Ultrabooks, despite having been around for the better part of a decade at this stage, still continue to amaze us.

The engineering acumen needed to create a notebook that is more powerful than the form factor would seemingly allow really is something spectacular to behold. Of course, the reason so many ultrabooks can exist at all is thanks to clever design choices.

Take the subject of this review, the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED for instance. The notebook is not only impossibly thin at 16.9mm, it weighs just 1.4kg.

Having checked the thin and light boxes, let’s take a closer look under the keyboard.

Beneath the sheen

Within the Zenbook 14X’s aluminium alloy chassis – which helps dissipate heat together with the cooling system – sits an Intel 11th Gen Core i7-1165G7. While base clock is said to be 2.8GHz, we found that while idling the CPU actually sits at around the 1.27GHz mark.

This isn’t a problem, however, as it means that the battery is conserved when you’re unplugged from the wall.

Incredibly, the CPU can reach a boost block speed of 4.72GHz when it’s pushed to do so. This is accomplished through something ASUS calls Intelligent Performance Technology. This ramps up the TDP from 15W to 40W which isn’t done briefly but is sustained until you no longer need that performance.

It’s a clever way to eke out extra performance when needed but keep the battery drain under control when you need to send emails on the move.

Our review unit was paired with 16GB of LPDDR4X running at 4266 and together with the CPU, we were never waiting for, well, anything. In Cinebench R23 we noted scores of 6 555 in the multi-Core benchmark and 1 515 in the single-core benchmark. We should note that the fans ramp up significantly when the CPU is under load, but the noise dies down almost as quickly when the CPU isn’t needed as strained.

In fact the performance was so impressive we were tempted to play games on the Zenbook 14X until we looked at the GPU. Here you will find an NVIDIA GeForce MX450 GPU. While you could play games that aren’t very graphically demanding, you would have to lower the resolution of the display and really, this isn’t a gaming notebook.

To illustrate this, we scored just over 2 000 points in 3D Mark’s Time Spy benchmark. It’s not great but as we said, this isn’t a gaming notebook so this won’t factor into our conclusion.

In terms of ports you will find:

• 2 x Thunderbolt 4
• 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A
• 1 x HDMI 2.0
• 1 x MicroSD card reader
• 1 x Headphone/microphone combo port.

Overall, in the hands of a working professional, the Zenbook 14X won’t leave them wanting.

A tale of two displays

For a few years now Samsung has been working with Microsoft to more closely integrate the Korean smartphone maker’s mobile phones with the desktop operating system. While the work has helped integrate Android and Windows to an extent, ASUS’ implementation feels more natural and well executed.

The Zenbook 14X OLED sports an all new ScreenPad with ScreenXpert 2. This trackpad functions like a secondary display albeit with limited functionality. We really enjoyed having Spotify a tap away and being able to toy with our playlists without minimising our active screen.

One of the marquee functions however is the ability to link your Android or iOS smartphone to the notebook and use the screenpad to make and field phone calls. It’s simple but oh so useful and we seriously miss the convenience now that the Zenbook 14X OLED has been returned to ASUS.

You can also move windows from the main screen to the ScreenPad and interact with them there. Oh and yeah, you can use the ScreenPad as a trackpad as well, you won’t, but the functionality is there.

Yes, the ScreenPad is relatively small by display standards, but we can’t explain just how useful it was to have access to it when we couldn’t connect an external display. We highly recommend heading to a PC store near you just to test this feature out, as you need to experience it to fully understand how great it is.

As for the main display, it is gorgeous. Once again, ASUS has received Pantone validation for this display and it boasts 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut and a jaw dropping 133 percent coverage of the sRGB colour gamut. This should scream “content creator” but we’d urge you to invest in an external GPU if that’s your intention.

Our header image was taken in full daylight and we were incredibly impressed with the brightness of the display.

Our only gripe about this display is its native resolution of 3840 x 2400p. While we enjoy large format 4K displays, in a notebook much of the “wow factor” is lost thanks to the tiny form factor. At 14 inches, this display would’ve been fine with a QHD or Full HD resolution.

Battery

Power things when you’re away from the tiny power pack i a 63Wh battery that ASUS rates with up to 8.3 hours of life between charges.

In our testing which involved streaming content from YouTube at 4K we achieved a battery life of 6 hours and 43 minutes. While working on text documents in Google Docs, this increased slightly to 6 hours and 58 minutes.

This is impressive and while your mileage may vary, you won’t be disappointed.

Conclusion

Dell and HP should be quivering in their boots.

The ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED is just such a cleverly designed notebook. From the way the display props up the bottom of the notebook to make typing more comfortable and encourage airflow to the ScreenPad, everything makes sense.

Yes, we dislike the 4K display, but we cannot deny the performance is great and that the overall user experience is something we hope other manufacturers make note of.

Had we not waxed lyrically enough yet, it’s about to get worse.

For this engineering marvel and excellent performance you will only have to pay R27 999.

That is a steal for one of the most premium experiences we’ve had with a notebook to date. If you need an ultrabook, the ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED is the one you want.