Asus Zenbook S16 review

The AI revolution is upon us, whether you like it or not. And while those two crammed-together vowels are being seemingly slapped on any halfway smart tech nowadays, there’s more of a reason to do it with newer-model laptops. That’s because, alongside CPUs and discrete GPUs, you’re going to start to see NPUs—neural processing units—as selling points for laptops, designed to be a more efficient way of using AI software. At least, that’s the theory.

One of the first cabs off the NPU rank is the Asus Zenbook S16, and it boasts plenty of AMD power beneath the hood of a very sleek and slimline exterior. Let’s take a look at how it fares after hours of testing.

At $3,499 RRP, the Asus Zenbook S16 isn’t exactly cheap. Then again, those going all out can comfortably pay double that (and then some) for top-of-the-line AI-branded laptops from MSI. Around the Zenbook S16 price point you’ll find the MSI Summit A16 with more storage, a lower-res screen and the non-AI version of the AMD Ryzen 9 CPU. For an Intel alternative, the HP Omnibook Ultra Flip 14 is around the same price, albeit in a more compact design and with a 360-degree rotatable screen. It seems the $3,500-ish price point is the norm among AI-toting laptops.

I wasn’t quite ready for the subtle but striking design of the Asus Zenbook S16 when I opened the unassuming box. “Ceraluminum” might sound like a term out of Avatar—it’s reportedly a kind of high-tech ceramic aluminium—but it makes for a durable-feeling shell that’s lightweight. Part of that 1.5kg anti-heft is due to the impressive 1.1cm thickness.

Despite the lack of chonk, I was impressed with the sound accuracy of the six-speaker configuration, particularly in the mids and lows, and even more specifically for how dialogue felt like it sat clearly atop other background sounds. The bass is okay but not amazing, but the volume is enough that you’ll turn heads if you crank it up.

More impressive is the 3K (2880x1800) 16-inch OLED screen, which has a 0.2ms response time, 120Hz refresh rate and 500-nit peak brightness. For my tests, it was as attractive for everyday computing as it was for diving into a range of game and movie trailers on YouTube. It’s a touchscreen, too, and my review unit came with an Asus Pen, which was very responsive, and Microsoft Word did a great job of converting my chicken scrawl to actual words. Still, I wish there was a spot for the Pen (or it was magnetised), and the opening hinge doesn’t allow the screen to go far back enough, so writing felt more awkward than natural with the keyboard and touchpad not acting as the best wrist rest.

There doesn’t appear to be any upgrade options for this laptop.

In terms of ports, you’re looking at a single USB-A 3.2 port (up to 10Gbps speeds), dual USB-C 4.0 Gen 3 ports for power delivery and external displays (up to 40Gbps), an HDMI 2.1 port, and the old faithful 3.5mm audio jack + SD 4.0 card reader combo. There’s no Ethernet, but I don’t see how that’d fit in such a slimline design. I like the inclusion of HDMI 2.1, but the USB side of things is leaning towards minimal given today’s peripheral needs, plus the reality that you’ll need one of those USB-C ports for laptop power.

Then there’s the keyboard and touchpad. On the keystroke front, you’re working with a backlit chiclet keyboard, with 1.1mm key travel. Practically, outside of use-error moments, I didn’t have any issues with typing on the S16. Meanwhile, the precious touchpad is big enough to be practical for my massive mitts, albeit without being so large that I was errantly touching it while typing.

The Asus Zenbook S16’s thinness is hiding some surprising grunt, built around an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor with 32GB of RAM. This Asus laptop also sports AMD Radeon 890M graphics alongside an AMD XDNA NPU, which is where that whole AI bit comes into play. Rather than just being a marketing bullet point, the S16 has a dedicated Microsoft Copilot button, which is effectively overkill but does save a mouse click or screen tap for those eking every possible microsecond out of their days.

