Asus ZenBook S 16 16" 3K OLED Laptop (Ryzen AI 9)[1TB]

To my good fortune I have had in my hands different types of laptops over the years, some better than others, of course. This laptop in particular catches my attention because it seems to me that there are divided opinions. After using it for several days, I have some comments that may be useful.In the box comes the laptop, the charger, a quick guide and nothing else. The first thing is to connect the charger to the laptop (usb-c) and then turn on the device. Regarding the charger which is 65w I can say that it charges relatively fast the laptop, the cable is long enough and resistant.The design is very stylish, it is a very thin and relatively light laptop, in person the device looks amazing, I do not think the photos do justice to its good design and ... MoreTo my good fortune I have had in my hands different types of laptops over the years, some better than others, of course. This laptop in particular catches my attention because it seems to me that there are divided opinions. After using it for several days, I have some comments that may be useful.In the box comes the laptop, the charger, a quick guide and nothing else. The first thing is to connect the charger to the laptop (usb-c) and then turn on the device. Regarding the charger which is 65w I can say that it charges relatively fast the laptop, the cable is long enough and resistant.The design is very stylish, it is a very thin and relatively light laptop, in person the device looks amazing, I do not think the photos do justice to its good design and finish.Regarding the keyboard and touchpad. The keyboard is very solid, the keys feel good to press, it does not take too much effort and typing generates a discreet sound. On the function keys are the keyboard illumination controls, screen, volume control and some other shortcuts, however it does not have multimedia control that although it sounds very trivial I consider something very useful when I work from home alone, I like to play music and switch back and forth between songs. The touchpad works well, it is a very wide rectangle and you can activate, through the My Asus app, shortcuts for volume control, screen illumination and search in multimedia playback. What does not convince me are these last two features, the size I consider is a bit big and this leads me to the second thing that is that precisely because of the size of the touchpad when I type on the keyboard, a part of my right hand makes contact with the touchpad, causing that if I have the shortcuts activated, constantly change the brightness of the light because precisely on that side of the touchpad is the brightness shortcut. Unfortunately the shortcuts cannot be deactivated separately, they are all activated or deactivated at the same time.Regarding the screen what I can say is that OLED panels have a superior quality to the classic monitors. The color reproduction is great, the brightness despite being only 500 nits at most is very good, the colors look vivid, dark colors look really dark and not grayish as in other panels. The resolution of the 3K monitor is noticeable every time you use the laptop, actually regarding the monitor I can only recommend configuring to taste each of the settings that Windows allows, because the default settings require adjustments.Regarding performance. I consider that this is where it is what may confuse some users. It turns out that upon receiving this laptop, by its very nature, when turned on it requires an initial configuration by the user to start using the device fully. Once the registration and setup is done the device is basically supposed to be ready to use, the situation is that if no other setup or configuration is done, the experience may not be so pleasant. In other words you can say that the product is plug and play but in this instance it is not. You see, a device that is new on the market like this laptop, is subject to constant updates that are precisely needed to improve the user experience, unfortunately there is no sort of instruction that tells you step by step how to do it and every when. I have seen this for several years and with different types of devices, so the main thing to know when buying a product like this is that it will almost always be necessary that the user can configure and customize their device based on their needs to get the most out of a device, and more so one like this with great capabilities.At first I downloaded all the available windows updates, among them was the BIOS update which is something extremely important for a pc. The following days I kept receiving windows updates and one more BIOS update and exactly in this last one things changed for the better. What improved a lot was the temperature of the laptop when it is in intensive use and in high performance mode. Now this does not mean that the laptop does not get hot, rather it gets less hot, although I would certainly not recommend, as ironic as it may seem, to use this laptop on anyone's lap, the heat emitted by the device is high, unless you use a pad to place it on your lap and on top of the laptop. If I insist on configurations, updates and customization, it is that all this if one takes the time to configure it, can result in a rewarding experience. It is also important to mention that basically the device works with two main configurations, when it is running connected to the charger and when it is running on the device's battery. In both cases the configuration is not the same, i.e. the performance of the laptop changes and therefore it is important to configure to taste these two ways of using the device.What happens is that there is a decrease of certain functions when used only with the battery and there are configurations that are already preset and need to be modified.Regarding how much power this laptop has, I must admit that it exceeded my expectations. The common office processes and uses can be executed without any problem. For multimedia use, no problems, plus the screen looks great and something I must admit is that the speakers really impressed me, they sound pretty good and have very good volume and do not distort the sound, well there Asus. Playing video games is ok, although I do not consider it a laptop to play competitively or triple A games. Audio and video editing without problem, although I do not consider it a laptop for professional editors, it can be very helpful for content creators who do not need very complex editions or animations. The main limitations are due to the fact that the processor comes with integrated graphics, it does not have a dedicated graphics card. Regarding the above I can recommend increasing the ram memory that is shared to the graphics, this configuration is found in the My Asus app, by default it comes automatic but if you set the maximum that allows 8GB you may be surprised by the improvement.In summary, the components of this laptop are of excellent quality and it shows in daily use, the material that covers the laptop ceraluminum quite resistant and is not a fingerprint magnet, OLED 3K screen, very good keyboard and touchpad, speakers that sound great, a very fast and efficient processor, a battery that lasts enough hours and charges very fast. Leaving aside the heat dissipation, I consider this laptop a good alternative for students, people who work from home, content creators and for daily office use. Perhaps a slight price discount would make this product even more recommendable!

