Asus Zenbook Pro 14 OLED laptop review: MacBook Pro rival with 120 Hz OLED display

RTX 4070 for content creators and gamers. Asus is relaunching the 14.5-inch Zenbook Pro and has equipped the fast multimedia notebook with a Raptor Lake Core i9-13900H and the new GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU. The 120 Hz OLED panel with 2.8K resolution is also new, but has a negative impact on battery life.

Andreas Osthoff, 👁 Andreas Osthoff (translated by Jacob Fisher), Published 06/12/2023 🇩🇪 🇷🇺

Note: The manufacturer may use components from different suppliers including display panels, drives or memory sticks with similar specifications.

Visually, the new Zenbook Pro 14 looks quite restrained and there is only a small ProArt logo on the display lid. Asus does not add any other visual elements otherwise. The surfaces are smooth, which quickly results in fingerprint smudges and the regular wiping away of these. The notebook appears very elegant in the dark color Tech Black, but the manufacturer stickers on the palm rest are massively annoying. The large sticker with the laptop’s features on the right side can be easily removed, but the four smaller stickers on the left side cannot. Who wants an Amazon Alexa sticker on their device when you’ve paid EUR 3,500 (~US$3,750) for it?

Asus uses a metal chassis and both the base unit and the display lid are extremely stable and torsion-resistant. The base unit also looks quite slim, which is made possible by the tapered sides. This is in stark contrast to the Apple MacBook Pro 14, for example, in which the base unit appears very bulky, although it is actually thinner than the Zenbook. This is definitely not an extremely thin notebook, but this is not a point of criticism in view of the powerful components.

The two display hinges are well adjusted, but cannot completely prevent a certain teetering when changing the opening angle. The maximum opening angle is ~135 degrees. The screen edges of the 16:10 panel are very narrow, especially on the sides, and the overall screen-to-body ratio is a good 85%.

In a direct comparison, the MacBook Pro 14 in particular is somewhat more compact in all areas, but there are no large differences in weight. Due to the high-performance hardware, some 15-inch devices in our comparison field naturally require a little more desk space. The included 200-watt power supply adds an additional 556 grams to the scales.

      Razer Blade 15 OLED (Early 2022)       Dell XPS 15 9530 RTX 4070       Asus ZenBook Pro 14 Duo UX8402VV-P1021W       Asus Zenbook Pro 14 OLED UX6404VI       Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 GA402XY       Apple MacBook Pro 14 2023 M2 Pro       DIN A4 {element.classList.add(‘hideEl’)});document.getElementById(‘showDeviceSizelabel_335426’).checked = false;document.querySelectorAll(‘#showDeviceSize_337000’).forEach(element => {element.classList.add(‘hideEl’)});document.getElementById(‘showDeviceSizelabel_337000’).checked = false;document.querySelectorAll(‘#showDeviceSize_337048’).forEach(element => {element.classList.add(‘hideEl’)});document.getElementById(‘showDeviceSizelabel_337048’).checked = false;document.querySelectorAll(‘#showDeviceSize_337670’).forEach(element => {element.classList.add(‘hideEl’)});document.getElementById(‘showDeviceSizelabel_337670’).checked = false;document.querySelectorAll(‘#showDeviceSize_337125’).forEach(element => {element.classList.add(‘hideEl’)});document.getElementById(‘showDeviceSizelabel_337125’).checked = false;document.querySelectorAll(‘#showDeviceSize_334927’).forEach(element => {element.classList.add(‘hideEl’)});document.getElementById(‘showDeviceSizelabel_334927’).checked = false;return false;” title=”hide all”>❌

Since the rear area of the base unit is occupied by the cooling, the connections are distributed over the middle of both sides. Using all ports at the same time may result in a workplace that appears very cramped. Nevertheless, Asus provides all the important ports, including USB-A, USB-C and HDMI. The rear USB-C port also supports Thunderbolt and should also be used if you want to work on an external monitor, since this is the only way to use the iGPU on the external monitor. The other USB-C port and the HDMI output always use the dedicated GPU, which consumes unnecessary power, especially in simple tasks.

The Zenbook offers a fully-fledged SD card reader that also achieves very high transfer rates. In conjunction with our reference card (Angelbird AV Pro V60), we recorded maximum transfer rates of more than 250 MB/s and a little over 100 MB/s when copying image files.

Wireless network connections are handled by Intel’s AX211 module, which supports Bluetooth 5.2 in addition to the current Wi-Fi 6E standard. We were unable to connect to the corresponding 6 GHz network of our Asus reference router, but performance in the 5 GHz network was very good and we had no issues with WLAN. A USB Ethernet adapter for wired networks is also included in the scope of delivery.

Asus installs a 1080p sensor in the upper screen bezel for the webcam. The picture quality is a little better than the old 720p models, but you should not expect miracles. An IR module is also installed, which enables facial recognition via Windows Hello.

The lower case cover is fixed in place with a total of nine Torx screws (T5) and can be removed easily. You then have access to the two fans, the battery and the single SODIMM slot for a RAM module. However, the WLAN module and one RAM module are soldered.

