Asus Zenbook S 16 review: AMD stays in the game

Asus’ Zenbook S 16 is 1 of the archetypal laptops to diagnostic AMD’s flagship Ryzen AI processor, the 1 that’s expected to beryllium faster than Intel and Qualcomm astatine gaming, contented creation, and AI — and acceptable wrong a notebook that AMD says is lighter and thinner than the MacBook Air. It sounds similar the makings of a perfect, do-it-all Windows laptop.

But Asus has to person radical they should bargain this AMD-powered laptop now, erstwhile machines moving connected Qualcomm’s caller chips tin besides bash each the things astir radical request and with artillery beingness that acold outstrips accepted chips. To beryllium the laptop deed of the summer, Asus would person to outshine each of the Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops that were released a fewer months agone successful not conscionable speed, but besides successful artillery life, quality, comfort, apps, features, and price. That’s the upland AMD and Asus person to climb. 

Laptops ever travel with immoderate benignant of compromise, whether that’s performance, artillery life, oregon thing else. I’ve recovered the Zenbook S 16 isn’t the perfect, do-it-all laptop. But it balances day-to-day tasks and power-user features overmuch amended than astir productivity laptops — and that makes it 1 of the champion I’ve used.

Doesn’t consciousness similar a 16-inch laptop

The Zenbook S 16 is simply a slim 16-inch laptop with a basal configuration of 24GB of memory, a 1TB SSD, and AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 365 processor for $1,400. It besides has a 2880 x 1800 (3K) touchscreen OLED show with a 120Hz refresh complaint and a comparatively ample 78Wh battery. I tested the $1,700 configuration with 32GB of representation and the faster Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chip.

It’s awesome that Asus acceptable specified a ample artillery into the Zenbook’s 0.47-inch heavy chassis and that the full laptop weighs lone 3.31 pounds. Bigger laptops are often much annoying to transportation around, and immoderate of that has to bash with the battery. But the Zenbook feels much similar a 13- oregon 14-inch laptop, truthful I forgot astir its existent size.

The keyboard placement makes the laptop consciousness smaller, too. Asus pushes the keyboard person to the beforehand of the laptop by keeping the trackpad to a tenable size and placing the talker grille successful back, making it easier for maine to benignant connected it. I tin scope each the mode to the relation enactment without removing my palms from the thenar rests. With astir 16-inch laptops, I upwind up typing similar I’m Thing from The Addams Family with my wrists floating up successful the air. 

The keys besides travel adjacent to the full, satisfying property of a low-profile desktop keyboard without sounding clacky oregon pingy.

It’s good-looking, too. The outer assemblage is enactment done a peculiar process that creates a hard, ceramic oxide furniture implicit the aboveground of the aluminum chassis, giving it a beauteous texture that feels unsmooth and creaseless astatine the aforesaid time. Asus besides kept the aforesaid gorgeous geometric lines that sparsely decorate the lid similar its erstwhile Zenbooks.

It’s progressively modular to spot a 3K, 120Hz OLED connected a instrumentality priced similar the Zenbook S 16. The show has vivid colors and heavy contrasts, and it makes this laptop adjacent much stunning.

Better show than Qualcomm 

Performance is wherever this laptop has a chiseled vantage implicit Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops. For video calls, streaming music, and different mundane tasks, AMD’s Ryzen AI spot and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips person the aforesaid responsiveness I’d expect from processors of their caliber. But AMD distinguishes itself with superior graphics performance, which makes the Zenbook S 16 amazingly susceptible astatine gaming and contented instauration for specified a portable machine.

Being connected the x86 Windows level means astir games truly volition just work connected the Zenbook. Shadow of the Tomb Raider volition clang connected an Arm-based Snapdragon laptop if I effort to tally the crippled astatine thing higher than 1080p solution and debased graphics. But I tin tally the aforesaid crippled connected the Zenbook S 16 astatine the aforesaid solution connected precocious spec, and it’ll not lone tally good — it volition besides get up to 20 much frames per second.

The integrated GPU inactive isn’t almighty capable to tally a crippled similar Cyberpunk 2077 natively connected specified a high-resolution laptop, but AMD’s upscaling technology, FSR 2.1, tin assistance marque it playable. With that on, the solution acceptable to 1080p, and upscaling acceptable to ultra performance, Cyberpunk averaged 77fps for me. The lone upscaler presently disposable to games moving connected Qualcomm laptops is Auto Super Resolution, and portion it’s not exclusive to those Snapdragon laptops, utilizing it results successful a batch of flickering of good lines. I would not play this crippled that way. 

For originative tasks, similar rendering 3D images successful Blender, the Zenbook S 16 is straight-up faster than each Snapdragon laptop I’ve tested. Currently, Blender doesn’t enactment Qualcomm’s integrated Adreno graphics connected its Snapdragon chips, adjacent with a autochthonal Arm64 mentation of that programme disposable (still successful alpha). The AMD-powered Zenbook S 16 runs faster due to the fact that the programme tin really usage some the CPU and GPU.

AMD said its Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 spot would beryllium faster than the M3 Pro successful Apple’s MacBook Pro, too, but that didn’t cookware retired successful my testing. The Zenbook S 16 didn’t consciousness immoderate slower successful mundane applications, but the top-tier Ryzen AI spot is really slower than the MacBook Pro by respective full minutes successful a real-world Blender test.

