I have dealt with my fair share of Windows laptops before moving on to an M2 MacBook Air — I was so convinced that regardless of the amount of money I spent on a Windows machine, it would let me down. But then came the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED and — excuse my excitement — it blew my mind. I had the machine for about two weeks to review and here is what I think of it.

The laptop stands out from the competition the minute you unbox it. At 1 kg, it is lighter than my MacBook, with absolutely no compromise on the build quality. ASUS says that it has used eco-friendly plasma ceramic aluminium for the chassis and it looks and feels very premium.

As expected, ASUS aced the display on this one too, with a bright 13.3-inch 2.8K OLED panel and a 16:10 aspect ratio. It also offers several settings in the MyASUS app that will help users adjust brightness and personalise the display to their convenience and improve battery life. All content viewed on it — from Google Sheets to Netflix binge sessions — was sharp and crisp. The audio quality was also really good since the speakers are located on the hinge and not at the bottom (notebook makers should really, ahem, take note, pun entirely intended).

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The review unit that I received was the maxed-out version with the 13th Gen Intel i7 processor, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. The chassis did heat up in the initial days and faced some glitches here and there, especially with the speakers and microphone, but once I tuned it to the Fan Mode in MyASUS, I barely faced any problems. And this is something that a lot of thin-and-portable laptops manage to screw up. While heating up wasn’t an issue anymore, the fans did get quite loud and the mode is not supported while you’re plugged in.

Another thing that most of these ultrabooks — including the MacBook Air — don’t have is sufficient I/O ports, and ASUS managed to fit in a full HDMI port and USB Type-A port along with the two Thunderbolt 4 ports and an audio combo jack.

Now, ASUS laptops have barely disappointed me, except when it comes to the keyboard — never been a fan of those — but this one changes that too. The keyboard is on par with the MacBook Air and makes typing a delight with full-sized keys and good key travel. The backlighting is also automatic, which was a great addition. I didn’t have to worry about turning it off during the day or turning it on at night. The trackpad is also decent, with clicky responses but the pushes get a little harder as you move towards the keyboard.

Also Read: ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED laptop review: Premium design, sturdy build quality

The battery life on the ASUS Zenbook S 13 is also decent. One would assume that the fans running and the power it takes to keep the chassis cool might reduce the battery life, but it lasted me well around five to six hours with several tabs open on Google Chrome, with WhatsApp and Slack running in the background and sometimes Spotify too, depending on my mood.

The only thing that annoyed me was that the Zenbook does not support lift to wake and also does not have a fingerprint reader, but to make up for that, it has Windows Hello facial recognition that works just fine.

In conclusion

If I hadn’t given up and bought the MacBook Air, I would have 100 percent grabbed the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED and I’m not exaggerating. It is a great laptop for everyday work and play. You cannot go wrong with it. The pricing starts at Rs 1,04,990 and the model ASUS lent me costs Rs 1,49,990. So, if that is your budget range and you do not want to move to macOS, ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED will not disappoint you.

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