Subjective Value Conclusion

I have three teenagers in my house. One of them already owns an ultrabook quite similar to this one. One uses a drawing tablet, and the other wouldn't stop asking to use this one. My wife drooled over it too. Performance notwithstanding, I know exactly where this ultrabook fits into the market, and I have four potential users here, plus myself. I put in many hours of gaming on the XPG XENIA 14, and it wasn't a chore. You're not going to play top-level "AAA" games with all the features turned on, but gaming at 720p/800p or with reduced settings actually worked better than I had hoped for thanks to the Intel Iris Xe onboard GPU. This little GPU impressed me not only because it was more capable than I had expected, but also because it pulls so little power, meaning the XENIA 14 wasn't that noisy either. Don't get me wrong, the fan was spinning at full speed, and it has a whine to it you can definitely hear, but it is not overbearingly loud.

You do also get a month of XBOX LIVE game streaming for free (which is available for $1 at the time of writing and does require a subscription), and it is part of the OS setup when you first power up the XENIA 14. This is partly to showcase how the XENIA 14 can be a somewhat capable gaming platform, which ties in ADATA's focus on a "Gaming Lifestyle" with the XENIA 14. The XENIA 14 isn't meant to be a top-level gaming platform, but instead nicely fits console users who need a PC for other uses and want some light gaming too, which the XENIA 14 is definitely capable of. I was really hesitant about that at first, but felt satisfied after putting it through the tests. You're not going to get a "perfect" 60 FPS in everything as you would with a decent discrete GPU, but what you do get is a console-level experience, if you just so happen to be using it connected to a TV…

Thanks to the HDMI 2.0b, Thunderbolt 4, and a USB 3.1 Type-C connector that supports DP, the XPG XENIA 14 is capable of connecting to three external panels if you'd like. This is pretty useful to me personally as I just can't work well on a single panel; I much prefer two. The HDMI port covers that, of course, and many laptops these days have one on hand, but added Thunderbolt 4 opens up other options that aren't just 8K displays. You can pretty much connect anything to the XENIA 14, whether it be displays, external drives, or USB sound cards. The list goes on and on because Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4.0 of course work together, with Thunderbolt 4 being faster and more capable. I'm glad XPG kept that plug here. I just wish this thing had a touchscreen.