Verdict
The Asus Zenbook S 16 ( 2024 ) is a suitable successor to Asus ' previous ultrabooks with a fantastically stylish design and lightweight construction , as well as lots of power against the competition , a marvellous OLED board and decent battery life . If you ’re in the market for a premium Windows ultrabook , this is the one to go for .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
The Asus Zenbook S 16 ( 2024 ) see a temperate refresh from last year ’s exemplar which proved to be one of our favourite laptops of 2023 with a funky design , family - lead display and ample power for productivity workloads .
For 2024 , the Zenbook S has moved up to using a 16 - in 3 jet OLED 120Hz video display , while also packing in some grunt with one of AMD ’s novel Strix Point laptop chips – specifically , it ’s the AMD Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 , complete with the goodness of Copilot+ .
You also get a Radeon 890 M iGPU bundle up in with the scrap , as well as 32 GB of RAM , a 1 TB SSD , and one of the most gorgeous , lightweight chassis I ’ve have , mostly thanks to its use of an interesting material .
All of this Zenbook goodness is survive to turn tail you £ 1699.99/$1699.99 , which puts it firmly in the frame against some of thebest ultrabookswe’ve tested , including theDell XPS 14 ( 2024)the newMicrosoft Surface Laptop 7 , and naturally theApple MacBook Air M3 .
Design and Keyboard
The Zenbook S 16 ( 2024 ) depend perfectly gorgeous with its slim grey and white frame . Ultrabooks tended to hit a bit of a paries with their aim in recent years , but Asus ’ competitor continues to crowd onwards both with its horizontal surface of style and contemporaneity with both its colour choice and super - fragile bezel , as well as its employment of innovative materials .
The top case of the new Zenbook S 16 is made of what Asus calls ‘ ceraluminum ’ . In other countersign , that ’s a portmanteau word of ceramic and aluminium which allow for a lightweight but hard - wearing material – perhaps the ideal blend for an ultrabook at this Leontyne Price .
The purpose of ‘ ceraluminum ’ on the lid and machined aluminium elsewhere keep this laptop visible radiation . At 1.5 kilo , it ’s unusually portable for a 16 - in simple machine , and is one of the most portable laptops I ’ve used . Combine this with a heaviness of 11 mm , and you ’ve got one of the slick look laptops available .
However , as much as the Zenbook S 16 is only 11 mm thickheaded , it pack in a fantastic pick of interface . The left-hand side houses an HDMI 2.1 embrasure , as well as a pair of USB 4 - capable USB - carbon ports and an audio combo seaman . On the right side , you ’ll find a USB 3.2 Gen 2 character - A embrasure for bequest connections and a full - size of it microSD .
The 65 percent keyboard is especially comfortable , and pit some of the best offering I ’ve seen , such as those on thebest MacBooks .
The key travel is reasonable , while also being quiet . What ’s more , the clean backlighting is crisp and vibrant and can also get jolly bright . There are also a helpful amount of function keys for interchange everything from loudness to screen brightness and the layer of keyboard backlighting , as well as those for mic mute , emojis , and shortcut keys for bothMyAsus software package and Microsoft ’s Copilot AI assistant .
compare to the former model , Asus also say the Zenbook S 16 ’s trackpad for this year is 40 percent larger . I do n’t have any reason to doubt that claim as the trackpad here is the prominent I ’ve meet on a laptop computer of this size of it . It ’s tactile and responsive , while also sustain gestures for everything from changing system of rules book to handle video recording playback reckon on where on the trackpad you move your digit .
On the point of sustainability , the Zenbook S 16 is packaged in a composition board boxful , while there are no charge card enwrap around the laptop or interior . The small charging brick has some plastic wrapper around it , but this is otherwise charge card - complimentary .
Display and Sound
Asus has also gone the whole hog when it comes to the Zenbook S 16 ’s presentation . This is a larger 16 - inch CRT screen complete with a 3 kB or 2880 x 1800 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate that provides a elaborated and responsive experience for canonic productiveness and more vivid , creative workloads .
