ASUS - ROG Zephyrus 16" WQXGA 165Hz Gaming Laptop-Intel Core i9-16GB DDR5 Memory-NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti-1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD - Off Black

PROS 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6e Beautiful 2560 x 1600 Display with 500 Nits Brightness 16GB DDR-5 RAM Intel 12th General Alder Lake Processor 14 Cores / 20 Threads 8GB nVidia GTX 3070Ti with 8GB of GDDR6 CONS Loud Fans Mediocre NVMe SSD Performance 8GB DIMM Soldered & Unreplaceable INITIAL SET-UP AND CONFIGURATION Unlike some other products, initial start-up and configuration went hassle-free. Driver configurations, Windows Update, Firmware Updates, etc. all downloaded and installed without any issues or frustrations. While not a pure, unaltered version of Windows 11, Asus did throw in some of their own stuff, but it wasn’t a ton of bloatware, and surprisingly, some of the installed Asus apps were actually useful. I wish I could say the same for my other Dell and HP computers. USE AND PERFORMANCE This is one powerful laptop. The new 12th Generation Intel Chips (aka Alder Lake) is a design, unlike any previous versions. The chips contain both Performance and Economy cores. These new processors need Windows 11 to function properly. In a nutshell, the processor works with the OS to move basic and background tasks to the Economy cores where they operate with less power and less heat. Processes and programs that need more power are moved to the Performance Cores. It is a seamless transition that the operator never knows about and is all handled at near the kernel level. This whole process works well, as the laptop remains cool and quiet doing basic tasks like Microsoft Office, web surfing, watching videos, and so on. How is the display on the Asus? It is just short of outstanding! Really, the only way to improve upon the display is to offer it in 4k and make it a touchscreen. The display is crisp. The colors are rich and vibrant without being overly vivid and fake. The additional resolution over 1080p is immediately evident. The display gives the user the best of both worlds. It not only supports a fast 165Hz refresh rate, it covers 100% DCI-P3 color space. This is huge for content creators, photo editing, and video. The end user is assured there are no colors left unseen, or most importantly, inaccurately reproduced. Asus includes a very handy color calibration utility baked into its Amory Crate Software. Anyone with an X-Rite i1 Display Pro or Pro Plus can use the app to calibrate the display to near perfection. While I did calibrate my display, the changes were minimal, as Asus has put a GREAT panel on the laptop and ships it almost perfect from the factory. The image really is outstanding. The Armory Crate calibration software needs some additional tweaking. It took quite a bit of fiddling to get my i1 Pro to finally complete a display calibration. There were several unplugs and re-plugs, etc before the software finally decided to start. GAMING The ROG Zephyrus is first and foremost a gaming machine. A machine that does gaming very well. As I’ve stated before, my current favorite go-to game is Forza Horizon 5. I’ve been playing the Horizon games for years. This is the first laptop that I’ve been able to play Horizon at the full panel resolution in either the Ultra or Extreme settings! Ultra nets around 75 fps and Extreme will get you around 60ish. Both still very playable in my book, as I am no competitive gamer. Halo Infinite also played just as well as Horizon. I manually tweaked the Halo settings to full panel resolution and maxed out all the settings. The Asus returned a nearly constant 60fps. I did get some drops into the mid 50’s, but for the most part, the game played 60fps, or just a little over. While I know people will disagree with this low numbers, but the game was perfectly playable for me. As a casual gamer that enjoys the campaigns and some online matches, the 60fps is plenty fine for me, especially in all that full resolution, gorgeous detail. Call of Duty Warzone played just as well, if not better than my 8 core, liquid-cooled i7 desktop with high powered nVidia graphics. I still averaged better than 60fps on full resolution, and setting near the max. The only difference between this and my gaming desktop, the desktop is silent with its radiators, where this one is not. This is one of the first