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Asus has a broad category of laptops in the country, which means you tend to see more laptop reviews from the brand than others. The latest from the company is the ZenBook S13 OLED which claims to be one of the lightest and thinner than MacBooks. This ZenBook model is priced upwards of Rs 1 lakh which gets you the base variant with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage, going up to Rs 1,49,990 for the 32GB + 1TB storage and powered by the 13th gen Intel i7 processor, which is what Asus offered us as the review unit. We ended up using the ZenBook S13 OLED laptop to see if the company has made a competent product that can become a MacBook alternative for buyers.

Asus ZenBook S13 OLED Review: What’s Cool?

Design is the first thing we noticed with the ZenBook S13 OLED and it is hard to ignore how light and thin the laptop is in real life. To give you the specifics, the laptop weighs just 1 kg and comes with 10mm thickness, which is nothing. With these figures, the ZenBook S13 OLED is one of the lightest laptops we have come across in recent times, and how easily it slots into your backpack. I’ve used a 1.2 kg laptop and even then this ZenBook S13 felt really good to carry.

But the lightweight nature does not mean you see a drop in the build quality. Asus has offered a durable matte finish with a touch of ceramic that is mostly pleasing to the eye.

The unique hinge design allows you to open the flap to 180-degrees. Asus has also mastered the display tech on its notebooks, and offers an OLED panel with 2.8K screen resolution that produces punchy colours, high brightness level, and sharp contrast yet conducive to long usage without affecting the eyes. You can watch movies, videos and browse the web on the screen.

Asus has launched the ZenBook S13 OLED with the 13th gen Intel Core i5, going up to Core i7 processors. You get them with a minimum of 16GB RAM and 512GB storage which is generous, even though you expect this much for a laptop that costs over a lakh. The performance of the laptop did not pose any issues for us, and even during heavy multitasking we didn’t see any lag or sluggish nature of the hardware. Our unit did have 32GB RAM with Core i7 chip, which definitely helps on that front.

We used the laptop as our main work machine for more than a week, which includes heavy browsing, over 15 tabs open on Chrome at a time, some photo editing and clipping short videos.

These kinds of tasks are handled easily by the laptop, which is what most people want to do. What also helps with the laptop is that Asus has not cut down on the connectivity ports to maintain its petite frame. You have the headphone jack, HDMI 2.1 port, Thunderbolt 4 USB C port and USB 3.2 Gen 2 port.

Using the Intel chip also seems to have benefited Asus with offering efficient battery life. The ZenBook S13 OLED has a powerful display and puts through the hard grunt but even then we didn’t see a major battery drop during the day on average. We managed to get over 6 hours of usage and still left with around 30 percent juice in the tank. Asus also gives you a 65W wall charger which can go to 100 percent in around 2 hours, while you can get half of that in 45-50 minutes.

Asus ZenBook S13 OLED Review: What’s Not So Cool?

The laptop is lightweight and you can’t really complain about that, however, we noticed the matte finish on the front is a smudge magnet. The moment you hold it from the lid, the prints are all over the panel. Having an OLED panel means you don’t have the anti-glare coating, and hence, the ZenBook S13 OLED display is reflective, and any harsh light makes it hard to view the content on the laptop.

Even though the laptop has a Core i7 processor, we noticed the hardware is just suited for extreme-heavy usage. This means you can enjoy light games, basic editing tasks but if you want to edit a 4K footage or enjoy the popular intensive games, this laptop shows its struggle with the fan blaring louder than usual.

Speaking of loud, the audio unit on the laptop has flattered to deceive, which is interesting to see from Asus as a brand that vouches for quality sound performance on notebooks. The lack of oomph could be the cause of the smaller frame. The keyboard layout is quite effective to a large extent but the low tactile feel means you miss the obvious typing experience of laptops.

Asus ZenBook S13 OLED Review: Should You Buy?

So can the ZenBook S13 OLED be considered as a MacBook alternative? In most aspects like design, comfort, screen quality and battery life, yes. But the performance grade feels a bit on the lower-end, even though you have the EVO i7 processor on board, the Apple M1/M2 silicone is definitely on the powerful side. Keeping the comparison aside, there is a lot going in favour of the ZenBook model, especially when you have multiple connectivity ports on a 10mm body.

The keyboard layout is spread out, supports backlight but the tactile feedback wasn’t to our liking. The battery life is a big plus for the laptop, however, the performance levels are more tuned to daily workhorses, and not suited for heavy editing, gaming tasks. It is definitely on the pricier side but still makes a decent case for being your next machine.