Asus ZenBook UX401
A fantastic 14in laptop in an ultra-compact chassis – the UX410 is a clear winner, despite tough competition
SCORE★★★★★ PRICE £499 (£599 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com
Looking for a premium, slimline ultraportable at a mid-range price is a little like planning to buy a luxury sports saloon for the price of a family runabout. Yet the Asus ZenBook UX410 comes close to the mark, delivering the kind of experience we would expect from a laptop costing over £1,000.
It’s compact for a 14in model, with the ultra-slim 6mm bezel allowing the screen to sit in a chassis the size of an average 13.3in ultraportable. It’s actually a few millimetres shorter on its longest axis than the 13.3in Medion Akoya S3409 and 15mm shorter than the hardly chunky Acer Swift 3. Thicker bezels above and below the screen mean we’re not quite in the territory of the Infinity screens on Dell’s high-end XPS machines, but it’s an impressive feat of engineering for a mid-range model.
That chassis, meanwhile, is gorgeous. It’s all aluminium, from the shiny lid to the keyboard surround to the base, and while there’s some movement if you try to bend the lid, it feels well-built and robust. The edge of the surround plate fits neatly over each side of the base, meaning there are no uncomfortable edges, and the working position is comfortable whether you’re sitting at your desk or working on your lap.
The keyboard is again fantastic for a mid-range laptop. Some may grumble over the shrunken Shift key on the left-hand side, but otherwise the keyboard feels larger and more spaced-out than it actually is. The typing action is light, not demanding much pressure, but with a crisp response as you tap each key down. The trackpad handles small motions, sweeping moves and multitouch gestures with high levels of accuracy, making the laptop as a whole a pleasure to use. At just 1.4kg you could comfortably carry it all day long, yet the screen and keyboard are sizable enough to keep you going through a working day without complaints.
Those slim lines don’t come at the expense of connectivity: you get the full suite of USB 3 and HDMI ports, plus an SD card reader and a USB-C port. This isn’t used for charging – you’re stuck with a tablet-style wall wart charger with a short 1.2m cable instead – but it’s welcome addition nonetheless. There’s also dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, with a 2x2 configuration for a maximum 866Mbits/sec connection speed. In short, you’re well-equipped.
The one thing you have cause to gripe about is the core specification – Asus uses a seventh-generation Core i3-7100U with just 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. In our benchmark results, this means a mid-table placing, but in general use running mainstream office applications (and even many professional graphics and design apps) you’ll be fine. If you need more horsepower then there’s a higher-end variant with a Core i5 and double the storage and RAM, not to mention a fingerprint reader. However, this will set you back another £150, so you may prefer to add more RAM and a SATA SSD manually yourself. They’re just a few Torx screws away.
“The chassis is gorgeous. It’s all aluminium, from the shiny lid to the keyboard surround to the base, and it feels well-built and robust”
Yet we haven’t even touched on the UX410’s strongest feature: the quality of its screen. Much as the 200-plus ppi screens of the MacBook Pro or Surface Laptop look incredibly sharp, 1,920 x 1,080 can still look beautifully clear on a good 14in display. This one is a cracker, too, with the best colour accuracy of any on test, high levels of brightness and contrast (362cd/m2 and 1,189:1 respectively) and a stellar 92% coverage of the sRGB gamut. You could happily edit DSLR photos on this laptop – or just stream Netflix and enjoy a great, vibrant picture. The sound is a tad harsh with the volume up high, but set it just loud enough to drown out the occasional whine from the cooling system, and it’s fine for casual listening.
This isn’t the most powerful laptop on test, and battery life is one area where Acer comes out on top – the Asus only just made it to eight hours of video playback where the Acer lasted for nine. All the same, the ZenBook UX410 feels a cut above the competition. Looking for a premium, slimline ultraportable at a mid-range price? Look no further.