laptops I didn’t have to make compromises when switching to a mobile gaming option from desktop. No small feat. NEGATIVES Que up a game, and things change. The once calm, cool operator disappears, and it becomes an obnoxious companion. The Asus does its best to overcome all that heat generated by the i9 and the GTX 3070, but it comes at a cost to acoustics. Being overly dramatic, this laptop sounds like an F-16 prepping for takeoff. WOW! This is easily the loudest laptop I’ve used and owned. Those fans ramp up and continue going strong until well after your game has ended. Anyone playing with anything less than a good set of noise cancelling, or noise isolating headphones will be distracted and annoyed. I know I was. I too, will ding Asus on their choice of RAM. For whatever reason, Asus has chosen to solder 8 of the 16GB directly to the motherboard. While the laptop will support up to 40GB of DDR5 RAM, there is no way, to get to perfectly matched DIMMs in the machine. Not sure what the thinking was there. One other point of contention is the NVMe SSD. For whatever reason, this is a PCIe Gen 4 x 4 capable machine, but the throughput through the Micron 2450 SSD is no better than my PCIe Gen 4 x 3 machines. Not sure if it is a firmware issue or SSD issue, but I was expecting WAY more throughput than what the real-world results returned. CONCLUSIONS In my opinion, the lackluster reviews of this product are a result of the poor decision of Asus to solder the first DIMM to the motherboard and the product as a whole, does not warrant such poor reviews. This is a great laptop. The new 12th generation i9 is a powerhouse. Team it with that 3070Ti graphics card and it can game with the best of them. The display is oh so gorgeous. Asus hit it out of the park with this display. This is the crispest, clearest, cleanest, sharpest display I’ve had on a laptop to date. Even better than other Asus displays I’ve used. The display calibrates nearly perfectly with overall delta errors less than 1 (display errors with a delta error of less than 1 are imperceptible to the human eye). Yes, in a perfect world, this would be a 4k, touchscreen display, but it looks so good, I’m OK with it not. The fans are LOUD and they distract from a good gaming session, but a good set of noise cancelling headphones will tame that, but if you forget your cans, the games aren’t near as fun. On a positive note, anything outside of gaming or CPU intensive tasks like video encoding or transcoding, the machine is all but silent. Rarely does it ever spin up those fans and make itself known. The keyboard has an excellent, premium feel, like the rest of the laptop. There are plenty of available ports for expansion including USB-A, HDMI, USB-C, and Thunderbolt (with PD) to name a few. While the SSD speeds and throughput are not as fast as I had hoped, I would have no reservations endorsing this product for anyone interested. EASILY RECOMMENDED!

Gaming PCs were so crazy starting a few years ago for me; I was somewhat disillusioned getting my first rig and realizing I basically got an empty box with LEDs inside, great price though. Once I was done getting all the components, main CPU, graphics card, memory, SSD, etc. I blew close to $2k getting it all set up. It was quite a process researching what I wanted to spend and getting the most compatible products. I suppose you could still go that route today, but from experience, I've decided it's best to get one preconfigured in laptop format for around the same price with less headaches. This newest Republic Of Gamers (ROG) laptop from Asus really ticks all the boxes and packs incredible power in such a slim form factor. I was really impressed with it and found few flaws and none I couldn't live with, except for maybe the price. Unboxing the unit felt quite premium with a briefcase look and the little fulcrum propping the unit up as you open the lid. Striking first view of the holographic screen lid the way it shimmered in a kaleidoscope of colors. Charger is slim and compact yet powerful at 240w, should charge the 90w battery in less than a half hour. The unit is built quite sturdy with a premium feel across the top and sides, the exposed grill when closed has a certain aggressive look to it. I like the rubbery texture layer surrounding the keyboard, feels smooth and comfortable though smudges and doesn't do anything for fingerprints. It feels