Asus Zenbook 14 OLED: Battery Life King Topples MacBooks, Offers More (Review)

Forget about MacBooks! The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q425M) just stole the crown for Windows laptops with the longest battery life. That's right, it even outlasts both the new 13-inch and 15-inch Macbook Air M3 models. For years, Apple dominated the battery life game, but the Zenbook 14 is putting up a serious fight. Could this be a sign that Windows laptops are finally catching up? Let's see what else this contender has to offer.

BATTERY LIFE: THE FACTS

In our quest to find the laptop with the longest battery life, we put three machines to the test: the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED and two new MacBooks. To ensure a fair comparison, we followed the same process for all three. We adjusted the brightness, disabled unnecessary features, and ran a web browsing loop until the laptops gave out. You can find all the nitty-gritty details on our "How We Test Laptops" page, but the key difference is the browser used. Windows machines ran the test with Edge, while Macs used Safari, both being their respective default options.

Here's where things get exciting! Despite the OS differences, the results are clear. The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED dominated with a whopping 15 hours and 52 minutes of battery life, leaving both MacBooks in the dust. The MacBook Air 13 M3 and 15 M3 managed a respectable 15 hours and 13 minutes and 15 hours and 3 minutes, respectively.

It's refreshing to see a Windows laptop compete neck-and-neck with MacBooks in battery life. The Zenbook even takes the fourth-place spot on our overall battery life champions list, although the top three positions are still held by Macs (dominated by the Macbook Pro 16 M2 Max). While Apple maintains the lead for now, their edge is shrinking.

But wait, there's more! The Zenbook isn't just a battery life champ; it also outperformed the MacBooks in several performance tests. To learn more about this impressive challenger, check out our full Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q425M) review!