The Asus Zenbook S 16 has beautiful design and plenty of battery power, but I’m not yet sold on its AI promises.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Beautifully designed | Little to get excited about from its AI features |
| Good keyboard and massive trackpad | You can get faster laptops for this kind of money |
| x86 avoids ARM compatibility issues… | … but ARM-based Windows laptops have better battery life |
Score: 3/5
In this review
Asus Zenbook S 16 Specifications
Asus Zenbook S 16 Design
Asus Zenbook S 16 Performance
Asus Zenbook S 16 Battery
Asus Zenbook S 16 Conclusion
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Design
If the designers of the next Star Trek series – let’s face it, there will always be another Star Trek series on the horizon – want to look for some simple starship props, they could do a lot worse than to check out the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA when it’s closed.
It’s a large (35.36 x 24.30 x 1.29) laptop with either a grey or white finish that Asus rather awkwardly calls “Ceraluminium”. Yes, marketing people really can make up words all the time!
The feel of that Ceraluminium, silly names aside is very nice, and it looks great too, with angular lines that really do give it that Star Trek-lite feel. My only complaint here – and it’s a small one – is that the Zumaia Gray model as tested does tend to pick up fingerprints rather easily, which rather spoils the style.
Flip the the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA open and you’re greeted with a fairly standard flat membrane keyboard; as it’s a 2024 model and “AI PC” is the watchword, there’s a dedicated Windows CoPilot key in place. Key response was very good during my testing period, though I could have wished for slightly larger cursor keys.
All the “large” that Asus could muster clearly went into the trackpad, which is massive. It does include some neat side functionality, so sliding your finger up the left hand side will raise or lower the volume, while the right hand side handles screen brightness.
The gap between the front of the laptop is minuscule, and between the trackpad and keyboard is functionally invisible. Some will love its expansiveness, but it does have the effect of pushing the keyboard a little higher up the body of the laptop than I was always comfortable with. That one comes down to your typing style, ultimately.
The Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA has a 16 inch OLED display with support for up to 120Hz refresh rates and a resolution of 2880x1800. As per Asus’ specifications there are models of the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA that omit touch sensitivity (and an included stylus) but the model I was sent for review was the touch/stylus capable model. I’m personally not huge on using styluses on laptop screens, but the feature’s there if you need it.
In terms of ports, the left hand side houses dual USB-C 4.0 ports, a 3.5mm combo headphone jack and HDMI, while on the right you’ll find an SD card reader and USB-A 3.2 port.
That should cover a fair degree of everyday needs, though if you’re charging the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA (which is via USB-C) you may want to consider picking up a simple USB-C hub.
Performance
The Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA is built around AMD’s new Ryzen 300 series AI processors, specifically either the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 or AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 365 models.
As far as I can tell, I think the Australian market’s only seeing that higher-end 370 variant; it’s certainly what Asus sent me for testing. That’s paired up with either 16GB or 32GB of RAM (32GB on the tested model) and AMD’s own integrated AMD Radeon 890M or AMD Radeon 880M graphics solutions.
Much of the hype here is around AI features, but this isn’t a CoPilot+ laptop, a la the Surface Laptop 7. Instead you’re looking at the more regular set of CoPilot features on board the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA, at least for now. As yet, I’m not exactly thrilled by what’s on offer here, and Asus’ own AI-led offerings such as the photo organising StoryCube app just isn’t that exciting.
Where the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA might have chops is in the performance stakes, thanks to the fact that (unlike the current crop of ARM-based CoPilot+ laptops, and yes, Asus has those too) it’s based on more classic x86 architecture, giving it theoretically full access to every single Windows app out there.
I say theoretically because there really are millions of apps spanning decades, and sometimes Windows apps can be quite fussy especially if they’re older x86 code… but I digress.
To get a picture of the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA’s comparative performance, I ran it first through PCMark 10’s general performance benchmark.