lightweight and thin for what's inside, like it employs some kind of 4th dimensional spacing to fit it all in. It has all sorts of ports which is great for me to plug in my external clicky keyboard and gaming mouse. All USBs are 3.2, 2 type A, 2 type C (1 thunderbolt4, 1 display port w/power out) and your typical HDMI out, headphone port, and MicroSD. The USB-A on the right side was pretty tough to get into, hopefully will loosen up a bit with time. Immediately upon booting it up, the screen took me by surprise, the vibrancy, the depth of color, the hues, and I'm only on the start-up screen. They've certainly done a great job reproducing colors on this 2K, 1600P screen, the blacks look OLED quality! Great for graphic design, the screen is Pantone certified ensuring the color you see is the color that will be rendered in real life. The built-in AI in the Nvidia RTX 3070TI does a great job picking the right properties for whatever you're doing which includes how fast the images refresh. With 3ms latency, using the MUX switch located on the Armory Crate app, discrete mode forces all processing to be handled by the GPU rather than going through the CPU's processor. My old laptop with 1080P and 8thGEN i7 is far behind this Zephyrus M16. When playing Fortnite, I could pick up serious latency issues and the game would frequently crash. The Asus plays flawlessly, no surprise there, at nearly twice the price, twice the memory (16GB DDR5 expandable to 48GB) and ridiculously superior processing power (14 cores, up to 5Ghz). The rich graphics with adjustable modes and amazing sound really put this in dream machine territory together with classic gaming machines like RZR or AW. As soon as I start playing Fortnite, the fan kicks in as I typically have it in performance mode when connected to the adapter. I figure Turbo mode offers only minor performance enhancement and slightly brighter screen, but the fan is quite loud and unless I wear headphones, it's too much. Like many reviews point out, the fans sound like you're in an airport, well not that bad, but you get the gist. It's not a deal breaker, considering this has more computing power than the average desktop. It comes with a fast PCI-e 4.0 1TB SSD, but don't worry if you need more, there's a second slot. The speaker setup on this thing really has me scratching my head how they put all that rich bass in there without making the keyboard tremble. Seriously, where do they fit 6 speakers?! The backlit keyboard is big enough for my long fingers with satisfying travel and quiet strokes. The Arua app allows you to adjust the light effects either on-screen or by toggling the F-key. I personally use an external keyboard and mouse for gaming, but find it quite comfortable to type writing this review. To sum it all up, I think this is a really good gaming laptop with super premium graphics and sublime sound. I'd wait until the price comes down a bit though. It's a great unit for graphic designers, film editors, cinematographers, and anyone that requires a top spec screen that delivers true to life Dolby Vision and Pantone certified color rendition.

Let's start with Pro's and Con's Pros: - Slim and lightweight - Very nice 16:10 format screen - Powerful and fast for a lightweight machine - Tons of i/o - 2x nvme slots - 1x ram slot upgradable (unlike alienware x15, ram is not upgradable at all) - Nice keyboard for a non-mechanical type. - Very silent on silent mode. Also very loud on turbo mode. (I'll explain below why is this Pro for me) - Nice soft touch finish Cons: - Fingerprint magnet! - "Slow" pcie4 nvme drive included - Hot air blowing directly at screen - HDMI port is not 2.1 - Power port is on the middle of left side. I like that it is very silent on silent mode. I also like that the CPU can run on high wattage on turbo mode. I'd rather have this option than crippling the CPU with lower wattage to make it cooler. If I need to run any CPU intensive task and want to finish work faster, then I put it in turbo mode. When done, put it back to silent. I also have the Asus Z13 and that machine runs cool and more quiet on turbo mode. But that's because the i9 12900H in that machine is capped and doesn't use it's full potential. But if you prefer the tablet style of Z13, by all means please get that machine. Gaming on M16 (silent mode) vs Z13 (turbo mode) is roughly about the same. And that is with M16 very quiet!

