We test the all-new Asus Zenbook A14, a laptop shaped around new materials

With colourful cases, key fobs, straps and stickers, we can say a lot about ourselves though our smartphones. But laptops? With these we undergo a personality by-pass, reduced to black or grey slabs that say nothing about us yet hold our entire lives within their frames.

It’s something of a grey area, and one that Taiwanese tech firm Asus has neatly stepped into. Its new Zenbook A14 laptops in elegant, nature-inspired shades were first unveiled during Milan Design Week 2025 at a smart, interactive exhibition by Studio INI.

They’re made from Ceraluminium – a product traditionally reserved for Nasa, which is 30 per cent lighter and three times stronger than anodised aluminium. It’s formed by blasting a ceramic particle through an electric bath. Asus has spent four years fine-tuning colours, texture and hardness, and the process contains no dyes and doesn’t use the acids or produce the hazardous water of traditional aluminium anodisation. Zenbook’s distinct colours and porosity are controlled by electric current voltage and a mineral formula.

For now, the Zenbook appears in ‘Iceland’ grey and ‘Zabriskie’ beige and comes with an enlarged touchpad with Smart Gesture support for easy navigation. The keyboard is made from recycled plastic, and the OLED touchscreen display provides immersive, richly coloured visuals. It has a battery life of 32 hours with a single charge and it’s thick enough to support a comprehensive set of ports (five in total, including an HDMI port), which cuts out the need for chargers and dongles. Traditionally, lighter has meant thinner, but Asus has turned this notion on its head; the Zenbook weighs in at just 1.2kg.

And it’s not just pretty; Zenbook has more than enough power to be rated as an official Copilot+ PC, Microsoft's AI-powered assistant that offers smarter ways to perform everyday computing functions – searching, recalling information, researching and even drawing.

Four ‘Signature’ edition Zenbooks were also on show in Milan. Made in Ceraluminium, their muted colourways are inspired by the dramatic landscapes of Iceland, The Maldives, Jordan and Turkey and each comes with a sleeve bag made from Kvadrat’s knitted upholstery textile, ‘Arda’. With a sleek tactile quality, the accessories are as covetable as a high-end handbag. The kicker is they’re not yet available; Milan was only a testing ground.

The company has an eclectic range of products, including the Adol 14 Air laptop that emits different fragrances thanks to a built-in diffuser (apparently popular with girls in China). There’s also the high-spec ROG range for gamers and the Pro Art series for design and content creation, revealing how Asus has its sights firmly set on design circles.

‘Both product lines represent two different parts of the target audience,’ explained a spokesman from the Asus design team in Milan. ‘One is more emotional, the other more rational, but when they combine, they can create great harmony, which is our design philosophy,’ – and also the inspiration behind the Zenbook name, first introduced in 2011.

With a team of 5,000 in-house R&D experts, Asus also claims its goal is to create a net-zero enterprise that helps drive the shift towards a circular economy, with a responsible, mainly Asian-based supply chain. ‘We believe in the power of sensory experiences to forge meaningful connections with design,’ says HW Wei, associate VP of Asus Design Centre.

With some rivals appearing to shift their focus to gradual iterations rather than any real innovation around the physical product design, if the new Zenbook is anything to go by, Asus is starting out as it means to carry on.

ASUS Zenbook A14, from £999 at JohnLewis.com, Asus.com, @Asus