ASUS Innovates with Cutting-Edge Laptops for Creators and Gamers

Meet the coolest 2-in-1 laptop I've ever seen -- the Asus ProArt PX13 is a creator's dream machine

Why you can trust Tom's Guide Our writers and editors spend hours analyzing and reviewing products, services, and apps to help find what's best for you. Find out more about how we test, analyze, and rate. The Asus ProArt PX13 is the Han Solo of creator-focused laptops. It's as handsome as everyone's favorite space smuggler, with a couple of AI-driven apps that will have content creators swiftly proclaiming their love for it -- only for the PX13 to nonchalantly tell them it knows. If you're a creator looking for all the goodies you could hope for from a 13-incher, Asus' ProArt is oh so easy to recommend. Beautiful, bold and just all-round brilliant, I've rarely been more pleasantly surprised by a portable PC. I've been testing out the base level Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050-powered model, but there are configurations up to a beasty RTX 4070,which have the capacity to act as decent stealth gaming laptops thanks to the intervention of Nvidia's frame-smoothing DLSS. Powerful, playful and performant, the ProArt PX13 will delight digital artists and prosumer video creators thanks to its mighty AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. With all that's going on under the hood of this shockingly small system, it's a slam dunk Editor's Choice winner. So let me explain why I've fallen head over heels for this brilliant AI-inspired Asus ProArt PX13 review. Could it be one of the best 2-in-laptops you can buy? Let's find out! As someone who almost exclusively tests the best gaming laptops, I can comfortably say the Asus ProArt PX13 is my favorite non-gaming machine I've had the pleasure to review. Sometimes, numbers don't tell the entire story. While we've technically tested laptop screens with greater color accuracy, in the flesh, the ProArt PX13's 3K touchscreen is a stunner. In-real world terms, Asus gorgeous' OLED "Lumina" touch display looks vivid and punchy. Its 0.2ms response time and perfect OLED blacks make it a delight to edit images and videos in Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro, while its stunning contrast makes it an awesome (albeit admittedly expensive) Netflix machine. I also appreciate the screensaver function that kicks in after a short period of time. It lights up the display with multi-colored moving blobs that help fend off dreaded OLED burn-in -- an increasingly rare screen defect that causes irreversible image retention if you leave a static image on-screen for too long. Enter two seriously fun AI apps. While the presence of a dedicated Copilot button on Asus' fantastic keyboard is appreciated (and a nice piece of future-proofing), it doesn't feel all that valuable quite yet. Yet in the here and now, "MuseTree" and "StoryCube" both make instantly compelling cases for AI-powered software. First off, MuseTree is a pleasure to fiddle around with. This app allows you to cook up AI-generated images via specifically worded prompts through its "Idea Map," or courtesy of translating your own handwritten drawings through the software's "Idea Canvas". Now, the end results I got were often a little bizarre, which is something I largely expect ultimately lies with however much inherent artistic talent you do or do not possess. Spoiler: I can barely draw a stickman. In spite of my doodling shortcomings, I've found MuseTree's AI images to be consistently entertaining. An example of having a good time with MuseTree despite its occasionally "interesting" interpretations of written prompts? I typed in "great white shark swims alongside a diver in scuba gear." While the resulting image the software generated above looked broadly convincing, quite why the AI app decided one of the toothy fish it generated could seemingly fly was a bit perplexing. Oh, and if you're interested, here's what happened when I asked it to generate images after typing "scary clown scares children." Second spoiler alert: it's pure nightmare fuel... My deepest apologies for exposing your eyeballs to that utter evil. Circling back to Idea Canvas, it's just a pure giggle, regardless of your level of artistic prowess. Here's my appalling attempt at attempting to scribble an on-screen T. Rex with the "AI Drawing Influence" Slider set to "Specific", then one set to "Creative"... Just like being back in "Jurassic Park," right? An adventure "65 seconds in the making." Before I get onto the other AI tool I've quickly become obsessed with, let's touch on those CPU numbers above. As you can clearly see, the ProArt beats its nearest competition in both our Geekbench 6.3 single-core and multi-core results. The PX13's AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is somewhat of a processing beast, which makes it a great option for creators who edit a lot of large video files. Plus, it manages to do all of this while keeping its cool under casual and strenuous use -- a marvel for x86 laptops. StoryCube is the other creative-targeted selling point the PX13 is hiding under its sleeve. In essence, this AI app can easily detect faces from your digital photo libraries, then put them into individual folders. In practice, it instantly allows me to categorize photos of various pals into handy, bespoke groups. And not to go too far