The weirdest laptop computer gimmick I’ve seen in 2024 got here from Asus with the Zenbook S 16 and the touted “ceraluminum.” It’s a made-up time period for the corporate’s new sort of laptop computer materials, and I believed it was simply extra tech world nonsense. Part of me nonetheless believes that, however when the brand new Lunar Lake laptops all promise huge good points in battery life, the brand new Zenbook S 14’s easy materials gimmick one way or the other intrigues me extra for this productiveness machine.
What’s ceraluminum? Asus has mentioned it’s a product of a fabric bonding with a ceramic materials to aluminum. It’s all too mysterious and, due to this fact, foolish. While you’re utilizing buzzwords like “ceramization” to explain the method of creating your laptop computer shells, you’re drawing consideration away from crucial components of the laptop computer itself. The fabric is meant to make the backplate harder and lighter. Every laptop computer technically has its minutely distinctive texture, however don’t begin pondering every new Zenbook is bespoke.
The Zenbook S 14 looks like plastic however affords a number of faucets and has a hoop like a stone countertop. Most of all, the feel and separated panels have a crisp look. It’s the identical design because the S 16 and didn’t garner a lot of an impression a number of months in the past. I believe one thing modified in my outlook—or maybe it’s the scale distinction—as a result of I picked it up, typed on it, gave it a flip, and I may instantly think about it turning into my every day driver. We nonetheless have to offer it the whole assessment remedy; issues won’t shake out in testing. All I can say is it makes a very good first impression.
So far as ultrabooks go, the Zenbook S 14 has quite a bit going for it, from the 3K OLED touchscreen show to the 72 Whr battery and assist for WiFi 7. The acknowledged 27 battery life is with video playback at low brightness, but when it will possibly go greater than 20 hours on a cost, I might be joyful. The rationale why the tech journalists on the market are ruminating a lot on the subsequent era of laptops is due to Lunar Lake, AKA the Intel Core Extremely 200V collection. Intel claims it’s a extra environment friendly chip promising higher efficiency with all the things from rendering to gaming, to not point out longer battery life. Laptops like Dell’s new model of the XPS 13 and the Acer Swift 14 AI are all promising 20+ hour batteries.
The Zenbook S 16 and S 13 have been powered by an AMD Ryzen AI 370 chip revealed earlier this yr. The S 14 ought to beat the AMD chip-powered laptop computer in efficiency, however we’ve heard sufficient in regards to the Core Extremely Collection 2, and we’ve nonetheless but to run all our benchmarks below our non-lab situations. In keeping with Asus, what’s extra vital is that Asus says the 14-inch laptop computer will final 38% longer than the S13 when operating the machine with 50 tabs open.
It begins at $1,400 for the Intel Core Extremely 7 256V model with 16 GB of RAM and $1,500 for a Core Extremely 7 258V and 32 GB of RAM. The 14-inch is actually my most popular measurement for the Zenbook. What’s higher is that it nonetheless feels very skinny and lightweight. The Zenbook S 14 is .47 inches thick and a pair of.65 kilos, but it doesn’t have that wafer weight that makes it really feel flimsy. It’s minutely lighter than a MacBook Air 13, although barely thicker. Asus mentioned it ought to run cooler than the earlier era of Zenbooks, with a redesigned vapor chamber and smaller SOC.
So far as gimmicks to promote laptops, the PC makers have been chock filled with it this yr. First, it was “AI PC,” then “Copilot+.” All have been huge guarantees with blended outcomes, albeit largely disappointing. I’m bored with it. I desire a distinctive laptop computer that I do know will final me a number of years, and I don’t want extra discuss how I can use generative AI to jot down my emails to my mother or generate pointless, ill-natured AI artwork.
That being mentioned, AI isn’t going away. Asus promoted as a lot discuss of AI as another OEM this yr, and there’ll most likely be a number of apps that may make good use of the Lunar Lake AI efficiency. Possibly I can endure Asus’ promotion techniques a mere ounce higher as a result of, in contrast to corporations like Acer or MSI, it’s not sticking “AI” within the naming schemes of its laptops. In comparison with that, “ceraluminum” appears normal.
