Zenbook S 13 OLED (UX5304) review – an ultrabook with battery life of more than 12 hours

Most recently, the ASUS company presented the Zenbook S 13 OLED (UX5304) laptop, which became its thinnest and lightest model with an OLED screen, that is, a real ultrabook. But in this case, ASUS returned to the classic 13.3-inch format, which seemed to be finally supplanted by 14-inch laptops, which thanks to thin frames were able to become much more compact. However, modern components allow the Zenbook S 13 OLED to exceed these indicators, with a thickness of just over 1 cm and a weight of 1 kg, the laptop is surprisingly comfortable to carry around. However, what else can its user expect besides a high level of mobility? In this review, I will tell you in detail about the capabilities of the laptop.

Zenbook S 13 OLED (UX5304) specifications

In the box

However, let’s start with the configuration, it is quite interesting here. The laptop comes in new, more environmentally friendly packaging made from recycled materials, and includes a carrying case and charger.

And if the case is standard and used in other ASUS models, then the power supply unit is completely new here.

ASUS uses a very compact GaN charger with a removable plug for the first time. If plugs for different types of sockets will be sold separately under it, it will be very convenient for those who travel often.

Design and materials

The first thing you notice when you pick up the Zenbook S 13 OLED is how thin and light it is.

The thickness of the case is only 10.9 mm, the weight is 1 kg. At the same time, ASUS achieves such indicators not due to the use of plastic, the chassis of the laptop is completely metal.

In this model, the company uses anodized aluminum with a plasma ceramization coating for the cover of the display unit, which gives it increased wear resistance.

In addition to durability, the new material allows you to get a surface that looks and feels like natural stone. Thanks to this approach, ASUS manages to create a recognizable design that does not require too bright elements. All that can be seen on the cover of the display unit is the monogram of the new company logo and a small inscription ASUS Zenbook.

Despite the light and thin case, the cover of the display unit can be opened with one hand, the hinge design allows you to fold the screen 180 degrees.

At the same time, the display slightly raises the base with the keyboard, forming an ergonomic slope.

The screen itself has thin bezels on top and sides and a glossy finish.

In general, the design of the model turned out to be very pleasant, the case is assembled perfectly and, despite its small thickness, does not bend anywhere.

Ports

In such a thin model, you don’t expect to see anythinga large number of connectors, especially since the previous generations of the Zenbook S line made do with a minimum of ports. However, Zenbook S 13 OLED, fortunately, became an exception. Not only can you find two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C with charging support and DisplayPort, but also standard HDMI 2.1.

In addition, there is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and a combined audio jack on the left side of the laptop.

Essentially, there are all popular ports for connecting peripheral devices.

In general, it would be ideal to have another slot for microSD cards, but considering that the laptop is not for processing photos and videos, its absence is understandable.

Zenbook S 13 OLED display

The laptop has a 13.3-inch OLED display with an aspect ratio of 16:10, a resolution of 2880×1800 pixels, a response speed of 0.2 ms, a refresh rate of 60 Hz, a peak brightness of 550 nits and a minimum of 0.0005 nits. ASUS has come up with a marketing name for this type of screen, which the company now calls Lumina OLED. So it should be easier for users to find out that a better display is installed in the laptop.

In this regard, Zenbook S 13 OLED does not stand out among other top models of the manufacturer. The screen offers a wide range of colors and allows you to choose your own calibration settings. In the MyASUS app, you can choose between sRGB, DCI-P3, or Display P3 color rendering, as well as manually adjust the color temperature and blue level.

Traditionally for ASUS notebooks with OLED panels, MyASUS also offers a full set of options to extend the life of the display.

Despite the fact that in the latest Zenbook models, the company used screens with a refresh rate of 90-120 Hz, 60 Hz when working with the Zenbook S 13 OLED does not feel like a disadvantage. The display is really very high-quality, and it is clear that in such a compact laptop the manufacturer was looking for an opportunity to get the most out of the built-in battery.

Platform and performance

The test version of the laptop used the new mobile processor Intel Core i7-1355U, the release of which took place at the beginning this year. This 10-core chip has 2 performance cores and 8 power-saving cores. The frequency of the former can reach 5 GHz, and the latter – 3.7 GHz. The basic thermal package (TDP) of the processor is at the level of 12 W, but depending on the cooling system it can reach even 55 W. Despite the thin body, ASUS was able to achieve this value at the level of 20 W, which is very good for such a compact model.

There is no discrete graphics in the Zenbook S 13 OLED, of course, the laptop uses the built-in Intel Iris Xe accelerator with a maximum frequency of 1.3 GHz.

