Chrome tabs, writing documents, attending calls, or switching between apps during the commute, the laptop didn’t slow down or stutter even once. App launches were instant, and everything from multitasking to light editing felt effortless.
Now, let’s talk about how the laptop performed during some benchmark tests.
In Geekbench, the laptop scored 2,430 points in the single-core test and 14,257 points in the multi-core test. In Cinebench R23, the multi-core score was 9,236 and the single-core score was 1,116, indicating dependable rendering performance for a thin ultrabook.
And with WinRAR and 7-Zip tests delivering solid compression and decompression numbers, file handling feels quick and efficient. Storage performance was equally strong, with sequential read speeds reaching 6,714 MB/s and writes crossing 3,600 MB/s. This means that apps load almost instantly, and large files transfer quickly.
These results echo my real-world experience. The laptop breezed through day-to-day tasks without hesitation.
Battery life is another area where the Asus Zenbook A14 lies comfortably ahead of its competition. On a typical office day, I get more than enough juice to last from morning commutes through afternoon meetings without reaching for the charger. In fact, I didn’t find myself reaching for the charger an hour or two before logging off on the second work day. This means that the laptop can easily last two full working days, depending on your usage.
In the PCMark Modern Office battery test, the laptop lasted a remarkable 1,066 minutes, giving you that peace of mind during long trips or workdays away from the charger.
Thermals are excellent too. Even during CPU-heavy benchmarks, surface temperatures stayed cool. The WASD area peaked at around 29.2 degrees Celsius, with the trackpad and palm rest staying even cooler. After a full day of real-world usage, the laptop remained consistently cool to the touch. This makes the Zenbook A14 one of the cooler-running ultrabooks I’ve tested recently.
The Asus Zenbook A14 is a solid companion for anyone who values portability and performance in equal measure. If your routine involves constant movement, long commutes, or working on the go, this laptop fits right in. Its lightweight build, strong battery life, fast performance, gorgeous design, and solid thermals make it a reliable everyday partner.
Yes, a second USB-A port would have made it even more practical, and the speakers could have used an upgrade. But these compromises feel small in the larger picture of what the Zenbook A14 gets right.
If you want an ultra-light laptop that looks good, performs well, stays cool, and lasts long without weighing you down, the Zenbook A14 is absolutely worth considering.
Also read: You can soon play Red Dead Redemption for free on your phone, here’s how
