Customer Ratings & Reviews

I've been searching for a personal laptop for over a year. I've tried and returned many machines - both PC laptops and Macbooks. But I think I finally found a keeper in the Asus Zenbook S 16. Why? It's a very light, aesthetically pleasing 16-inch laptop with a 120hz 3K OLED screen, a comfortable keyboard, a smooth trackpad, good-sounding speakers, 24GB of memory, a decent webcam, solid battery life, and a brand-new powerful AI processor—all for a GREAT price. There aren't many laptops that check all these boxes. It's not perfect—I even had to exchange it for a new one because of some issues I was experiencing—but given that there isn't much on the market like this laptop that runs X86 - and I didn't want a Snapdragon X laptop due to ARM compatibility issues - I had to give it another shot. And I'm glad I did. So, what issues did I initially run into? First, the unit I originally had ran incredibly hot. I read that there was a BIOS update to fix this, but even after applying it, it still felt unreasonably warm, even when doing simple things like watching videos. Additionally, while watching YouTube videos, there would be a screen glitch across the entire browser window every so often, which was annoying. Lastly, when I watched video content using my Galaxy Buds Pro 2 Bluetooth earbuds, the sound was delayed, which didn't match the words. Given that most major Tech YouTubers had nothing but praise for this machine, and it checked all my boxes—I thought I might have just gotten a defective laptop. So I returned it for a new one. I'm happy to report that I'm experiencing NONE of the above issues. There is very little heat aside from when you're charging it, and that's because it's so thin. Under regular use, it runs very cool to the touch. There's also no Bluetooth audio lag and no screen glitching. I haven't tried any video editing on it, but from what I've seen, simple 4K video edits using something like Clipchamp or CapCut should be fine. Obviously, if you want to do any major video editing, you should look at a laptop with a dedicated video card. My only complaint is that the trackpad isn't as tight as I'd like it to be. It's hard to explain, but you'll sometimes hear a little noise/rattle when you tap to click (instead of a full press.) It's nothing I can't live with, and the click when you fully push down is satisfying. Again, this may be a minor quality control issue, but it's one I can live with, given how great everything else is. So, in summary, after a year of searching and using MacBooks, Windows x86 Laptops (Core Ultra Series 1), and even the new Snapdragon X Windows laptops, the Asus Zenbook S 16 is by far the best laptop I've ever used - and that's even after having to return it for a new one. Usually, if I have to return a laptop, I never go back to it, but this one felt special, and the number of issues didn't match the reviews I was reading and watching. So, I had to give it a second chance. I'm glad I did.

