
Hinge rigidity becomes weaker at wider angles which makes the laptop difficult to pick up or transport without the display falling backwards.

The hinges could have been firmer as well since it tends to teeter a bit when adjusting angles or typing.

The lid is even worse especially since it carries no edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass reinforcement. Attempting to twist the base from its corners would result in more creaking and warping than on the UX434, for example. The metal skeleton, while very light, is thin and more susceptible to warping than we would like. Corners are sharper and surfaces are flatter to contribute to the thinner design.Ĭhassis rigidity is a step down from other ZenBooks and popular high-end Ultrabooks like the HP Spectre, Dell XPS, Razer Blade Stealth, or Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. Visually, Asus has dropped the gold trim along the top row of the keyboard in favor of a more unibody look. Though Asus has not yet revealed the price of our Core i7 Tiger Lake test unit, we suspect it to launch for around $1000 to $1200 USD to be similar to the Ice Lake-powered UX425J. Competitors in this space include other upper mid-range 13-inch or 14-inch Ultrabooks like the Huawei MateBook X Pro, Dell XPS 13 9300, LG Gram 14, MSI Modern 14, and the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7.

Our test unit comes configured with the Core i7-1165G7 CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and 400-nit FHD display. In other words, thin-and-light laptops equipped with Tiger Lake like our ZenBook 14 should be even better at video editing and running games without needing to rely on discrete GPUs.Īside from the updated CPU, new QHD display option, and faster RAM, the UX425E chassis remains visually identical to the UX425J. The new 11th gen Intel processors are notable for their integrated Iris Xe graphics that have been designed to better compete against both the mobile AMD Ryzen Vega RX series and the Nvidia GeForce MX series. The Tiger Lake-powered ZenBook 14 UX425E series is set to succeed last year's ZenBook 14 UX425J series when it launches this October.
