Asus Zenbook A16 review: next-gen Qualcomm chipset makes this lightweight laptop a MacBook beater

Introduction

Windows laptops were given a real shot in the arm (or should that be ARM) last year, when Qualcomm stormed onto the scene with its incredibly efficient Snapdragon X silicon. Twelve months later, Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is here to give the x86 establishment a run for their money on performance – and give Apple’s in-house chips a scare too.

Asus is first in line with this, the Zenbook A16. It’s a ridiculously lightweight premium notebook with a gorgeous screen, generous connectivity and unique finish that sets it apart from the matte metal competition. Pricing is unsurprisingly in the nosebleeds at £2100 (US pricing was still TBC at the time of writing), sandwiching it between an M5-powered MacBook Air 15in and a Dell XPS 16 equipped with Intel’s Series 3 Core Ultra X7.

On paper, it should give its rivals plenty to chew on in terms of performance and battery life. The bigger question will be whether Windows 11 is happier on ARM-based hardware now than it was a year ago. Qualcomm and Microsoft have been working hard behind the scenes to improve software support; have things changed enough to earn this a recommendation without the asterisk?

Design & build: lighter than air

If Asus keeps stripping weight out of its laptops, at this rate you’re going to have to start tying them down in gusty weather. The Zenbook A16 is a scant 1.2kg, which is an incredible showing for a 16in laptop. It even undercuts the latest MacBook Air 15, which as the names suggest, has a screen that’s 1in smaller in the diagonal. This is one of very few 16in laptops I can comfortably hold with one hand.

It’s also wonderfully slim, tapering to just 13.8mm at the front edge. That hasn’t had any really negative effects on rigidity, with just the smallest amount of screen wobble noticeable when really hammering away at the keyboard.

Connectivity is decent, given those skinny dimensions. There are two USB4 Type-C ports good for 40Gbps data, DisplayPort video and power delivery; a single 10Ggbs USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A; an HDMI 2.1 video out; a 3.5mm headphone port; and a full-size SD card reader. Dell’s newly-revived XPS 16 can’t match it.

There’s little to separate the A16 from its Zenbook A14 baby brother style-wise, with the same basic silhouette, softly rounded corners, and ‘Zabriskie Beige’ colour scheme. Branding is subtle, with just a small “Asus Zenbook” badge on the lid, Asus logo on the bottom bit of the screen bezel, and tiny Zenbook graphic above the power button. I thought the latter was a button at first, but it’s purely decorative.

The standout design flourish is Asus’ bespoke ceraluminium finish. Science nerds will tell you the firm zaps a magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis with enough high voltage that some of the aluminium bit gets converted to a tougher ceramic-like layer; I’ll say it’s one of the nicest-feeling laptops I’ve used recently. The texture reminds me of a pebble at the beach that’s been smoothed by centuries of seawater. It’s not a coating, so won’t fade or wear away over time, repels fingerprint smudges pretty effortlessly, and is scratch-resistant. Plus it’s not just another gunmetal grey, making a refreshing change from the Windows laptop norm.

Keyboard & touchpad: shallow grave

While I’m sure Asus could have squeezed a numerical keypad into the Zenbook A16’s chassis without compromising the QWERTY keys too much, I get why it didn’t bother: this is an everyman ultraportable, not a business machine, and fewer keys means less weight.

It also means each island-style QWERTY key has a comfortable amount of space around it, and barely any of them have been shrunk to fit. Only the grave accent is half-width, and not being French, I have very little use for it. The half-height function keys are perfectly acceptable too. Less so sneaking the power button in here, right next to the delete key and above backspace where it’s too easy to hit accidentally and send the laptop to sleep.

Asus has kept the somewhat slippery key coating I wasn’t a fan of on the Zenbook A14. While it stays cleaner for longer than other keyboards, I still found I would lose my place when touch-typing. The exceedingly bright white backlight – which doesn’t have the best coverage of the smaller, alternate key legends – was a big help finding it again though.

Key travel can be a problem for super-thin laptops, but there’s enough of it here that I never felt I was bashing away at a firm surface. There’s just enough feedback from each key, with a decently springy action for a membrane-style ‘board and a soft sound.

A fingerprint sensor still doesn’t make the cut here, meaning Windows Hello facial recognition is your sole way of skipping the lock screen without tapping in your password or PIN. It’s as fast and accurate as every other laptop I’ve tried lately.

The touchpad beneath the keyboard is absolutely massive, giving plenty of room to perform Windows 11’s usual multi-touch gestures. Palm rejection is once again on point, meaning the mouse cursor wasn’t constantly bouncing about while I typed – despite the pad sitting directly central to the keyboard. It has mechanical clicks rather than haptic ones, which can feel a bit spongey if you press the extreme corners of the pad, but there’s otherwise little to grumble about here.

Screen & sound: treat for the eyes

If last year’s Zenbook A14 played it safe in any aspect, it was with the screen. While it rocked OLED panel tech for glorious colours and epic contrast, the 1920×1080 resolution was fairly average and the 60Hz refresh rate was behind the times. Asus has fixed that for the A16, pulling out all the stops with a 3K resolution stunner.

Text, photos and videos all look pin-sharp at 2880×1800, and everything stays smooth in motion at a nippy 120Hz. While this is no gaming laptop, OLED’s inherent speedy response times really shine when booting up a fast multiplayer shooter.