The amount of RAM in the test model was 16 GB LPDDR5 5200 MHz.

While the data storage was implemented on the basis of PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD from Samsung with a capacity of 1 TB. This is a very fast drive with a read speed of 6892 MB/s and a write speed of 5136 MB/s.

Overall, the Zenbook S 13 OLED exceeded expectations in terms of performance. In the PCMark 10 synthetic test, the laptop scores 5360 points when working from a charge and 3928 points when working from a battery.

For comparison, it is more than provided by the also relatively new Zenbook 14 OLED with last year’s Intel Core i7-1260P processor, it scored 4434 points for charging and 2853 points for battery in PCMark 10.

The built-in graphics in such a thin body does not allow you to seriously talk about games, but it will actually be enough to run old games or, for example, Civilization 6 with minimal graphics settings.

To sum up this section, I will note that in everyday use, if you work with office tasks, the Zenbook S 13 OLED provides a very comfortable level of work.

Heating and stability of operation

In such a thin body, as in the Zenbook S 13 OLED, you expect to see a passive cooling system, but ASUS managed to fit two ultra-thin fans into the laptop at once. They are almost inaudible during normal use, and under load they operate surprisingly quietly, not exceeding 50 dB, which is even less than the noise level in an open office space.

In the AIDA64 system stability test, there is a slight throttling at first, but it disappears as soon as the cooling fans spin up. This is due to the specifics of the test because in real use it is very difficult to immediately load the processor to 100%.

In general, the work of ASUS engineers was not in vain, the cooling system does its job perfectly. The temperature of the processor is kept at the level of 74 degrees Celsius on average, while the laptop body becomes barely warm. The average frequency is kept at almost 2.5 GHz, which is not fantastic, but it is a very good result for such a compact laptop. You can count on good performance under load.

Keyboard and touchpad

ASUS succeeded in what Apple could not, namely to implement a comfortable keyboard with a classic reliable “scissors” mechanism in an ultra-thin laptop and also with a key travel of 1.1 mm and the distance from the center of one button to another is 18.7 mm.

At first, the keyboard seems a bit unusual, you need to get used to the short stroke of the keys, but then you start to understand that you type on it even faster because less effort is required to press the button. Hopefully, we will see this type of keyboard in other ASUS laptop models.

Zenbook S 13 OLED received the new ASUS ErgoSense Touchpad, the dimensions of which reach 129×81 mm, this is a really large touch panel covered with ultra-thin glass.

There are no complaints about the touchpad in terms of accuracy, it perfectly recognizes the position of fingers and supports Windows 11 gestures. However, it has a rather loud click, which is very dissonant with the quiet operation of the keyboard. In general, it would be good if ASUS finally began to abandon mechanical touchpads and switch to fully touch-sensitive ones using vibration to simulate pressing.

Webcam and Windows Hello

The laptop received a Full HD webcam, which copes well with its main task, transmitting images during video calls.

In the settings of the MyASUS utility, you can choose various effects that will be applied to the webcam image, for example, blur the background.

Next to the webcam of the Zenbook S 13 OLED is a set of infrared sensors, which is used for the operation of the facial recognition system.

It allows you to link these biometrics to your Windows 11 account and sign in without entering a password using the Windows Hello feature.

Audio

The laptop uses two external speakers certified by harman/kardon, which also support Dolby Atmos sound settings. I’ve already written this more than once in this review, but I’m not afraid to repeat myself, you don’t expect loud speakers from such a thin laptop, but in the Zenbook S 13 OLED, they play very loudly.

The only thing is that, as in all recent Zenbook models with stereo speakers, the sound, although loud and spacious, has almost no bass. For videos it’s not a problem, but for listening to music it depends on the genres you like.

However, it is better to listen to music through headphones, in this model they can still be connected with a wire through a standard 3.5 mm connector, or use wireless headphones thanks to Bluetooth support 5.2.

Zenbook S 13 OLED battery life

The laptop’s built-in battery takes up essentially half of its body, so ASUS managed to fit a battery of up to 63 Wh.

It paid off because the battery life of the Zenbook S 13 OLED is really at a very high level. In the PCMark 10 test, the laptop lasted almost 13 hours, that is, very close to the 14 hours of operation declared by the manufacturer.

The laptop is charged through the built-in USB Type-C ports, and both are suitable for this purpose. The complete compact GaN charger with a capacity of 65 W allows you to quickly charge the laptop according to the Power Delivery standard.