This is the brand new Asus ZenBook S16, just announced at Compute, where I will be when you actually watch this video. This is now a week before that. Asus very kindly sent this over ahead of the launch for me to have a play with. So this is an early pre-release sample, so I can’t do any proper tests or benchmarks. But I want to give you a bit of a first impressions walkthrough. And for me, there’s five reasons why this is shipping up to be one of the best laptops I’ve used this year so far. And at number one, This is in the first wave of laptops boasting AMD’s latest Ryzen processors with particularly big upgrades for the integrated graphics and also the AI performance.
We’re looking at up to 50 tops or trillion operations per second. So for any AI accelerated tasks, these new chips in these new laptops will be much more efficient. Now, of course, the issue with putting a new powerful chip in a laptop this thin and light is keeping it running cool and quiet. So this guy comes with a new dual fan design. We also get graphite sheets throughout, including underneath the keyboard, which is obviously where you keep your hands. You don’t want your palms getting sweaty while you’re using this. And up here, we have, let me see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. 3,522 individually CNC machined vents up here, keeping everything nice and cool.
Now, obviously, I can’t test the performance, nor the thermal performance and the throttling nor the battery life for this video this is very much a first look and I’ll hopefully come back to this in a full review soon as well as a more broader buying guide because there are so many new laptops with so many new different chip options coming out it’s getting a bit overwhelming so make sure you have hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for that but on paper even in the 28 watt performance mode that this can run out with the new chips it shouldn’t get too hot or too loud so number one is the performance but number two the screen this is a 16 inch 3K resolution, 120 hertz, HDR OLED touchscreen, which also supports this, the ASUS Pen 2.
And it is a gorgeous screen, if perhaps a little bit too glossy for my liking, but there will also be a smaller ZenBook coming a bit later in the year, but I always prefer a big screen as long as it doesn’t make the laptop too big or heavy, which very neatly brings me onto number three, the design. This 16-inch laptop weighs just 1.5 kilograms and is 1.1 centimeters thick. Thick, so what’s that? 11 millimeters. Which is very impressive, especially when you consider, say, the MacBook Air 15, which has a smaller screen, is the same weight and a little bit thicker. And it looks good, it feels good, it’s premium and metallic, not like some of those recycled cardboardy materials that we’re seeing on some other thin and light laptops.
Massive trackpad, we’re talking 40% larger than the previous ZenBook S, and which does now share the same 16 by 10 aspect ratio of the screen. 90% screen-to-body ratio here with these super thin bezels, but with just enough room for their TNTP AI Sense camera up here with an IR sensor so we get Windows Hello face unlocking. I have to give ASUS credit because as someone who regularly uses a MacBook as well, including the MacBook Airs where you have to make do with just USB-C ports, considering this is thinner than the MacBook Air 15, we have an HDMI 2.1, we have two USB 4s, audio combo jack, full-size SD card reader, and a USB Type-A. It’s a 3.2 Gen 2, I think. Basically, every port you’d need in a chassis this thin.
I don’t know quite how they do it. And they’ve also squeezed in a six-speaker sound system with two tweeters, four woofers. It’s tuned by Harman Kardon, and we get Dolby Atmos support. But moving on to number four, and I think it deserves its own number by itself just because of how proud Asus are of this Ceriluminium… Ceriluminium… Ceriluminia… Ceriluminum? Ceriluminum. Although I feel like I should say, because I’m English, Ceriluminium. Which is essentially their fancy marketing buzzword for this new high-tech ceramic for the aluminium chassis, which makes it incredibly durable, resistant to fingerprints and smudges and scratches, but also very lightweight. And it doesn’t feel cheap or rough or like recycled cardboard. Honestly, I think they’ve done a really nice job with this.
It feels premium, it looks good, but it is nice and lightweight and it doesn’t pick up my grubby little paw prints. This also comes in two colors. This is Zumaia, I think that’s how they say it, Zumaia gray. It also comes in a Scandinavian white. And it’s not like they’ve just painted this white either. Both versions are actually the same color underneath, but due to the chemical structure and some oxidization process, I’m not going to pretend I know how it all works, it then changes the color. So they’re not just painting it white, which might get chipped or fade over time. And finally, number five, the price. Now this will vary between regions, and right now I think I only have the price for this top spec model with the highest end new Ryzen chip and also the two terabytes of storage, 32 gigs of RAM, but we’re looking at 1,599 pounds, 1,600 quid, which is obviously quite a lot of money for a laptop without a dedicated graphics card, but when you consider the MacBook Air 15, for the same price, you get half the RAM and a quarter of the storage.
They’re both going after the premium thin and light market, and unlike a MacBook Air 15, you are also getting a OLED 120Hz touchscreen with this, which is very nice. But I can’t wait to see how these new AMD Ryzen chips fare against the M3 and also Intel’s competitors. So again, make sure you have subscribed for my big laptop buying guide coming very soon. But what do you reckon of this new ASUS ZenBook S16? Let me know what you make of this in the comments below. If you’ve got any questions or anything you’d like me to test for my full review, also drop a comment, comment, comment, and I will see you guys next time right here on the Tech Chat. Thanks for watching.
