ASUS Zenbook S16 (UM5606) Review: AMD AI smarts on show in a thin and light body

88%

Great design with plenty of power

• Criteria

The recently announced AI focused ASUS range of laptops powered by the new AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series processors. One of the highlights is the new Zenbook S16 with its new Ceraliminum coating which ASUS have sent over for us to check out. 

The Zenbook S16 is available for $3,499 with anAMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Processor, 32GB LPDDR5X and 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD. The laptop includes a large 16-inch 3K ASUS Lumina OLED display powered by AMD Radeon 890M Graphics.

Light and thin, the Zenbook S16 incorporates a brand new material, a Ceraliminum coating which brings strength to the chassis, as well as a durable finish which has a ceramic feel, in a Zumaia Gray colour way.

I’ve been using the ASUS Zenbook S16 for a couple of weeks now and here’s how it went.

Hardware

Design

The laptop is ultra-thin and light despite the 16-inch display, measuring just 1.1 cm thin and 1.5 kg. Despite that 16-inch display, the Zenbook S16 still easily fits into a backpack to take with you on the road.

The lightweight all-metal chassis includes the gorgeous Ceraluminum finish on the lid with the ASUS Zen logo represented by crossing lines etched into it. The Ceraluminum finish feels great, as well as making it both strong and durable, with the Zenbook S16 carrying military spec (MIL-STD 810H) certification making it the perfect road companion. 

Despite that thin profile there’s a wide array of connectivity options including a USB Type-A, as well as USB 4.0 Type-C ports and HDMI 2.1 port and 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack, as well as a full sized SD card reader packed in.

The 16-inch OLED display is gorgeous with slim bezels at the side and a slightly thicker bezel at the top to accommodate the FHD camera at the top which supports IR for Windows Hello – though doesn’t have a privacy shutter.

The lower deck has a spacious Backlit Chiclet Keyboard and enormous precision glass touchpad. The keyboard now has a Copilot PC button to the left of the arrow keys, giving you fast access to the Windows AI assistant. 

At the top of the keyboard, you’ll see what appears to be a gorgeous CNC-machined speaker grill – it’s not. Instead it’s an external vent for cooling, but it looks great. Instead, you’ll find the speakers on the side on the base, using the table to rebound sound up to you. 

 

 

Display and Audio

The 16-inch Lumina OLED touch panel on the Zenbook S16 comes in a 16:10 aspect ratio, giving the unit a more squared off look. On the audio side, the Zenbook S16 comes with a 6-speaker audio system from Harman Kardon with powerful bass for a full theatre experience

The display offers refresh rates up to 120Hz making it quite smooth no matter what you throw at it. With a peak brightness of 500 nits, it’s not quite as bright as some of the ASUS Lumina displays I’ve used previously, but still bright enough to use outdoors, though the gloss finish shows a lot of reflections.

The display comes with all the certifications. It carries VESA Certified HDR True Black 500, it’s Pantone validated and has 100% DCI-P3 coverage. 

The touch component is useful, and ASUS have also included stylus support with an ASUS Pen included in the box. The ASUS Pen 2.0 is a lovely stylus to use, nicely weighted and comes with replaceable tips in H, HB and B tip sizes. 

I’m a bit of a fan of stylus’s (Stylii) for productivity and the only downside I see is that there’s no place to dock it, and knowing me, I’ll inevitably leave it at home when I need it.

On the audio side, the 6-speaker Harman Kardon system which includes Dolby Atmos support, sounds good. I’m still a little disappointed there’s no up-firing speakers in that grill above the keyboard, but the audio does sound good.

Of course it’s lacking in the lower end, but the mids and highs sound quite good – and you do get spatial audio effects thanks to Dolby Atmos which also lets you select from one of the preset EQ settings for games, movies, music or voice.

 

Performance

The key feature for the new ASUS Zenbook S16 is the new AI powered AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor which includes the AMD XDNA Neural Processing Unit (NPU) capable of up to 50 Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS). The processor is paired with 32GB DDR5 RAM and 1TB SSD storage, with an integrated AMD Radeon 890M Graphics card.

The performance can be managed using the AMD software which lets you choose between Hypr-RX, Quality and Hypr-RX Eco profiles, as well as giving you a custom option. You obviously get more fan noise on the higher end performance profiles – but if you need that grunt, you’re going to get fan noise.

