Asus Zenbook A14 is a 2.2 pound Snapdragon X laptop starting at $899

The Asus Zenbook A14 is a thin and light laptop powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processors and designed to offer long battery life in an ultraportable package at a variety of price points thanks to a wide range of configuration options.

Entry-level models will come with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X processor and a 1080p IPS LCD display, but Asus also plans to offer higher-priced configurations with up to a Snapdragon X Elite processor and a 2.8K OLED display. Prices will range from $899 to $1500 depending on the components used.

The laptop weighs just 1 kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) thanks to a magnesium alloy chassis with the “ceraluminum” treatment that Asus introduced last year for premium laptops. Designed to offer a scratch-resistant ceramic-like quality to aluminum, this layer isn’t a coating, but is actually an oxidized layer that grows out of the aluminum itself.

While the first laptops to use the material only featured it on the lid, the Zenbook A14 has an all-ceraluminum chassis, which means the material is also used for the base, palm rest, and keyboard deck as well.

And the company notes that while Zenbook A14 comes in two colors: Iceland Grey and Zabriskie Beige, neither involves paint. These colors are actually formed by the chemical process used to create ceraluminum. Color is determined by the state of the oxidization process.

Asus says despite the thin and light design, the laptop has a large 70 Wh battery that offers “32+ hours” of run time… although those sorts of figures are usually determined using pretty light workloads, so I’d expect substantially shorter battery life in real-world conditions.

Customers in Japan and some other Asian markets will also be able to pick up an even lighter-weight model that has a 50 Wh battery and weighs just 899 grams (1.98 pounds), but it’s unlikely that this configuration will be offered in the west.

The laptop has Two USB4 Type-C ports, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type Type-A port, HDMI and 3.5mm audio ports, an IR webcam with support for face recognition, and a keyboard with 1.3mm key travel as well as a touchpad with support for “smart gestures,” allowing you to adjust settings like screen brightness and audio volume by swiping along the edges of the touchpad.

Other features include a hinge that’s designed to let you lift the lid using a single finger and support for WiFi 6E and WiFi 7 wireless options.

Asus says there will be four different Qualcomm Snapdragon X series processor options, although all will feature Qualcomm’s NPU with up to 45 TOPS of AI performance, and the laptop has a dual-fan cooling solution that will allow the chips to run at up to a 45 watt TDP.

One thing to keep in mind that while Asus says the Zenbook A14 has an awful lot of configuration options, the company doesn’t let customers pick-their-own-specs the way that some companies that build PCs on demand do. Instead, it will be up to retail partners like Amazon and Best Buy to determine which models they want to sell, and you’ll likely see a few different configurations available for purchase, with the models available varying by geographic market (and maybe by retailer within a specific market).

The first model to hit the streets in the US will be the Asus Zenbook At (UX3407QA-PS76), which should go up for pre-order today at the Asus Store for $1100. This model is a 2.2 pound configuration with a Snapdragon X processor, 1920 x 1200 pixel OLED display, 32GB of LPDDR5x memory, and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 SSD.

A $900 model with a Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-42-100) chip, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB SSD will be available soon from Best Buy for $900.