Asus Zenbook S 16 review: AMD stays in the game

Asus’ Zenbook S 16 is one of the first laptops to feature AMD’s flagship Ryzen AI processor, the one that’s supposed to be faster than Intel and Qualcomm at gaming, content creation, and AI — and fit inside a notebook that AMD says is lighter and thinner than the MacBook Air. It sounds like the makings of a perfect, do-it-all Windows laptop.

But Asus has to convince people they should buy this AMD-powered laptop now, when machines running on Qualcomm’s new chips can also do all the things most people need and with battery life that far outstrips traditional chips. To be the laptop hit of the summer, Asus would have to outshine all of the Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops that were released a few months ago in not just speed, but also in battery life, quality, comfort, apps, features, and price. That’s the mountain AMD and Asus have to climb.

Laptops always come with some sort of compromise, whether that’s performance, battery life, or something else. I’ve found the Zenbook S 16 isn’t the perfect, do-it-all laptop. But it balances day-to-day tasks and power-user features much better than most productivity laptops — and that makes it one of the best I’ve used.

Doesn’t feel like a 16-inch laptop

The Zenbook S 16 is a slim 16-inch laptop with a base configuration of 24GB of memory, a 1TB SSD, and AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 365 processor for $1,400. It also has a 2880 x 1800 (3K) touchscreen OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a relatively large 78Wh battery. I tested the $1,700 configuration with 32GB of memory and the faster Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chip.

It’s impressive that Asus fit such a large battery into the Zenbook’s 0.47-inch thick chassis and that the whole laptop weighs only 3.31 pounds. Bigger laptops are often more annoying to carry around, and some of that has to do with the battery. But the Zenbook feels more like a 13- or 14-inch laptop, so I forgot about its actual size.

The keyboard placement makes the laptop feel smaller, too. Asus pushes the keyboard closer to the front of the laptop by keeping the trackpad to a reasonable size and placing the speaker grille in back, making it easier for me to type on it. I can reach all the way to the function row without removing my palms from the palm rests. With most 16-inch laptops, I wind up typing like I’m Thing from The Addams Family with my wrists floating up in the air.