Forget your MacBook – Asus' refreshed Zenbook A14 might be an ideal alternative

With CES in full swing, it's a big January for laptop launches, and one of the major subplots from the last year or so is cropping up again. As the biggest and best laptop-makers launch new devices, the big question is which chip-maker they pair up with.

With AMD, Intel and Qualcomm all offering up extremely viable SoC contenders, it's a bit of a buyer's choice, but it's unsurprising to see the Snapdragon market share grow over time. Case in point: the new, refreshed version of the Zenbook A14 that Asus has just announced, which doubles down on Snapdragon.

Where it previously featured the Snapdragon X1-26-100 (in a 2025 version to which we gave a very solid four-star verdict), the 2026 Zenbook A14 will sport the Snapdragon X2 Elite, a step-up that should bring with it a big boost in battery life and efficiency.

Efficiency is basically the biggest word from CES 2026 as a whole, frankly, since most of the new chips being shown off make far bigger leaps on that front than they do in terms of raw power. In the Zenbook A14's case, it means Asus is quoting massive battery performance – up to 28 hours of video playback, making for comfortable all-day real-world use.

Another big upgrade comes in the display department. Last year's A14 had a lovely OLED panel, but it was only 1200p, whereas you'll now get FHD (1080p). That'll solve one of our few gripes with the laptop, since it could sometimes lack a little sharpness.

Just like last year's version, the laptop comes in at under 1kg to stand out as one of the lightest machines you could hope to pick up, and its design doesn't appear to have changed much. That's no bad thing, since this was already a very attractive machine, to be fair.

It also maintains a policy of offering helpful quantities of I/O ports, including a full HDMI port, two USB-C ports and a USB-A one for older connections. There doesn't look to be an SD card reader, though, which might make the MacBook Pro look more helpful for photographers.

We're very much not all photographers, though, and a new MacBook Pro will almost certainly cost way more than the ZenBook A14, given that the 2025 version came in at £1,099 in the UK, $1,199 in the USA, and AU$1,999 when it launched (and can now be had for more like £800 in the UK).

I don't have pricing at this point, as is common for CES laptop announcements, but it'll doubtless come soon, and I'd expect it to mirror last year's, making this a clear competitor for the MacBook Air rather than the Pro, and a standout option in the Windows laptop market.