ASUS - Zenbook S 16 16” 3K OLED Touch Screen Laptop, AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 - 24GB Memory - 1TB SSD - Scandinavian White Before getting into my review, I want to mention that after your initial setup, run the MyASUS software to make sure you have the latest BIOS. Early BIOS had some thermal management issues under workload. It is also my recommendation that if you are going to do high-load tasks, a laptop cooler would be a good investment, as the system can still get warm. ASUS's Zenbook S 16 has an AMD Ryzen AI 9365 processor composed of four standard Zen 5 cores and six Zen 5C cores, an 880M integrated GPU with 12 compute units, and an integrated AI neural processing unit rated at up to 50 trillion operations per second. Scandinavian White units have a stunning “Ceraluminum” finish, a fusion of ceramic to an aluminum surface, creating a light, unique matte texture. It is too bad it is only on the lid of the unit. The unit is a good meld of performance and portability. It measures only half an inch thick, with thin bezels on all sides. It is under 14 inches wide and only 3.3 pounds in weight. The 16” 3K OLEd touch screen has a beautiful picture that is sharp, vibrant, and has a good touch response. The keyboard is spacious and center-aligned but lacks a numpad. The keys are large, feel comfortable, and are intuitive in their use and performance. It has a useable backlight that performs adequately but only offers a couple of brightness settings and the only color is white. The keys have good travel and are soft and quiet. It worked quite well at typing accurately at a fast rate. The touchpad is huge at about 6 inches wide. It is responsive, and unlike other touchpads, I had no issues with unintended inputs. The camera in the lid provides a means of Biometric login. Since there is not a fingerprint reader, Windows Hello facial recognition fills this gap. The camera's low-light ability helps in darker settings. This provides a quick, secure way to log in without typing a password or PIN. Presence detection is supported so the laptop can be locked or the screen turned off when you step away. There is not a privacy shutter. Power: I like the fact that the laptop comes with a small USB-C power brick that is almost the size of one that you would use for a Phone or Tablet instead of a huge brick-size power converter. The battery is a modest 78Watt-hour battery—it is hard to squeeze in a lot of battery into a small, thin laptop. Battery life is good, though. I achieved a 13.5-hour life when I looped a 4K-sized film of the latest Terminator movie. And boy do you enjoy the quality of a dark movie on an OLED screen. Communication: Because of its compact size, it has a good selection of ports. The left side has an HDMI 2.1 port, a pair of USB-C ports (USB4), and an auto combo jack. The right side is equipped with a USB 3.2 Type-A port and a full-size microSD slot. It comes with WiFi7 and Bluetooth 5.4 The Dolby Atmos has good sound with a 6-speaker Harmon/ Kardon system, but because of the size and power of the speakers, the volume for, say, watching a surround-sound movie is just adequate. I use a headset to get the true emersion I crave. Performance is there for most non-gaming things, but for gaming, you should limit yourself to low-rez older games. The AI features are minimal with Copilot, Paint, and StoryCube, and you can notice a performance boost in these apps with the AI hardware, but from what I have read, Microsoft is planning to include many of the AI features of CoPilot Plus PCs with Snapdragon processor laptops to AMD Ryzen AI laptops around the end of 2024 or the first quarter of 2025. But we all know how promises are on unreleased software. The ASUS Zenbook S 16 is a good midrange laptop that does well at most things but only works minimally for games. It is thin, light, and has a great keyboard, OLED touchscreen, and touchpad.

