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Asus Zenbook A16: Two-minute review
The Asus Zenbook A16 is a large laptop that aims to shoehorn premium performance into a portable package. It certainly achieves the latter; I was impressed by just how light and thin the unit really is, especially when you consider its 16-inch diagonal. It’s much easier to carry around than many of its rivals.
What’s more, it looks good. The beige colorway of my review unit was a refreshing change to the dour shades of many laptops, while the mottled pattern on the lid adds further interest, making it one of the best laptop choices if you’re after a unique design.
The Ceraluminium material might have a ridiculous name, but its build is anything but. While it’s incredibly light, it’s also quite solid. Meanwhile, the lid offers plenty of stability while still being easy to open and close. The bezel around the display isn’t quite so premium, but thankfully it’s very minimal, which helps to maximize screen space as much as possible.
Another impressive aspect of the Zenbook A16’s design is the variety of physical connectivity options. Despite that slender chassis, you get three USB ports (two Type-C and one Type-A), an HDMI port, a combo audio jack, and a full-size SD card reader.
This generous selection puts other similarly thin laptops to shame, although I was mildly disappointed to see nearly every port loaded on one side. Not splitting the USB-C ports across both sides is an especially aggravating decision, considering both can be used for charging and connecting to external monitors.
The Zenbook A16 is a capable general-purpose machine. It makes light work of basic productivity and entertainment tasks, including 4K streaming. However, it falls down somewhat when gaming. It can’t handle AAA titles all that well, performing worse than other laptops with similar integrated graphics.
Some heat can be felt towards the back and left side of the base, but this is far from troubling. The fans also produce a noticeable sound, but mercifully this isn’t as disruptive as some other examples.
The display is the highlight of the Zenbook A16, though. The crystal-clear 3K resolution is ideal for screen size, while the OLED technology ensures a deep contrast and a vibrant color palette. It also has plenty of brightness, which helps to prevent pesky reflections from ruining the viewing experience.
Thanks to the light actuation and spacing of the keys, the keyboard is easy to use. There’s also a little more travel and dampening to presses than is typical for a laptop keyboard, which only adds to the tactility and feedback. It’s a shame, though, that there’s no number pad and few navigation keys.
On the other hand, the touchpad of the Zenbook A16 is more practical. Its large surface area makes navigation easier, while the useful side gestures are convenient and functional. There were only a few occasions when I accidentally triggered them (and cursor movement) when typing, which is a much better hit rate than I’ve experienced with other large touchpads.
Battery life is impressive, too. The Zenbook A16 lasted a full 24 hours in our movie playback test, which is considerably longer than comparable models. For perspective, the 16-inch Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro I tested only managed 14 hours in the same test.
However, it can’t match the Samsung for performance and sheer design quality, despite being about the same price. This means that unless you prize portability above all else, the Zenbook A16 mightn’t offer the best value compared to some stellar rivals.
Asus Zenbook A16 review: Specs
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
Base |
Review |
Row 0 – Cell 3 |
|
Price |
TBC |
$1,699.99 / £2,099.99 (Aus TBC) |
Row 1 – Cell 3 |
|
CPU |
Snapdragon X (X1-26-100) (up to 2.97GHz, 8 cores) |
Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme (X2E-94-100) (up to 4.7GHz, 18 Cores) |
Row 2 – Cell 3 |
|
GPU |
Qualcomm Adreno (integrated) |
Qualcomm Adreno (integrated) |
Row 3 – Cell 3 |
|
RAM |
32GB LPDDR5X |
48GB LPDDR5X |
Row 4 – Cell 3 |
|
Storage |
1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD |
1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD |
Row 5 – Cell 3 |
|
Display |
WUXGA (1920 x 1200) OLED, 16:10, 60Hz |
3K (2880 x 1800) OLED, 16:10, 120Hz |
Row 6 – Cell 3 |
|
Ports and Connectivity |
2x USB-C (4.0 Gen 3 with support for display / power delivery, 40Gbps) 1x USB-A (3.2 Gen 2), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack, 1x SD 4.0 card reader; Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 |
2x USB-C (4.0 Gen 3 with support for display / power delivery, 40Gbps) 1x USB-A (3.2 Gen 2), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack, 1x SD 4.0 card reader; Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 |
Row 7 – Cell 3 |
|
Battery |
70Wh |
70Wh |
Row 8 – Cell 3 |
|
Dimensions |
13.9 x 9.5 x 0.7 inches (354 x 242 x 17mm) |
13.9 x 9.5 x 0.7 inches (354 x 242 x 17mm) |
Row 9 – Cell 3 |
|
Weight |
2.4lbs (1.1kg) |
2.9lbs (1.3kg) |
Row 10 – Cell 3 |
Asus Zenbook A16 review: Price & availability
- $1,699.99 / £2,099.99 for top model
- TBC in Australia
- Some rivals offer better value
The Asus Zenbook A16 is available from April 7th in two guises: both get Snapdragon CPUs, but one is the X1-26-100 with 8 cores and the other the X2E-94-100 with 18 cores. The models also have different RAM sizes (32GB and 48GB) and display resolutions (2880 x 1800 at 120Hz and 1920 x 1200 at 60Hz). Both come in two colorways: gray and beige.
