Asus Zenbook 14 (2026) Review

Design and Keyboard

• Familiar look and feel
• Lightweight, with a good port selection
• Satisfying keyboard and huge trackpad

The Zenbook 14 (2026) picks up where last year’s Zenbook A14 (2025) left off, offering a similarly stylish beige colourway that remains particularly unique among the canon of lightweight ultrabooks out there. It looks excellent.

It is ever-so slightly heavier at 1.1kg, making it around 100g heavier than the older model and existing Zenbook A14 (2026), although it’s still easily portable, especially for such a compact laptop.

The reason for this being so lightweight is because of Asus’ continued use of its own innovative ceraluminium material on the laptop’s lid. It blends ceramic and aluminium for a rugged, yet lightweight finish. The former material remains uncommon in laptops, and is one I’ve seen more in the world of watches in bezels, cases and bracelets for fantastic durability and lightness.

The Zenbook 14 (2026) is thin at just 13.9mm, and offers a good selection of ports for most folks. On the left come a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports, plus a full-size HDMI port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The right side is home to a sole USB-A port.

Being a more compact laptop, the fact there is a smaller layout keyboard here isn’t a surprise. It’s a 65% option complete with arrow keys, function row and surprisingly deep travel. The 1.3mm of total travel means keypresses have a certain substance to them, as opposed to feeling like hair triggers, while it was satisfying to use for writing words up over the course of a week. It also comes with a bright white backlight for after-dark working.

Even with its smaller chassis, the Zenbook 14 (2026) still manages to slap in a huge, MacBook-busting trackpad. It’s positively huge for a laptop of this size, giving my fingers a lot of real estate for movement and gestures. The action and movement are super slick too, owing to its glass surface.

The packaging here seems to be entirely plastic-free, with the laptop coming in a cardboard box and paper bag, although there isn’t a power adapter or associated cable.

Display and Sound

• Deep blacks and fantastic contrast
• Resolution and refresh rate remain a little low
• Middling speakers

The Zenbook 14 (2026) sticks with a compact 14-inch 1920×1200 60Hz OLED screen for better or for worse, offering solid detail across a smaller size. I’ll still bemoan the lack of a higher 120Hz refresh rate for added zippiness, as it’s been the case in the past.

Nonetheless, the panel impresses both on immediate use with its inky blacks and excellent contrast, with my colorimeter measuring 0.01 for black level and 10210:1 for contrast. The 6500K colour temperature is perfect, too. 

The 281.6 nits of peak SDR brightness is disappointing, though, as it’s a third or so worse off than the Zenbook A14 (2025) and fails to meet our 300-nit target.

As for colour accuracy, the Zenbook 14 (2026) afforded virtually perfect results, with 100% sRGB and DCI-P3 coverage alongside 98% Adobe RGB. This means this screen is well-suited for productivity and more colour-sensitive workloads, although it is a little low-res for the latter against rivals.

The speakers here are reasonable, if unremarkable. They’re downwards-firing, so you’ll want to ensure this Asus laptop is placed on a harder surface such as a desk to avoid sounding muffled. There’s a decent mid-range, although they lack top-end precision and extension in the low end. You can use them for basic tasks, although I’d suggest utilising the headphone jack for any serious content consumption.

Performance

• Last year’s Snapdragon X SoC inside
• Performance is fine, if underwhelming against 2026 processors
• Solid RAM headroom and snappy, if meagre capacity, SSD

Asus hasn’t kitted out this Zenbook 14 (2026) with one of the shiny new Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 SoCs in any of its three flavours, instead choosing to stick with the base model Snapdragon X chip found in last year’s model that was introduced at CES 2025.

Qualcomm had stated at MWC that it would retain the first-gen Snapdragon X chips to compete in the lower-cost laptop sector, letting the newer chips loose on higher-end hardware. As a refresher, this base model chip comes with eight cores, while you get ten on the X Plus and 12 on the X Elite.

In single-core loads in Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23, this chip keeps up with its more powerful brothers with scores in the right kind of ballpark, proving the Zenbook 14 (2026) to be fast enough for general productivity and lighter tasks.

However, the multi-core scores in Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23 are slower by around 35-50% than newer Snapdragon X2 chips. Against the crop of non-X Intel Panther Lake chips found in the likes of the Dell XPS 14 (2026) base model, Geekbench 6 has some parity,  although Cinebench R23 wins out in favour of Intel.

3D performance is where things have notably improved with the latest run of chips from all manufacturers, with 3DMark Time Spy scores usually in the 2500-3500 range for 2026 chips. For reference, the Snapdragon X yielded a result of just over a thousand, meaning it’s much less suited to more graphically intensive tasks.

The 16GB of RAM gives enough headroom for some intensive tasks, while the 512GB SSD is more meagre. It’s a decently brisk PCIe 4.0 choice, too, with measured read and write speeds of 6203.94MB/s and 5977.02MB/s respectively.

Software

• Copilot+ PC offers AI smarts
• Reasonably clean Windows 11 install
• Small compatibility issues, being Arm-based

The Zenbook 14 (2026) comes with Windows 11 and a reasonably clean install, too. There isn’t much in the way of bloatware with regard to an unwanted anti-virus or similar, although there are some pieces of software courtesy of Asus that come pre-installed.

There is MyAsus, which comes as part of the taskbar when you first open the Zenbook 14 (2026). This is where you can check on everything from battery level and enabling battery care modes to choosing which type of workload this laptop’s network connection prioritises.

In addition, there is also GlideX, which is where you can manage tasks such as casting or mirroring the Zenbook 14 (2026)’s screen to other devices wirelessly, or transfer files across the same network. You can also enable remote access to a mobile device, too. The Storybook app is designed as another means of organising photos and videos, using AI to recognise faces and file your photos for you, which is handy.

There is also enough AI horsepower from the Snapdragon X chip inside to mark this laptop as a Copilot+ PC, providing access to Microsoft’s AI functionality for generative powers and filters in the Photos and Paint app, as well as the clever Windows Studio webcam effects for background blurring, auto framing and maintaining eye contact. With the latest version of Windows 11, there is also the controversial Microsoft Recall feature.

Being Arm-based, the Zenbook 14 (2026) also has the problem of having minor issues with some compatibility. This is because Windows is traditionally run on x86-based systems, so to work on Arm, apps have had to be translated through Microsoft’s Prism translation software. For the most part, I had little in the way of issues with compatibility in running a range of benchmark software, as well as Photoshop and similar apps. As with other Arm-based Windows laptops I’ve looked at though, the PCMark 10 benchmark app doesn’t run fully.

Battery Life

• Lasted for 13 hours 32 minutes in the battery test
• Capable of lasting for one to two working days.

The one area where Asus has skimped in theory with this new Zenbook 14 (2026) against the older variant is with battery capacity. We’ve got a more modest 50Whr capacity to play with, although the brand is still optimistic, with it quoting up to 30 hours of runtime on a charge.

In running the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery test at the requisite 150 nits of brightness, this Asus laptop lasted for 13 hours and 32 minutes before conking out, meaning you’ll get roughly two working days out of it away from the mains. It also puts it right in the mix against key rivals.

As is becoming more customary with a lot of modern laptops, the Zenbook 14 (2026) doesn’t come with its own charger. When charging with a high-wattage Ugreen option, it pulls up to 66W when charging from the wall. Getting back to 50% took just 28 minutes, while a full charge took 78 minutes.

Should you buy it?