A surprisingly gentle and highly effective 16-inch ultraportable

I went into 2025 extremely amped to evaluation ASUS’s 2.2-pound ZenBook A14, solely to be disillusioned by the lackluster efficiency of its Snapdragon X chip. I am nonetheless a bit heartbroken, to be sincere. However now ASUS is again with a revamped A14 and a bigger 16-inch ZenBook A16, each of which sport new Snapdragon X2 Elite Excessive chips. The A16 is barely heavier at 2.6 kilos and a pair of.9 kilos, nevertheless it nonetheless competes with LG’s Gram Professional 16. And due to Qualcomm’s new {hardware}, it is truly speedy sufficient to compete with Intel and AMD ultraportables.

Take all the pieces I initially appreciated concerning the ZenBook A14 final 12 months — its skinny design and portability, its easy “Ceraluminum” case and its daring OLED display screen — stretch it out a bit, and you have the ZenBook A16. There’s an understated magnificence to its design that is much more intriguing than ASUS’s mainstream notebooks, just like the ZenBook 14 OLED from just a few years in the past, and it is not attempting as onerous to impress as ASUS’s typical gaming notebooks. It is much like the corporate’s attractive Zephyrus G14 and G16 machines, which really feel high-end while not having an excessive amount of gaming bling.

ASUS

The Zenbook A16 is the lightest 16-inch ultraportable we’ve seen but, and it’s surprisingly succesful because of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 chips.

Professionals

• Surprisingly gentle
• Polished design
• Wonderful OLED display screen
• Tons of ports
• Large efficiency leap over X1 chips

Cons

• Potential Arm incompatibilities
• Doesn’t assist all PC video games

What struck me first concerning the A14 final 12 months stays probably the most intriguing facet of the A16: It simply appears impossibly gentle for its dimension. The mannequin I’m testing, which may also be bought at Finest Purchase, weighs 2.9 kilos because of its glass touchscreen cowl. However you can too get a slimmer 2.6-pound model of the A16 at ASUS’s online store.

ASUS’s Ceraluminum materials, which seems like a mix of ceramic and metallic, additionally exudes high quality and heat once you maintain it. There is not any shock of chilly metallic in your lap such as you’ll discover with most premium laptops, together with Apple’s MacBook Professional. However it’s additionally simply as sturdy as these machines, with no discernible creaks or flex when pressured. ASUS claims its Ceraluminum instances are additionally scratch and fingerprint resistant, and to date that appears to be true of my evaluation unit after just a few weeks of testing.

The ZenBook A16’s beautiful 16-inch 3K OLED display screen is its defining characteristic, and it delivers all the pieces you’d count on from OLED. Colours look daring and vibrant, and it provides inky darkish black ranges. It delivers an eye-popping sense of distinction you will not discover on most LCD screens (except they’ve Mini LED backlights, just like the MacBook Professional). Textual content seems crisp and sharp, and the massive display screen dimension does an ideal job of creating video playback really feel immersive (particularly in the event you’re laying in mattress, attempting to atone for The Pitt).

Personally, I would nonetheless go for the A14 due to the burden distinction, however in the event you want massive screens that is definitely probably the most intriguing choices round. The A16 additionally has a full-sized SD card reader and HDMI connection, each of which the smaller mannequin lacks fully. ASUS additionally included a wholesome quantity of different ports, together with two USB-C 4.0 connections, one USB Sort A 3.2 port and a headphone jack. From a productiveness perspective, you may definitely get much more finished with the ZenBook A16’s connectivity.

The identical holds true for Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 Elite chips within the A16. Each the X2E94100and X2E96100 are 18-core chips with a single core enhance velocity of 4.7GHz, which is an enormous leap over the 8-core X1 chip in final 12 months’s A14. The X2 Elite-equipped A16 additionally comes with a whopping 48GB of RAM, which feels downright luxurious given our present RAM availability disaster, in addition to a brand new 80-TOPS NPU for AI workloads.

