Asus ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition Review: Buy it for the fun, not for productivity

As for the laptop, the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition looks special from all angles. The body is bathed in a shade of Zero-G Titanium and the rest of it carries special space graphics and stickers, with easter eggs smeared all over. All of this may have seemed cool if I was younger than 20 years old but I am a grown-up and despite being a space nerd, all of these graphics seem too much. I wished there was something reminiscent of the Asus P6300 laptop on this ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition.

Okay, the lid has a small 3.5-inch OLED display that keeps showing animated space graphics. It looks cool for the first few minutes but after that, it is simply a gimmick. It doesn’t work as an Always On Display to show time or other information while the lid is closed. I asked Asus whether it is doing something to bring that functionality to this display but the answers I got were unsatisfactory.

Open the lid and the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition looks similar to a regular ZenBook model, except for the space graphics and easter eggs, and that orange painted spacebar. The trackpad is large and you get the integrated Numpad. The keyboard’s white backlighting is disturbing in the daylight as well.

Despite being a special edition laptop, it is 15.9mm thick and weighs 1.4 kilos. This is not a lightweight laptop and not at all slim, especially next to a MacBook Air. The thickness allows the laptop to feature all useful ports such as two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, the microSD card slot. You get an adapter for USB-C-to-Ethernet, and a fingerprint sensor to unlock the device. 

Asus ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition Display 

The ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition gets one of the nicest displays from Asus. There is a 14-inch OLED display with 2.8K resolution, 100 percent DCI-P3 colours, and a refresh rate of 90Hz. Being an OLED display, you are getting one of the nicest viewing experiences on any Windows laptops at the moment. Whether watching YouTube videos or reading our HT Tech website with all its colourful content, this is a treat for the eyes. The 90Hz refresh rate makes scrolling and animations a bit easier on the eyes. 

Asus ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition Performance 

Being a new Asus laptop, it is bound to get some special edition goodies inside. My unit of the Space Edition came with the Intel Core i9-12900H processor, 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and 1TB 4.0 Performance SSD, and Intel Iris Xe graphics for graphics duties.These are all good specs by all means and for power users, these should make for joyful experience.

I had tested a 12th Gen Intel laptop prior to this and there were some issues with the performance, which I observed also on the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition. This was the Core i9 processor and yet the laptop often stumbled with basic workloads involving Google Chrome, Word, and YouTube Music running in the background. It ran fine for most times but it was in those busy moments when the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition took a second or two to load up a page, or open the Word document. Maybe Microsoft needs to optimise Windows 11 better for the new processors but at the moment, you don’t expect a Rs. 1.7 lakh laptop to run out of breath, especially when a much cheaper MacBook Air is at home managing similar workloads.

Having the Core i9 processor is also detrimental to the battery life. On a typical office workday, the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition could last at most up to six hours at a stretch. Hence, I had to use it plugged in most of the time to get work done seamlessly. Maybe choosing the more efficient Core i5 processor or the Core i7 could help with longer battery stamina but on the Core i9, the situation is grim. Asus could have fitted the laptop with a bigger battery.

The dual speaker system on the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition delivers sub-par audio quality. It goes loud but there’s no depth to the audio. The 720p webcam is of poor quality and is best left unused for video calls indoors. 

Verdict 

The Asus ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition is a great attempt at creating something exciting out of a mundane high-end Windows notebook. Asus has certainly gone the distance to justify the extra you pay for this one, especially with the special packaging, that space-themed paint job, a cutesy display, some beefy performance bits inside, and a gorgeous OLED display. It all looks exciting but for the extra I am paying, it just doesn’t feel as special as the ROG special offs we have seen in the past.