Asus Zenbook S13 OLED: Lighter, Thinner, More Powerful [Review]

Laptops increasingly want to be more portable, and that is why it is a necessary step for firms to bet on creating thinner and lighter devices. Those who have been with me for more than five years analyzing devices know that I have a weakness for these 13-inch equipment and designed to be moved from one place to another without compromise.

We analyze in depth the new Asus Zenbook S13 OLED (UX5304), an extremely light device, very manageable and that will allow you to carry out all your usual tasks. Discover with us what the new Asus “ultrabook” consists of and if it is really worth betting on this technology.

Materials and design: Less is more

In this case, Asus has opted to maintain a design without fanfare, something that we greatly appreciate. "Portable" computers have long ceased to be "portable", with special emphasis on the previous quotation mark. Although before we desperately sought lightness, taking Apple's MacBook Air as a reference, the reality is that the advent of low-cost laptops and gaming devices have made ultrabooks increasingly difficult to see.

However, With a 13,3-inch device and a weight of only 1KG, Asus has come to remind us that all is not lost for now.

In this sense, we have dimensions of 29.62 x 21.63 x 1.09 centimeters, for an exact weight of 1 kg that we did not need to confirm with the weight, the lightness is felt. And this does not prevent it from being resistant, the Asus Zenbook S13 OLED has US MIL STD 810H military grade certification, which is said soon. Let's be honest, we have not stamped it on the ground either to verify what it is capable of offering us in this section.

We have several ports of all kinds on both sides of the screen, a construction that gives a feeling of stability, firmness and above all, durability.

Hardware: For the day to day

We begin to see the ins and outs of this Zenbook S13, in which Asus has decided to mount a processor Intel Core i7 – 1355U at 1.7 GHz, with 12MB Cache, and up to 5 GHz in turbo and built with 10 cores and 12 threads.

At a graphic level, mounts the well-known home card Intel Iris Xe, that although it does not promise us great stridency, it is more than enough for casual games and running the most common applications without any problem.

The version that we have tested It features 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM soldered onto the board, along with 512GB of M.2 NVMe SSD memory. This has promised a fast start up, a fast configuration and above all, a light performance of the equipment in the most common tasks.

It is not cheap, and it shows in the components. Despite all of the above, we have more than enough hardware for the most common tasks. In this sense, the laptop with its integrated hardware will guarantee us enough time of use, battery life and, above all, the confidence that we are not going to become "obsolete" in the short term.

Multimedia and connectivity: What an OLED panel

OLED panels are not the usual theme of laptops, however when you are looking for excellence in portability and design, you have no choice but to bet on this technology. We have an OLED panel of 13,3 inches, 2,8K (2880 x 1800) resolution and a 16:10 aspect ratio.

A delay of only 0,2 ms is surprising, but not so much its refresh rate of 60Hz. It's not something to get excited about either (although it's more than enough) its brightness of 550 nits, but it is worth it to have Dolby Vision certification. It has other Pantone Validated color certifications, as well as an exceptional anti-reflective coating.

Be that as it may, we have a luxury panel, with sufficient brightness, a spectacular color adjustment and, above all, some blacks that will leave your mouth open. It has Harman Kardon tuning for the speakers, Although they are sufficient, they are not an exceptionally good point either, somewhat lacking in "punch", understandable given the size of the device.

Regarding connectivity, we have Wi-Fi 6e which has given us speeds of up to 700MB in our review, Bluetooth 5.2 and more than enough ports on a physical level:

• 2x USB-C Thunderbolt 4
• 1x USB-C 3.2
• 1X HDMI 2.1 TDMS
• Jack 3,5mm

Indeed, having two true Thunderbolt 4 ports does not rule out HDMI, Bravo to Asus, which with the excuse of being thin has not left behind the most basic and necessary connectivity.

User experience

The keyboard is backlit and enough of a journey to work with him calmly, I found it outstanding. Not so the trackpad, in which Apple is still the king, and which brands insist on denying, a large trackpad, but it says absolutely nothing and seems stuck in the year 2010.

We have infrared sensors around the webcam to help us with identification tasks (Windows 11 and Windows Hello). This camera only reaches HD resolutions, enough for a quality video call, but let's be honest... why do brands keep skimping on the webcam?

The 63WHr battery has good autonomy, at least a working day of about 6 continuous hours has endured us. It has a lightweight and quality USB-C power adapter, which makes things much easier for us (65w).

We have some bloatware included, but not too much (MyASUS, ScreenXpert and GlideX), as well as a 30-day trial of McAfee Livesafe.

The overall performance has been satisfactory. allows us to easily perform office tasks within the Microsoft Office suite, we can consume high-quality content and in a totally exceptional way considering the incredible quality of its OLED panel, as well as lean on a bit of casual gaming, since it has endured our games of Two Point Hospital and Civilization V without too many problems.

Not bad if we take into account that it is a laptop with a starting price of 1.499 euros, Available on the official Asus website. A true laptop, in the strict sense of the word.