Gaming laptops have always been interesting to me. They’re configured to rival desktops, and in many ways they succeed. There are however limitations in attempting to be the prettiest machine on the market. The ASUS ROG M16’s specs are in the upper echelon in terms of sheer power and performance. Inside of the box you get the power brick and plug, the laptop obviously, and documentation. The laptop itself looks sleek and beautiful. The feel of the frame surrounding the keyboard is this nice soft touch rubber material. The screen has very minimal framing, and includes a webcam. The webcam itself isn’t the greatest, but you have Windows hello which allows you to unlock your laptop with your face. When you open the laptop, the screen tilts back, and the back of the lower half of the laptop lifts up. I’m assuming that it’s to allow the vents of the bottom of the laptop to release the hot air. Speaking of vents, this laptop has vents on the back, sides, and underneath. That may seem like a lot, but there’s a reason for that. As I mentioned in my opening, there are indeed limitations in attempting to make this a sleek and pretty machine. The laptop is a thin gaming laptop. As much as I appreciate the effort in making the laptop thin for a nice lightweight and sleek laptop, it comes at a price. The laptop gets hot. It’s not hot enough to scald you, but hot enough to heat up your room if you use it long enough. There are modes you can set the laptop at. I like performance. If you put it on turbo, it feels like you’re inside of a commercial airplane, and you’re next in line for take off. I wish I were exaggerating, but it’s that loud. Performance keeps it quiet enough where I can use the laptop without the need of a headset. Silent sounds pretty similar to performance in most situations, so I choose the added boost and go with performance. The screen has a 165hz display with a 3ms response time for that game that requires fast movement. It has a nice 1TB solid state drive, which is large, but most modern games average at around 80GB these days, so after installing a couple of games, it took up about 75% of the space. Of course you can add another drive, so it’s not a deal breaker. The GPU. This is the meat of the laptop. It uses a Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti. I tested out a FPS, graphically intense adventure game, and a survival horror game. Needless to say, all three ran on ultra, and one level below at a steady 45-70 frames per second. It really is a treat to your eyes to see games the way developers wanted you to see their games. A surprise to the laptop is an addition of a MUX switch. In simple terms, it’s a switch that allows the GPU to connect directly to your screen for maximum performance. The onboard graphics chip will be bypassed completely. The sound on the laptop is actually quite good. It doesn’t have the most amazing bass, but it honestly is up there with some more expensive laptops. Let’s be real, most people will probably use headsets when playing or watching a movie, but still a viable option when needed. One really nice feature is the huge trackpad. It’s nice to see, but honestly, for gaming, it’s a no-go. I’m probably one of the few people in the world that use my gaming laptop as a “desktop.” It’s always plugged in, and connected to a dock that itself is connected to two monitors. I don’t find myself typing on the laptop keyboard, or using the trackpad. I still keep the laptop open so I can use it as a third screen, so the beautiful screen is still a part of my setup. I have one major gripe with the laptop, and it’s the location of the power plug. It’s smacked in the middle on the left side. I have my guess as to why it was put on the back; because that’s where all the hot air goes. Still, it’s such an odd location. Okay, gripe over. When it comes to ports, it has plenty. You have your USB-A/C, a ethernet port, a sound jack, and a micro SD slot, which I found really convenient. I just keep my 128 GB card in there and use it a mini internal hard drive. I like the subtleness of the RGB lighting. This laptop doesn’t scream “I’m a gaming laptop” like most others do. You can also turn off the keyboard RGB lighting if you want to be incognito when you’re outdoor. Now, to the final portion of the laptop. It runs Windows 11. I had been using Windows 10 up to the point before I got the M16. Windows 11 is a bit different, so it’s taking a bit to get used to, but all of my game launchers work fine, and my games run without an issue. I’m not going to go too much into Windows 11 since it’s not the main point of this post. All in all, it’s a great laptop. It runs fast and smooth, and loud, and hot… That’s the best way I can sum it up.

Coming from the previous generation of the Asus ROG Zephyrus m16" laptop. Personally, I define performance as when hardware and software work seamlessly without any issues that impede the device from running smoothly. This ASUS - ROG Zephyrus 16" WQXGA 165Hz Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i9 - 16GB DDR5 Memory - NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti - 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD is a powerhouse machine equipped with a ton of I/O. The screen bezels are remarkably thin, housing a gorgeous 2560x1600 resolution at a 156Hz refresh rate, which is a must for gaming and even smoother screen refreshing. Playing games is fluid and has no lag or screen tearing and no backlight bleed. The combination of Intel Core i9-12th generation (Alder Lake) with 15Gb DDR5 memory and Nvidia 3070ti provides high performance, to me, is incredible. I can't demand more than that! Unlike my previous generation Model: GU603HM-211.ZM16, this new Asus ROG, has a hybrid GPU, the dGPU (dedicated), and iGPU (integrated from the CPU) for performance balancing purposes. With that being said, I can freely bypass the iGPU by disabling it through the MUX switch from the pre-installed Asus Armory Crate and keep only the dGPU enabled. I found this feature beneficial since it allows me to choose between higher or lower performance. The speakers are crystal clear with Dolby Atmos; I was blown away by the sound clarity. Keyboard typing is smooth, and the trackpad is very responsive. I like the updated login method using its stunning webcam for Windows Hello compared to the integrated fingerprint into the power button from its predecessor. Startup and Login are amazingly fast. The laptop feels premium and powerful for gaming, video editing, productivity, and office work. I would like to see two things in Asus's next update: Managing the fans as they become loud when running and the laptop bottom gets hot. In addition, to move the charging port further down instead of being in the middle. All in all, personally, I'm completely satisfied with my Asus ROG laptop regardless of how the RAM is configured onboard as long as I experience peak performance with no lag!! I tried it in gaming and office work, and the results are exceeded my expectations. So try it, and you won't regret it!!!!!