In terms of the raw numbers, Geekbench AI tests offered respectable-to-great results for the S16 next to the Intel-powered Alienware M16 R2 and HP Omnibook Ultra Flip 14. Admittedly, that’s on the CPU side, but the respective NPUs in those three laptops are all there to efficiently handle machine-level AI tasks. In my comparisons to a high-end desktop PC, there was only a fractions-of-a-second lead in terms of Copilot responses on the S16.

These laptop manufacturers have gone in on Copilot as the default device-level AI companion, and while it’s not yet feature complete, it is a functional-if-not-flawed device that offers speedy results. Copilot is more built to answer questions based on online resources and can spin up some basic prompt-based art in a few seconds on the S16, but I was more surprised at its tendency to ask me questions at the end of an answer and its capacity for mostly natural conversations. Like online matchmaking for games, Copilot feels more geared towards speed, but after hours of testing on the S16, the accuracy was there, too. Mostly. It’ll assumedly only get better, too.

In terms of comparisons to other laptops we’ve recently reviewed, the Asus Zenbook S16 had strong single-core performance, second only to the Intel Core i9-14900HX-powered Lenovo Legion Pro 5i in Geekbench 6, and third behind that same Lenovo laptop, and only just behind the HP Omnibook Ultra Flip 14 for Cinebench single-core CPU scores. Multi-core scores range from middling to meh, with the S16 ranking at best fifth in Geekbench 6 tests. It was in eighth for an overall Novabench score and the iGPU only just scraped into the top 10, admittedly against some powerful contenders that are either Enthusiast or Extreme in terms of performance.

On that point, you shouldn’t expect a whole lot of cutting-edge gaming potential on the S16. I had to make serious graphical compromises to get playable frame rates in Counter-Strike 2 at native resolution. Effectively, forget about native res, drop games to 1080p and start the fidelity at low or medium presets, then work your way up to find playable frames. It’s not an anti-gaming laptop as much as it is one that doesn’t have gaming front of mind. Indie games and older less-demanding titles should be a comfortable fit.

What’s more future-proofed is wireless connectivity, with both WiFi 7 and low-latency Bluetooth 5.4. As impressive as those standards are, it’ll likely be your respective external equipment that’ll let you down on experiencing their full impressiveness. Still, it’s great to see the latest standards included. More impressive is the comparative lack of bloatware, even if there is still a handful of things you may want to uninstall if you’re not using them.

In terms of battery life, the S16 lasted just shy of 11 hours and 45 minutes in our 1080p YouTube playback test, which is more than enough to get you through a day of work, study and/or bingeing videos. In terms of getting the battery back to full, it’s great to see USB-C power-delivery fast charging. It took 112 minutes to get back to 99% with the screen on, with that last percentage point taking another 20-odd minutes (assumedly slower to preserve battery health).

I did have a mix of Windows and Asus weirdness during my time with the S16. Initial Windows 11 setup got caught on an initial loop of identical steps, and the 24H2 update got stuck in an infinite loop, even after multiple restarts and a BIOS update. The 1080p webcam looks decent enough but only worked about half the time for Windows facial recognition.

Worse was when the sound completely disappeared, which I fixed via Windows 11 troubleshooting, but then the two USB-C ports stopped working. That’s a big issue when you need at least one of those for charging the S16. Restarting and troubleshooting (via MyAsus and Windows) didn’t fix the issue, but I eventually found a Reddit thread that had the fix for a completely different Asus laptop model: power off, hold the power button down for 15 seconds, then power it back on again. It’s disappointing to see what appears to be an old ghost in the Asus machine rear its ugly head in another laptop.

At the top level, the Asus Zenbook S16 is a solid offering, thanks to its ultra-thin and lightweight design, great speakers, a gorgeous OLED screen, and a futureproofed dedicated AI chip. Battery life and the included Asus Pen are also nice touches, but there are a few too many cons holding back the S16 from the true value of its $3,500+ investment.