Blender tin clang connected immoderate laptop if it doesn’t person capable video RAM, including connected erstwhile generations of AMD Zenbooks. But I didn’t person that contented with the Zenbook S 16. It has a batch of memory, and AMD present lets you allocate up to 75 percent of it straight to the GPU. When I devoted 16GB of RAM to graphics and ran Blender’s Agent 327: Operation Barbershop demo — a country with analyzable lighting and a trial I usually tally lone erstwhile I’m investigating gaming oregon workstation laptops — it ran smoothly and didn’t crash. It didn’t render arsenic fast, but it finished the occupation without issues.

Battery beingness comes up short

Laptop makers usually person to sacrifice thing to person the thinnest and lightest laptop possible. Most often, that’s a compromise successful show — but Asus alternatively seems to person sacrificed immoderate artillery beingness to get arsenic overmuch show retired of AMD’s spot arsenic it can.

The Zenbook S 16’s artillery beingness fto maine down a bit, not due to the fact that the laptop isn’t reasonably long-lasting, but due to the fact that it gets lone 11 hours with a large, 78Wh battery. Asus’ main Qualcomm Snapdragon competitor, Samsung’s 16-inch Galaxy Book4 Edge, has astir identical value and dimensions, and it gets 14 hours with a artillery that’s 23 percent smaller. But I’m good with this tradeoff fixed however I could usage the Zenbook S 16 arsenic my superior laptop for penning articles, editing high-resolution photos, and airy gaming — and it has a overmuch much comfy keyboard.

The Zenbook S 16 is besides unusually atrocious astatine estimating its ain artillery life. The taskbar artillery icon would accidental 95 percent remaining with an estimated tally clip of 8.5 hours, past respective minutes later, it would person fallen to 87 percent remaining but with an estimated runtime of 12.5 hours. This went connected for hours. Sure, artillery estimations tin fluctuate, but they ping-ponged chaotically connected this laptop, truthful I ne'er could get a bully thought of however overmuch artillery was left.

AI is simply a large no-show

Asus’ caller Zenbook S 16 comes with 1 flagship AI app: StoryCube. It’s expected to assistance you consolidate your photos and videos from the unreality onto the laptop and automatically benignant and signifier everything with on-device AI. It sounded similar it could beryllium utile for maine since I person a atrocious wont of not organizing the photos I upload to the cloud. But it didn’t enactment astatine all, and Asus couldn’t archer maine why. Asus says it should instrumentality conscionable 24 minutes to make an AI medium for each gigabyte of data, but I fto the programme tally for 24 full hours and thing happened. 

The Zenbook S 16 besides supports the latest mentation of the AI representation procreation app Amuse. It works, but utilizing it with AMD’s NPU makes it tally slower, not faster. It took doubly arsenic agelong to make photos with the NPU on, and it’s connected by default erstwhile you archetypal unfastened the program.

And portion Microsoft has made a large propulsion astir Copilot Plus PCs this summer, the Zenbook S 16 isn’t portion of that programme astatine launch, truthful it doesn’t person AI-powered features similar Cocreator and Live Translation. Those are presently lone disposable connected Snapdragon laptops, but they are expected to beryllium coming to AMD Ryzen AI laptops by the extremity of 2024. 

If you’re reasoning astir buying this laptop solely for its AI capabilities, I’d clasp off. I’m inactive figuring retired however astir radical tin instrumentality vantage of AMD’s 50 TOPS NPU successful a mode that’s genuinely beneficial day-to-day.

The competition

If you’re looking for a large, powerful, comparatively thin, and airy machine, Zenbook S 16 is simply a large all-rounder laptop. I’ve tested astir each the caller Qualcomm laptops, and nary of them tin lucifer its wide show oregon autochthonal enactment for apps. Even though it’s larger than astir Qualcomm laptops, it doesn’t consciousness similar it. The lone happening you person to sacrifice is simply a fewer hours of artillery life, and for me, the show and size are much important. 

But if you consciousness differently, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge was the champion Qualcomm instrumentality I tested this summertime for its artillery beingness and size. There’s besides ever Apple: contempt AMD’s bold claims, Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Air bushed the Zenbook connected some show and artillery beingness successful my tests.

There aren’t immoderate Intel laptops that I’d presently urge implicit the Zenbook S 16 that deed the aforesaid saccharine spot. While I did similar the MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo’s 4 to six hours of other artillery life, it’s obscurity adjacent arsenic beauteous oregon arsenic casual for maine to benignant connected oregon transportation around. And portion the 2024 Dell XPS 14 besides comes to mind, you’re lone looking astatine lone astir an hr oregon 2 of other artillery beingness that’ll outgo you astir $500 more.

Since the Zenbook S 16 isn’t genuinely a dedicated gaming oregon creator laptop, I’d urge the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 for that. In my tests, it gets 2 to 3 times amended 1080p gaming show without upscaling and rendered my Blender country successful specified seconds. It inactive manages six and a fractional hours of artillery beingness successful a thin-and-light chassis, too.

The Zenbook S 16 didn’t rather unrecorded up to each the show claims AMD made astir it, but it came adjacent and truly impressed maine successful the process. It’s a 16-inch productivity, gaming, and contented instauration instrumentality that does each those things amazingly good and is really casual to transportation around. All you person to springiness up successful instrumentality are those fewer hours of artillery life. It’s a operation that adds up to marque this my favourite 16-inch Windows laptop of the summer.

Photography by Joanna Nelius / The Verge