This laptop keeps up with my desktop! Desktop is a i9 12900k with a 2080ti. For the price you can't beat it I think, a similar Dell with the same specs would run about 400 more. The design is pleasing. The display works great with it being 165 hertz, especially in gaming. But there is a bit of backlight bleed on mine also, but it really doesn't bother me too much. The battery life is really not great. But I knew that before buying. When getting basically a desktop replacement laptop it is not going to have the best battery life period. They can put the biggest battery allowed by airlines and it will still not be the best when gaming. But I expected that with what the laptop is sporting! An i9 12900H and a 3070ti will suck those cells dead quick when gaming! I was disappointed in the fact that they soldered 8GB of RAM on the motherboard, so if I wanted to upgrade later I only have the 1 slot to work with so I think the most I can install will be 40 GB total. I just don't like having 2 different size GB modules in any of my machines. But that is a bit down the road as finding DDR5 RAM is hard right now, especially laptop DIMMS of DDR5. Just wished they didn't solder the one on the motherboard. But even that is not enough to drop an egg down for me. I knew that issue before I bought it so they did nothing wrong in my eyes. But I also researched it for a while before I purchased it. And the other problem is the heat it produces and the fan noise. But I think Asus should come out with a bios update hopefully that will fix some of these issues. But they did use liquid metal instead of regular thermal compound and they have clever heat piping hooked up to the CPU and GPU. But these components maxed out while gaming in such a small form factor are going to generate some heat and the fans will rev up. I've been a very loyal user of Asus for a while. I use their motherboards and monitors in my desktop and I never ran into a problem that Asus did not take care of. I do think Asus will come up with a software fix for the heat and noise. They have one m.2 slot available for a storage upgrade. I just purchased a 1TB NVMe gen 4 drive to install as a games drive. I just couldn't find in an article or video what speed that M.2 is running. But that does make for a good upgrade for people, the fact that you won't have to uninstall the main drive just to upgrade your memory when you decide to do it. I would really recommend this laptop to anyone looking for a gaming laptop that can tackle triple A games now and for a while down the road. It does have some issues but so does every other laptop I've ever owned. Before I researched this laptop I was looking at a Dell that had 11th gen i7 and a 3050. It was 500 more and when I found out about this release I researched it and never went back to Dell. Would definitely buy it again.

INTRO: On paper, this ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (GU603Z) is packed with top-tier specs that should get many mobile PC gamers excited, but does ASUS’ execution deliver on the promises? UNBOXING: The unboxing experience of the M16 is pretty cool. You have a briefcase-esque box with an ROG design on the box. And once you lift up the lid of the briefcase, the rear-side of the M16 tilts upward so that you can just grab the laptop without having to shimmy the laptop out. This design is a reference to the ErgoLift hinge on the M16 to help with airflow. Aside from that, you’ll find a 240W wall charger (6.5in x 1in x 3in) that connects to the M16 via DC barrel plug. BUILD QUALITY: The M16 has a design that’s mostly plastic. On the outside of the laptop, the top and the bottom panel are both plastic, but the top has a diffused texture rather than a cheap glossy or smooth feel. On the bottom, you’ve got 10 screws along the perimeter and another 3 screws hidden under some removable rubber caps. The keyboard deck area uses a soft touch rubbery kind of texture which is much more susceptible to collecting oils and grease—something I’m not particularly a fan of from an aesthetic perspective. Additionally, on my unit, the USB-A ports have far too tight of tolerances. They will loosen up over time, but at first it was honestly difficult to plug anything into the USB-A ports without feeling like I was going to break something. I will be very unhappy if this issue eventually causes damage. EXPANSION/UPGRADES: In terms of expansion, the M16 supports adding an extra m.