We saw some good devices from Intel, some really nice devices from Qualcomm, but we were all waiting to see what AMD would bring with their new tech. So, we finally have an all-new chip from AMD inside an all-new laptop from Asus: the ZenBook S16. Now, the naming around this chip is God-awful as usual—they went with the AMD Ryzen ai9 HX 370. It’s a terrible name, but there are two chips: the 370 at the top end and the base model, the 365. Both these chips have great performance, particularly the 370, and they are also very energy efficient.
This is a very thin device, measuring in at 12 to 13 mm thick depending on where you throw the caliper. Typically, when you have a design that is so thin for an x86 laptop, you just get bad performance. But because of this new chip, they enabled you to achieve good performance on this device while keeping it super thin. Despite its thinness, you still have two USB-C ports, an HDMI port, a USB-A port, and a full-sized SD card slot on the right side. Asus has done a good job in terms of the overall package.
The top finish of the laptop is something Asus calls a “Ser aluminum” finish—a typical terrible name from Asus. It’s a ceramic polymer bonded to the top aluminum layer, supposed to make the surface a little bit harder. It almost feels like polished concrete or polished stone. The laptop comes in two colors: a dark gray, which looks nice if you don’t like the cream color. Personally, I love the cream color—it looks sick!
The design features a series of holes for the grill, with smaller holes inside the larger ones. This creates a very unique look. Larger holes might have been cheaper to produce and offered better airflow, but this design is slightly more spill-resistant because of the smaller holes.
This laptop rocks a 16-inch OLED panel, and both models feature this panel. The screen is simply amazing in terms of image quality because it’s an OLED panel. It’s also very fast with a 120Hz refresh rate and a response time well under a millisecond. The color accuracy is on point, and it’s a touchscreen with pencil support. Some configurations include a pen in the box, while the base models do not. This is an awesome screen for any use.
I tested both the 365 chip and the HX 370 chip. On both devices, the default power setting is 17 watts, and if you bump it up to the highest performance mode, it’s at 28 watts. These chips can go up to 54 watts, but you’d need a thicker device to pull it off. Even at the lower power setting, you’re getting really good performance because these are very energy-efficient chips. The heat output is low, and the fan noise is very quiet, which is the main reason why they’re able to keep this device so thin.
When they first showed me this device last May, I didn’t believe they’d be able to do it. I thought it was going to be too thin to deliver the expected performance of an AMD Ryzen chip. But they managed it, and it’s impressive. Inside, there’s a super-thin vapor chamber on top of the chip, some graphite sheets, and a pair of fans. This setup provides solid thermal performance for such a thin device, even in games.
There are two different GPUs depending on the chip: the base chip, the 365, has a Radeon 880M, and the higher-tier chip has the 890M, which has more compute units. These are a noticeable step up from the previous generation of AMD’s onboard GPUs. For light gaming, they are awesome, and for moderately demanding games, they are okay. But for serious gaming, you’ll need discrete GPUs from Nvidia or AMD.
The HX 370, with its higher core count, is surprisingly good for video editing. If you need a portable device for editing, this will do the job better than expected. However, the keyboard does get warm during intense use. It’s not uncomfortably hot, but noticeable. If they made the device a little thicker, they could have solved this issue.
The keyboard itself is backlit nicely, and it’s very fast to type on, though it feels a bit shallow. The super-thin design necessitated this, but I wish they had made it one or two millimeters thicker for a more responsive feel and cooler keyboard. The trackpad is nice and big, centered because there’s no number pad on the side. However, the side controls for brightness and volume feel underbaked. I’d prefer accurate button controls over these sometimes unresponsive features.
The speakers on the ZenBook S16 are very good. Asus has figured out how to do good speakers on laptops. The G14 and G16 gaming devices had killer speakers, and the S16 follows suit. It sounds better than the 15-inch MacBook Air but not as good as the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
The battery is a 78Wh unit, taking up a big portion of the internal space. AMD chips have been known for long battery life, and this generation is even better. For light tasks like web browsing or checking emails, the ZenBook S16 will last a very long time.
A lot of the marketing around this chip is about the NPU components, which can go up to 50 TOPS. However, there has yet to be a killer app or feature from Microsoft that utilizes the NPU in a way that makes it essential. This device, despite having a 50 TOPS NPU, is not a Co-Pilot Plus laptop—only the Snapdragon X Elite devices are. This might change over time, but for now, it’s just a regular laptop to Microsoft.
At $1,399 for the base model, the ZenBook S16 is definitely priced as a premium product. The HX 370 model with more RAM is about $200 to $300 more. Whether you should buy it depends on your budget. There’s nothing else on the market right now that offers this kind of performance in such a thin device. It’s priced high because it’s unique and offers premium aesthetics and performance.
If you’re on a tighter budget, waiting for other devices might be wise. They won’t be as nice, but they’ll be cheaper. Overall, the ZenBook S16 is very impressive, delivering more than expected. If you need a super-thin device, it won’t disappoint.
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