Asus Zenbook S 14 UX5406: Reviewing Intel’s AI-powered laptop

With the announcement of Microsoft’s AI-powered laptops in collaboration with Qualcomm, known as the CoPilot computers, Intel found itself in a challenging position. Now, we’ve received the answer from Intel: a new laptop with built-in AI capabilities. Does it stand up to the competition?

When Microsoft first unveiled its CoPilot laptops, Intel found itself caught off guard. For the first time in many years, an entire line of future laptops wasn’t based on Intel’s hardware but on the hardware of an unexpected competitor that entered the PC market: Qualcomm, with its Snapdragon processors.

Intel, however, quickly responded, releasing its own CoPilot laptops in collaboration with major manufacturers, powered by Intel’s latest Lunar Lake processors. These processors represent a significant upgrade to Intel’s 14th-generation Core Ultra Series 200V (the second generation of Core Ultra processors, after Intel discontinued its traditional generation naming scheme). The key feature here is that, like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processors, Intel’s new processors also feature neural processors designed specifically for AI tasks. Does this technology meet the challenge? We had the chance to test one of the first laptops with this new technology, the Asus Zenbook S 14 UX5406.

Design and Build

Asus' Zenbook series, the company’s flagship line, has been known in recent years for its sleek, attractive designs, and the Zenbook S 14 UX5406 we received for review follows this trend. It has a silver-gray finish with the brand’s new logo etched into the surface (resembling the shape of the letter "A," reminiscent of the Starfleet insignia from "Star Trek"). The material used here is an alloy developed by Asus, combining ceramic and aluminum. The result is impressive and unique: a 14-inch laptop that is both sturdy and lightweight, with a slim profile of just 1 cm at its thinnest point and a low weight of 1.2 kg.

One feature we really appreciate about Asus laptops is that they don’t skimp on ports, even in slim devices. The Zenbook S 14 UX5406 includes a traditional USB-A 3.2 port, two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports for fast data transfer and display, a headphone jack, and a full HDMI port. This is certainly a better offering than some manufacturers that limit themselves to only two USB-C ports and a headphone jack.

Upon opening the laptop, we find a stunning display with a built-in HD webcam, a full-sized keyboard, and a spacious touchpad. However, the arrow keys are a bit smaller than usual. The typing experience is very comfortable, with a key travel of 1.1 mm, and there’s also a dedicated key to activate CoPilot. In terms of usability, this laptop is very pleasant to work with.

Before wrapping up the design section, it's worth mentioning the small 65W charger, which is more compact than any other laptop charger I've encountered. It’s a small cube that resembles a smartphone charger, making it a great advantage for those who are often on the go. Asus also includes a stylish gray envelope case to protect your laptop.

Display and Sound

As usual, Asus impresses with the display quality. The Zenbook S 14 UX5406 features a stunning 3K OLED screen (though glossy), with a brightness of 500 nits and rich, deep colors. There’s a slight red tint, likely due to a 70% reduction in blue light to help with sleep. The display supports various color standards, such as DCI and Pantone, and Dolby Vision. The contrast is excellent, as is the detail, with a 120Hz refresh rate. It’s also a touch screen, and Asus includes a stylus for direct use on the screen.

The sound is of high quality, similar to what we’ve come to expect from Asus in previous laptops. The Zenbook S 14 UX5406 is equipped with four speakers, tuned by Harman Kardon and supporting Dolby Atmos, providing impressive surround sound. The sound is loud, clear, and surprisingly detailed for laptop speakers. This laptop easily passes the “is this laptop suitable for Netflix on the go?” test with flying colors.

Performance and AI

The Zenbook S 14 UX5406 is powered by Intel's new processor, which we’ll delve into shortly, and it features 32GB of RAM and a fast 1TB SSD in the model we tested. There are also more affordable models with slightly less powerful specifications. Intel's processors include neural processing units (NPU) for AI tasks, but oddly, they are mainly used for background tasks, while the heavy lifting for AI computing is done by the main CPU and GPU. Together, they achieve 47 TOPS (trillion operations per second), surpassing Microsoft’s 40 TOPS threshold for CoPilot laptops. However, there’s a catch: currently, the laptop doesn’t fully support real-world AI applications, with an update scheduled later this year.

