The Asus Zenbook 15 OLED (UM3504) is a capable 15-inch notebook that's great for both work and entertainment. But especially for the latter, thanks to a vibrant OLED screen that stands out in movies and games. Its AMD-powered internals produce top-notch performance, and battery life is good, too. Probably the only catch is that at S$2,098, it costs slightly more than your mainstream 15-inch notebook.
Quick specs
- 15.6-inch (2,880 x 1,620 pixels) OLED
- AMD Ryzen 7 7735U with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD
- USB Type-A, 2x USB Type-C, HDMI, audio jack
- 67 watt-hour battery
At around 1.4kg, the aluminium-clad Asus Zenbook 15 OLED is relatively portable for a 15-inch laptop. And it's pretty sleek, too. The chassis is surprisingly stiff with just a bit of flex. While there are even lighter, albeit more expensive models out there, such as the LG gram Style 16, the Asus doesn't feel like a burden on your daily commute. However, I would have liked at least one more USB-A port than the single one on the Zenbook. There are two USB-C ports, as well as a HDMI port. Asus also squeezed in a numeric keypad, which is nice to have. What's even better is the infrared webcam that supports facial recognition. This 1080p webcam is decent for online video meetings, but note that images have some noise, and are slightly soft. The webcam lacks a physical privacy shutter, though you can disable it via a keyboard shortcut.
Perhaps because I have been mostly testing notebooks with a productivity-slanted 16:10 or 3:2 aspect ratio, but the Zenbook's 16:9 screen seems wider than usual. This display is more suited for watching videos, especially since it's a lush OLED that can produce inky blacks. Asus seems to be going on a charm offensive to tout the benefits of OLED — even creating an entire website for this. But I think consumers nowadays have plenty of experience with OLED screens. And they would recognise that the one on the Zenbook is great. It's bright, sharp, with eye-popping colours. It also has a 120Hz refresh rate, though you'll have to manually set that. Its Dolby Atmos speakers have more body and depth than your typical notebook speakers. You may even get a whiff of 3D surround sound in some Dolby Atmos content like Netflix's 6 Underground.
The Zenbook 15 uses AMD's latest Ryzen 7 7735U mobile processor, and has the standard 16GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD. AMD has generally outperformed the equivalent Intel chip in PCMark 10. Hence, it's no surprise that the Zenbook is ahead of its rivals with a PCMark 10 score of 6,600. For example, the Acer Swift Go, which is powered by a 45W Intel Core i7-13700H chip, produced 6,093 in PCMark 10. You can also run less demanding games such as Hades on this laptop. Battery life is excellent for a 15-inch notebook. The Zenbook clocked 8 hours in our video-loop battery test with screen brightness set to maximum.
At S$2,098, the Asus Zenbook 15 OLED is slightly more expensive than a mainstream big-screen laptop. For example, the new Dell Inspiron 16 Plus is around S$2,000 with a dedicated graphics chip. But the Asus is lighter, and runs cooler, albeit it's less suitable for gaming. Instead, the Zenbook's biggest rivals will be similarly lightweight laptops with OLED screens, such as the Acer Swift Edge and LG's gram notebooks. Get the Asus Zenbook 15 OLED from Lazada, and Shopee.
Note: Review unit provided by Asus.
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