Asus’ latest ultraportable is, by a healthy margin, one of the nicest laptops to carry around. It’s pleasantly thin, light, and built assuringly well. It follows a wedge-shaped design that has been a mainstay on Zenbooks for a while now. But this time, Asus is going for a dual-tone approach, both inside and out. The black keyboard deck serves the same kind of contrasting look with the silvery metal deck as the recent crop of MacBook Pro machines.
Another shift is the size of the trackpad, which is wider, surprisingly spacious, and profoundly smooth for a laptop as small as the Zenbook S13 OLED. There is no flex to be seen on the keyboard, and neither is there any floppy movement for lid movement. It’s also quite surprising that the 2024 version comes with two fans fitted in that sleek chassis.
The shell is made out of recyclable metal in an environment-friendly manner. Notably, Asus says the S13 OLED is the most eco-friendly Zenbook ever made, employing elements like post-industrial recycled (PIR) magnesium-aluminum alloy, ocean-bound plastic, and post-consumer-recycled (PCR) plastics. Asus calls it plasma ceramic aluminum, but for a buyer, it’s simply a job well done. It has a beautiful satin-like texture that feels great to touch, but unlike the MacBook Air, doesn’t leave nasty smudge marks.
Moreover, it is a military-grade MIL-STD-810H-certified build that is at play here, so you can sleep easy knowing this machine can brush off a few accidental bumps. This is the kind of machine you want to carry around like a notebook. It’s not quite the 12-inch MacBook, but if that machine were to reincarnate as a Windows laptop, the Zenbook S13 OLED would be it.
