Around a couple of weeks ago our friends from Asus Philippines reached out and asked if we’d like to have a hand at their most recent Zenbook refresh. Having practically gone through most their Zenbook lineup in varying degrees over the years, we made certain that we get this experience down pat. And so we got to spend a couple of weeks with the Asus Zenbook 14 UX3405CA.
Now this unit was deployed almost immediately into production… I later found out that the performance from the laptop itself was a little bit on the slow side and initially I just chalked it off to some sort of incompatibility between the software and the very new hardware – things like unsigned (not yet supported) cards or some such.
Naturally I couldn’t let that become the experience that I had with this – what should be the fastest running hardware configuration – end in such travesty and so I checked some of the display settings and advanced configurations within the Windows environment and there was actually a list of programs – specific ones which you tell the computer to only use the faster, more capable graphics engine and not dilly dally around that. You could find this in Settings > Display > Graphics > Custom settings for applications
True enough, after some tweaking with the refresh rates and the program specific GPU preference settings, the performance on that particular program saw significant improvement (and even that is an understatement – it is literally night and day!)
Now that the issue that I had stumbled upon has been cleared up, here’s what you can REALLY expect from this – the latest Asus Zenbook 14 2025 refresh:
Aesthetic
The Ponder Blue colorway is such a neutral tone that is rather muted in nature, so much so that you actually have a bit of a hard time “seeing” the contrasting shiny finish of the branding logo and graphic on the lid – you need to catch it in the proper light and angle. This lends to its being inconspicuous yet super powerful compact machine.
The laptop comes in at 1.2kg; it isn’t the lightest in Asus stable but it’s a decent enough carry especially for the performance that it offers. This remains an Intel based device and you can expect the stability that you’ve come to recognize along with that badge.
Asus has the ergo-lift hinge down pat but this one seems to forego it or feature very little of it but that allows it to lie flat on a surface which can be useful for scenarios where you would want to share something with your peers.
The surface, I’m currently not sure if this is of the ceraluminum kind, is quite the fingerprint magnet so have a cloth ready with your carry along because you’d wanna wipe it down especially if that’s a pet peeve of yours.
Connectivity
The port selection is typical of this size with two USB-C ports, both Thunderbolt 4 capable, a single “legacy” USB-A 3.2 port for flexibility, and a full size HDMI 2.1 as an external display option. WiFi7 and Bluetooth come standard and I didn’t find an instance when I needed any more while out and about with the Zenbook 14.
It is important to note that there is no dedicated AC port on the Zenbook 14. You charge it via the USB-C port with its 65W power brick which can top off the system quite rapidly. The battery on the Zenbook 14 is 75Wh and you can really feel its longevity while performing daily activities with it. You may need to charge at least once if you’re met with a really full day but it feels significantly less obvious and that is a very good thing.
The camera has a physical shade that would block any input and the system recognizes when this is in the closed position so you can lay any fears of spying to rest when you’re using it outside of meetings. This quick toggle also gets you out of any ‘situations’ should they arise.
Performance
An Intel Core Ultra 9 285H, clocking in at a base 2.9GHz, exists as the brains of this Zenbook iteration and that is definitely nothing to sneeze at. there’s 16-cores inside of this chip and, depending on the load, the apt ones are utilized for the best performance any Zenbook has ever been equipped with. The speed on turbo – 5.4GHz! Here are its benchmark values
It is paired with 16GBs of RAM and an 8GB Intel Arc 140T iGPU working hand in hand to deliver a seamless computing experience for any practical application.
I would like to stress however that the hardware on this Zenbook has a particular penchant for consuming media… it is so good at it that it almost feels like its encouraging you to take the time to just fire up one video after another to enjoy. This couldn’t have come at a better time as lately I’ve been exploring beatboxing, thanks to that viral video of Wing, and the Dolby certified listening experience plus the 3k 120Hz OLED display is such a good match! (insert chef’s kiss emoji here) LOL
The AI Connection
As far as AI integration into the device, apart from the very prominent Copilot key and enhanced conferencing features, there isn’t really much on that front just yet. But whatever may come, this configuration is ready with its 13 TOPS NPU at the ready.
This 1TB configuration that ASUS sent over retails for Php89,995 alternatively there is an Ultra 7 / 512GB SKU that can be had for Php77,995. The difference is well worth the trade up IMHO but you cannot go wrong either way. It comes with glowing recommendations from us.
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