The ASUS Zenbook S is a 16-inch productivity machine powered by AMD, Windows 11, and Copilot. This is a high-end laptop that is designed to handle more power-hungry tasks such as content creation, but it isn’t great for heavy gaming. I have only had the Zenbook for about a week, but it’s already proven itself to be a fantastic multitasking powerhouse.DESIGN: The physical design of this laptop is stunning. It has a ‘Celaluminum’ covering, which is a combination of ceramic and aluminum that is strong and scratch resistant. The color is a silvery white tone and there are some geometric lines etched into the lid of the computer. “ASUS Zenbook” is imprinted on the cover as well, but it’s small and set off to one corner. When you open the cover, the screen, keyboard, ... MoreThe ASUS Zenbook S is a 16-inch productivity machine powered by AMD, Windows 11, and Copilot. This is a high-end laptop that is designed to handle more power-hungry tasks such as content creation, but it isn’t great for heavy gaming. I have only had the Zenbook for about a week, but it’s already proven itself to be a fantastic multitasking powerhouse.DESIGN: The physical design of this laptop is stunning. It has a ‘Celaluminum’ covering, which is a combination of ceramic and aluminum that is strong and scratch resistant. The color is a silvery white tone and there are some geometric lines etched into the lid of the computer. “ASUS Zenbook” is imprinted on the cover as well, but it’s small and set off to one corner. When you open the cover, the screen, keyboard, and trackpad match the gorgeous exterior.The trackpad is a bit larger than a standard trackpad and you have the option of using more two, three, and four finger gestures. This type of function is very similar to what you get with a touchscreen device, such as a mobile phone or tablet. Since I’m very accustomed to that, I felt right at home.DISPLAY: This laptop does not come with a pen, but the monitor is a touchscreen. This is one feature that I wish my other laptop had because I mistakenly touch the screen so many times when I move between my phone, tablet, and laptop. I found that the screen was very responsive and it didn’t seem to get too dirty with fingerprints. The screen resolution is 2880 x 1800, which is Full HD and actually treads into 2K territory (anything between 1440 and 2160 is considered 2K). The specs actually classify it as 3K, which isn’t widely recognized.The aspect ratio is 16:10, which is slightly bigger than standard widescreen. I viewed 4K video content from YouTube on this laptop and thought it was gorgeous. The screen is reflective and if you try to take a picture of its screen while turned off, you will get a reflection of yourself in the shot. With a brightness of 500 nits, the it’s very easy to read and edit documents as well as images on this display.With it being an OLED HDR screen, visuals are very impressive. You get a high color depth and very vibrant images.SOUND PERFORMANCE: I was very impressed with the power and sound quality of these speakers. They are Harmon/Kardon speakers and the computer is equipped with Dolby Atmos as a sound profile. I listened to some music using YouTube Music and blown away by how powerful the speakers are. For most sound, I comfortable listening at a level of 10, but for testing purposes, I bumped the volume up to 24 and 50 (I discovered that the volume increases and decreased by increments of 2). At 50, it was almost too loud for me — especially with it sitting right next to me. I found that I had a slightly different experience when I played a movie using Disney+. I had to turn the volume up to 50 in order to hear all the details I wanted to hear while watching the intro sequence to Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2.I used an app on my phone (Sound Level Meter) to measure the loudness of the speakers. First I captured some ambient noise, which measured around 27dBA. Then, I listened to music at the two levels I mentioned. The average dBA level was 33.5 with a max level of 79.2. The meter divides sound levels into four colored segments - blue (quiet), green (speech), yellow (noise), and red (danger). For the most part the volume level was in the green area, but when the music peaked at a high point (at 50% volume on the laptop), the level bounced into the yellow area. With the movie playing at 50%, I got a max level of 58.5 dBA and a minimum level of 25.2 dBA. It barely bounced into the yellow area.BATTERY: Out of the box, the laptop did not power on until I plugged it into power. It did, however, immediately show that it was at 60% battery level after set up was completed. I charged the laptop to 100% and then ran it down to 3% by playing a constant stream of 4K video streaming on YouTube. The screen brightness was turned up to 100% but the volume was turned down to 0%. The backlighting on the keyboard was also turned off and no other tasks were running other than YouTube on Chrome. I started this test at noon and at 11:44pm the computer finally shutdown due to lack of power. It took less than two hours to charge it back to full power with 30% battery life gained in just under 30 minutes.NETWORK: To test the network performance, I ran Ookla’s Speed Test using Chrome. The download speed was 814.95 Mbps and the upload speed was 724.87 Mbps and the ping was 13. This was using an AT&T Fiber connection with a Netgear RAXE500 Tri-Band WiFi 6E Router.PERFORMANCE: When it comes to performance, I will say that standard real-world tests passed with flying colors. I did a variety of tasks including surfing the internet, editing photos (just using Paint), and notepad/word processing tasks. I set the laptop up as a new PC and customized the experience for business and creativity as it seemed to match the specs of the computer the best. I did decline the trial offers of Office 365 and Xbox Game Pass. When it came to search settings, I turned off search highlights and the work or school account options. Then, I turned off the Microsoft Start feed in the Widget area. Once those setup tasks were completed, I completed the Windows updates. For the most part, this was a pretty standard setup process for me, but I did note that after the second reboot, I got a notification that ASUS needed to do a Firmware update on the Bios. I completed that with no issues, but a couple of days later, I had to do it again. There weren’t any issues with these updates, but it was strange to me since I’ve not encountered that before.After finishing setup and updates, I restarted the computer and immediately ran Task Manager to see how many computing tasks were running. There were 186 tasks running - most of which were system-based. There were 68 background processes and Task Manager reported that 3% CPU, 22% Memory, and 1% Disk was being used for these processes.I did several benchmarking tests on this laptop when I first got it (Geekbench, Geekbench AI, GFX Bench, and Cinebench) to check out its general performance ranking. I admit that I was a little confused about this machine’s place in the market since it has all high-end components except for the entry-level GPU. The tests I ran provided some valuable insights.Cinebench - Cinebench is a benchmarking tool used to evaluate the performance of a computer's CPU and GPU. It primarily measures the processing power of the CPU by rendering a complex 3D scene, which tests the CPU's ability to handle multi-core and single-core workloads. The resulting score reflects the CPU's performance, with higher scores indicating better processing capability. Single-Core Score 113pts; Multi-Core Score 713pts. This ranked it along size Apple M1 Max and Apple M1 Ultra processors, which are powerful, but are two generations behind the current chipset for that ecosystem.GFXBench - I ran the high-level and render tests. The results were:Aztec Ruins OpenGL (High Tier) 3721.82 Frames4K Aztec Ruins OpenGL (High Tier) Offscreen 2362.31 FramesRender Quality (high precision) 3927.92 mB PSNRThis means the Zenbook’s GPU will perform similar to a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 or NVIDIA GeForce 1050 Ti.Geekbench - Geekbench provides an easy-to-understand score that allows users to compare the performance of different CPUs and devices across various tasks, ranging from everyday applications to more demanding computational workloads. The Geekbench CPU score was 1606 single-core / 8363 multi-core and the GPU score was 26656.One additional test I ran was to see how quickly the laptop would compress a 4K video file. I used a 4K H.264 video file that is 10 minutes 15 seconds long and added it to Handbrake. Then I used the Fast 1080p30 preset to complete the conversion. The file was converted in approximately 12 minutes.Overall, the ASUS Zenbook S exceeded my expectations. I wish that it had a more powerful GPU so that it could also be used for gaming, but it’s a fantastic laptop that can used for nearly any type of task.

