This ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607O is an interesting laptop for many reasons – but there are two main ones. The first is the laptop itself being extremely lightweight despite a 16-inch screen size, and it is also powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite chipset, particularly the X2E-94-100.
But in today’s review, we’ll only talk about the laptop itself, as we do have another video dedicated to the Snapdragon X2 Elite chipset instead. Do subscribe to ur YouTube channel so you don’t miss out on that video when it comes out.
Design
Now, back to the laptop itself. It’s basically the same design as the A14 from more than a year ago which we have also reviewed – link at the top right corner there, but the laptop body is now enlarged for a 16-inch screen size.
The laptop is still made out of the ever-wonderful Ceraluminum that makes the laptop supremely lightweight. I mean, I can easily carry this laptop with just one hand, but of course, the weight distribution is a bit weird since it is a huge laptop after all. This Ceraluminum is also durable against scratches at the same time. I didn’t baby this laptop at all during my testing period – and so far, there are zero blemishes on it.
This Zenbook A16 is also available in two different colors – Iceland Gray and Zabriskie Beige, but the availability might differ from region to region.
I do have to say though, that “ASUS Zenbook” at the center of the lid… makes it look so… weird? If we only have the “ASUS Zenbook” wording, then I’d prefer to have it at the edge of the laptop, preferably the corner or the top-middle part, but that’s just personal preference. To me, I still like the 30th Anniversary design on the Zenbook S16 UM5606WA, but that laptop is extremely heavy compared to this one.
Screen
The second big aspect of this laptop – and I mean it literally – is the screen. This massive 16-inch OLED screen with a resolution of 2880×1800 pixels can go up to 120Hz refresh rate just looks amazing.
We tested this display and found out that it actually can output around 486 nits in maximum brightness and 4.62 nits at minimum. However, we can then turn it up to HDR mode and the brightness shoots up to 1062 nits. I got flashbanged, because nits is a measurement of brightness density – and 1062 nits for a 16-inch screen is just blindingly bright.
The color gamut coverage and color accuracy is also extremely good as it practically covers 100% of both sRGB and DCI-P3, while also covering 93.4% of Adobe RGB as well. The average ΔE remains to be low, which is just amazing.
For all I can say, ASUS is really doing a fantastic job for the display, as they’ve been for the past few years. Sadly, this is not a touchscreen, unlike some other ASUS laptops of this grade. I guess this is a way to cut down on the weight and thickness.
It does come with Windows Hello up top, so that’s a great feature to have.
Specs and performance
Now, I’m sure many people are curious about the performance of the new Snapdragon X2 Elite series of chipsets. For our particular unit of the ASUS Zenbook A16, it comes with:
- Snapdragon X2E-94-100
- Adreno X2-90 integrated GPU
- 48GB of RAM at 9523MT/s
- 1TB of NVMe SSD
The reason why we have 48GB of RAM is that we can make a chunk of it become the shared memory to be used as the VRAM for the GPU. I personally will just leave it in default since it’s already plentiful.
We’ll save most of the graphs and performance, wattage, heat, all of those things in the dedicated video for the Snapdragon X2 Elite, but here’s a summary.
Qualcomm and Microsoft fixed a lot of things – well, at least the things that I’ve tested. They all run fine with no graphical glitches or bugs. The apps and games just run like it’s natively on x86. No tinkering required – except for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth which just kept saying fatal error. Probably because of the unsupported GPU.
Either way, the first generation of the Snapdragon X Elite from like 2 years ago has two different issues running alongside each. The first issue is Microsoft Windows with the Prism translation layer. Yeah, it translated apps from x86 to Arm and the apps work… but it was extremely buggy at times. Secondly, the Snapdragon X Elite chip itself was in a quite terrible state and games were running terribly.
Now, the apps run fine. The games also run fine. I actually had a really good time playing some games on this laptop too, and I totally forgot the fact that it is running on Windows on Arm with the Prism translation layer – because Windows games are still catered towards x86.
Of course, it’s not perfect. Despite the Snapdragon X2 Elite consuming upwards of 60W during stressful loads, it still renders our test video in DaVinci Resolve slower than the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H. I also had a lot of stutters while gaming due to shader caching, and that reminds me of the mobile gaming experience.
Still, all things considered, the Snapdragon X2 Elite – at least for the X2E-94-100 that we tested here – has improved drastically compared to the previous generation.
