- Soon Kai Hong
The Best Windows Laptop Instead Of A MacBook Air
Updated: Dec 19, 2023
We’ll say it right here, right now. This is the best Windows laptop to get instead of a MacBook Air. This is the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED and right off the bat, you might be thinking that that’s nothing new? Indeed, Asus is using the exact same name as before and this is simply a new revision, the UX5304 model to be exact. But trust us, the name might be the same but nothing about this laptop is the same. A brand new design, a gorgeous OLED display, great performance, great battery life, an outstanding keyboard, respectable battery life and the list goes on and on. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited.
Now there’s nothing fancy about the exterior packaging as usual, everyone is going green so expect more and more companies to just simply give you recyclable packaging in the form of brown cardboard. Inside however, you get the fancier packaging for the laptop itself, the 65W Type-C adapter is just right beside that and you do also get a laptop sleeve.
Now that’s nice and all but here’s where it gets really nice.
Ceramic Is Incredible
This is one beautiful looking laptop.
We really can’t say much else about it. The design is seriously striking and just downright amazing. We can say with almost utmost certainty that this might just be the most beautiful looking laptop in 2023. What immediately stands out is the design and texture of the lid.
First of all you get the huge arrowhead like design that Asus is using for most of their laptops moving forward but couple that with how it integrates with the design of the lid and the use of silver as the accent, the entire lid feels like a ceramic tile that you’ll find in a modern kitchen.
As far as we know, no one has ever done something like this and this is incredible. Not only does it look good but it feels good.
Now that design translates to the main chassis itself as well. Asus is taking some cues from Apple here and so you’ll find that the keyboard deck is of a different anodized colour from that of the main silver chassis. We don’t really know what it is about this but it really just looks great and complements very well with the entire design of this laptop.
Over 130WPM On Average
Which, by the way, the typing experience is fantastic here. The keycaps are nice and large which helps with accuracy, but in addition to that, the keystrokes themselves have a good travel distance and bottom out feel. The touchpad is also nice and large and this might be a surprising point to talk about but the left and right clicks do actually feel great. Asus really focused on the details with the Zenbook S 13 OLED and it shows.
The ports selection is yet another point which boggled our mind. Despite the thin form factor and a weight of just xxx, Asus has managed not just two Type-C Thunderbolt 4 and the 3.5mm headphone/mic combo jack but also full sized HDMI 2.1 and a Type-A USB 3.2 Gen2. I mean just take a look at it, the height of the Type-A port is practically almost the z-height of the chassis. It’s incredible.
OLED, Say No More
We then get to perhaps the best part, the OLED display.
Asus is probably the only company right now, trying to equip as many of their laptops with OLED and we’re all for it. For those of you interested in the specs of this OLED panel, here they are on the screen. True, burn-in is still an issue to think about but Asus has already implemented many ways to mitigate that as much as possible.
In 2023, we’ll take OLED any day simply because it’s that great. Watching your favourite shows gets that much nicer and even just general browsing is a little more awesome. Speaking of which, you can also actually play Valorant here with little to no difficulty at all and not only are the colours going to be better, the response time of OLED is plain superior. It’s a better experience all around.
We do wish that Asus had provided the 90Hz panel instead of just 60Hz but for what this laptop is supposed to be, 60Hz is not the end of the world.
At this point, we’re just talking great things about this laptop but seriously, it is that good. We love this laptop. Battery life is of no issues either. Easily over 10 hours of battery life in a real world usage scenario. The webcam is also better than average, able to dish out 1080p with good image quality and mic quality. And even the speakers are pretty great, especially for this form factor.
Performance
Lastly we have performance and this sports the Core i7-1355U, 16GB of DDR5 RAM and 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD.
Again, it’s simply great. You’ll have no issues with multiple tabs open in your browser of choice, transferring of files, working on documents and all that are going to be smooth and responsive and you can even do some light gaming on this. Valorant runs like a champ with no hiccups and you can even run a more demanding game like Genshin Impact at 1080P Medium settings with no problem at all.
At the end of the day, this is one fantastic laptop that has surprised us with not just great performance and a beautiful display, but it ties all that together in a chassis that’s just simply stunning.
The 'Windows MacBook'
This, the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED is honestly the direct competitor to the Apple MacBook Air with M2. It is that good. Now we aren’t sure of pricing and availability just yet so all that info will be in the description or a pinned comment down below but seriously we’re going to say this again.
If you want all the great things about the MacBook Air with M2 but you would rather use Windows instead and also enjoy a better selection of ports, seriously consider this. It is that good.