ASUS Zenbook S13 OLED Review (UX5304) – Slim, Portable, Lightweight Laptop

The Zenbook S13 OLED is one of ASUS approach in taking ultraportable laptops to another level in even taking things lighter but by not losing much, in fact almost everything that a productivity users always needed when using a computer on the go. Lets dive into the new offering and see what it has to offer on this laptop, and for sure on this, many things has been done to keep this thing real slim, and lighter than evee.

Design & Flexibility

The very objective of the Zenbook S13 OLED is the portability, and with that, ASUS chooses the material and build real carefully on this. Lets start from the body, the thickness is just at 1 CM and the weight is just 1KG, which I find it very very remarkable and this is really thin and light whenever you wish to carry it, whether its in your bag or just a normal laptop sleeve, it will just do fine and you dont really feel much weight to it. According to ASUS, this is slimmer than the previous model as much as 25% by re-engineering all the internals to be much tighter and integrated while still be able to give more air to breathe thanks to the slight revamp of the ever popular ErgoHinge design which can be adjusted till flat and that extends the flexibility of usage as well.

Materials play a big role also in slimming things down, and there is two part to it. The first part is the main chassis which is the main body primarily make of magnesium-aluminum alloy, with a glass type touchpad which looks huge and easy to navigate on, and a keyboard with fairly big comfortable keypresses and key travel is good as well. You dont have fancy RGB backlight on the keyboard, and white color fits well generally. Now to the second part, the lid material is made with plasma ceramic aluminium material with sandstone-like design to it, which also follows by the fresh 2023 design from ASUS that makes it definitely stands out from the others. While it is small, at just 13 inch size, there is still an infrared webcam for precision video conferencing and facial recognition for Windows Hello

Looking at the bottom cover reveals that there is 2 ventilation areas at the left and right, and slightly below there is a pair of speakers that provides essential audio to the unit. Opening the bottom cover reveals that everything is integrated tightly and the only option you have is NVME storage upgrade from the existing slot occupied, and of course you can swap it up to a 2TB NVME Gen4 storage should you need more.

Display & Audio

On to the display, the ASUS Zenbook S13 OLED is as the model mentions, over a gloss OLED display on a 2880 by 1800 pixels which is quite packed in clarity, peaking up brightness up to 550 nits, making it vibrant over its 16:10 aspect ratio and of course, has Dolby Vision there and 100% color gamut that is advantageous coming to creative applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator just to name a few there. Combination of blue light filter, HDR and Pantone Validation also makes this highly suitable for all your on the go streaming and entertainment, even for spreadsheet is great as well where its wider aspect ratio makes it able to view more for your productivity needs.

Audio wise, the pair of stereo speakers can be quite clear, loud, a little bit of the punchy sound there with some bass and balance treble, but if you love heavy metal music, this might put you off a abit there but otherwise, general audio and music works really well in combination over Dolby Atmos and tuned professionally by Harmon/Kardon, coupled with customized pre-set equaliser settings and furthermore, the noise cancelling microphone makes it clearer for directional oriented communications and provides a pleasant experience when communicating via zoom or any conferencing applications.

In summary for this part, both audio and visual combined gives a balanced experience for your daily use, and with combination of Dolby Vision + Atmos, this is an all round Dolby entertainment package in a small profile laptop.

Performance, Applications, Benchmarks

Beneath the slim portability, the ASUS Zenbook S13 OLED processor is powered by the latest Intel 13th generation i5 or i7 processor with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM running at 5200Mhz and starting from 512GB of NVME storage which is user upgradable to 2TB of storage with any available NVME storage in the market as long it is running at least on Gen4, however the memory is non upgradable since it is soldered to the motherboard. With that said there is still advantage, which even its small size, you still have 2 USB C thunderbolt 4 ports that supports external display, graphics card, 1 full size USB 3 A port, headphone combo jack, HDMI 2.1 port along with a robust 2×2 WiFi 6e with Bluetooth 5.2 connections, enabling low latency wireless connection with your favorite devices, whether its a TWS or just your favorite mouse, the laptop can handle it with ease.

There is still a few applications included with the ASUS Zenbook S13 OLED, and of course some of it can be uninstall if you wish to but the majority of it you will need it. Whats included is the MyASUS app, which lets you set your performance mode and diagnostics. Then you will get GlideX which enables the user to Mirror, Extend or combine the screen with your favorite mobile devices, such as your phone or tablet, expanding usability and more screen to use and control at the same time, you can also use your tablet as your laptop touchscreen and this is especially great when you are a regular person that draws with a stylus on your existing tablet.

Lets talk a little bit on the experience, it is easy to get about 6 to 7 hours in average daily on full charge on our test unit, with a mix of editing, browsing and very light gaming, and yes it does been able to handle even higher graphical intensive games like Genshin Impact with set to low graphical settings and you should be able to go on adventures within the game. As for work, we tested with Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office 365 suite and with the high resolution OLED screen, it does get the job done with the specifications combined with ease. As above you can see Genshin still runs around 50FPS in 900P resolution.

Finally its a the benchmarks, in my case I will still do it, it does reflect some of the mid scorings, but hey, its an energy efficient laptop, so even on full power with the adaptor, in many real world scenario, it will do the job just fine.

Technical Specifications

Verdict & Conclusion

The ASUS Zenbook S13 OLED is one compact laptop in a package that breaks away from its traditional laptop footprint that brings in environmental friendly and recyclable material to a lightweight, slim like outlook laptop that packs some punch that is suitable for any productive and casual users that is indicated from the design, and they did meet the objective that one might want to pick this up for all you wanted for work, some play, watching movies and most importantly, you can appreciate it’s OLED display for design purposes as well. Priced from RM4,999, with the included features and specifications starting with the 13th Generation i5 Processor, it is well priced and it is widely available online and from ASUS authorised dealers nationwide.

For more information on the ASUS Zenbook S13 OLED, Click here to visit.