At the end of June, Asus revealed refreshed ZenBooks, which immediately impressed me with their design, elegance, but also their equipment and compact dimensions. We tested its predecessor, ZenBook 14 UX431F, which looked a bit awkward and didn’t interest me much except for the price. However, the new UX425 is a completely different story. Will it dare to be the title of the best ultrabook with the 10th generation Intel Core we have tested?
Rating
Asus ZenBook 14 UX425JA-BM040R nicely surprised me. Already during the presentation, its design and specifications approached me, but one cannot make an overall opinion from paper parameters. However, after spending time with ZenBook 14, I can say that it is really amazing. I praise the build quality and compact, light but still very strong body, which offers the highest quality. The port selection is excellent, including my favorite Thunderbolt 3 ports, but also full-featured HDMI and USB. The IR camera is great for quick unlocking and works really fast and reliably. The display, although not in the highest configuration, offers great colors, uniformity and a modern frameless design. The touchpad with a numeric backlit part is also an interesting feature that you just don’t normally see. And we must not forget the 67 Wh battery, which is the largest in its class, which was confirmed by the victory in the battery life test.
Of course, there are also negatives. Personally, the layout of the keyboard does not suit me very well. The tests also showed that UX425 is, on average, the second slowest i7-1065G7 in the test. Both the Yoga C940 and XPS 13 2-in-1 scored higher on average. However, the analysis of the course of performance tests showed why. The ZenBook is configured for 15 W rather than 25 W, such as the XPS, so its performance in longer tests is limited. Therefore, it is not very suitable for playing games or long video rendering, etc. But remember that I’m talking about a 1 kg ultrabook and not a workstation. Interestingly, however, it beat all the competition in single-core instant performance tests. Therefore, it will serve very well for what it is intended for. However, if you want even more performance, you can reach for the AMD version labeled as Asus UM425IA-AM020T.
The two weeks with the ZenBook 14 UX425 were very pleasant and the negatives are hard to find for me. After a long time, this is a product that has no significant weakness, and although we had great machines with high performance or a unique design, often their price was not affordable to most users. However, this is not the case with the UX425. For 1259 euros, it is a very interesting choice, especially when comparing with other Ice Lake laptops in the test, which exceeded the 2000 euro border. Even cheaper is the AMD version with a price below 1000 euros, which I consider a really great offer. After considering all the above reasons, I therefore decided to award the ZenBook 14 UX425 an editorial award Go for it!
Asus ZenBook 14
- UX425JA-BM040R (i7/16GB/512GB) – 33 990 Czk/1 285 Eur
- UX425JA-BM005T (i5/8GB/256GB) – 24 490 Czk/925 Eur
- UM425IA-AM046T (4500U/8GB/512GB) – 22 990 Czk/868 Eur
| Asus ZenBook 14 UX425 |
| + single-core performance is the best of the Ice Lake laptops |
| + favorable price |
| + WiFi 6 and Thunderbolt 3 USB-C with charging, DisplayPort |
| + excellent battery life |
| + HDMI 2.0 – 4K 60 Hz, full-featured USB and microSD card reader |
| + display with thin frames and very good color reproduction |
| + high quality touchpad with backlit numeric part |
| + IR camera for Windows Hello |
| + top-notch build quality |
| + low weight |
| - lower performance during longer workload |
| - keyboard layout may not suit everyone |
