Review of ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP5401E): a powerful ultrabook-transformer with OLED screen

The Asus Zenbook Flip 14 OLED is a very pleasant to use versatile ultraportable laptop-transformer, one of the main features is the display. The notebook's 14-inch 16:10 OLED display has a strikingly rich picture, 90 Hz refresh rate and high brightness level. Inside the laptop is quite powerful, because of the form factor "iron", which will be insufficient unless to work with heavy graphics, or modern games, for which it is not designed. SSD-drive notebook shows very high speed. The keyboard Zenbook 14 Flip OLED is very comfortable and has a backlight, and the touchpad is big enough with good sensitivity. Battery life is a little short of a full day's work, but 7 hours is pretty good. The body of the laptop has a nice appearance and is well made. From the complaints to the laptop can be noted except that a noticeable noise cooling system at maximum loads. In general, the laptop has a couple of competitors with similar hardware configurations: Lenovo Flex 5 and HP Pavillion x360. They are slightly cheaper, but can not compete with the hero of the review in terms of image quality. They have standard 16:9 IPS screens with 1920x1080 resolution and standard 60 Hz.

5 reasons ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP5401E):

• A compact and stylish metal body
• Unbeatable OLED screen with rich colors and refresh rate of 90 Hz
• Powerful hardware
• Comfortable keyboard and touchpad
• Very fast SSD-drive

2 reasons not to buy the ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP5401E):

• you're looking for a laptop for working with heavy 3D graphics, or gaming
• Very noticeable cooling system noise at maximum loads

Quick Transition:

1. What's in the box?
2. What does the ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP5401E) look like and what are the design features?
3. Is the laptop comfortable to use?
4. How high quality is the screen?
5. What about performance, battery life and sound?
6. Bottom line.

What's in the box?

ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP5401E) came in a pretty attractive gray box with a picture of the laptop itself and basic technical information. In the package there is a branded case with a place for the stylus, power supply for 100 watts, power cord, branded ASUS Pen, USB Type-A adapter to RJ-45 and all the necessary documentation.

What does the ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP5401E) look like and what are the design features?

ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP5401E), like the entire current line of ultraportable Zenbook laptops, has a rather recognizable design. The slim dark gray body is made of aluminum alloy, with a concentric pattern around the ASUS logo on the top lid. The metal is thick enough: the cover does not sag under pressure. The notebook looks stylish and attractive, yet understated. The top cover still collects fingerprints a little, although they are very easy to remove with a microfiber. The working surface is also metal, almost the entire width is taken by the keyboard with black keys.

ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED - ultraportable model, so the set of ports is quite modest, although there is everything you need. The right side has one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, a 3.5mm combo audio jack, a microSD card reader, LED indicators and screw holes.

On the opposite side are two Type-C Thunderbolt 4 with Power Delivery and DisplayPort support, a full-size HDMI 2.0b and another "portion" of holes for system cooling:

On the back, again, ventilation and two rather massive 360° ErgoLift hinges, theoretically capable of withstanding 20,000 flip cycles.

On the front there is a cutout for more convenient opening of the laptop. So on the whole structurally everything is quite familiar, in its place.

On the bottom there are a lot of holes for ventilation, four rubber feet and stereo speakers, located at angles to the surface. On the perimeter there are Torx screws, and on the front there is a thin and long plastic insert for a more stable Wi-Fi signal. It is under it that the two antennas are located.

The bottom cover is easy enough to remove with the appropriate screwdriver and card. Though the layout is very dense and there is actually only access to the SSD-drive, the network card and the cooling fans. The RAM of the model is soldered out on the board. So the upgrade options are quite limited. Although there are configurations with 8 and 16 GB RAM, and the younger variant is still available to us.

The laptop has a touchscreen display, so it is covered with protective glass, shining off some corners. The NanoEdge bezels on the top and sides are very thin. Above the screen are two microphones, a webcam and an LED operating indicator.

The laptop is quite compact: 311x223x16 mm and weighs 1.4 kg, so you can carry it with you every day, it is not cumbersome in a backpack. Made ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED is very high quality and feels solid. All surfaces do not sag, parts are sensitively fitted to each other. The laptop meets military grade MIL-STD 810H requirements. You can't drop it or throw water on it, but it will hold up in the most basic conditions.

Is it comfortable to use?

ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED uses structurally interesting hinges. 360° ErgoLift. They lift the top of the keyboard slightly during normal notebook use. This improves air circulation for cooling. At the same time, they allow you to rotate the lid 360° and use the Zenbook 14 Flip OLED in different modes. Including tablet and presentation modes. At the same time, the lid can be opened with one hand without problems, and the display is well fixed in the right position.

The keyboard occupies almost the entire width of the laptop. It is not quite standard: in addition to the usual ultrabook block, there are separate Home, PgUp, PgDown and End buttons on the right side. Previously, this solution was used in the more 15-inch Zenbook. Everything else is done as usual: a little lower the top row of function keys (including the keys to turn off the microphone and webcam). It ends with the power button. It has a built-in fingerprint scanner and is slightly lower than the other keys to prevent accidental presses. Both Shift are long, Enter is single-level. The arrow block is reduced in height.

The buttons are quite large, with a comfortable spacing. The distance between the centers is 19.05 mm. The stroke is 1.4 mm, it is quite comfortable to use, the presses are relatively soft, but informative. There is a white backlight with three brightness levels.

The touchpad is large with a pleasant coating and a comfortable degree of sensitivity. There is no need to connect a mouse. The touchpad also acts as a NumberPad 2.0 digital touchpad. It is activated by a long tap on the button in the upper right corner. The touch button in the upper left corner is responsible for two levels of brightness when touched, or for starting a calculator when swiped. Interestingly, even in numeric keypad mode, the NumberPad 2.0 can be used as a regular touchpad.

