The most interesting thing here isn’t the outside, though - it’s the interior.
This ZenBook is among the first laptops we’ve seen with one of Intel’s Tiger Lake CPUs.
It’s a fiercely competitive era in the laptop market, though.
Features and Design
The UX425 is unmistakably a ZenBook.
Opening the machine reveals more alloy in the same dark shade.
The shape is sleek, with a tapered front edge and slim bezels on both sides of the screen.
The laptop can be opened smoothly with your fingertip.
More reassuring is the ZenBook’s adherence to MIL-STD-810G standards.
Internal access is possible as long as you’ve got a small enough Torx screwdriver.
The left-hand side houses the HDMI output.
On the right side is a microSD card slot and a full-size USB 3.2 Gen 1 port.
That USB port has a more modest maximum bandwidth of 5GB/s.
There’s one big omission when it comes to connectivity, though - no headphone jack.
Asus includes a USB-C-to-audio adapter, which is helpful but a somewhat clumsy solution.
Above the display is a 720p webcam that works with Windows Hello.
Quality isn’t great - it’s fine for business calls and family catch-ups, but that’s all.
A keyboard shortcut can be used to turn the webcam off, but there’s no physical privacy shutter.
There’s no fingerprint reader on this machine, either.
That machine has Thunderbolt 4, too.
The ZenBook’s keyboard is pretty standard for an ultraportable.
The keyboard’s buttons are wide and large, with a clear font and a decent 1.4mm of travel.
It’s a little on the crisp, and is well-suited to long typing sessions.
The only downside is the noise as they’re not exactly quiet.
The trackpad is wide and has solid functionality - it has multi-touch gesture support alongside the aforementioned number pad.
The glass surface is smooth and responsive, and the two buttons are fast and shallow.
Those figures create a measured contrast ratio of 1,624:1, which is a top-notch result.
Uniformity is great, too - the brightness only deviated by 5% in the corners.
That sRGB color reproduction is pretty good, too.
The Delta E of 0.93 is fantastic - below the point where human eyes can detect deviations.
It’s easily good enough to handle mainstream photo editing, too.
The speakers are fine, if not outstanding.
It’s easy to find laptops with better audio kit.
Performance
TheCore i7-1165G7is the key component in this machine.
Tiger Lake brings significant improvements when compared to the blue firm’s last laptop CPUs.
Those speeds are bolstered by a Turbo peak of 4.7GHz.
Elsewhere, Tiger Lake includesIntel’s Iris Xe graphics core, which has 96 execution units.
It’s an improvement over older Intel integrated GPUs, and here it’s clocked to 1.3GHz.
If you want to use wired internet, you’ll need to rely on the included USB adapter.
Loading up Cinebench’s multi-core test saw the ZenBook score 1,739 points.
The CPU’s below than expected performance can be explained by the ZenBook’s clock speeds and temperatures.
It’s clear that the CPU has nothing more to give inside the ZenBook.
Further benchmarks saw this pattern repeat.
If you want any sort of gaming ability in an ultraportable, find one with an AMD Renoir chip.
Battery Life
There are some positives to be found elsewhere.
The Asus is a decent thermal performer: fan noise is modest and the exterior remains cool throughout.
It’s just a shame that the decent thermal ability comes at the expense of clock speed.
Its battery life is more than reasonable, too.
