There was a time when ultraportables used to demand painful trade-offs. Either you pick performance or battery life, and live with the sacrifice. In 2025, that equation finally tilts in our favour, thanks to newer processors from the likes of Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm that feature cutting-edge technologies that promise the best of both worlds with all the benefits that a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) has to offer.
The ASUS Zenbook 14 UX3405CA aims to be just such a machine. It aims to deliver a machine that works like a compact workstation yet travels like a tablet in a sleeve. For Rs 1,12,990, you get a 1.28kg shell milled from recycled aluminum, a 120Hz 2.8K OLED panel, a 75Whr battery, and every modern convenience, from Wi-Fi 7 to twin USB4 ports.
The real headline, though, is the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H with a 34-TOPS neural engine and a 16-core Arc 140 T integrated GPU backed by 32GB LPDDR5X-8533 and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. On paper, it looks like the first laptop that can jump between coding, 4K timeline editing, and late-night esports without a discrete GPU or a power brick always at hand. Two weeks of testing prove that the spec sheet doesn’t exaggerate, but it does hide a few quirks you should know before buying.
Table of Contents
Design and Build
Lift the lid and you meet an aluminium chassis that feels more like a precision instrument than a mass-market notebook. The new monoline “A” glimmers subtly on the matte surface, steering clear of RGB theatrics yet ensuring anyone in the know will spot it as a 2025 Zenbook.
The entire shell is milled from 70% recycled alloys, passes the MIL-STD 810H certification for drops, vibration, and extreme climate, and crucially, does not flex, even when you pick the machine up by one corner. The hinge opens a full 180 degrees, folding completely flat on a desk for sketching or quick coffee-table presentations.
The hinge is also stable and smooth, allowing the lid to open with just one finger. At the same time, the screen barely twitches when you hit your stride on the keyboard. All of that durability comes in a footprint that slips neatly into an A4 sleeve for excellent portability. Speaking of which, the notebook weighs 1.28kg. Add the 65W GaN charger, and the overall weight climbs to only 1.46 kg, which is light enough that you routinely double-check your backpack to ensure it is inside.
Display
ASUS pioneered affordable OLEDs on laptops, and the panel here is one of its best executions yet. You get a 14-inch, 2,880×1,800p display with a 16:10 aspect ratio.
The display offers a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz and can automatically drop to 60Hz to conserve power. It covers the entire DCI-P3 colour space, peaks at just under 500 nits in HDR highlights.
Watching Netflix HDR episodes reveals specular highlights that IPS panels simply cannot replicate, while typing documents in dark mode feels like white text floating in space. ASUS applies a low-gloss coating that tames office reflections yet still lets colours pop. Only direct midday sunlight overwhelms the screen, at which point you will wish the company had nudged peak brightness past the 600nit mark.
Response times are near-instant, and the panel ships with a colour calibration report in the box, lending confidence to Adobe Lightroom edits and design work.
I/O and Connectivity
The port layout has improved over last year’s Zenbook. The left edge now holds a lone USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, useful for legacy peripherals. Everything else is on the right. Two USB4 Type-C connectors deliver 40Gbps bandwidth, DisplayPort 2.1 video, and up to 100W Power Delivery charging, so you can run an external 4K monitor and recharge simultaneously over one cable.
There is also an HDMI 2.1 port, which is great for those with high-resolution monitors or TVs as the standard supports high-resolution output. A 3.5 mm combo jack is provided for wired headsets, while a microSD card reader will be handy for photographers.
That being said, if you rely on full-size SD cards, you will need a dongle. Additionally, having both Type-C ports on the same edge can make cable management messy on cramped desks, but throughput never becomes a bottleneck. Wireless connectivity is equally forward-looking as the Intel BE200 module supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.
Keyboard and Trackpad
ASUS’s edge-to-edge keyboard is reliably good. Keycaps are generously spaced, sculpted ever so slightly at the centre, and offer a 1.4mm travel.
White back-lighting offers three brightness steps, each perfectly even across all legends. As is the case these days, a Copilot key now lives where the right-hand Ctrl key used to be. Here’s a quick rundown of how I got used to it. On the first day, I tended to mispress it. By day two, I was summoning Copilot for quick explanations. By day three, it had become a key part of how I worked.
The glass touchpad is expansive at 130×78mm and feels silky smooth under your fingers. It also comes with ASUS’ NumberPad 2.0 feature that quickly turns it into a numpad for quick data entry. Clicks register with a muted “thunk,” and palm rejection borders on flawless, and four-finger Windows gestures glide without stutter. There are bigger trackpads on 16-inch rivals, but none feel more precise.