This is also one of Asus ’ Lumina OLED panel meaning we ’re receive deep Black and high-flown colours and contrast . This was backed up in my examination where my trusty colorimeter measured a nearly sodding 0.03 disgraceful spirit level and superb colour accuracy for both mainstream colours with 100%sRGBaccuracy , and for more colour sensitive workload with 100%DCI - P3and 94%Adobe RGB . In add-on , the 6500 K color temperature at max brightness is also bang on , and its 12810:1 contrast ratio at max luminousness is really first-class .
The only area where this OLED panel fall down is with its peak brightness . My examination measured it to be just 338.1 nit , which is passable for both indoor and outside usance . However , this is more of a wider figure of OLEDs against their Mini light-emitting diode counterpart , for instance , more so than an issue with the Zenbook S 16 ’s specific panel . On a brighter note , this 16 - in panel is also a touchscreen , which is exact and reactive
The speakers on the Zenbook S 16 are downwards - lighting , think placing the laptop computer on a mild aerofoil such as a bottom or sofa can impact public presentation . They are yet decent , offering solid clarity and body with an ok amount of depressed - end .
Performance
Inside , the Zenbook S 16 opts to go with one of AMD ’s novel Strix Point APUs . Specifically , it ’s the buirdly Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 , complete with 12 core and 24 threads , as well as a Radeon 890 M iGPU .
The HX 370 provided some fantastic results in central processing unit benchmarks such as Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 6 with outstanding single and multi - core scores that get off the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H - poweredDell XPS 14 ( 2024)and even go toe to toe with theApple MacBook Air ( M3 ) , where it ’s neck and neck at time .
AMD ’s new Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 is also on top against the Arm - base Snapdragon X elect Windows ultrabooks we ’re seeing from both Microsoft and Samsung , and in the immediateness at least , it continues AMD ’s authority of the CPU space where they ’ve been untouchable with desktop chips in the retiring couplet of years .
The Radeon 890 M iGPU offers a respectable musical score in the three-D Mark Time Spy benchmark which means the Zenbook S 16 is capable of some diagrammatically intensive work , although it ’s on this pointedness where other ultrabooks with discrete GPUs perform a lot serious .
The 32 GB of headroom here is idealistic for more intensive workloads , or just open a lading of Chrome tabs at once , while the 1 TB SSD offer a enough capacity . It is also a reasonably quick SSD with 5059.92MB / s reads and 3685.65MB / s publish , meaning you ’ll be able to get at your data rather briskly .
Even under load , the Zenbook S 16 also remained especially unruffled . There was a small amount of fan racket under lading and the laptop computer did get slightly warm , but in day - to - twenty-four hour period utilisation , it did n’t spin out up at all .
Software
The Zenbook S 16 fare with Windows 11 and a reasonably clean install , too . There is n’t much in the way of bloatware with regards to an unwanted anti - virus or similar , although there are some pieces of software good manners of Asus that amount pre - put in .
There is MyAsus , which comes as part of the taskbar when you first get to the Zenbook S 16 . This is where you may find out on everything from bombardment level and enabling battery care mode to choose which character of workload the Zenbook S 16 ’s connection connection prioritize .
In summation , there is also GlideX , which is where you could manage task such as stray or mirroring the Zenbook S 16 ’s CRT screen to other machine wirelessly , or transpose file across the same meshing . you’re able to also enable outside access to a mobile equipment , too . The Storybook app is designed as another mean of organize exposure and videos , using AI to recognise face and file your photo for you , which is ready to hand .
As well as offering those apps , as a Copilot+ laptop , the Zenbook S 16 also benefits from Microsoft ’s AI functionality . The master thing here is the summation of its Copilot key , which acts as a wake button for Microsoft ’s AI help . It work up a window where you may ask the AI all manner of things , such as to write some textual matter , or you may inquire it a mountain chain of information .