The top model costs $1,699.99 (and £2,099.99 in the UK), while the pricing for the base model is yet to be confirmed. This is also the case for the pricing and availability of both models in Australia.
This is undeniably an expensive laptop. It’s similarly priced to the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro, which is about as premium as they come. Graphical performance is also superior to that of the Zenbook A16, handling AAA games much better. It’s nowhere near as light, though.
If you need even more graphical power but want to keep that 16-inch form factor, the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 10 is a better alternative. Granted, its performance doesn’t match up to the very best gaming laptops, but the mere fact that it has a dedicated GPU — and a powerful one at that — means it can handle demanding titles, as well as video editing and other creative duties, far better than any machine without one.
Asus Zenbook A16 review: Design
- Very light and thin
- Interesting Ceraluminum construction
- Generous port selection
There are a few aspects of the Asus Zenbook A16’s design that made me sit up and take notice. The first was my review unit’s beige finish, which is a breath of fresh air in a world of monochromes (although it should be said that a gray model is also available).
The second is the Ceraluminum construction, which looks and feels softer and more inviting than the hard and sterile materials of other laptops. I also appreciated the mottled finish of the lid, which looks more like paper and adds an interesting aesthetic element.
However, the standout aspect of the Zenbook A16 is its incredible lightness. When coupled with its ultra-thin chassis, this must be one of the most portable 16-inch devices out there. The soft, rounded sides of the base make it more comfortable to pick up and hold, too.
Despite its featherweight construction, build quality is also good. The base feels reasonably solid, while the hinge for the lid provides smooth and easy adjustments, as well as sufficient stability once set in place. The screen bezel is a little disappointing: although it’s very thin, the material quality is a step down. It isn’t flush or integrated into the screen, either, as it is on the best MacBooks, but this is a minor quibble.
There’s an admirable number of ports on the Zenbook A16. There are two USB-C ports, both of which employ the USB 4 standard, supporting both charging and external monitor connections. It’s a shame that they’re both on the left; it would’ve been more practical if they were split across both sides, to improve amenability for varying setups.
Also on the left are the combo audio jack and an HDMI jack, which means this side is somewhat overcrowded; by contrast, the right only gets a single USB-A port and an SD card reader. Still, it’s hard to complain when there’s this much variety at all; similarly large and thin laptops can’t compete.
Asus Zenbook A16 review: Performance
- Great general performance
- Lacks graphical pedigree
- Sharp and bright display
Asus Zenbook A16 benchmarks
3DMark: Night Raid: 34,017; Fire Strike: 6,672; Steel Nomad: 646; Solar Bay: 12,960; Solar Bay Unlimited: 12,549; Solar Bay Extreme: 1,352; Solar Bay Extreme Unlimited: 1,303
Geekbench 6.5: Multicore: 15,075; Single-core: 3,779
Cinebench R23: Multi Core: 9,370; Cinebench R24: Single Core: 89; Multi Core: 452
Crossmark: Overall: 1,840; Productivity: 1,652; Creativity: 2,132; Responsiveness: 1,634
Passmark Overall: 5,613.1; CPU: 16,825.4; 2D Graphics: 567.6; 3D Graphics: 4,243.7; Memory: 3,559.5; Disk: 46,745.8
BlackMagicDisk: Read: 4,832MB/s; Write: 4,330MB/s
HandBrake 4K to 1080p: 86fps
Total War: Warhammer III: 1080p, Medium: 53fps
Total War: Warhammer III: 1800p, Ultra: 15fps
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 24 hours and 5 minutes
The general performance of the Zenbook A16 is respectable. The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip in my review unit handled typical everyday workloads well, such as light productivity and entertainment. It also streamed 4K content without issue, and the copious 48GB of RAM certainly helped with multitasking, too.
Graphical performance was disappointing, though. It failed to complete Puget Bench’s Adobe Premiere benchmark, due to an effect failing to render in time — an error I’ve experienced with other laptops lacking dedicated graphics, although some such models did complete the test successfully.
