ASUS Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition Is So Heavenly It Could Pass For An Official NASA Laptop
Here's a bit of trivia for you—did you know that 25 years ago some ASUS laptops were sent into space? Thick and ancient by today's standards, the ASUS P6300 rocketed to the Mir space station for a 600-day mission and garnered praise from Russian cosmonaut Sergei Avdeev, who commented that the P6300 "never overheated like some of the devices made by other companies." Now two and a half decades later, ASUS is celebrating the anniversary of the P6300's trip to low orbit with the Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition (UX5401).
I've only seen renders and photos, but based on those, this is one of the coolest looking laptops I've ever seen. This is a much thinner and lighter laptop than the one that traveled where relatively few people have been so many years ago, but it looks ready for lift-off. The themed designed would like right at home at NASA, or Blue Origin, or SpaceX.
As the name implies, the Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition is built around a 14-inch OLED screen, but there's also a 3.5-inch OLED companion ZenVision display on the lid. This shows personalized notifications, animations, or text, and is just one of the many delightful features of this laptop.
Getting back to the main display, it features a 2880x1800 resolution (2.8K, 16:10 aspect ratio), 90Hz refresh rate, 550 nits peak brightness, 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, and a 92 percent screen-to-body ratio. It's also DisplayHDR True Black 500 certified, and Pantone validated for color accuracy.In place of rocket fuel, this laptop is powered by an Intel 12th Gen Core i9-12900H processor with integrated Xe graphics. This is flanked by 32GB of LPDDR5 memory and a 1TB M.2 form factor PCIe 4.0 SSD for storage.
The I/O selection includes a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports (supporting display and power delivery), an HDMI 2.0b output, 3.5mm combo audio jack, and a microSD card reader. And on the wireless side, you're looking at Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.
It's a high-end laptop for sure, and according to ASUS, it's also compliant with US Space Systems Command Standard (SMC-S-016A) durability requirements to handle the kind of vibrations one might encounter when blasting off into space.
While I've made the link the NASA, to be clear, this is really an ode to the Mir station, with a special graphics printed on the inside deck. ASUS also says it "contains several carefully hidden surprises for you to discover, depicted in Morse code or graphics all over the laptop." Jeep owners can relate to that sort of thing.
You can find a ton of visuals and details on the Zenbook's product page, which is worth a visit when you have a moment. There's no mention of price, though ASUS does say the Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition will ship in the second quarter of this year.