How good is the screen?

One of the most interesting features of the ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED is its screen. In our case, it is a 14-inch. OLED with 2880x1800 (2.8K) resolution, 16:10 aspect ratio, 0.2 ms response time, and a refresh rate of 90 Hz. There are options from 4K, although there is no critical need for such a diagonal. Promising "true" black, HDR support, 100% DCI-P3 color space coverage, 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, 1.07 billion color reproduction and PANTONE certification. The screen impresses with its very saturated picture, high brightness and maximum viewing angles. Separately ASUS mentions the filtering of up to 70% of harmful blue light. The display is touch sensitive and the ASUS Pen 2.0 stylus is able to recognize 4096 pressure levels and angles.

In addition to the standard Splendid color settings available in all ASUS laptops, the Zenbook 14 Flip OLED still has a few settings specifically for OLED screens. Namely - the setting for maximum matrix life extension, pixel burnout prevention, flicker prevention and the target mode, in which only the active window remains bright, and the rest of the content on the screen is shaded.

In the laptop installed OLED matrix made by Samsung, the model ATNA40YK04-0. For it the maximum brightness of 400 cd/m2 is declared:

Hardware measurements with a colorimeter showed that the maximum brightness is 376.4 cd/m². The color coverage is indeed significantly wider than standard sRGB, and the color temperature and RGB values are very close to the reference values, so the display is very high quality indeed.

What about performance, battery life and sound?

The ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP5401E) uses 11th generation Intel Tiger Lake processors. A configuration with the Intel Core i7-1165G7 came to us. The processor is made with 10nm SuperFin process, includes four cores and supports Hyper Threading 8 threads. The base frequency can range from 1.2 to 2.8 GHz depending on TDP. Turbo Boost speeds up to 4.7GHz are possible. The processor has a standard TDP of 28W, but the Zenbook 14 Flip OLED uses ASUS Intelligent Performance Technology (AIPT), which can vary this from 15W to 42W in different operating modes switchable in the proprietary MyASUS software. The graphics gas pedal is exclusively integrated Intel Iris Xe, which includes 96 actuator blocks, and the maximum frequency can reach 1300 MHz. The RAM is 16 GB LPDDR4X-4266 MHz. Unfortunately, it is soldered on the board, so you can not replace or increase the volume, although 16 GB is quite enough for comfortable operation. Wireless interfaces: Wi-Fi 802.11 ax (Wi-Fi 6) and Bluetooth 5.0.

In CPU tests ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP5401E) shows quite high performance, especially in Performance mode. In graphics tests, all quite modest, yet discrete video gas pedal is absent. The laptop is not designed for important games or for professional 3D-editors. For photo editing or basic video editing performance is quite enough.

The drive is a PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe v1.4 SSD Samsung PM9A1 for 1 TV. The claimed read speed is up to 7000 MB/s and write speed is up to 5100 MB/s.

Theactual performance is exactly as claimed: speeds around 7000 MB/s, and writes at just over 5100 MB/s. The drive is very fast.

The ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED uses the IceCool Plus cooling system with two 8mm and 6mm heat pipes and two new IceBlades fans with 87 and 83 blades. They are made of liquid crystal polymer, lighter and thinner than conventional fans. They have a curved shape that is aerodynamically designed to provide increased airflow pressure. In addition, IceBlades fans use hydrodynamic bearings, which help reduce vibration and noise compared to other types of bearings.

At low loads, the fans are inaudible. But at maximum "revolutions" the noise level was quite high. Of course, not as much as in gaming models, but usually ultraportables are a little quieter. In the AIDA64 stress test at maximum load, the temperature of the components at first increases to about 93°, there is a trolling up to 19%. After that, the cooling system adapts, the temperature does not exceed 80-85° and the system runs at full power. The whole working surface at any load remains cool.

Play on ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED is also realistic, although not in the latest and most demanding games. Mortal Kombat X with low graphics settings and 1920x1200 resolution holds a stable 60 frames per second. Deus Ex Mankind Divided with low settings and similar resolution shows 35-40 FPS. Spec Ops The Line with fine settings at a native 2880x1800 is about 30 FPS.

The laptop is equipped with a 63W*h battery, ASUS promises a full working day without recharging. In real-world conditions, it comes out to just over 7 hours. That's constant Wi-Fi connectivity, document work, browser, basic image processing and online music. The brightness is about 30-35%: with this screen this is enough for comfortable work in the office. ASUS ZenBook 14 Flip OLED charges from the complete power supply for 100 watts in about 2 hours.

The audio system is represented by two speakers. The volume reserve is quite decent, especially considering the size of the laptop. But you should not expect impressive quality or low deep frequencies. For movies or videos is enough, to enjoy music you should connect headphones or an external audio system. To adjust the sound there is a separate Dolby application with presets and graphic equalizer.

All basic settings of the laptop are made with the help of the MyASUS application, installed on all the laptops of the company. It allows you to install updates, customize the system performance, screen, AI noise reduction system and more.

Bottom line. Three things to know about the ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP5401E).

• The ASUS Zenbook 14 Flip OLED (UP5401E) is an ultra-portable laptop with a metal chassis
• It features an excellent 14-inch OLED display with a refresh rate of 90 Hz
• The laptop's setup is enough for any work task except heavy graphics

For those who want to know more

• ASUS ExpertBook B7 Flip (B7402FEA): the flagship corporate laptop with a rugged chassis
• ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2022): The most powerful gaming tablet
• MSI Katana GF66 11UD Overview: A Practical Weapon for the Virtual Samurai
• ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16: Killing power of the 16-inch caliber