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD in the 2280 form factor. Additionally, you have access to a single DDR5 SODIMM, with 8GB being soldered to the system. If you were to swap the removable SO-DIMM to a 32GB module, you could reach a theoretical maximum of 40GB of RAM. The removable SO-DIMM in my unit is the Samsung M425R1GB4BB0-CQKOL which runs at DDR5-4800 with latencies of 40-39-39-76 according to CPU-Z. DISPLAY: The display on the M16 is the AUO B160QAN02.Q which comes in at 2560x1600@165Hz and reaches 500 nits brightness. The display also covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, is Pantone validated for color accuracy, supports Dolby Vision and also supports VESA Adaptive Sync technology—AKA variable refresh rate. I personally think this is a fantastic display. It’s plenty bright, viewing angles are decent but not quite IPS-level, but has fast response times for gaming and excellent color reproduction. Additionally, the display supports the VESA Adaptive Sync standard—which is similar to FreeSync or G-Sync in that it synchronizes your game’s framerate with the display’s framerate. This can help smooth out games that operate below the refresh rate of the display. This display seems to operate best between 48Hz - 165Hz. Under the Intel Graphics Command Center app, I recommend leaving Adaptive Sync & Adaptive Sync Plus enabled, but disabling Unlock FPS because there is no benefit in rendering beyond the refresh rate of the display. You can read more about Adaptive Sync at the links below: https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/q3jcqd/lets_talk_about_adaptive_sync_on_xmg_neo_with/ https://www.pcworld.com/article/617097/usb-c-and-adaptive-sync-do-g-sync-and-freesync-work-over-usb-c.html WEBCAM & MICROPHONE: The integrated webcam is not great. It comes in at 1280x720 at up to 30fps and it’s pretty choppy unless you have excellent lighting conditions. Otherwise, it’s a very smeary and grainy image. However, one benefit is that you have Windows Hello facial recognition using the IR cameras, and it has worked very well for me, overall. Logging in is seamless, and many applications that support biometric login can leverage Windows Hello. The microphone array is not great—especially when the fans are going. At medium-high gain levels, the microphone is clear, but it also introduces a ton of unwanted noise. However, I found that I could open the ASUS Armoury Crate and go to Device > System > Audio and set the Two-Way AI Noise Cancelation ON for the microphone array. While this makes your voice sound more compressed and digital, it eliminates a vast majority of noise. In that same app, there are other microphone modes such as Cardioid/Stereo/Omnidirectional, but in my testing, they sound terribly tinny & compressed. SPEAKER & HEADPHONE: The integrated speakers are decent for what they are. I did not have any issues with heavy vibrating distortion from the mylar drivers like I did with the 2021 TUF Dash F15—which is fantastic. I have enjoyed music from the M16 and chose the “Dynamic” mode under the Dolby Access app. The speakers get plenty loud and deliver an overall pleasant sound.They don’t come close to the speakers on the MacBook Pro 16”, but I didn’t mind listening to music on them. From my findings, the onboard headphone amplifier can get loud, but it does impact the frequency response—especially for headphones that pull a lot of power. I think this headphone is suitable for more sensitive headphones and headsets, but will lose detail on more power-hungry headphones like planar magnetic headphones. My Sennheiser HD 560S sounded good through the M16, but my Hifiman Sundara sounded less energetic and muffled in the treble—especially at lower volumes. Maxing out the volume on the Sundara could get it to comfortable levels whereas max volume on the HD 560S could definitely damage your ears. KEYBOARD: I like the keyboard on the M16. The keys are quiet, have good key-travel and are spaced out in such a way that is natural for me to type on without issue. It also features RGB lighting, but it is single zone (being 1 color for the entire board). You also have access to 4 macro keys at the top of the keyboard deck which can be changed via the Armoury Crate software. By default, they are your volume up & down, microphone mute and hotkey for opening Armoury Crate. I would have liked to see these Macro buttons work with the Fn key as well to give the user a total of 8 macro options, but holding the Fn key doesn’t do anything for the Macro keys. TOUCHPAD: The touchpad is reasonably sized on the M16. For me, it isn’t positioned obtrusively and I don’t find myself causing phantom mouse movements while typing on the keyboard. Multi-touch gestures work well, and it’s just an overall responsive trackpad. However, I’m not personally a fan of the amount of pressure it takes to register a click on the touchpad. I’m probably just spoiled with the likes of the Apple Force Touch trackpad, but the touchpad on the M16 just feels