**** Summary **** The 2024 Asus Zenbook S 16 is a striking and handsome 16" laptop that is light, ergonomic, and a pleasure to use on a daily basis. Despite its thinness, it packs a bright and crisp OLED display, spacious keyboard, a huge trackpad, and performant components that makes it speedy and lag-free, perfect for multitasking. The battery life is good, the speakers sound great, and its thin and light design makes it an ideal computer. I love it! _____ *Pros: -Clean, stylish, and elegant design. -Great performance from the AMD Ryzen AI 9 CPU, 24GB of DDR5 memory, and speedy NVME hard drive. -Thin and light. -Good battery life. -Big, smooth, and responsive Microsoft Precision touchpad. -The MyAsus app is very helpful and easy to use. _____ *Cons: -None **** Design & Build Quality **** The 2024 Asus Zenbook S 16 is one good-looking laptop. I have the Scandinavian White model with the Ceraluminium lid, and the device looks very stylish, elegant, and premium. The lid has a matte feel, and it looks like concrete. The display can be raised with one finger, and it goes up without any wobbling or stability issues. The 3K OLED display is bright, crisp, and evenly lit, and it makes colors pop and the blacks are truly black, making it a pleasure to watch movies and music videos on. The screen can achieve up to 500 nits brightness, and supports a 120Hz refresh rate, delivering an awesome multimedia experience. The 6-speaker system is well-tuned, and the audio is clean, punchy, and has a great soundstage. It has probably the best-sounding speaker system on a laptop. The keyboard is spacious and the keys are well laid-out, making it easy to type fast. I do wish the key travel (1.1mm) has more padding for a softer experience, but it's not bad. It feels a bit stiff initially but it didn't take long for me to get used to it. The white LED backlighting on a white keyboard works better than it sounds since the light is bright and the letter cutout is relatively large. The Microsoft Precision touchpad is HUGE, and I love it. It feels so smooth when gliding my fingertip across it, and it's also very responsive. I'm very appreciative to Asus for providing many useful ports on such a thin and light laptop. On the left side, you have one HDMI port, two 40Gbps Thunderbolt ports, and an audio jack. On the right side, you have one 10Gbps USB-A port and a SD card reader. That's enough ports for me to not resort to using a dongle which is always annoying. The rest of the technology is great and reliable as well, such as Wi-Fi 7 (MediaTek MT7925) and Bluetooth 5.4. This is my third Asus laptop, and it's the best one yet. I love the design, the meticulous attention to detail, and great build materials and build quality. **** Hardware & Performance **** Not surprisingly, the Zenbook S 16 is quite the performer, thanks to the 10-core, 20-thread Ryzen AI 9 365 processor, 24GB of LPDDR5X memory, and 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVME drive from Samsung (model MZVL81T0HELB-00BTW). 952GB of storage space was accessible and ready for use out-of-the box, and the laptop, thankfully, didn't come with too many third-party apps pre-installed. Multi-tasking on the Zenbook S 16 has been a delight. You want to run Chrome with more than 30 tabs open? Check. Stream music videos in the background while encoding that 4K action cam or drone footage? No problem. Play some 3D games or run emulators? No sweat. The Zenbook S 16 can do all of the above without breaking a sweat and without having to resort to its highest fan-profile mode, which is called Full-speed mode inside the MyAsus app. The other available modes are the Performance mode, Standard mode, and Whisper mode. For my purposes, I was content with the Performance mode, which gives me the right dose of performance without excessive fan noise. The battery will drain a bit faster but the trade-off is worth it to me since I demand speedy responsiveness and snappy performance from my devices. My wife has been using the Zenbook S 16 as her daily driver, and she loves it! Her previous device was the 16" Asus VivoBook M1603QA, which has an AMD Ryzen 7 5800HS processor with 8 cores, 12GB of DDR4 memory, and a 512GB PCIe 3.0 NVME drive. She says the performance difference was very noticeable which is backed up by the Geekbench 6 score comparison - the VivoBook scored 1818 for single-core and 6702 for multi-core, while the Zenbook S 16 scored 2789 and 12,815, respectively. With the Zenbook S 16, Asus has put together a well-balanced and performant machine that runs really fast and well without any overheating or fan noise issues, all in a stylish, thin, and light package. **** Any issues? **** I tried to find some faults with the Zenbook S 16, but I really couldn't find any. Everything is good - the design, build materials and quality, the display, the keyboard and trackpad, the gorgeous screen and awesome speakers, fast and stable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections. I feel very confident that 99% of the people who purchase this laptop will be very happy and satisfied. My wife likes it so much, she took it from me and made it her daily driver! :) **** Is it worth the coin? **** Yes! I say that because you do get many fancy features for the money, such as the outstanding 120Hz 3K OLED screen, unique and stylish design in a thin and light package, great performance from the Ryzen AI 9 CPU, DDR5 memory, and PCIe 4.0 NVME drive, and long uptime from the 78WHr battery. After spending this amount of money, you would want a device that brings delight and a frustration-free experience every time you sit down in front of your computer. And the Zenbook S 16 delivers exactly that type of experience. It's a 5-Star Win.

Pros: Smooth processor, beautiful display, lightweight, aesthetically appealing good (not great) battery Cons: Would be awesome as a 2 in 1. Touchpad functions like dim or volume control too sensitive. No fingerprint reader. A little slower than it should be. -Gets intermittently warm, but the firmware throttling prevents it from getting too hot at the expense of some CPU power. -Drawing on the screen is not as intuitive as lets say a Galaxy Book Pro, close, but not as good. I want to love this laptop. But I am in heavy like right now. At the right price it is a steal though. Gets much better reviews than the one with the HX370 cpu, so aa tempting as it would be to try that one, this is the sweetspot. If it had a 2 in 1 form, I would be 100% sold. Either way, it is solid "A minus". You shouldnt be disappointed especially if you buy it onsale.