You also get the welfare of procreative AI in Windows scheme apps such as Photos , where you may add together filters or an interesting background . The Photos app on a Copilot+ personal computer also has an Image Creator social occasion , where you’re able to give the system a prompt and it ’ll generate an image for you with fair truth . Microsoft Paint also has standardised smarts , where AI can help you tot detail to images using the CoCreator tab where it can turn your image into everything from pixel artistic production to an rock oil house painting .
The Zenbook S 16 ’s webcam also benefits from Windows Studio webcam effects to keep you in frame , as well as to extend commodious feature of speech such as backcloth fuzz , which solve a treat for conference calls . There are also utile extra include a way of adding resilient subtitle to television directly within Windows , which is handy .
Microsoft’sRecallfeature is still missing however . This would have taken screenshots every few arcsecond of function so you could look back and remember things you ’ve looked at , even if you did n’t manually bookmark them in a internet browser or take a manual screenshot using the Snipping Tool . It will be usable , although only for Windows Insiders .
Battery Life
For such a powerful ultrabook , the Zenbook S 16 impressed with its battery biography . In my examination where the cleverness is dropped to 150 nits and the PC Mark battery exam is run until the laptop enroll its hibernation state of matter due to low electric battery , Asus ’ latest competitor with its large 78Whr battery lasted for 13 hours 18 minutes , which is pretty solid .
Against the Dell XPS 14 ( 2024 ) , the Zenbook S 16 impresses , considering Dell ’s choice live for just shy of 8 hours , while theMSI Prestige 14 AI Evo CMmustered up 12 and three fourth hours . For a New ultrabook , the Zenbook S 16 is fantastic .
Its recharge time is also brisk too , with it going from prostrate to amply charged in 100 moment , or 1 hour and 40 proceedings with its 65W USB - C courser . Dell ’s recent XPS laptop computer took 20 minutes longer . Zero to 50 % took 45 minute though , which is behind the husky 100W charger in MSI ’s choice that only too half an time of day to recharge half billing .
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Should you buy it?
The Zenbook S 16 ( 2024 ) ’s unclouded exercising weight for a 16 - inch laptop computer is marvelous , while it search gorgeous too , especially with its use of Asus ’ own ceraluminium chemical compound .
As much as the Radeon 890 M structured graphics in the Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 APU inside the Zenbook S 16 ( 2024 ) bid competent performance for diagrammatically acute workplace , even entry - level laptop GPUs found in other ultrabooks offer a fleck more pizzaz .
Final Thoughts
The Asus Zenbook S 16 ( 2024 ) might just be my favourite laptop computer of 2024 . Asus ’ latest ultrabook simply packs everything you could require in a Windows laptop computer and assume it to Apple with a package that ’s both fashionable and has an awful set of power .
The Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 is one of the best laptop buffalo chip we ’ve tested , achieving high-pitched - riding scores in benchmarks and helping the Zenbook S 16 feel reactive in day - to - day exercise , too . In increase , its 3 M 120Hz OLED gore offers the consecrated blend of being responsive and detailed with gorgeous colouring and contrast , as well as deep blacks . The 78Whr battery deep down also offers solid survival , too .
Where rival such as theDell XPS 14 ( 2024)have caveat such as a inadequate barrage fire life or weaker performance , the Zenbook S 16 ( 2024 ) does n’t . If there are any issues , they ’re smaller 1 , such as its care prison term not being quite as quick , or the iGPU not being as powerful as a discrete graphics batting order . Put simply , the Asus Zenbook S 16 ( 2024 ) post a strong claim to being thebest Windows laptopavailable today , and surely one of thebest MacBook Air alternativesif you desire to stick with Microsoft ’s OS .
Trusted Score
How we test
Every laptop computer we review goes through a serial publication of uniform checks designed to gauge central divisor , including form quality , performance , screen quality and battery life-time .
These let in formal synthetic benchmark and written trial , plus a series of substantial - world checks , such as how well it runs popular apps .
FAQs
The Asus Zenbook S 16 ( 2024 ) press just 1.5 kg , which is particularly light for a 16 - in laptop .
Test Data
Full Specs
