I decided to replace my aging Surface Go laptop with another notebook for a number of reasons. While I liked the ultra-portability of the Surface Go device and its keyboard, some of its hardware specs were not cutting it anymore. The device had 4 Gigabytes of RAM only, and it could not install Windows 11 because of incompatible hardware. While I could work around that, it would still be terribly slow.
The decision to buy another notebook was born. My main requirements were that it could be upgraded to Windows 11, had plenty of RAM, a good display, and a good keyboard to help me with my writing. I thought about getting a Surface Go 3, but it turned out to be too expensive if you level up the base configuration with a better processor, more RAM and the needed keyboard.
Chance had it that the Asus Zenbook 14 was on sale during Black Friday: to be precise, the model is Asus Zenbook 14 UX425JA-HM311T. The version that I was interested in was discounted by about 40%, down to about €660 from over €1000. It is powered by an Intel Core i5-1035G1 CPU, has 16 Gigabytes of RAM, a 512 Gigabyte SSD, and an excellent display 14″ display with 400-nits and a resolution of 1920×1080.
The Surface Go 3 would cost about €800 in the configuration with the better processor, 8 Gigabytes of RAM and a type cover. Granted, it has a touch-screen, which the Asus does not have, the display resolution is 1920×1280, and it is a bit lighter than the Asus device.
Interestingly enough, Asus’ device beats Microsoft’s in a number of fields, including battery run time, storage, RAM and processor.
I received the Asus device some time ago and have used it for about a week now for my daily writing here on this site.
In this article, I’d like to describe my experience with the Asus Zenbook 14. The review won’t focus on benchmarks or hardware metrics, but mainly on my experience as a user and writer. Reviews that focus on hardware can be found on may sites, including this one.
The first thing I did after the initial startup configuration was to run the upgrade to Windows 11. All my desktop PCs are not compatible with Windows 11, and I needed access to Windows 11 outside of using Virtual Machines for my writing. The upgrade was quick and the powerful hardware, especially when compared to the aging Surface Go.
I copied important files and the Thunderbird profile from the Surface Go laptop to an USB device, and transferred the content to the new Asus …….
Source: https://www.ghacks.net/2021/12/12/hands-on-with-the-asus-zenbook-14/