Before I purchased this I was concerned about reviews citing stability issues, heat, and low performance. First, once you're at the Windows desktop, run the MyAsus application and let it update all the software - including the BIOS. The updated BIOS solves most of the problems. Given how thin this laptop is, it will run a little toasty. Surface temperatures are very reasonable for the surfaces you use; I was expecting much worse based on reviews, this is nothing. If you touch the speaker grille at the top of the deck, that gets hot, but under normal use you should never need to touch that region of the laptop. Fan noise under the Standard Mode is reasonable; Whisper Mode is as advertised and for most users should be the default operating mode. The other two higher power modes are mostly pointless; they increase fan speed but not the power limits of the processor, so there's no real performance improvement. Performance is excellent given the weight, noise, and heat, and some light gaming is even possible in the Standard Mode. For a point of reference, gaming performance is about on par with an ROG Ally handheld, and better than a Steam Deck. Be sure to set the video memory allocation to 8GB. This laptop proved to be exactly what I was looking for: it's light, it's well built, the keyboard is surprisingly comfortable, touchpad has a smooth glass surface, the OLED screen is beautiful, and it's very performant given its size and weight. It features modern I/O like WiFi 7 and USB4, and it's powered off of USB-C (be sure to use a charger and - this is important - cable rated for 65W). And a pleasant surprise: the speakers are very good, especially given how thin this laptop is. I don't think the higher spec version of this laptop with the Ryzen AI 9 370 HX and 32GB of memory is actually worth the upsell; the RAM isn't strictly necessary and the 28W power limit means any performance improvements are going to be minimal. And that version doesn't come in the gorgeous Scandinavian White finish. Now here's what sucks: - The finish on the OLED display is very glossy, reflections are bothersome, and *anything* on the surface will refract. You will need to keep it clean. - Windows Hello login using the camera works about 50% of the time, and it lags. - The lid is beautiful and the texture is gorgeous but it's a fingerprint magnet. - There's still a little jank. I haven't had issues with it staying asleep or waking up, but there have been odd times where the display brightness keys stop working correctly and the brightness is dim. Rebooting fixes the issue. This is more or less the laptop I've been looking for: big, bright, beautiful screen, very low weight, powered by USB-C, can play games in a pinch. I do think ASUS probably could've increased the power limits in Performance Mode a little, another 5W or so; there's some juice left in the tank with the cooling system. But it's still ample for what I need. If you know what you're getting into - an ultralight ultraportable laptop is not going to set the world on fire with performance and it's going to be a little warm - this is an excellent system.

My daughter got accepted in law school and she needed a new laptop. My wife and I decided that she needed a really good one and that is why we chose to look at Best Buy. Not only does Best Buy carry a large selection of laptop computers but they also have Retail Sales Associates that has worked with all of them and are very knowledgeable about their products. We happened to get one of those Retail Sales Associates when my daughter was trying to decide. She really liked the Lenovo, however, since the particular computer that she wanted was on back order due to it's popularity, she was kind of lost. That is until a kind sales associate stepped in and told her that he really liked the ASUS Zenbook S 16. Not only did he explain all of the various features, he took my daughter over to the laptop to see all of them. We were all amazed by how light the Zenbook was and could not believe all of the different amenities that came with the computer. The biggest thing for my daughter, which not a whole lot of people think about, is all of the USB, HDMI and other ports that were on the computer. The Zenbook is packed with all kinds of different high-definition multimedia interface ports and it had every one that she needed and wanted. The screen on the Zenbook was amazing and it was super fast. My daughter definitely wanted this computer and the only thing that was standing in the way was waiting for the popular associate to finish with other customers so that we could purchase it. Once my daughter got the computer home, she called us to tell us every feature that it presented and how excited that she was. She definitely knew that she purchased (well dad purchased) the best computer with all the gadgets she needed and could not thank the sales associate enough. Her and my wife also went back a week later to get a great printer and was lucky enough to have the same sales associate again attend to their needs. He was wonderful and dedicated to his job. The best thing that happened after the sale, was my daughter calling me to tell me she loved me and thanking me for getting her such a nice laptop. That really made my day. It even got better as I was able to price match with Best Buy a week later and get a much much lower price which was reflected on my Best Buy credit card. We definitely made the right choice and the right store.