In general performance tests, we got mixed results from the Asus Zenbook. Some tests showed impressive results, while others were more average. The problem doesn’t seem to lie with the powerful Intel Core 7 Ultra 258V processor but with Intel’s ARC graphics processor. While it’s better than previous integrated graphics from Intel’s Iris series, it still falls short when compared to Nvidia and other competitors.

In the 3DMark Night Raid test, designed for integrated graphics, the Zenbook scored an impressive 34,539 points, but this benchmark is somewhat outdated. In the more general Time Spy test, it scored 4324 points, which is decent but didn’t beat the current XPS 16, which features a 14th-generation Intel Core 155H processor paired with a more powerful Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU. The Zenbook did achieve a solid score of 3255 points in the newer Steel Nomad test, positioning it between a business laptop and a gaming laptop.

How does it compare to CoPilot laptops powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors? In the GeekBench test, the Zenbook scored 2717 points for single-core performance and 11,068 points for multi-core, which places it behind the Snapdragon X Elite, even when compared to Asus’s own Vivobook S 15, which scored 14,370 points in the same test, roughly 3,000 points higher.

In the Cinebench test, the Zenbook achieved mixed results. Despite an impressive single-core score of 120 points (beating older competitors like Apple's M1 and Ryzen 5800X), its multi-core performance was surprisingly low, with only 475 points, compared to the Snapdragon X Elite’s 1027 points.

In the PassMark benchmark, the Zenbook placed in the 61st percentile with 6045 points, indicating strong overall machine performance. The main contributors to this are its powerful CPU (20989 points, 87th percentile) and strong disk performance (25242 points, 93rd percentile). In this test, it outperforms the Snapdragon X Elite, but it’s important to note that this test wasn’t designed for Qualcomm’s processors, and they run it through a command translation layer.

As for AI capabilities, we struggled to evaluate them due to an annoying issue: there is currently no real-world support for the neural processor in AI applications. This functionality will be added in an update next year. While Intel provides a demonstration environment for AI capabilities, including image generation with AI, it’s just a demonstration—unlike Qualcomm-powered devices, which already offer real-world AI capabilities on Windows 11 out of the box, such as image generation from text, video effects, and real-time translation subtitles.

Intel and Asus state that these features will be added later this year, but it’s somewhat frustrating to buy a laptop that’s supposed to have AI capabilities, only to find out that those capabilities will come as a software upgrade after purchase. In synthetic AI benchmarks like Procyon, the Zenbook scored 359 points on Stable Diffusion 1.5 (image generation from text), and 212 points on Microsoft ML (machine vision).

Battery Life

One promise Intel had to fulfill against Qualcomm's competitors was improving battery life, as Qualcomm’s CoPilot laptops offer long hours of work on a single charge. It seems Intel has succeeded in this area—the Zenbook S 14 UX5406 comes with a large 72Wh battery and, thanks to the energy-efficient processor, it delivers impressive results.

In Futuremark’s battery test, the Zenbook achieved 25 hours of work, which is very impressive. In real-world use, after eight hours of work, the battery was at 50%, so a full charge should last about 16 hours, which is quite remarkable. In fact, you could leave the compact charger at home, but if you do need to charge it, there’s fast charging that can fill the battery to 60% in under an hour. Very impressive.

The Bottom Line

The Zenbook S 14 UX5406 is an impressive laptop, especially when it comes to its interface, build quality, display, speakers, and long battery life of over 16 hours on a single charge.

In terms of performance, it can easily handle most tasks required by modern laptops, but the fact that it’s marketed as an AI-powered laptop—and still lacks real-world AI capabilities directly through Windows 11—means that, for now, if you want a true CoPilot laptop, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon-powered devices are the way to go. It’s unfortunate, but true.

Intel’s rush to prove “we also have AI-powered laptops” hasn’t quite paid off, and in this sense, it’s an unfinished product. Once the updates are released and we can compare real-world AI capabilities, we’ll be happy to do so.

Lastly, regarding the price: the Zenbook S 14 UX5406 in the version we tested is a very high-quality laptop, but it’s also not cheap. It costs around NIS 8,400. However, a more affordable version with a more modest spec will also be sold for about NIS 6,000, which still offers good value for the money.