There’s no question why the MacBook Air is one of the most popular laptops in the market: aside from being slim and light, the MacBook Air’s M3 chip is both powerful and efficient that can last for a whole day of productivity on a single charge. Windows laptops are catching up recently with Copilot+ and better processor offerings from AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm. The latest MacBook Air contender is from ASUS with the all-new ZenBook A14, which made its debut at CES 2025.
This marks the first time that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips will be available to the more premium ZenBook line. Configuration options include up to 32GB LPDDR5x RAM and up to 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and you also get WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity. The Snapdragon X is lauded for its battery life based on our experience with the 2024 VivoBook S 14, and ASUS is doubling down on it with the ZenBook A14, promising as much as 32 hours of battery life for its 70wHr battery.
Aside from promising a long battery life, ASUS also promises the ZenBook A14 to be very light at 980g, making it a true rival to the MacBook Air on paper. Despite being under 1kg light, the ZenBook A14 touts a premium build with the use of ASUS’ Ceraluminum material. Being a premium laptop, you get a q14-inch OLED display with a Full HD resolution, 600nits peak brightness, and DisplayHDR True Black 600 certification.
Being a rival to the MacBook Air, ASUS is giving a competitive price to the ZenBook A14 at $1,100(~Php 65k) for the Snapdragon X variant. If that’s not enough, there’s a more affordable $900 that’s slightly heavier, uses a Snapdragon X Plus chip, but only has 16GB RAM and 512GB storage—and appears to be exclusive to the US via Best Buy.