Pros -The oled, contrast, brightness, and detail are great. My first oled laptop, hope theres no burn in issues down the line. -The battery seems to last a good while -Boots up fast, can be quick at times - Good sound - Ceraluminum material makes the laptop feel nice and durable* - Charges fast via Usb C, the charging brick is a smaller square block than my prev pc Cons - Can get warm, especially when plugged in but, what laptop doesnt?! - Keyboard keys are too squishy and feel like they will wear out soon. Only time will tell - my Zenbook, has a creaking sound on the top left, when picked up, opened, or moved. Don't know why, cant see anything wrong but, this is a little annoying/worrrisome - I did experience severe screen flickering and glitching, flashing from the screen when the screen saver came on. The laptop shut off randomly once, and the usb port had stopped working once. I think this happened before all Windows and Asus updates including bios. Haven't had this happen again. I hope it stays that way. - while doing creative work like video or photo editing, the laptop does stutter and has crashed more times than i have liked. This is unacceptable given the specs this laptop has. I have not overworked it in anyway. This happens kinda often and its annoying. - wish it had 1 more USB A port and , mini fully insertable SD Card slot (not one that requires the bigger sd adpater and it sticks out half way) Its hard to find a laptop with these specs for the price i paid. Costs for PCs are getting ridiculous. Overall, the negative issues ive had are concerning and i would normally return it, but, comparatively, theres not much better out there for around the same cost. If the freezes and crashes stop, then this laptop would be perfect. Asus, please create more durable and tactile keyboard keys. These keys, are too soft, push in too much, and make it cumbersome and weird to type on. Not something i expected on the Zenbook line.

The Zenbook S 16 is a near perfect device, with one huge (hot) problem. The build quality on this device is very good, and the white finish is quite nice on it. The screen is fantastic (high refresh rate, good brightness, OLED contrast), the performance is snappy and the laptop should have no trouble keeping up for the next couple of years. Battery life is pretty good in normal use, and the laptop has good port selection. I also like the large trackpad as well. The one major flaw with this laptop is that it gets extremely hot to the touch when doing anything more than general use. Download a file? Run a game? This thing gets very, very hot to the touch on the underside between your lap. Just be mindful if you plan to do performance work that way. Outside of that, during general use it remains cool enough and the fans are fairly quiet. This is a great laptop for anyone who wants a premium experience, excellent build quality, and lots of features, as long as you can get over the heating up.

Great laptop overall. Vibrant screen with good colors. Bright enough for indoor use. Fast and responsive in Windows. Very lightweight and good portability. The AI functions are still a mystery to me. Not sure of how this laptop is AI vs one that isn't AI. Keyboard keys are too shallow, but gets the job done. Take note that there is no CTRL key on the right side, which is annoying. After 3 months, the screen started glitching for 1 week until it would not turn on. Now I have to send it in for warranty repair. Never had this happen on any of my numerous other laptops.

Really good for the price (got it for $1099 b/c of memorial day sale). Thin and elegant design. Havent maxxed out RAM usage yet, which is nice since with 16gb I was constantly having issues. Biggest problems thus far is that it gets decently hot, the battery life isn't incredible, and that it comes preinstalled with lots of ASUS software and Microsoft stuff (all of which is pretty standard). Hate the Copilot button, but again, standard. Overall, its performing quite well. Ive yet to use it with adobe or autodesk products, but I probably will in the future.

Excellent product, Light, battery enough( saving energy mode 10h+) , good quality when you touch it. No issue with the heat ( without charging) If you want to buy it for game, not good, woth charging it’s very hot. Office use/ home work use, perfect screen. If asus can listen, be a better vision for screen side angle, improved viewing , now cannot see anything if daylight come in. Another thing is when you open it , you might scratch the camera or the top screen, the open design need to be better.

The good: The display is beautiful, and the keyboard feels great. The exterior made of "ceraluminum" looks and feels so much better than black plastic (but see below). The CPU and graphics can handle professional tasks (Matlab, CAD software) easily and no doubt most games would run fine, although it will get hot if you push it for long periods. The not-so good: - The exterior is slightly porous and in the first week I spilled a drop of ketchup on it and cannot get the stain out completely - it is now covered by a sticker. :( - The 24GB of RAM is adequate but is soldered to the board so can never be upgraded. - The backlit keyboard illuminates the main characters but barely lights up the upper shifted ones (e.g. %, &, ", ?) and the contrast gets worse the brighter the keys (there are 3 brightness levels), so a few times I had to guess that ^ is above the 6 key, etc. - I am glad it has a headphone jack and HDMI because the one USB-A port is taken up by my wireless mouse receiver, and one USB-C by the power cord, leaving only one open USB-C connector. The SD card slot is nice but you have to buy a "shallow" adapter (for a Macbook) so that it does not stick out too far.