Also, it didn’t run Cyberpunk 2077 in a playable state with the Ray Tracing: Low preset selected. This isn’t too surprising given the aforementioned integrated graphics, but I have tested laptops with similar solutions that did manage to run the game at the same settings more smoothly.
Adjusting the allocation of the shared memory to favor graphics tasks helped somewhat, but not by much — and certainly not by enough to justify the considerable increase in heat and fan volume.
I found the sweet spot between performance and visual fidelity was achieved on the Zenbook A16 by switching to the Ultra preset (which disables Ray Tracing), lowering the resolution to 1080p, and enabling Frame Generation.
During such intensive workloads, some heat can be felt at the top of the keyboard and the left-hand side of the base. In fact, this can even occur when the Zenbook A16 is under moderate loads, but fortunately the temperatures are far from worrisome or uncomfortable. Fan noise can be heard in such cases as well, but this is muted to a greater extent than on some other laptops, and is therefore less distracting.
Perhaps the highest-performing aspect of the Zenbook A16 is its display. The 3K resolution is sufficiently sharp for a display this large, while the 120Hz refresh rate provides plenty of smoothness. And since it uses OLED technology, contrast is deep and colors are vibrant. The screen is shinier than many I’ve seen, which does mean reflections can make themselves known, but thankfully the high brightness levels stop them from dominating the image entirely.
I found the keyboard great for typing with. The generous spacing and lightness of the keys makes fast and accurate inputs a cinch, while their extra dampening and travel over those of other laptops imparts more satisfying feedback. I always feel it’s a shame, though, when a 16-inch laptop misses out on a number pad. There aren’t any navigation keys, either, save from a Delete / Insert key.
Thankfully, the touchpad on the Zenbook A16 is more practical. It stretches from almost the very bottom of the base to the bottom of the keyboard, providing a large area that makes for easy navigation. It also has an incredibly smooth surface, which only makes it more enjoyable to use.
And while it’s also wide, it’s narrow enough to prevent the palms of your thumbs from resting on it constantly. Even when mine did, there were only a few occasions when this contact triggered cursor movement or the side controls for volume and brightness — which, incidentally, function very well.
There are other slider controls on the touchpad besides these: gesturing along the top edge allows you to scrub back and forth on video and audio content, while swiping diagonally from the top-right corner launches ScreenXpert, Asus’ tool for managing app windows and multiple displays. Despite the usefulness of these Smart Gestures (as they’re called), it’s a shame that none of them can be customized.
Asus Zenbook A16 review: Battery life
- Outlasts rivals by a wide margin
- Still not the best of the best, though
The battery life of the Zenbook A16 is very impressive. When I ran a movie on a continuous loop, it managed to last just over 24 hours. This makes it much more enduring than other large laptops, such as the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro and MacBook Air 15-inch, both of which lasted half as long in the same test.
However, there are laptops that can do even better: the HP OmniBook 7 14-inch, for instance, managed 26 hours, again in the same test, while the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ managed over 30 hours. So while the Zenbook A16’s endurance is certainly remarkable, it’s not the absolute best in the broader laptop market.
Should I buy the Asus Zenbook A16?
|
Attributes |
Notes |
Rating |
|
Value |
Hugely expensive, and the fact is other similarly priced rivals are better overall. |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Design |
The Ceraluminium construction is incredibly light, although it’s perhaps not quite as premium as others. There are a pleasing number of ports, too. |
4 / 5 |
|
Performance |
For workaday use, the Zenbook A16 is very good, and its excellent display showcases content brilliantly. Graphical performance leaves a lot to be desired, though. |
4 / 5 |
|
Battery Life |
Among the best for a large laptop, outlasting rivals by a long way. However, it can’t match the very best laptops. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Total |
The super light design and excellent display are big plus points for the Zenbook A16, but the middling graphical performance and high price hamper its value compared to the alternatives. |
4 / 5 |
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
Asus Zenbook A16 review: Also consider
How I tested the Asus Zenbook A16
- Tested for several days
- Used for numerous tasks
- Plenty of laptop reviewing experience
I tested the Asus Zenbook A16 for several days, during which time I used it for general browsing, light productivity, streaming content, and gaming.
I also ran our series of benchmark tests, designed to assess all aspects of performance. I also ran a movie on a continuous loop to test the battery life.
I’ve reviewed a large number of laptops previously, across a broad range of price points, form factors, and use cases.
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lewis.maddison@futurenet.com (Lewis Maddison)
