Asus Zenbook A16 review: A great alternative to the MacBook Air

I’ve already put Asus’s new Zenbook A16 through the wringer When I brought a pre-production unit with me to CES. I loved it because of its great power in a lightweight 16-inch body. It’s fast enough for part-time content creation, has long battery life, and its large OLED screen is clear and vivid.

Now, the final production model is here, priced at $1,599.99 for the configuration with a whopping 48GB of RAM — a balance of specs and price that’s virtually unheard of, especially in These are uncertain times. All the strengths of the pre-production days are still there, and the early hardware issues and software bugs you encountered have been fixed (as they should be). The result is a unique Windows laptop for anyone looking for more screen real estate in one of our lightest, most capable packages, and a worthwhile alternative to a MacBook Air 15 inch.

The Zenbook A16 is primarily available in the US in a single configuration with an approximately 18-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100 chipset. It also includes 48GB of RAM (soldered) and a 1TB SSD. Its sharp look is thanks to the gorgeous 16-inch OLED display with 2880 x 1800/120Hz resolution and Asus’ Ceraluminum coating, which envelops the chassis in a glossy finish. The A16 has a more comfortable feel than your average laptop, thanks to that lightweight texture and unique beige color. This is the peak beige (Complimentary or insulting, depending on how you feel.)

The pre-production model I used back in January wasn’t ready for benchmark testing, but the final A16 and the new X2 Elite Extreme chip certainly are. And after putting it through a full battery of tests across Geekbench, Cinebench 2026, PugetBench, Blender, and more, I can confidently say: Damn, it’s pretty good! the MacBook Air M5 15-inch It aims to compete with still wins most head-to-head matches, but the Zenbook shows its strength in multi-threaded CPU performance across Geekbench and Cinebench. It’s even hot on the heels of the MacBook in the PugetBench Photoshop test (a CPU-intensive test).

Switch to Intel Panther Lake processor Asus ZenBook DuoThe Zenbook A16 easily wins our single- and multi-core CPU performance tests. The Zenbook Duo has a much bigger advantage in graphics tests thanks to its larger Arc B390 GPU. But you pay a lot more for the Duo’s graphics chips (and second screen), as it costs $700 more than the Zenbook A16.

The A16’s performance results are consistent with my real-world experience using it to edit 50MP RAW files in Adobe Lightroom Classic, where it was often reminiscent of the base M4 and now M5 MacBooks. I can perfect my edits, even on battery power. And speaking of battery life, the A16 is another example of a Snapdragon laptop that easily lasts an eight-hour workday of mixed use (Chrome tabs, some video calls, and a little streaming). I spent a day this way, with roughly 90 minutes of group video calls, and still had 30 percent battery left to use for my evening.

The rest of the Zenbook A16’s hardware is also put together well: a hinge that opens easily with one finger, a nice-touch keyboard with deeper key travel than the MacBooks, a solid mechanical trackpad, and some decent speakers. The trackpad is hinged at the top, shaped like a piano key, but clicks well on the bottom half. Listening to music on the A16 sounds great and is fairly full, but it lacks bass, as you’d expect. The downward and outward facing speakers are partially blocked when you rest the laptop on your legs, changing the sound. It doesn’t have the same level of oomph that the 15-inch MacBook Air can provide, but overall this is still a pretty complete package for a thin and light (and large) laptop.

My biggest knock against the Zenbook A16 remains the same issue I have with all Arm-powered Windows laptops: its gaming stance. Qualcomm deserves some credit for working to get more games running on Windows on Arm (now up to 2,400 titles supported from the initial 1,200), but it’s still a drop in the pack compared to x86 Windows. Easy Anti-Cheat is now supported, so games like fortnite It can run on Snapdragon laptops. but Elden Ring Nytrin (one of my favorite games of online live service games) still doesn’t work, despite using Easy Anti-Cheat as well. Qualcomm and Microsoft need to continue building momentum and get more developers and publishers to update their games for Arm. I can’t help but bring up Snapdragon laptops for this, because one of the main attractions of using Windows is the ability to play almost any game I want. I’m fine with settling for potato-quality graphics on the integrated GPU, as long as I can game whatever my mood.

With the right gaming support, a laptop like the Zenbook A16 could one day become the MacBook Air killer (or closer to one) it’s put on. It’s a great alternative as it stands, but you have to want to use Windows and be willing to play the same game of roulette which begs the question “Is this game supported?” Just like Mac users do.

Obsessive gamer needs aside, I’m relieved to see the Zenbook A16 hit the market with this much RAM and performance for $1,600. The MacBook Air may not be a killer, but it’s an interesting alternative and not just a run-of-the-mill device either. I’d still suggest most people go with the MacBook Air, and if you really need more power or more ports (including a handy SD card slot), the entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro is also up there. But this is also a much bulkier and heavier laptop. The Zenbook A16 offers an interesting and refreshing development: a light but large laptop with very good performance and enough RAM to weather the ongoing storm of global memory shortages.

Now let’s hope Asus doesn’t raise prices in a few months It’s like we’re starting to see somewhere else.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto/The Verge