Having owned the X1 Carbon for many years, my standard is set high. This Zenbook s16 is almost a perfect ultra lightweight. The keyboard is not as good as the X1 Carbon, but it's still very good. I get about 6-7 hours of battery life with mix use of surfing and watching YT/movie. OLED screen is a nice touch and text reading does not suffer. On the negative side, this device gets warm when is being charged. Like other OLED screen laptop I've tried, reflection is almost unbearable in bright light or outdoor. Two technical issues I've come across are: 1) Screen black out twice while in use, and 2) Randomly not charging. The work around is to power down, unplug everything and hold the power button for 40 secs. I still like the Zenbook s16 and do hope these two issues get addressed in the future.

The laptop packs more than enough power for all my work. While it might not be able to run AAA Games, it is most suitable for people wanting to do their office work, develop software, or just watch shows on the amazong display. And with the battery life, it is the best work laptop I can have. I used to have an MSI GF65, but it was just to heavy to carry around, and you cannot expect more than 30 mins of battery from any gaming laptop even for working on Word.

I absolutely love this computer! Its perfect in every way, the screen is so clear and vibrant, the processor is fast and handles everything i do on it, it’s really light weight to carry and move around yet its a very solid build quality. Here is nothing im unhappy with about this computer and i have told all my family and friends if they need a new computer to buy this!!

So far have been using this for about 2 months since the begining of my freshman semester for school. this laptop was meant to get me through my entire college journey. So far this laptop has been very buggy and giving me issues left and right. let me express that the pros include what it should, things like extra long baterry life that gets me through my entire school day on one charge pretty much, a beautiful display, and lightweight. The cons tho, The laptop runs very hot without even doinb much other than coding python and web browsing. The laptop will freeze and not respond to anything at all randomly. The laptop screen while beautiful will flicker randomly when im watching a video on canvas that was assigned to me. I know these issues are random and hard to replicate so i have not brought it in but I do plan on it as soon as I can. I am very disapointed in asus as I use them for almost any PC DIY project I have ever done. This is a huge let down and could probably sway me to not buy asus again.

I had a bottom of the line ASUS laptop for 5 years with never a problem. So was more than pleased with the new Zenbook S16. It has a sleek thin design, beautiful clear touchscreen, and awesome features on the touch pad. Plenty of memory and fast response. Plus, it’s light weight. I’m not a gamer and use mostly for small business and newsletters and photoshop work. But it meets all of my needs. Some reviews speak of it getting too hot, but I have not had a problem like that anymore than any other laptop. The battery lasts a strong 8 hours. It was easy to set up even though I was new to Windows 11. I would highly recommend this model.

Works great for the price! It works better than expected for not having a dedicated gpu and can handle light gaming and CAD work without killing the battery. Good battery life, no overheating issues, and a gorgeous screen!!

Pros: Fast Performance Good Battery Great Screen Good Build Good speakers Cons: Runs hot under medium loads, fans are a bit noisy keyboard and trackpad a bit mushy

I'm a devoted Apple user for three decades, and this is my first Windows PC. Both my work and school rely on 365 accounts, and the cross-platform issues were constant and exhausting. I decided to set up a Windows/Android-based tech system and was extremely nervous about it, but I did my research and took the plunge with the ZenBook S 16. After two months of use, this PC continues to exceed my expectations. I love the build; for a 16-inch laptop it's remarkably thin and light, and the Ceraluminum material is virtually impervious to fingerprints and smudges. The touch-screen OLED display is stunning, and the Ryzen AI 9 365 processor is quick as lightning and able to handle some pretty heavy multitasking with ease. The battery life is insane. I'm getting upwards of 16 hours of moderate to heavy usage. I read that it has some thermal issues, so I adjusted those settings in the MyAsus app and it hasn't been an issue since. It can be a bit pricey, but it frequently can be found at a discount on sites like Best Buy. Coming from my 14-inch MacBook Pro M3 (which I've relegated to my creative apps and tasks and personal use) I can say that I enjoy using the S 16 just as much if not more. I cannot say enough about how great this laptop is!