Review: Asus ZenBook 14 UX434F

Conclusion

At the £1,499 price point, the Asus ZenBook 14 UX434F has all the hallmarks of a premium ultra-portable PC. Design and build quality are top-notch, and despite being one of the smallest 14in laptops on the market, there's plenty of performance courtesy of a fast Core i7 CPU, GeForce MX graphics and a spacious 1TB M.2 SSD.

Add to that a comfortable keyboard, convincing speakers, decent I/O and a 1080p touchscreen, and you have what ought to be a well-rounded machine that's more than a match for most competitors in this category.

Asus gets so much right that it's a shame the much-vaunted ScreenPad detracts from the overall experience. Rather than enhancing productivity in a meaningful way, the secondary display is lacking in software support and, given its toll on battery life, is presently tough to justify.

Some may find the extra panel useful, but after the novelty factor has worn off, we suspect most will use it almost exclusively as an ordinary trackpad, which seems a terrible waste. There is potentially a bright future for multi-display devices running next-gen Windows 10 X, but right now, ScreenPad isn't something we'd actively look for in a laptop.

Bottom line: the finicky nature of the Asus ScreenPad is such that ZenBook 14 UX434F falls firmly into the category of try before you buy.

HEXUS.where2buy

The Asus ZenBook 14 UX434F laptop will be available to purchase from Amazon and John Lewis starting October 2019.

HEXUS.right2reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.