Asus’ contention is that this is a productivity-focused laptop, so it needs to do well here. Here’s how it compared against a crop of differing laptop approaches, many of which hit the same kinds of price points as the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA.
Not entirely surprising that some more gaming-centric laptops outperform the Zenbook S there, but it’s still a competitive score that suggests for the kinds of office productivity work Asus wants to pitch it towards, it should be mostly suitable.
What about on graphics performance? Is Asus hiding a gaming laptop within the Zenbook S’ slender frame?
No, not really, but that graphics score does suggest that it’s a system capable enough as long as you don’t want gaming at particularly high frame rates.
It’s not challenging the very best productivity machines graphically for high-end video rendering either, though again it would be a suitable enough machine as long as you had a little patience – and clearly more graphically adept than the Surface Laptop 7.
On the software front, the Zenbook S 16 is a Windows 11 machine; the model as supplied runs Windows 11 Home though Asus’ specifications do suggest that Windows 11 Pro may be an option through some resellers. Asus keeps the Zenbook S 16 reasonably clean and clear of crapware, which I always appreciate.
Battery
The Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA ships with a 78Whr battery that Asus says is good for up to 20 hours of battery life. Power performance on a laptop is always dependent on app usage, and over the many years I’ve been reviewing notebooks, it’s been quite rare that I’ve seen a laptop get all that close to most manufacturer’s claimed figures.
This isn’t some gotcha that states that the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA blew me away with better than claimed battery life, because that wasn’t the case, but I will note that it’s not notably better or worse than many that I’ve tested relative to claims in this respect.
Because battery life really does depend on usage, to give a comparative figure, I run laptops through two specific battery tests.
Firstly, a soft battery test, looping a 1080p locally stored video full screen and at full brightness and moderate volume to the point of battery exhaustion. Video processing is a very simple task for a laptop, so that gives you a typical “best case” scenario.
Then I use PC Mark 10’s gaming battery test to put the screws to a laptop’s battery. The Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA isn’t a gaming laptop to speak of, but this gives a better “under stress” type figure, if you were really pushing it hard for a sustained application load.
Here’s how the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA compared against that same crop of laptops across those tests:
The gaming battery score there is predictable; few laptops, even those made for gaming last all that long if you’re playing a heavy duty game – but the same is true if you’re doing high-end video editing, AI work or other heavy app workloads too.
The video score is pleasing; while it’s not at the same level as I saw with the Surface Laptop 7, that device couldn’t run the PC Mark 10 Battery test at all thanks to its underlying ARM architecture.
900 minutes of battery life – 15 hours and not a minute more – does fall short of Asus’ claims, though with the screen brightness dialled down and less volume from the speakers you could probably get a little closer to the stated “up to” 20 hour figure. It’s enough for light level all-day work, but if you wanted to push the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA’s processor a bit more, a recharge would be necessary.
The Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA recharges via USB-C with a small supplied 65W charger in the box, which is a nice aid towards portability if you’re travelling with it.
ASUS Zenbook S 16: Alex’s Verdict
The Zenbook S 16 certainly has some appeal. I do appreciate the design style, and while it’s not the lightest laptop you can buy, it’s in the conversation for 16 inch models, most of which tend heavier than this, making it a decent proposition for productivity workers who have to shuffle between desks on a constant basis. The display is nice, the keyboard responsive and battery performance is good for an x68 based laptop.
Conversely though if battery life really matters to you, the gulf between x86 and ARM systems remains immense. At this kind of price point you can get faster laptops, though not in systems quite this thin typically, too.
The AI hardware on the Asus Zenbook S… well, it sure is there, and standard Copilot features will run, but right now there’s not a whole lot compelling in the on-device stakes for most everyday users yet. As always my advice remains to buy based on what a device can do now, not what it might have in the future – so AI isn’t quite a reason alone to pick up the Zenbook S.
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ASUS Zenbook S 16: Pricing and availability
The ASUS Zenbook S 16 retails in Australia from $3,499.
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