Asus ZenBook 14 with Ryzen AI 7350 Review – Thin, Efficient, and Surprisingly Powerful

This is the new Asus ZenBook 14. It’s just 14.9 mm thin and is powered by AMD’s new Kraken Point CPU. While it’s still built on the Zen 5 architecture, unlike the high-powered Strix Point chips, this one is designed with power efficiency in mind. Inside, it’s rocking the AI 7350, which in my opinion is sort of like an ideal hybrid for anyone looking for a balanced laptop with solid battery life.

Not too long ago, I tested the Vivobook S14 with the Ryzen AI 9365 CPU. While it crushed our benchmarks, it was drawing nearly 53W of power, which is absolutely wild for a thin and light machine. But the result of that was pretty terrible battery life. The ZenBook 14, on the other hand, should fix that.

Pricing and Configuration

Pricing for this laptop is expected to land around $1,100 after tariffs, though that could also change—after all, we are living in uncertain times. The configuration I have features the AI 7350 CPU with 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, paired with a 1200p OLED display. This unit will only be available through ASUS’s online store. However, there’s supposedly a Walmart-exclusive version dropping sometime next week at the same price, except it comes with double the memory. I feel like that’s a better bargain, in my opinion.

So yeah, it’s definitely not cheap, but unfortunately, we are living in different times, and prices for tech are expected to go up from here. We’ll keep an eye on pricing and update you in the description if there are any deals from the outside.

Build and Design

The ZenBook 14 keeps the same design language as previous generations. Both the top and bottom lids are made out of metal, while the keyboard deck is a mix of magnesium alloy and aluminum components. It feels okay—there’s still a bit of keyboard flex—and the jade black finish is an absolute fingerprint magnet, so you’re going to have to spend quite a bit of time keeping it clean. The screen doesn’t flex much, though there is a bit of wobble to note.

Overall, from a build quality standpoint, this is a step above the Vivobook S14 but not quite at the premium level of the ZenBook S14. It feels more polished and refined. I know they’re both ZenBooks—this one just has an “S” in front of the 14—confusing names from ASUS, but I just wanted to give you a breakdown of how these laptops feel.

The laptop weighs around 2.65 lb, which is pretty light for a 14-inch device. It’ll easily fit inside your backpack, no problem. The included 60W USB-C power adapter is super compact and lightweight as well. It supports fast charging, letting you charge the laptop to 60% in under an hour.

Keyboard, Trackpad, and Ports

Moving on to the interior space, this layout feels very familiar if you’ve used any other ZenBook laptops. One thing I noticed is that ASUS removed the dedicated section that previously gave you access to the webcam and mic mute switch, along with some other controls.

The keyboard is solid, with 1.4 mm of key travel, giving you great tactile feedback. It’s great for typing notes. It’s backlit in white, although the brightness output could be better—some keys just don’t light up as evenly as others.

The trackpad features a smooth glass surface with no noticeable issues and supports smart gestures borrowed from the Vivobook lineup.

Considering the chassis is only 6 inches thick, ASUS managed to squeeze in a decent selection of ports. You get a full-size USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A port (not Gen2, which is unfortunate in 2025). On the right-hand side, you have a full-size HDMI port, headphone jack, and a couple of USB-C ports with a mix of 3.2 Gen2 and USB 4 speeds.

Webcam and Audio

The webcam is a 1080p sensor, and ASUS has included a physical privacy shutter switch that works well. It handles exposure compensation nicely. The microphone sounds decent and should get you through most meetings without a problem.

As for the speakers, they’re bottom-facing and average at best. Don’t expect great audio output from them. I’d recommend using external headphones for a better media experience.

Display

ASUS is offering a couple of OLED options here. There’s a high-end 3K 120 Hz panel, and then there’s the one I have, a 1200p 60 Hz screen. Honestly, this isn’t the sharpest panel I’ve come across—it’s not bad, but at a normal viewing distance, I can still make out individual pixels. If screen sharpness is a priority, upgrade to the 3K version.

That said, everything else about the display is fairly average. It offers good color gamut thanks to the OLED tech—colors are vivid. However, brightness is underwhelming. My sample topped out at 360 nits, which is fine for indoors but not ideal for outdoors. The panel is also highly reflective, so it’s totally unusable outside.

OLED and PWM Dimming

One area I wanted to dive deeper into is PWM dimming, especially for OLED laptops. PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) controls brightness by flickering the screen on and off rapidly. It helps maintain OLED color accuracy versus the DC dimming used in LCDs. Most people won’t notice this flicker, but if you’re sensitive to it—especially in low-light environments—it’s something to be aware of.

At 100% brightness, the ZenBook 14 handles PWM dimming well. Thinner black bars in our test footage are what you want. But as you dial down the brightness, thicker black bars appear, meaning LEDs are off for longer—this could bother some users during extended use.

Just for fun, I compared it to the M4 MacBook Air, which uses DC dimming on its LCD panel. Brightness stays constant with no flickering—just smooth and steady.

Internals and Upgradability

Getting under the hood is pretty straightforward. Once you remove the Torx screws, you’ll see the memory is soldered onto the PCB—unfortunate, as it means no post-purchase upgrades. You only get one shot at configuring the specs before buying.

The primary NVMe SSD is accessible and offers good speeds, but there are no additional storage expansion slots.

Performance and Benchmarks

Despite having two fewer physical cores than the AI 9365, the AI 7350 still packs 16 threads, which is impressive for a laptop of this size. It shows what AMD’s architecture is capable of.

We compared it against the Vivobook S14 with Intel’s Core Ultra 5 226V, the ZenBook S14 with the Ultra 7 258V, the Vivobook S14 with the Ryzen AI 9365, and the M4 MacBook Air.

ASUS offers four performance modes: Whisper, Standard, Performance, and Full Speed. We focused on Standard and Full Speed to see how the chip performs at 29W vs. 34W. Full Speed mode gets loud, so use headphones.

Those 16 threads give the ZenBook a noticeable edge over Windows laptops with Intel chips. Intel took a bold risk with Lunar Lake by removing SMT, which hurts multi-threaded performance. Even so, it’s not far behind the AI 9365 in the Vivobook S14.

Interestingly, enabling Full Speed mode doesn’t add much performance over Standard, despite pumping in an extra 5W.

Single-thread performance on these Zen 5 CPUs is impressive—this should be a wake-up call for Intel. What really stood out, though, is how fast the M4 MacBook Air is. It tops charts in R24 while sipping just 12W.

Real-World Usage and Creative Workloads

For everyday office tasks, everything runs quickly and smoothly. You probably won’t notice much difference from other thin-and-light laptops.

For heavier multi-core workloads, the AI 7350 lands between Intel’s Lunar Lake chips and AMD’s AI 9365. It’s more than capable in apps like Blender or any transcoding software that uses all threads.

For GPU-accelerated tasks, the integrated Radeon 860M falls short—it has four fewer compute units than the 880M in the AI 9365, so you’ll see slightly lower performance.

In creative workloads, the ZenBook 14 holds its own. The M4 is still in a league of its own due to optimization. AMD chips perform well but lag slightly in apps like Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve, likely due to software optimization or AMD’s encoding efficiency.

If your workflow heavily relies on video editing, consider Intel’s Lunar Lake or Apple’s M4 for smoother, faster results. You can still edit on the ZenBook 14, but I wouldn’t rely on it completely.

Gaming Performance

This isn’t a gaming laptop, so keep expectations in check. But if you want to casually play something during downtime, it’s capable. At 1200p on medium settings using the Radeon 860M at 34W, it puts out decent frame rates.