I found myself back in the computer market for my high schooler that needs a better computer for programming. I didn't want to send her back to school with a bulky gaming system, and I didn't feel right sending her back to school with a Snapdragon ARM processor either (ARM compatibility not quite 100%). So I was aiming for something with an i5/Ryzen 5 or better processor, 16+ GB of RAM, at least 1 TB of storage and 15+ inch of screen in a slim package.In my opinion, the ASUS laptops have really impressed me in the last handful of years. I got my dad an ASUS Vivobook a couple years ago and he's still impressed with the OLED display on it. I recently got my wife a Zenbook with OLED and that's fitting her computer needs very nicely. So when this Zenbook S 16 came ... MoreI found myself back in the computer market for my high schooler that needs a better computer for programming. I didn't want to send her back to school with a bulky gaming system, and I didn't feel right sending her back to school with a Snapdragon ARM processor either (ARM compatibility not quite 100%). So I was aiming for something with an i5/Ryzen 5 or better processor, 16+ GB of RAM, at least 1 TB of storage and 15+ inch of screen in a slim package.In my opinion, the ASUS laptops have really impressed me in the last handful of years. I got my dad an ASUS Vivobook a couple years ago and he's still impressed with the OLED display on it. I recently got my wife a Zenbook with OLED and that's fitting her computer needs very nicely. So when this Zenbook S 16 came around, the system really checked all the boxes for me.In the box, there isn't much to find, the laptop itself and a charger. The charger itself is 65 watt charger with a square brick and a fixed cord that is about 6 feet long and outputs to USB-C. The only knock here is that the prongs don't fold flat into the brick, they are fixed.The laptop itself is just under 3.5 lbs. One side has a USB-A Port and an SD Card slot. The other side has two USB-C ports rated for Thunderbolt 4, an HDMI port and a headphone jack. I find it very portable and one of the unique aspects is that the top shell of the monitor has what ASUS calls Ceraluminum. It's supposedly a high-tech ceramic to provide the lightness and hardness of ceramic while still being workable (malleable) like aluminum. It has a texture of a water swept stone with a few intersecting pinstripes of silver. The trackpad is nearly 6 inches by 4 inches. By comparison, the keyboard real estate consumes an area of 11 x 4 inches.Booting up the first time, was pretty quick. This system comes with 24 GB of RAM and 1TB of NVMe storage. Unfortunately, the RAM is soldered and not upgradeable. The storage however, can be swapped. So I may upgrade that to 2 TB when prices come back down.The screen is beautiful. ASUS really knows how to make OLED displays. 16 inches at 2880 x 1800 resolution, touchscreen with 500 nits of brightness. I find the display is pleasantly bright and I don't think I'll have any problems with brightness even if it's in sunlight. The display is beautiful. Colors really pop and I feel like they are more accurate than traditional display technology.The processor is about as new as I've ever gotten. I think it's about 1 month old at this point. Ryzen AI 9 365. It handily beats anything from the Intel Core Ultra series of processors in all aspects except for integrated GPU where it seems to lag by single digit percentages. I have thrown a lot of productivity apps against it and it has not slowed down a beat. I don't expect my kiddo to be playing AAA games on ultra settings with this laptop, but ability to play some games is definitely there. The AI designation in the processor's name denotes the ability to handle AI tasks locally to the system. You still need to be connected to the internet to enable the feature, but more of the processing is handled locally. The Neural Processing Unit (NPU) is rated at 50 TOPS vs an Ultra 5 or Ultra 7 from Intel only having TOPS values in the 30s. What's more is that this new line of Ryzen processors really challenge the Snapdragon in terms of power efficiency. I trust this laptop to get my kid through a day of school.This ASUS Zenbook 16 really fits the needs of my high schooler getting into programming. You get a top of the line processor that still sips power, 24 GB of RAM that should be plenty for most applications, 1 TB of storage, 16" of screen real estate, which is great so my student has less scrolling to do but it also has an NPU that can handle 50 TOPS. This will come in handy as AI assists in programming.