The ASUS Zenbook S 16 laptop, in my opinion, has been the flagship laptop using AMD’s Ryzen AI 300-series processors going back to this past June at Computex in Taipei, where I first set eyes on a preview version. AMD formally launched these processors, along with its other Zen 5 laptop and desktop processors, in July. While this specific laptop wasn’t launched until August, it did stir up quite a bit of excitement with its new CPU, GPU and NPU capabilities.
While Microsoft is enabling this laptop with new Copilot+ capabilities in preview thanks to the Ryzen AI 370 processor inside it, I wanted to write a review of this laptop and evaluate how the Zen 5 CPU adds to the experience. ASUS is able to pack such a powerful chip into such a sleek design thanks to the laptop’s advanced thermal design and “Ceraluminum” (sleek high-tech ceramic) materials, which make the laptop lightweight, thermally conductive and sturdy.
The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Processor
The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chip (admittedly a mouthful) is the powerhouse behind this laptop’s capabilities — and the fastest in AMD’s lineup available today. That said, it is likely that a thicker, more thermally robust laptop design could squeeze even more performance out of this chip. This is important to note because every laptop’s implementation of this chip will likely vary on thermals and power delivery and could affect peak performance. Additionally, battery life can be affected by different implementations of the same chip as well.
The HX 370 is a 12-core chip, featuring four Zen 5 cores and eight Zen 5c low-power cores. This is clearly a configuration designed for power efficiency without compromising too much on performance. That’s why it should be no surprise that single-core performance fell within the middle range of my GeekBench 6 benchmark results of Copilot+ PCs powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processor. Where it faltered was in multi-core performance, where it fell towards the bottom of the stack. Cinebench performance was also towards the lower end of the range, which I was a little surprised by. GPU performance was great, especially in Counter-Strike 2, where I got a very stable and playable 60 FPS on medium settings, something that Qualcomm couldn’t claim.
AI performance was one of the hardest things to measure because there aren’t any benchmarks that can test AMD’s NPU, so all of them are forced to test the GPU. As such, AMD’s AI performance — at least from the NPU — is a mystery compared to the competition. This is an area where I believe AMD has fallen behind and is playing a fast-follower role, trying to follow Qualcomm’s and Intel’s lead and capitalizing on their successes and failures. That said, this approach does not really fit AMD’s current market-leader position, and I believe that the company should be investing more in developer access to its NPU.
Battery life is another difficult discussion to have for this laptop because, although it’s quite clear that the platform brings a significant improvement in battery life over the previous generation, that’s hard to quantify with a 3K OLED display and a 78 Wh battery. OLEDs are inherently power hungry, and a 78 Wh battery is quite large and designed to account for that hunger, which may negate any chip-level power savings. Even so, we’ve seen similar configurations from Lenovo using Qualcomm processors that get much better battery life. In my experience, I could get about eight hours of work time on this laptop, which is an improvement over the preceding generation but not as good as what I’ve seen from comparable platforms. In fact, I would assess that battery life was about on par with the Samsung Book4 Edge 16, which unsurprisingly has the same OLED panel — which I believe affects battery life the most.
The Zenbook S 16 Laptop
As a complete laptop in terms of design and functionality, the Zenbook S 16 is a stunning machine. I remember first seeing it at Computex and being enamored with the design and weight. And I was excited when AMD sent me one for review because it was one of my most anticipated laptops of the year. System performance aside, this device does feel quite thin and light — much like the Samsung Book4 I mentioned, although it has a very different design language.
The Zenbook S 16 also benefits from having a more mature x86 processor inside, meaning that application compatibility isn’t a problem. Additionally, most of ASUS’s choices with this system are overwhelmingly good: 32GB of RAM, 40 Gbps USB-C ports, and full-size USB, HDMI and SD card slots. I also don’t mind the OLED panel decision because OLEDs are simply superior to LCDs; still, there is a considerable battery-life penalty for OLEDs no matter what you do. The OLED also came in quite handy for movie watching and photo and video editing, which I did plenty of over the last few months.
I did, however, run into a long-time Windows issue on this machine that I had all but forgotten about once I had reviewed a few Arm-based windows PCs over the past few months. The issue is that the Zenbook S 16 woke up in my laptop bag overnight and drained its battery while overheating inside my bag. I truly thought that the industry had moved away from this problem, but it seems that x86 systems are still plagued by it, while Arm systems are not. Another oddity I experienced with this laptop was that the display would go dark for a second when switching between battery and wall power. I can’t say I’ve experienced that before.
Thinking of power issues, I also believe that ASUS should consider having USB-C ports on both sides of the laptop. Yes, there is a USB-A port on one side, but the reality is that people often need the option to charge from either side of the laptop. I hope that for the next generation ASUS considers this a necessity and puts at least a 10Gbps USB-C port on the right-hand side.
Copilot+ Is Coming Soon
While this laptop is not officially a Copilot+ PC yet (that update is available via Insider Preview Dev Channel), it will be mainstreamed to the broader public in 2025 once Windows Insider Preview users help work out any bugs. The entire situation with Windows Copilot+ updates and which features are available based on different silicon vendors is confusing. It also remains unclear how long it’ll be until x86 Copilot+ PCs reach true feature parity with their Qualcomm-based peers. Still, the Copilot+ capabilities, while limited and not fully ready, are a nice bit of futureproofing for added value.
With all that said, and with special thanks to the powerful Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, I am extremely comfortable recommending this laptop to anyone who wants a great balance between performance, entertainment and productivity.
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