ASUS ZenBook 13 (UM325UA) Review

Hello! Sorry for my four month absence. This is a review about my new laptop. I chose it because of its slim design, and really nothing else. It was also discounted with 20%. 

ASUSTek have never been on my laptop list. Although I have known the company for a while, I didn’t really think of them as a laptop company, or at least a company that stretches into that market. That changed.

From the moment I bought this laptop, I was greeted with a very nice box, which made sure that when I opened the lid, the laptop would lift itself. As far as the box’s contents, it was really interesting. Inside, there was the laptop, a 65 watt USB-C charger, a sleeve (which is a really neat thing to add), and two adapters. One of them was a USB-C to Headphone port. Here was my first concern. ASUS had a lot of space to put a port that has a diameter of 3.5mm, but they made it a dongle. Not very effective, if you ask me. The other adapter has proven to be very useful in my daily life. It is a USB-A to Ethernet adapter. 

The laptop was pretty thin when I first held it, and it was decently light. It was lighter than my iPad Pro with a Logitech Folio keyboard, which I sold. Upon opening it, one thing came very clear to me. The screen was a nightmare to clean. The glossy screen felt soft and sensitive, which made it a bit harder to clean with the standard micro fibre cloth. That is a con. If you want to not clean your screen every 2-3 days, please consider getting the non-OLED option. Once I booted it up, I was stunned. The loading times weren’t near what I had used before. In reality, they were pretty average for a laptop with a Ryzen 5 processor.   I set it up, but then wondered if I should update to Windows 11, but that will be a topic for later. Let’s get back to the subject. After I set it up, I suddenly was hit with the fact that the colours were super vibrant. Believe me, the screen is a 5-star hotel to your eyes. 

The laptop came with Windows 10 Home, but not the promised by the merchant Pro edition. That wasn’t that big of a deal. The model I got featured a:

• AMD Ryzen 5 5500U (2.1GHz base)
• 8GB of RAM
• 512GB of SSD storage
• A 1920×1080 13’ OLED screen

Let’s get to the after unboxing experience. As of first impressions, the laptop performed very well in doing what I usually do. The only thing that disappointed me was the camera. It was a 720p camera, which really is an average camera for meetings. The microphone was also pretty average. The keyboard felt a bit sticky at first, but weirdly with time, it didn’t feel the same. 

One thing I would like to point out is the unnecessary junk that is pre-installed, that gives you notifications every 2 hours on average. McAfee seemed to have gotten the most of me, so I deleted it. The MyASUS app was pretty good. It had some important things for the laptop. 

The second thing I want to point out is the Windows Hello compatible IR. It is amazing and unlocks your computer instantly. I really like it, as it seems very practical, but safe at the same time.

The battery life of the laptop is pretty good and does me well throughout the day. It lasts around 9 to 12 hours with my daily tasks. The laptop is very thin, as I mentioned before, so I was surprised by the fact that it cooled itself very well. The included modes in the MyASUS app made it a lot easier to control them, as well as the duration of the battery. 

Since it had an x86 processor, unlike my Mac, it ran all of my needed software with no issues. Many programs ran well above my expectations, and many games ran decently. Here are some of my benchmarks, but in proper English:

• Fortnite ran well. At low settings, the laptop scored an average of 58FPS. At medium settings, the laptop had some struggles. It ranged from 42FPS to 52FPS. At high settings, the laptop was making a lot of noise, but was really quiet. It ran at 30FPS on average. At epic settings, I was getting from 17FPS to 34FPS. Overall, it was playable, if you keep yourself to medium settings.
• osu! ran with no bugs. It averaged around 195FPS without V-Sync.
• CS:GO ran well, averaging between 50 to 70FPS on medium settings.

*FPS – frames per second

Not a lot of people will be buying this laptop for gaming, though. Here are real-world tests, and by that, I mean how programs perform.

• The Microsoft Office 365 set runs perfectly on Windows 10 and Windows 11.
• Photoshop runs fine, and can get the work done.
• Chrome works well, and can also get the work done, although I use Microsoft Edge.
• Sony Vegas has a few hiccups, but runs fine nonetheless.
• Sublime Text runs perfectly.
• Visual Studio 2022 runs well, but has a few issues here and there.
• Visual Studio Code runs perfectly.
• Minecraft (or Java-based programs) work well on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Windows 10 ran wonderfully, and Windows 11 was a runner-up! It was a free upgrade, so that was good!

As of care, in general, the metal corpus gets fingerprints easily, so I carry a micro-fibre cloth with it all the time. And a disclaimer, please clean the glossy screen with only a microfibre cloth and don’t use any chemicals.

To summarise, the laptop is great, thin and powerful, here are all the cons and the pros:
Cons:

• It needs to be cleaned more often to retain a good and beautiful shape.
• Some things need to be enabled for advanced use.

Pros:

• It is powerful and slim.
• The design is gorgeous.
• Many programs run fantastic on it.
• It has a long battery life.
• It has an amazing OLED screen.
• The models have good specifications.

This was a short review, I hope you liked it. Thanks for reading!