rather stiff/rigid, even compared to other gaming laptops I’ve tested. I consider this a nit-pick, but it’s also worth giving the feedback to ASUS. PERFORMANCE: *All performance testing was performed using the stock Turbo performance profile under Armoury Crate and using a stand that lifted the laptop off the desk. This system is using an Intel Core i9 12900H, 16GB of RAM, and an RTX 3070 Ti that can hit 100W and boost to 120W. From my testing against another system with a mobile RTX 3070 that can reach 140W, this 3070 Ti is limited mostly due thermal/power constraints and more or less matches a 140W RTX 3070. In some cases, the 3070 Ti beats it, while in other situations it actually loses. In my testing, the RTX 3070 Ti generally topped out around 75C under the Turbo performance profile in Armoury Crate, but in the most demanding scenarios, the CPU would reach over 90C, which is not the most desirable. Even so, I was able to run a game like Control maxed out with DLSS (default render res) + RT and still achieve around 60fps depending on the area. Dropping the render resolution to 720p would give me closer to 80fps average. A game like Call of Duty: Warzone would be more advantageous to shoot for high framerates. In my testing, I was able to achieve maximum settings and DLSS Balanced + RT while yielding over 120fps. Dialing back some settings and using a performance mode of DLSS should yield even higher framerates. Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme DirectX benchmark: 6889 3DMark TimeSpy: 10470 (https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/72998418) Cinebench R23:16956 (multicore) over 10 minutes. Additionally, you have 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD storage via the Micro 2450 MTFDKBA1T0TFK—which is great, but it’s barely reaching into PCIe 4.0 speeds at roughly 3600R/3500W sequential speeds in CrystalDiskMark. Even so, I’ve seen much slower drives in such expensive laptops, so I’m still happy to see this. Overall, performance is great, but the fan noise is quite loud because this is such a thin and light chassis at ~4.5lbs. BATTERY: In terms of battery life, I am getting somewhere around 6 hours on battery (silent performance profile) with mixed, non-gaming performance. This includes web browsing, listening to music, YouTube videos, etc. This was with Bluetooth turned on, although with no BT devices in use. While not bad, I’ve certainly seen better battery performance out of other laptops. That being said, I do think with some tweaking (maybe some undervolting?) I could get longer battery performance out of the system. CONCLUSION: Overall, the Zephyrus M16 is a good laptop, but it’s somewhat hard to justify the price tag unless you seriously want a thinner, lighter gaming notebook. On one hand, it has an incredibly fast processor, but it’s also much more susceptible to thermal throttling because the chassis is constrained for airflow. And with the RTX 3070 Ti only reaching a peak 120W, its performance is underwhelming when a 140W RTX 3070 can basically match it in a laptop that costs significantly less. From a performance perspective, what you’re getting in a chassis this size is awesome. But you are paying a premium to get it in this smaller notebook chassis. And unfortunately, I just don’t think that the price premium & size is quite worth it when you have to consider heat, fan noise and longevity.

Pros: - This laptop is a beast when it comes to laptop gaming. I have been hitting around 250-300FPS in Valorant at high settings. - 12900H and 3070Ti (Mobile) performs around the same as a 11900K+2070 Desktop which is awesome for a laptop - The laptop is very sleek and feels like it's made of quality materials - Ton of port options -Screen is bright and beautiful Speakers are loud and clear - good bass Cons: - Sounds like an airplane about to take flight when playing a game - Hotter than the pits of hell - Idel around 60-65 -DDR5 was one 8Gb Stick and 8Gb Soldered - There is a space to the right of the ASUS button that gets hotter than the rest of the computer Charging Port is in a strange location If you are looking for a desktop replacement or a gaming laptop this is the one for you. For extended battery life and casual use, I would probably look somewhere else. The reason why I gave it three stars is, while it is fast and it works well, it idles at a higher temp that I would like for long term use and it ramps up randomly or with mild use. It also came with a decent amount of bloatware. I am not even that upset about the fans being 52dB at their loudest while gaming. For laptops that makes sense but for $2300 I expect a laptop that can switch between that gaming and executing light loads with ease at a low temp.