+ Advantages:
- Slim and light design, good display screen.
- Strong performance.
- Good battery life.
+ Limitations:
- Performance is reduced when not plugged in.
- RAM upgrade not supported.
+ Editor's Advice:
Asus Zenbook S16 will be suitable for business users or content creators who need a high-end AI laptop with a thin and light design, large screen size but still ensures a balanced experience in many other factors such as high mobility, strong performance and good battery life.
Of course, with the above high-end equipment, the price of this device is not easily accessible to most ordinary users. Besides, the device is still limited when it cannot achieve maximum performance when using the battery.
Design and display
Asus Zenbook S16 (UM5606KA) is considered an enlarged version of the Zenbook S14 model that the company launched in late 2024. The device has a minimalist, sturdy appearance. The product's finishing quality is good, there are no unnecessary details, and there is no warping when force is applied to the body.
The device has two sides made from Ceraluminum material. This material is 30% lighter but has 3 times the durability of conventional aluminum, providing effective scratch resistance and longer life. The device also meets the military standard MIL-STD 810H durability. The surface is treated with a rough texture, thereby increasing the effectiveness of anti-smudge and fingerprint during use.
The device weighs 1.5kg and is 11.9mm thin. In the large-screen laptop segment, this is considered a relatively compact size. This thin and light design allows users to easily carry it when traveling.
Compared to some competitors in the same segment, the 15-inch MacBook Air M4 weighs 1.5kg and is 11.5mm thin, the MSI Prestige 16 AI+ weighs 1.5kg and is 18.95mm thick, while the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 weighs 1.53kg and is 13.9mm thin.
The hinge of the machine has a relatively different structure compared to most laptops on the market. The hinge is designed with 4 joints, of which 2 joints are located near the 2 sides like normal products and 2 joints in the middle.
This design helps distribute force more evenly when the user uses it, thereby providing a smoother opening and closing experience, without being too stiff or too loose. The center of the body is also slightly concave, allowing users to easily open the screen with one hand. However, this hinge only supports a maximum opening of about 130 degrees, instead of 180 degrees like many other laptop models of the company.
With most 16-inch laptops on the market, manufacturers often equip full-size keyboards with a full numeric keypad on the right side to help users enter data more easily. However, Asus chose to remove the numeric keypad area on the Zenbook S16 model. This can be considered a limitation for users who need to enter numbers regularly.
In return, the keyboard area has a larger space. The keyboard has good bounce, the keys are designed with large size, easy to operate. However, due to the thin and light design, the key travel is not deep enough. This keyboard is also equipped with a backlight so that users can use it more easily in low light conditions.
The large touchpad has a borderless design that extends to both sides. This area is also covered with glass for a smooth swiping experience. The touchpad is solidly finished and does not make any rattling noises when used.
The device's screen is 16 inches in size, using an OLED panel with 3K resolution (2880 x 1800 pixels), 16:10 ratio and 120Hz refresh rate. The large 16-inch size provides more display space, allowing users to comfortably multitask. The screen bezels are designed to be thin, giving a display area of 90% of the front.
The display quality of this screen is comparable to that of many other high-end laptop panels on the market. The colors are vibrant, the viewing angle is wide, and the blacks are deep. This screen also covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, allowing users to use it for professional graphics editing tasks.
The maximum brightness of the screen reaches 500 nits, which can be easily used for working outdoors. However, this is a mirror screen that is quite susceptible to dust and fingerprints, and will reflect light in complex environments.
The Asus Zenbook S16 comes with a Full HD webcam. The quality of this webcam is quite good, capable of processing images and accurately recognizing faces, and the colors are not distorted or grainy when used indoors.
In addition, the device is also equipped with an infrared camera system, supporting Windows Hello face unlock feature to enhance security. The device also integrates Microsoft Pluton chip, meeting TPM 2.0 security standards to increase safety when used.
Ports and speakers
Asus Zenbook S16 is equipped with 1 USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port supporting data transfer up to 10Gbps, 2 USB-C 4.0 Gen 3 ports allowing image output to external display, high-speed data transfer up to 40Gbps and support power delivery charging, 1 HDMI 2.1 port, 1 3.5mm audio jack and 1 SD card reader slot.
This number of connection ports is just enough to meet daily work needs. The built-in SD card reader slot is especially suitable for users who do work related to graphics, image and video processing. Users will not need to carry external card readers when they need to copy content from the camera to the laptop.
The device integrates a 6-speaker system with the ability to reproduce good sound details, solid bass and no distortion when turned on at high volume. If the user only uses it in the office, the device's speakers can meet most of the needs for listening to music and entertainment without having to connect to external speakers.
Performance and AI features
Asus Zenbook S16 is equipped with AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 processor, 24GB LPDDR5x RAM and 1TB SSD. The device also has a built-in PCIe M.2 slot for users to upgrade storage capacity, but does not support RAM upgrade.
Evaluating through the Geekbench 6 performance benchmarking software, the CPU on the Asus Zenbook S16 achieved 2,787 single-core points and 10,912 multi-core points when plugged in. When not plugged in, single-core performance dropped by about 30%, while multi-core performance dropped by about 8%.
It can be seen that the device still experiences performance degradation when not plugged in. This is a common limitation on most laptops running processors manufactured according to the x86 architecture at the present time.
However, this chip is still a high-performance processor, so users will hardly feel the difference in the actual working process with basic tasks. When handling heavy tasks, users should still prioritize charging the battery so that the device can maximize its performance.
The Zenbook S16 comes with an integrated Radeon 860M graphics card. The machine's integrated graphics processor will be suitable for experiencing eSport games with not too complex graphics.
Meanwhile, with more graphically demanding AAA titles like “Black Myth: Wukong” or “Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered,” the device can still handle 40-45fps performance with medium-low graphics settings. Of course, when running heavy tasks and playing games, the device will heat up significantly, especially in the heat dissipation area near the screen.
In addition, the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 chip also integrates an NPU with a performance of up to 50 TOPS (processing 50 trillion calculations per second), helping this AI laptop model meet Microsoft's Copilot+ PC standards. Therefore, the device supports a series of AI features such as the Recall feature that helps users search for information they have viewed on the computer, Cocreator allows creating AI images or Live Captions supports real-time language translation.
The battery that comes with the device has a capacity of 78WHrs. Testing the device overnight in Sleep mode, the device consumed about 4% of the battery capacity. With the need to handle mixed work tasks such as web browsing, watching videos, doing office work and editing images, the device can meet the usage time of about 7 hours continuously at 80% screen brightness setting and 60Hz refresh rate.
Summary
In the same segment, Asus Zenbook S16 competes directly with some rivals such as MacBook Air M4 15-inch version, MSI Prestige 16 AI+ and Lenovo Yoga Slim 7.
The device is suitable for business users or content creators who need a high-end AI laptop with a thin, light design and large screen size but still ensures a balanced experience in many other factors such as high mobility, strong performance and good battery life.
Of course, with the above high-end equipment, the price of this device is not easily accessible to most ordinary users. Besides, the device is still limited when it cannot achieve maximum performance when using the battery.
In addition, the configuration of the device can meet the gaming ability well, but the cooling system is not designed for this need, so users should not use the device for heavy tasks for a long time.
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/cong-nghe/danh-gia-asus-zenbook-s16-doi-thu-cua-macbook-air-m4-15-inch-20250801210122192.htm
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