As I’ve come to expect from Asus OLEDs, colours are very accurate right out of the box. You get complete coverage of the sRGB gamut, making it an ideal choice for creative tasks without the need for a calibrator first. I’m still waiting to see how it stacks up against the Tandem OLED in Dell’s new XPS 16, but it’s comfortably up there with the best current-gen Windows laptop screens.

Contrast is fantastic and black levels are nothing short of great (enough to earn an HDR True Black 1000 rating), although the glossy panel coating does make light reflections a little troublesome. There’s a good rather than spectacular amount of screen tilt to counter this. Viewing angles are impeccable, however, and brightness is ample. In SDR mode it tops out close to Asus’ 500 nit claim, which for me meant being able to clearly see the screen next to a window on a sunny day.

About the only thing missing is touch support, but that didn’t bother me. The glossy panel finish would just need cleaning all that more often if you were deliberately prodding it on the regular.

Audio remains a bit of a weakness for the lightest Zenbooks. The A16 has down-firing drivers that might be a small step up from the A14’s weedy speakers, but not enough to beat the best ultraportables. Expect sound that’s lacking in bass, but with reasonable volume.

Performance and battery life: need for speed

Qualcomm threw out some big numbers when it revealed Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme late last year, but the Zenbook A16 is the first chance I’ve had to verify them – and see whether software compatibility has improved enough that there’s little penalty for picking one over the x86-based alternatives.

The X2E94100 is the head of an all-new lineup which may be based on the same 3nm ARM architecture as the original Snapdragon X Elite, but has seen dramatic upgrades across CPU, GPU and NPU. It’s an 18-core monster that can boost as high as 4.7GHz and has access to a whopping 48GB of unified memory.

Synthetic benchmarks reveal single-core performance on par with Apple’s M5; multi-core oomph is usefully higher, though some of that can be chalked up to the MacBook Air topping out at 32GB of memory. It trades wins with an M5 Pro in multi-core tests, while being faster than an Intel Panther Lake-powered Asus Zenbook Duo (2026) across the board. That includes AI-based tests, helped by the Hexagon NPU and its impressive 80TOPS of compute ability.

There’s serious power on offer here, resulting in flawless performance on the Windows desktop and no issues with more demanding creative apps. The active cooling fans were able to tame the chipset in its highest performance profile without becoming noticeably louder.

Benchmarking was my only real encounter with Windows on ARM software compatibility issues. PCMark 10 refused to run on the Snapdragon hardware. Otherwise every one of the apps in my regular rotation – Adobe Photoshop, Slack, Spotify, Outlook, Teams, and more – just worked. Big-name software from the likes of Affinity, Blender, OBS and Ableton are all on board now, and the enterprise side has grown massively too. There will be some outliers, but in my experience there’s no longer any reason to write off a Snapdragon-powered machine because of software support. That applies to games too. Steam installed as normal, along with my go-to titles for 3D graphics testing.

The Zenbook A16 isn’t a gaming laptop, and its native resolution is asking a lot of any mobile GPU, let alone an integrated one. Qualcomm hasn’t caught up to Intel’s Panther Lake just yet, with Shadow of the Tomb Raider managing 19fps at native resolution to the ZenBook Duo (2026)’s 29fps.

You really need to drop down to Full HD and stick to Medium detail settings to get playable frame rates. This is still a good showing for an ultraportable laptop, just not a transformational one. Qualcomm supports Microsoft’s Auto-SR upscaling, but only in a handful of games; the Nvidia, AMD and Intel equivalents have been more widely adopted, making them the better choice for anyone wanting ‘free’ AI-assisted performance boosts.

Battery life was Qualcomm’s ace in the hole last year, and while both Intel and AMD have made big strides with their latest chips, Snapdragon X2 is still looking like a longevity champ. While I didn’t quite reach Asus’ claimed 21 hours of video playback, the Zenbook A16 managed an impressive 18 hours of streaming content at half brightness. That’s an hour more than an M5 MacBook Air in typical use. Having a larger 70Whr battery surely helps.

In typical use I comfortably lasted a full working day of web browsing, image editing, email, document writing and video streaming, without once thinking about reaching for the power adapter.

Given the only laptop I’ve tested with Intel’s new Panther Lake Core Ultra so far is the dual screen, 99Whr Asus Zenbook Duo, I don’t have an apples-to-apples comparison – but Qualcomm’s Elite Extreme chip is looking very competitive. The first-gen Zenbook A14 lasted even longer, though the model I reviewed had an entry-level chip. You’re getting the best of both worlds here: immense power when plugged into the mains, and long lifespan away from it.

Charging is equally speedy, with a 130W power brick able to refuel it fully in around an hour.

Asus Zenbook A16 verdict

Qualcomm has come a long way in a single processor generation. Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is a fantastically powerful yet efficient chipset that also addresses most of the software concerns around its predecessor. It either keeps pace or bests the Intel and AMD competition on Windows, and comfortably matches some of Apple’s beefiest processors for outright oomph. It should absolutely be in the conversation for anyone looking for a do-anything ultraportable that can go all day away on battery power alone.

The Zenbook A16 puts the chip in a great light, with amazingly portable yet sturdy build, gorgeous display and ample connectivity. It’s not perfect: the somewhat slippery keyboard takes some getting used to and I’ve heard better sound from other thin and light laptops. The high-end CPU commands a high price, too – one not everyone needs to pay if they’re mainly doing basic desktop tasks.

That said, it’s now the first laptop that comes to mind for a Windows-powered alternative to a tricked-out 15in MacBook Air or M5 Pro-powered 17in MacBook Pro.

Asus Zenbook A16 technical specifications