Ryzen 7 5800H & 90 Hz OLED: Asus Zenbook Flip 14 OLED in review
Asus turns to AMD: The 14-inch device in the increasingly popular 16:10 format scored well in our review. The AMD 5800H CPU delivers decent performance overall for the small form factor of the chassis. The trend of jamming more powerful hardware into ever smaller cases continues here, and lots of power also means lots of waste heat that needs to be cooled. Asus therefore sacrifices space for potential ports for elongated cooling outlets, of which there are three on each side.
The quality of the case is very good. It remains stable in all positions and offers a modern design. The well-designed layout of the keyboard only took a short while of getting used to before we were no longer making mistakes. The pressure point could be a little better, but this is splitting hairs. The solution for the missing num pad is clever: Asus has integrated it into the clickpad in digital form, which can be activated via a brief tap on the top right corner of the clickpad. Even the much-used calculator has been incorporated here, as it can be started at the same time by sliding from the upper left corner downwards.
The display offers contrast values of infinity to one and all the color spaces we tested are fully covered. Furthermore, the screen is a touch panel with 90 Hz, which reacts to input as fast as lightning.
Via the MyAsus software, performance can be adjusted to the desired scenario. If you want to work quietly, you can activate the Whisper mode. The Standard mode behaves dynamically and adapts the cooling to the required performance. But up to this point, you cannot utilize the full 45 watts of the AMD 5800h. Even in tablet mode, the fan profiles are locked and the processor's power loss is limited to 15 watts. Those wanting to max out performance are forced to use the power supply here. Only then can Performance mode be activated, with which we also carried out the entire review. In doing so, all the remaining advantages of the Asus Zenbook Flip 14 come to the fore, but strong performance all brings disadvantages. The fans are not extremely loud in Performance mode, but they frequently wind up and down, which we found annoying. In the MyAsus software, you can adjust other things such as display settings, speakers and microphone as well as the battery and more. The catch: MyAsus can only be used after creating a user account.
The hardware is somewhat spartan: Asus installs a total of three USB ports in the Flip 14 OLED, two of which are USB-C and one USB-A. Thunderbolt and PCI-Gen 4 are not included, but there is an HDMI 2.0 port, a 3.5mm audio combo port and a micro SD card reader.
Although portability is given, if you want to use the device in fresh air, the maximum brightness is not sufficient to read the display well in the sun. In addition, you also sacrifice valuable battery life, which is primarily consumed by the OLED panel. The battery is large enough - this is just a general problem with OLED devices. This means that at maximum brightness, you can still get away with just under 7 hours. At 150 cd/m², you can add another two hours, according to our Wi-Fi test. In comparison: the Dell Latitude 9420 2-in-1 convertible, which doesn't have an OLED panel but uses IPS, manages 11.5 hours.
You can find more information in our detailed review, which also provides possible alternatives.