The Zenbook S16 can handle most day-to-day, as well as more power user focused tasks with relative ease. It also has the advantage over other ‘Copilot+ PC’s that have been released, in that the Zenbook S16 uses an x86 based architecture instead of the ARM based architecture on Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite processors, so ALL applications run without compatibility issues or need for an emulator. 

The AMD Radeon 890M integrated graphics though is definitely not going to cover your gaming needs. Using the lowest possible graphics settings in the likes of CyberPunk and Sons of the Forest, the game was lucky to hit low 20’s frames per second.

As usual, we ran it through the usual 3DMark tests and here’s how it went:

Battery and Charging

Powered by a 78WHrs, 2S2P, 4-cell Li-ion battery, the Zenbook S16 also includes a USB TYPE-C, 65W AC Adapter for charging.

The new range of ASUS PCs are ushering in AMD’s AI entry in the Copilot+ category, putting it squarely up against the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Series processors. In Stephen’s review of the Vivobook S15 with the Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite he saw around 18 hours of battery life, which the Zenbook S16 unfortunately falls short of.

The battery life on the Zenbook S16 is closer to 10-11 hours of solid use making it a great laptop for taking on the road where you won’t be seeing a charger until the end of the day.

Once you do get charging, the compact 65W charger gives you a 30 percent charge in 30 minutes, but took a shade over two hours to charge to full. 

Software

Windows

Running Windows 11 Home edition, the Zenbook S16 also includes fast access to the Microsoft Windows Copilot AI thanks to the button on the keyboard. The ASUS website doesn’t list the laptop as a Copilot+ PC, instead noting that there will be a ‘Free update to Copilot+ PC experiences, when available’.

The Windows experience is fine though, with the AMD processor utilising x86 architecture and hence there’s no Prism Emulator here, so it all just works.

In terms of pre-installed apps, you get the usual Microsoft applications including an Office 365 Trial. You also get the apps for configuring your hardware including an AMD app for the Radeon graphics, and the Dolby Access app for your audio.

ASUS have also loaded their apps onto the  Zenbook S16, including their AI powered StoryCube app as well as their ScreenXpert and GlideX apps, as well as the MyASUS app for configuring the hardware and getting support. 

 

AI

Copilot

The headliner AI feature for Microsoft is of course Copilot. The ‘ everyday AI companion’ as Microsoft calls it, is accessible almost instantly from the dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard. Copilot can do a lot in terms of searching and summarizing your emails or documents, and it can also generate imagery or text based on prompts. It’s a fun tool, and becoming more useful though I still spend a lot of time checking the output.

RECALL

Of course, one of the biggest features of the Copilot+ PC launch: Recall, isn’t launching. Microsoft announced their Recall feature has been ‘delayed’ over privacy concerns.

For those not aware, Recall was the AI powered feature which would be built-in to Windows. The feature would screenshot your activities and then allow you to easily find apps, documents, or messages you’ve previously used, visited or looked at, simply by asking the AI.

 

AI Co-Creator in Paint

Microsoft has still not sorted out the payments for their AI Image Creator in Paint. I haven’t been able to accrue credit to use here, and seems to underline the lack of Copilot+ functionality for AMD in Windows. 

Instead, I found I could create the image in Copilot using their generative AI.

 

ASUS AI StoryCube

ASUS have included their AI powered StoryCube app. The app imports photos from your local storage, connected devices, and can also connect to cloud services including Google Photos, iCloud and OneDrive.

The AI component is supposed to parse your photos, then group faces of your family, friends etc. making it easy to find them.  Where it failed for me was the cloud import, where most of my photos are stored. The Story Cube AI app seemed ok, except I had to reauthorise it each time while trying to test it. Suffice to say, I stopped trying. 

Should you buy it?

The ASUS Zenbook S16 is a stylish, and durable machine that has plenty of grunt to easily take care of your day-to-day browsing, office work and even some higher-end creative tasks. 

Where the Zenbook S16 doesn’t hold up is in gaming, and AI is still really waiting for more applications and use cases, but it IS ready to go on the laptop when those applications arrive. 

The Zenbook S16 though is a stunningly light and sturdy bit of kit, which will easily last through the day on a charge, with enough left for you to relax at the end of the day and happily perform most tasks with ease. 

The ASUS Zenbook S16 is available from $3,499 through the ASUS e-Shop, as well as JB HiFi, Harvey Norman, Officeworks, and Bing Lee.