CPU and Performance
Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285H is the star attraction here with six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, two low-power E-cores, and a 24 MB L3 cache, all fabricated on Intel 4 process and bound together by Thread Director 2.0.
More importantly, the chip integrates a neural-processing engine capable of 34 TOPS for on-device AI workloads. Synthetic benchmarks demonstrate the architecture’s capabilities. Cinebench R23 finishes at 15,042 points in multicore and 2,081 in single-core, running neck-and-neck with many 45W H-class parts from 2023. Cinebench 2024 records 934 multicore and 126 single-core. Geekbench 6 puts the CPU at 15,689 multicore and 2,938 single-core, the latter edging an Apple M2 MacBook Air in raw per-thread speed.
GPU and Gaming
The Arc 140 T iGPU is where the Zenbook leaps ahead of every Iris Xe laptop that came before. Geekbench 6 Compute returns 41,641 OpenCL points and 35,555 Vulkan points. 3DMark tells a similar story: Time Spy scores 4,293 overall with a 4,013 graphics sub-score, while Time Spy Extreme still musters 2,127. Fire Strike lands 8,179, Fire Strike Extreme 3,864, and Fire Strike Ultra 2,077.
Night Raid crowns the set with 31,669 total and 39,596 graphics. Numbers only matter if they translate into playable frame rates, and they do. Valorant at 1080p (High settings) sits between 220FPS and 260FPS, depending on map complexity. Even in chaotic firefights, the minimum never drops below 200FPS, taking full advantage of the 120Hz panel.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider manages 52FPS at 1080p (Low settings) with XeSS Balanced. Cyberpunk 2077 becomes playable at 720p (Low settings) with XeSS Performance, averaging 45 frames per second.
Creators also benefit from the laptop’s graphical prowess. PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve scores 3,472, roughly doubling last year’s Iris Xe results and closing on laptops with discrete RTX 2050 dGPUs. The single fan spins up audibly under sustained gaming, but the tone is a broad whoosh rather than a dentist-drill whine, and the keyboard deck never felt too hot even after an hour of continuous play.
Audio and Webcam
ASUS and Harman Kardon tuned the upward-firing speakers with enough audio to fill a small meeting room and, more importantly, enough low-frequency presence to keep YouTube music from sounding tinny.
Dialogue reproduction is crisp, and Dolby Atmos processing widens the soundstage when you wear headphones. An FHD IR webcam handles Windows Hello log-ins instantly and offers surprisingly clean low-light images, though noise creeps in when room lights dim.
The physical shutter feels reassuringly solid and shows a distinct diagonal stripe when closed, so you never have to guess if the lens is blocked. A triple-microphone array leverages the NPU to filter out keyboard clack and background chatter. On a Teams call, fellow participants reported that my voice sounded clearer than when I used my 14-inch MacBook Pro, which is high praise indeed.
Battery Life and Charging
A 75Whr battery inside a 1.28kg shell might sound impossible, yet ASUS manages to pull it off by shaving board space and using higher-density cells. In practice, battery endurance is superb for the power on tap.
Our mixed-use test on PCMark ran for 14 hours and 11 minutes before the warning popped at 10%. When you do need juice, the included 65W GaN adapter pushes the pack from 10 percent to 60% in 49 minutes and to 100% in 1 hour 35 minutes. Either USB-C port handles charging, and the laptop will accept power from a 45W phone brick, though you lose the fast-charge rate if you drop below 60W.
Final Verdict
The Zenbook 14 UX3405CA is what happens when an engineering team refuses to choose between speed, stamina, screen quality, and portability. You get a machine that offers excellent levels of performance, impressive graphical capabilities, and an eye-catching display. At the same time, it is portable enough to fit inside most backpacks and tote bags.
Yes, ASUS could have shifted one of the USB-C ports to the opposite flank, the display does reflect bright sunlight, and full-size SD cards demand an adapter. But each shortcoming is easy to live with, whereas the accumulated strengths change how casually you carry real creative power. If your workload blends code, 4K video trimming, light esports, and day-long travel, the UX3405CA is the most complete 14-inch laptop you can buy for a shade above Rs 1 lakh.
Editor’s rating: 8.5 / 5
Pros
- Powerful Intel Core Ultra 9 processor
- Impressive graphical capabilities
- Excellent OLED display
- Long battery life with USB-C fast charging
Cons
- No full-size SD reader
- Both USB-C ports on one edge crowd cables
- Display can be reflective under sunlight