I instantly felt the distinction in energy after I booted up the ZenBook A16. The awkward sluggishness whereas shopping the online or perusing Evernote entries on the A14 was gone. As an alternative, the A16 all the time felt extremely responsive and able to work, like an keen pet that by no means will get bored with enjoying fetch. Benchmarks additionally revealed the huge velocity variations: The X2 Elite A16 scored 1,200 factors increased in Geekbench 6’s single-core CPU check, and its multi-core efficiency was twice as quick.

The comparability is a bit unfair, I am going to admit, as a result of the A14 I reviewed final 12 months was caught with probably the most fundamental X-series Snapdragon chip, whereas the A16 touts Qualcomm’s newest and biggest {hardware}. That additionally makes the A16 a bit costlier than final 12 months’s A14: Finest Purchase lists it at $1,600, whereas the A14 initially bought for $1,100.

However at the very least the ZenBook A16 delivers the efficiency you’d count on for its worth vary. Within the PCMark 10 Functions benchmark, it scored 17,264 factors, which is 1,000 factors increased than Dell’s Premium 16 (aka final 12 months’s XPS 16) with Intel’s Core Extremely 7 255H chip. It is also leagues forward of the previous ZenBook A14, which scored a meager 12,127 factors.

Benchmarks by no means inform the entire story, after all, however these large efficiency gaps are the type of factor you instantly discover in on a regular basis efficiency. I used to be in a position to load up the ZenBook A16 with dozens of tabs, Evernote, 4K YouTube video streams and huge Audacity jobs, and it by no means broke a sweat. Because it’s an ARM-based Snapdragon system, although, bear in mind older apps might run into points, or fail to work fully.

That Qualcomm {hardware} additionally made gaming a significant drawback for the primary era of Snapdragon X Elite chips, which did not carry out effectively and had been additionally incompatible with video games that required kernel-level anti-cheat. Updates to the Home windows on Arm platform mounted the latter situation, and Qualcomm additionally launched its Snapdragon Management Panel to ship quicker driver updates. Now all Snapdragon X Elite chips can play Fortnite, Roblox and Tencent titles. Qualcomm claims that 90 % of video games will run on the Snapdragon Elite X2 chips.

And that features demanding titles like Cyberpunk 2077. I used to be in a position to attain 80 fps in that recreation, whereas enjoying with medium settings in 1080p, together with enabling AMD’s FSR body era. This would not be my perfect solution to play Cyberpunk, nevertheless it’s an indication that the ZenBook A16 can at the very least maintain its personal in gaming. Sadly, it would not load Arc Raiders, as a result of there’s nonetheless no assist for its anti-cheat tech. Fortnite launched simply effective, although, and for some those that’ll be sufficient.

However actually, anybody shopping for the ZenBook A16 is not doing it to play shooters, you are doing it to get one of many lightest productiveness machines round. ASUS’s keyboard was comfy to sort on, although I’d have appreciated to see extra key depth akin to the Floor Laptop computer. Its trackpad is giant and responsive, nevertheless it’s additionally mechanical, which suggests you may solely click on alongside the decrease two-thirds. On this worth vary, I would count on ASUS to make use of a haptic trackpad with full protection.

The ZenBook A14’s battery life (18 hours and quarter-hour) was one in all its really spectacular options. ASUS repeats historical past right here with the A16 clocking in 21 hours and 35 minutes in our rundown check. That is the rapid profit of getting a chip primarily based on cell ARM structure. Throughout my testing, the A16 drained all the way down to 80 % after round 4 hours of steady work.

Compatibility points apart, the ZenBook A16 delivers nearly all the pieces I need in an ultraportable. It’s received a stunning OLED display screen and all the ports you want. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite chips additionally give it a much-needed energy enhance. And better of all, it is one of many lightest and sleekest 16-inch Home windows laptops I’ve come throughout. Simply be ready to pay a bit additional over different ultraportables for its slim dimension.