The keyboard offers a key travel of 1.4 mm and offers average input overall. Considering the thickness of the case and also the price, more could have been done here, especially since the keys tend to rattle a little overall. For example, we liked the keyboard of the ROG Zephyrus G14 (1.7 mm travel) better. In terms of layout, you also have to get used to the single-row Enter key as well as the small arrow keys. Lastly, there is a three-stage white backlight that can be activated via sensor.

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We measured the OLED panel with professional CalMAN software (i.e. X-Rite i1 Pro 2) using the default Native profile as well as Display P3. Colors appear a little oversaturated in the Native profile, which results in even more vivid image quality, but some colors overshoot the important limit of 3. The Display P3 profile, on the other hand, provides extremely accurate colors and allows for direct image/video editing. We were unable to improve the display further with our own calibration, which is why the corresponding profile for download is not provided here. An sRGB profile is also available. The P3 color space is completely covered.

Display Response Times

↔    Response Time Black to White
0.9 ms … rise ↗ and fall ↘ combined	↗ 0.4 ms rise
	↘ 0.5 ms fall
The screen shows very fast response rates in our tests and should be very well suited for fast-paced gaming. In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.1 (minimum) to 240 (maximum) ms. » 0 % of all devices are better. This means that the measured response time is better than the average of all tested devices (22.2 ms).
↔    Response Time 50% Grey to 80% Grey
0.67 ms … rise ↗ and fall ↘ combined	↗ 0.33 ms rise
	↘ 0.34 ms fall
The screen shows very fast response rates in our tests and should be very well suited for fast-paced gaming. In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.25 (minimum) to 636 (maximum) ms. » 0 % of all devices are better. This means that the measured response time is better than the average of all tested devices (35 ms).

Screen Flickering / PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation)

Screen flickering / PWM detected	240 Hz
The display backlight flickers at 240 Hz (Likely utilizing PWM) . The frequency of 240 Hz is relatively low, so sensitive users will likely notice flickering and experience eyestrain at the stated brightness setting and below. In comparison: 53 % of all tested devices do not use PWM to dim the display. If PWM was detected, an average of 19178 (minimum: 5 – maximum: 3846000) Hz was measured.

The OLED panel’s response times are very fast, but we detected PWM flickering at all brightness levels. DC dimming is used down to a brightness level of 50%, and classic PWM with a frequency of 240 Hz is used below that. Asus itself advises not to go below this brightness and to use the flicker-free OLED dimming function in the MyAsus software instead. We discussed this in detail in the review of the Zenbook S 13 OLED and the functionality is identical here.

Outdoors, the highly reflective touchscreen is problematic because you always have to deal with reflections, even on cloudy days. The viewing-angle stability is very good overall. Only from certain (wide) angles do you notice a blue cast, which is typical for OLED panels.

The Zenbook Pro 14 is only available with the Intel Core i9-13900H and 16 GB of RAM is soldered. A SODIMM slot is available, which is equipped with either 16 or 32 GB of RAM, depending on the model. As for the graphics card, you have the choice between the GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop and the RTX 4070 Laptop, of which the latter is installed in our test device.

There are three different performance modes in the MyAsus software: Whisper, Standard and Performance. The table below shows the TDP/TGP values of the modes. We used Performance mode for the following benchmarks and measurements, since the graphics performance of the GeForce GPU in particular is otherwise significantly lower. In everyday life, however, you can easily use one of the other two modes without issue. The Zenbook also has a MUX switch that can be used to completely disable the integrated GPU. However, switching requires a system reboot.

The Intel Core i9-13900H is a high-end mobile processor with 6 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores, which is why a total of 20 threads can be processed at any given time. Apart from the slightly higher clock rate, however, there are no differences to the Core i9-12900H. The performance in the Zenbook Pro 14 is very good thanks to the high power limits, although it must also be stated here that the Intel chip is only marginally faster than the new AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS with 80 watts, despite the significantly higher power consumption. In our CB R15 multi-loop, the i9-13900H drops to 90 watts after a few runs, where it is also slower than the 7940HS.

On the other hand, the single-core performance of the performance cores is still very good: we see an advantage of around 15% over the current AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS here. The main rival Apple MacBook Pro 14 is clearly at a disadvantage in terms of raw CPU performance, but the power consumption of 34 watts is also significantly lower. The MacBook also has the advantage that performance remains constant in battery mode. The Zenbook’s CPU, however, drops to a meager 30 watts without the power supply, resulting in a performance loss of around 45% in multi-core tests. More CPU benchmarks are listed in our tech section.

* … smaller is better

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System performance is excellent, which is confirmed by both the good benchmark results and our subjective performance impression. We experienced no issues with the Zenbook Pro during testing.

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In our standardized latency test (web browsing, YouTube 4K playback, CPU load), the test device shows slight limitations when using real-time audio applications under the present BIOS version.

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Our test device is equipped with the Micron 3400 NVMe SSD, which offers a storage capacity of 2 TB (of which 1.79 TB is available after the first start-up). It is a fast PCIe 4.0 SSD, although the devices from Samsung and SK Hynix achieve slightly higher transfer rates. But this does not play a major role in everyday use; it is much more important that performance remains stable under sustained load. More SSD benchmarks are listed here.