New Asus Zenbook S13 Wedges 13th Gen Intel, OLED Screen Into Extremely Thin Chassis

Asus' 13.3-inch ultraportable is going slimmer than ever. The new Asus Zenbook S13 OLED, which the company announced today, will be just 1.09 centimeters (0.43 inches) thick and weigh 2.2 pounds (approximately 1 kilogram). That's thinner and lighter than the MacBook Air with M2. This model will run on Intel's Core i7-1355U.

The new model is also slimmer and lighter than the existing S13 OLED, which uses an AMD Ryzen 6800U CPU, weighs 2.43 pounds (1.1 kg) and measures 0.59 inches (14.9 inches thick). That laptop was often hard to find in stores, so perhaps the switch to Intel has something to do with availability.

Other specs of the new Zenbook include 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 1TB of storage, a 63 WHr battery and a 13.3-inch, 2880 x 1800 "Lumina" OLED display (Asus suggests this is just a branding name for its OLED display). That OLED screen has Dolby Vision support and True Black 500 certification, up to 550 nits peak brightness, and Asus is promising 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut. Asus says the OLED panel allows for the lid to be 30% slimmer than previous models. Still, the laptop has an FHD camera with IR for Windows Hello login. 

The laptop will come in a gray or blue finish and will be made of recycled aluminum in the gray version. Asus says it uses an exclusive "plasma ceramic aluminum material for the lid," that should make it resistant to wear and tear. It also suggests that each lid, like stone, will be "individually unique" and that the design meets the MIL-STD 810H military durability standard. From pictures, it looks like it's going to be an attractive, eye-catching notebook, but we'll render our verdict on that when it comes through our labs.

Asus is also claiming that its circuit boards reduce weight, using fewer layers and a "higher wiring density, with many more transistors" to theoretically increase performance despite being very small.

Despite the sleek size, there's still a USB Type-A (USB 3.2 Gen 2) port along with a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI 2.1 output and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

One place you may notice the size reduction is the keyboard. Again, we'll need time with the system to really pass judgement, but the keys do appear to be a bit less staggered than on your standard keyboard, with short backspace, enter, tab, caps lock and left shift keys. The keyboard sits in a black well, which reminds me a bit of the MacBook Pro.

Asus states that the Zenbook S 13 OLED (UX5304) will be available for its $1,399.99 suggested retail price at ABT. But when I followed up, Asus told me that you'll also be able to find it at Best Buy, Amazon, and Newegg. If $1,399.99 is for 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, that's a solid price.

The laptop is launching today, so we're hoping to get our hands on it soon for a deep-dive review to see if it qualifies as one of the best ultrabooks.