ASUS ZenBook S 13 OLED Laptop Review: A Svelte Beauty

ATTO Disk Benchmark

ATTO disk benchmark is a fairly quick and dirty test that measures sequential read/write bandwidth across a range of different data sizes. While we don't typically compare these results across multiple machines, it's useful to gauge whether a particular notebook's storage subsystem is up to snuff for the use case scenarios that the machine will be tasked with.


With its PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD, the ZenBook S 13 OLED was able to deliver quite respectable write speeds, hitting around 4.5GB/s at its peak. These scores beat many of the other laptops in this price segment, and more or less match the likes of the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8. For the most part, speeds were uniform across the largest block sizes, so you'll get a fairly consistent experience if you often work with larger files, while small random transfers should be responsive too. 

Speedometer 2.0 Browser Benchmark

We use BrowserBench.org's Speedometer test to gauge mixed internet usage experience, which takes a holistic look at web application performance. This test automatically loads and runs several sample web apps from ToDoMVC.com using the most popular web development frameworks around, including React, Angular, Ember.js, and vanilla JavaScript. This test is a better example of how systems cope with real web applications, as opposed to a pure JavaScript compute test like JetStream.
The ZenBook S 13 OLED did very well in this test, beating out much of the thin-and-light competition like the XPS 13 9315 and the ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1. That said, it didn’t quite reach the heights of the Yoga 9i Gen 8 or the Galaxy Book3, two other laptops with the latest Intel 13th Gen chips. Still, the machine showed very good system responsiveness overall and is obviously plenty fast for any web browsing or online work.

Cinebench R23 Rendering Benchmark

This is the latest 3D rendering benchmark from Maxon, based on the Cinema 4D R23 rendering engine. We tested both single-threaded and multi-threaded tests on all of the notebooks represented here...

The ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED did relatively well in the single-threaded test, matching or beating much of the competition. In multi-threaded performance, it wasn’t quite as impressive, though it still performed almost on par with the larger XPS 13 9315.

Geekbench 5 Benchmarks

Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmark that simulates real world processing workloads in image processing and particle physics scenarios. We tested the notebooks featured here in Geekbench's single and multi-core workloads. It measures single-threaded performance allowing a single core to stretch its legs, and multi-threaded throughput to put all cores under a heavy load.
Results here were very similar to CineBench R23, with the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED offering good single-threaded performance, but somewhat middle-of-the-pack multi-threaded performance.

PCMark 10 Productivity And Content Creation Benchmarks

PCMark 10 uses a mix of real-world applications and simulated workloads to establish how well a given system performs productivity tasks, including image and video editing, web browsing, and OpenOffice document editing. While these scores appear to be all over the place, the systems are sorted by their overall PCMark score, which is the third (gray) bar in each cluster.
The ZenBook S 13 OLED performed relatively well in these tests, but wasn't particular noteworthy. In its overall score, it wasn’t able to beat last year’s Galaxy Book2 or the ROG Zephyrus G14. The exception here was the “Essentials” score, which is built to cover common, everyday use computing cases. That's where the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED faltered a bit, which pulled down its overall score.

3DMark Graphics And GPU Tests

3DMark has several different graphics tests which focus on different types of systems. We tested here with Night Raid, which is 3DMark's targeted benchmark for laptops with integrated graphics. This test presents a solid challenge for the system's CPU and GPU engines using DirectX 12's API.

As expected, the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED's performance here isn’t great, and with its 15 Watt U-Series chip, it obviously underperformed somewhat against many other comparable laptops that have P-Series Intel silicon. The machine lands right between a couple of previous gen systems, both packing the same Iris Xe graphics core.

Next up, let's take a look at the Extreme preset for the punishing 3DMark Fire Strike test. This DirectX 11 test has been around for a while, but it's still pretty challenging for mobile GPUs.

Scores here were pretty similar to the previous test, with the Galaxy Book3 amongst the top performers, and the ZenBook S 13 OLED duking it out with some previous gen systems featuring the same graphics core. This ASUS laptop generally did about as well as the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10, which came out almost a year ago. Note, however, that the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED has a low-power U-series processor, whereas the Lenovo machine has a higher-powered P-series chip.