Again, we have another video talking about the Snapdragon X2 Elite in-depth, so watch check out our YouTube channel when the video is published.
Battery life
Another big advantage that comes with Arm processors compared to x86 is the battery life. This ASUS Zenbook A16 with a 70Wh battery and equipped with the Snapdragon X2 Elite, from our test of using the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery life test, can score around 13 hours. However, do take note that this PCMark 10 Modern Office test is not designed to work with Arm devices. I had to force it to run via command line to make it run. So, this result is kinda like a worst-case scenario. The reason why I still did this test is because we’ve been using this test in the past already, so I just continued using this test.
Still, having 13 hours while fighting an uphill battle is amazing. Doing a rough calculation here, the entire laptop was consuming around an average of 5.3846W throughout the entire test. Not bad.
Charging speed
We should also talk about the charging speed because this laptop acts rather weirdly, in a way. This laptop actually comes with a 130W charger in the box. Yes, 130W. It’s bulky, but necessary. This laptop can take in a lot of power when it is running at 100% performance and also charging the battery at the same time.
But, our charging test is done with the entire laptop turned off. Using the stock charger, it takes in around 110 minutes to charge from 0% to completion while wasting only around 11.2Wh of energy. Yes, we can calculate that out too.
The laptop will take in around 87W at most, and it does throttle the charging speed after a while as seen with the square wave-looking pattern. Overall, quite fast charging speed, all things considered.
But, if we don’t want to use the stock 130W charger, then it’s a bit finnicky. So far, most of our 140W USB-PD PPS chargers work fine with this laptop and it is able to boost up its performance just like the stock charger.
Certain 140W chargers that we have will display this message – so you have to check out some proper charger reviews before purchasing one for this laptop. We can recommend this Ugreen 140W charger and this Anker desktop charger as they both work just fine with this laptop. If you’re interested in the reviews of these two chargers, then check it out in the description below.
Anyway, using our Ugreen USB-PD PPS charger, it charges the laptop from 0% to completion in about the same time, while the power loss is slightly lower at 10.3Wh. Not a huge difference, but better.
Ports
Okay, let’s now also talk about the ports. This ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607O comes with the same set of ports as the Zenbook S16. Do keep note that HDMI 2.1 TMDS is basically just rebadged HDMI 2.0, so it’ll go 4K 60Hz at most. Still, I wish there’s a USB-C port on the right as well so we can plug in either way of the laptop charge.
Keyboard
The keyboard of this laptop remains the same as the A14 we reviewed last year. The actuation force is low but the key itself is springy, so making it very responsive and bouncy to type on. With its rather long travel distance, this is actually very fun to type on.
Trackpad
The trackpad is massive and smooth to glide on. I actually enjoyed using this trackpad as well, but the palm rejection could have been better at times. Well, not palm detection rejection but rather it’s the palm clicking rejection. When I’m typing on this laptop, my palm is already on the trackpad itself, and if I rest my palm on the trackpad, it’ll automatically click something on the screen.
Upgradability
So… can we actually upgrade anything in this laptop? Well, let’s take apart the bottom panel. It’s actually quite dangerous to do so as the whole panel is not reinforced and it can bend too much and break easily. If it’s not obvious enough, do this at your own risk.
After opening the back panel, the only thing that we can swap out is the 1TB NVMe SSD. Everything else is soldered onto the motherboard.
It is also here that we can see that there’s quite a lot of empty space around the battery. While ASUS could’ve used a larger battery here… I understand why they didn’t The back panel has this stands that rest beside the battery, providing structucal strength.
So yeah, we can swap out the SSD, and do it at your own risk since it’s quite dangerous.
Should you buy the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607O?
Finally – should you buy this laptop then? Well… it’s clear that Qualcomm and Microsoft improved a lot of things this generation. Most games run fine, but there are some games that just won’t run at all.
However, for most use cases, I can just treat it like any other laptop and just use it as is. It’s actually viable to consider a Windows laptop that’s running on Arm architecture nowadays.
But the price – well, I was told it is at RM7,999. It’s up there against the other high-end premium Zenbooks.
And that’s all that we have to share with you here today about the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607O with the Snapdragon X2 Elite. It’s a super lightweight laptop with a wonderful screen and actually great performance. The things that I want to do on a laptop is also running smoothly now.
For more information regarding this laptop, check out the official ASUS website.
Where to buy? (Affiliate links)
For more information about the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607O, click here.
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