Asus ZenBook 14 UM431DA: With a slowed-down AMD CPU

With the Asus ZenBook 14 UM431DA, Asus's truly visually appealing 14-inch laptop is also available with the powerful AMD Ryzen 7 3700U. The latter is particularly attractive also because of its Radeon RX Vega 10 integrated graphics unit. With it, several games can be played smoothly, which is interesting for casual gamers who don't place great importance on having the highest graphics settings. Image and video editing hobbyists can also achieve passable results with it.

The result of our benchmarks with the ZenBook 14 UM431DA is all the more disappointing. In these, the CPU performs well in the short-term individual tests. In the long-term test, however, performance drops by a whopping 25%, landing at the level of significantly weaker CPUs. In direct comparison, Asus's laptop can only compete with a Ryzen 5 3500U.

This also raises the question mentioned at the beginning, of why users should spend more money on the supposedly stronger CPU in the first place when it can't develop its performance in the long run at all. The summary, therefore, gives the impression that the Asus ZenBook 14 is still a very visually appealing notebook, but it can neither be upgraded well nor knows how to handle its hardware properly.

Therefore, prospective buyers shouldn't expect the most from this model variant. In addition, there are general criticisms such as a very slow SD card reader, which allows a large part of memory cards to protrude beyond the case, and a battery life that isn't bad but should have been longer.