ASUS ZenBook 14 Flip OLED Review – Flipping Fantastic

The ZenBook 14 FLIP OLED is the latest model of convertible 2 in 1 laptops from ASUS, packing a 2.8K HD display—this is our review. Capable of being used as a notebook and a tablet, this hybrid laptop has a lot going for it.

Thanks ASUS for the ZenBook 14 FLIP OLED review unit! Here are the specs of the model we received:

Specifications

Design

The ZenBook Flip 14 OLED shares the minimalistic design of many previous ZenBook models. This laptop is offered in Jade Black with a matte finish to the touch. It looks classy and professional. While the surface does not collect a lot of fingerprints, it’s also not entirely smudge-free, so do bear that in mind.

It’s slim, incredibly light and easy to carry on hand. At only 1.4 kg with a thickness of 1.59 cm, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more portable laptop with a flip display as great as this. Despite how slim it is, it feels surpisingly sturdy and durable.

On top of being able to rotate its display into tablet form, it has an ErgoLift design, a favourite feature of mine from many of ASUS’s laptops. By having the back of the laptop raised slightly, typing on it feels a lot more comfortable while ventilation is improved, helping to keep it cool.

Display

There’s a reason why ASUS puts “OLED” into the name of the product—because it’s just that good. The ZenBook 14 Flip OLED’s display is the pinnacle of viewing pleasure. As if the 2.8K HD resolution isn’t already enough, the OLED nature of the display provides a noticeable difference in quality compared to other 14-inch notebooks you can find.

Seriously, being able to see colours this vividly and images this sharp is an eye-opening experience (pun intended). It doesn’t matter what you do on the ZenBook 14 Flip OLED—everything looks immaculate.

Furthermore, the display is also touchscreen, given that you can use it as a tablet. The viewing experience is crisp and consistent whether you use it in tablet mode or tent mode.

If I really had to nitpick, I wish that the display has anti-fingerprint coating to it. To be fair, many touchscreen laptops do not come with this coating, but it’s a handy add-on simply because I hate showing off my fingerprint-adorned screen while I’m presenting something. Also, the ZenBook 14 Flip OLED comes with its own stylus, which does the job, but is not as versatile as the other stylus I use.

Keyboard and trackpad

The backlit keyboard provides decent feedback and feels just right for typing. Key travel is really comfortable and there’s sufficient space between the keys. Also, there are specific keys for muting audio and turning off your webcam, which is super convenient for online meetings. 

The power button also doubles as a fingerprint scanner, so that’s another plus point for security. 

Just like the ZenBook 13 OLED review which I’ve done in the past, the ZenBook 14 Flip OLED also has a virtual Numpad on the trackpad which can easily be turned on or off by touching the top-right corner. It’s an excellent feature that conserves space and is very useful for those who work with numbers a lot.

Connectivity

It has all the ports you ever need on a laptop. It’s great that it comes with an HDMI 2.0 port and a microSD card reader—two ports that occasionally go missing on work laptops. Also, having its own dedicated audio jack is nice, since those also tend to go missing on super thin laptops.

As for the standard USB ports, the ZenBook 14 Flip OLED has 2 USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C ports, both of which support data transfer, charging as well as video output. A USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port is also present. 

Audio

As mentioned previously in this review, the ErgoLift design of the ZenBook 14 Flip OLED elevates the back part of the laptop slightly. This also helps in the audio department, since sound isn’t blocked by the table you’re using it on.

As for the audio quality itself, the harman/kardon stereo speakers are decent, but there is a lack of bass in them—nothing a good pair of headphones can’t fix.

Battery

The ZenBook 14 Flip OLED carries a 63 Whrs battery that takes roughly 1.5 hours to charge with the bundled 100w adapter. With the display’s 90 Hz refresh rate enabled, the laptop lasts around 6 to 7 hours of regular use for me. 

Obviously, using the laptop for demanding tasks like gaming or video editing will cut that duration a lot more. Regardless, while it may not have the best battery duration and charge time, it’s good enough for use on the go.

Performance

I’d like to reiterate that the ZenBook 14 Flip OLED is not a gaming laptop. Despite that, should you do decide to run video games on it, here’s the performance you might expect (Note: our model uses AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800H, has 16 GB RAM and integrated AMD Radeon graphics, so your results may differ with different hardware).

Running Genshin Impact on it, the laptop clocked in just over 30 FPS with 2K resolution at the lowest settings.

As for Apex Legends, the FPS hovered above 50. Even with the lowest settings, the laptop ran pretty well.

Gaming aside, the laptop was able to handle up to 12-13 Google Chrome tabs with ease, while running Photoshop in the background. Whether you’re using it for regular work or running games, the ZenBook 14 Flip OLED remained cool.

Benchmarking

I ran several benchmarking software on the ZenBook 14 Flip OLED. Here are the results:

On PCMark 10, the laptop achieved a score of 5,627. It will handle basically all work tasks exceedingly well, except for heavy video editing, which is to be expected.

3DMark Time Spy gave it 1,412. There is a rather big gap between its graphics and CPU score which isn’t that strange considering that it’s a work laptop.

For Cinebench, the Multi Core performance was ranked at number 4 while Single Core performance was ranked number second, which puts it ahead most of its competition.

Closing thoughts

The ZenBook 14 Flip OLED is everything you’d ever want from a 2-in-1 convertible notebook. Stellar display, great performance, all the ports you need and a decent battery performance are packed into this machine. Whether you’re a creator or a business user, it will fulfil basically all your demands.

The ZenBook 14 Flip OLED is priced at RM 5,499. Visit its page on the ASUS website to find out where you can get it. 

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