ASUS Laptop Zenbook 14 OLED UX3402VA 14.0" 2.8K 90Hz Touchscreen OLED Laptop (Intel i5-1340P, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Windows 11) Intel EVO Certified

Very pleased. Great screen, lightning fast and Windows 11 Pro

Firstly, despite the "evo" sticker, this still comes with lots and lots of Asus apps & services (always running) that come back even when fresh install Win 11 due to firmware hooks. Still best to wipe the disk and start afresh with a clean Win11 download from Microsoft using Media Creator. The display is OLED thus fantastic, but very glossy and thus prone to reflections; a matte overlay may be required depending on lighting. Pixel arrangement seems OK to be, the density is high enough that you don't see it unless you're 10cm from screen. 90Hz refresh is nice if you come from 60Hz laptops. The CPU is a P thus has 4 P(performance) cores and 8 E(fficient) Atom cores but is also 28W rated (64W turbo max) - rather than the usual U (ULV) CPUs that you'll find in 13-14" laptops (with only 2P cores but 15W rated). Thus for some tasks it will be faster but it will consume more and laptop will get hotter. Asus clearly goes for performance here - note there are even 14" variants with H processors that are 45W rated! Note these are 13th gen (Raptor Lake) in name only, with none of the improvements the desktop versions have. If cheaper, the 12th gen version is just about the same. Memory is decent at 16GB (LP-DDR5X 4800Mt/s) not the fastest but then again this is no gaming laptop. Naturally it is soldered so you won't be upgrading it. Graphics is your standard integrated "Iris XE" but at least with 80 EU that supports most modern graphics DirectX 12.1, DirectX ML, OpenCL, Vulkan - don't expect RTX though. I've not tried top-end games, but Fornite and the like do work at lower resolution - 1080p looks decent enough and 1440p is doable with some restrictions. SSD is PCIe 4 x4 (Samsung PM9B1) that is your standard OEM, again not fastest but decent speed. You can upgrade this and it has a heat-spreader also. Wireless card is AX211 that supports Wifi 6E (and thus 6GHz channels) and is socketed! - thus you should be able to upgrade to Wifi 7 (e.g. BE200/201 range that just came out). It does have 160Mhz wide channels with 2.4Gbps link (on paper and next to router) but usually 800mbps or so. Sound is pretty decent - no there is no bass naturally but basic frequencies sound pretty good to me. This is a great media machine - where movies, anime look fantastic. HDR is supported and with OLED screen it is really a treat. Support seems decent with Asus generally releasing both BIOS and firmware updates for 3 years or so, similar to Dell XPS but not quite Lenovo business range of 6-9 years or so. But again different price. Upgrading - you have your hex tiny screws but sadly some more screws under back feet ;( Please take care peeling those feed off as the rubber may break (mine did) and then it is a mess. In this respect the Dell XPS or similar Lenovo are much easier to service. BTW, the thermal paste of CPU seems OK thus you don't need to change it unless you got really expensive stuff. Better than what Dell / Lenovo usually put in. Overall it is still a pretty cheap middle of road non-gaming laptop. A similar Dell XPS or Lenovo Carbon X1 are at least 2x for same spec thus in these difficult times hard to justify. But if you have the money, naturally those are better.

PC doesn’t turn on. Can’t get past this blue screen.

Reviewing the Zenbook 14 OLED UX3402VA variant here with i5 Core 1340P, 16GB DDR5, 512GB SSD, Touch OLED. It only arrived yesterday but wanted to drop an early review for anyone looking to buy it in the current Black Friday deal at 750 quid. I'll update again in a few weeks. In the box you'll find the Zenbook, USB-C power brick and some manuals (no carry case). It feels solid and well built apart from one thunderbird port that is mounted slightly wonky wrt the case. I ran diagnostics from BIOS (Power + F2) before setting up Windows 11 Home and everything passed ok. The OLED screen is the touch variant and has a very slight grainy effect to it when you look very close. Otherwise it is very pretty, blacks are obviously pure black etc. The default refresh is set to dynamic but you can change it to fixed 90Hz if you want. The touchpad feels really nice and mine has the built-in numpad that seems to be absent on some models. The keyboard is ANSI UK and feels ok to type on, decent feel and size. Some keys are half-size including Fn and arrow keys but this isn't much of a problem. Keyboard backlight is inconsistent but not really distracting. Too early to talk about overall performance but in balanced mode with light web browsing, the fans did not come on at all and everything was as smooth as you'd expect.