into "snake eats its own tail" territory, but it can even detect faces from photos I took of framed snaps of me and my chums that are hanging in my bedroom. Its "AI Album" feature can actually pick up on what's happening in a picture, too. A cool example? It created a folder called "Ball games", which mainly consisted of me and friends playing mini golf over the years. Although the fact it also made a folder called "Kids" -- which was solely made up of two selfies of me both taken this year, no less -- shows there are still some kinks to iron out. I mean, I know I've got a bit of a baby face. But c'mon, I'm 39 years old, not 39 months old. Not that it ever would, could or should be legal to marry a laptop purely based on its eye-arousing qualities. But damn, I'd be down on one knee with a hastily purchased pawn shop ring if such an unhinged law ever passed. The ProArt PX13 is flexible, fabulous and downright jaw-dropping. You can position it in one of three equally viable positions, depending on our needs. It can act as a traditional laptop -- the configuration I imagine most folks will embrace. You can also bend it back like it was one of the best iPads connected to a smart case. Option the Third: feel free to go full "Neo in The Matrix trying to dodge the Agent's cheat code bullets" by bending it aaallll the way back so it acts like a tablet, sans-stand/case. I can see why Asus' marketing is trying to lure in Bear Grylls-style outdoor creators with this cutting edge system. Asus has subjected it to the U.S. military's rigorous MLD-STD 810H tests, so the PX13 is ready for anything -- even if you decide to start editing videos on top of Everest. What I will say, though, is that I hope all of those outdoor creators Asus has pivoted its 13-inch ProArt towards have one of the best power banks and portable chargers in their backpack. Suffice to say, battery life isn't the best on the PX13, and during our tests (where we continuously web surf at 150 nits screen brightness), Asus' portable PC was comfortably beaten by both the Surface Pro 11 and the M3 MacBook Air. If you're planning to use the ProArt PX13 mainly from home, though, where a wall socket will never be far away, you should be able to look past the ProArt's battery life shortcomings. Ultimately, I can get over subpar battery life because the PX13 is an excellent example of practicality meets prettiness, all wrapped in a shell that's been built to withstand the harshest of outdoor conditions. What's this? A quality keyboard from Asus, you say? I am frankly shocked. Shocked, I say. In other news, water is wet. The PX13 has a backlit chiclet board with 1.7mm key travel distance, meaning it feels instantly responsive to type on. I like the ProArt's keyboard so much, I actually typed this review up on it. That's a rarity for me, as I usually write on the Alienware Pro ($199) that's paired with my desktop PC. My only real issue with the PX13's board? In the case of my review unit, the backlight wasn't enabled out of the box. Instead, I had to go through a few mildly annoying Google searches until I figured out holding the Fn key then hitting F4 would light up my life. It seems a little odd that the board's backlighting is seemingly turned off by default (at least with my review unit). Yet once I stumbled over that minor issue, those all-white lights are instantly attractive. As someone who suffers from eye strain, it's great that there are three different brightness levels, so when your peepers start to tire, you can dim the ProArt's keys in an instant. All in all, a brilliant board. As you can see above, the Asus ProArt PX13 does a whole lot right, but even the Michaelangelo magic of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling has the odd teeny blemish. The flaws this creative and playful 2-in-1 system have certainly don't derail the overall success of this laptop, but nor can I entirely turn a blind eye to them. If this mightily impressive 2-in-1 laptop was a figure from Greek myth, it would probably be Achilles. The PX13's intensely vulnerable heel? Its underwhelming refresh rate. Considering the hefty $1,699 starting price, the fact its otherwise exemplary OLED panel shoots itself in the foot by topping out at 60Hz doesn't cut the mythical mustard. I do a lot of pixel-precise Photoshop work on my incredibly immersive Samsung Odyssey OLED G9. As one of the best curved monitors, the fact I can edit images at 240Hz with one of the best wireless mouse options currently available makes a real difference. I often engage in precision photo manipulation using Adobe's polygonal lasso tool, and buttery screen response times are important for accuracy. 60Hz feels subpar by 2024 laptop display standards. The impressively accurate Asus Pen 2.0 ($99) helps combat screen sluggishness, to an extent. I've found using the clone stamp tool in PhotoShop with the peripheral to feel pleasingly swift on the PX13's touchscreen. The addition of four interchangeable tips with sensitivity topping out at a pressure sensitivity of 4096 is also welcome. Yet there's a catch. The PX13 doesn't come bundled with the digital pen from every retailer -- something I verified with my PR contact at Asus. If you buy this impressive 2-in-1 from Asus directly, the excellent peripheral is bundled in free. Yet if you pick up the 13-inch ProArt from a major third-party retailer like, say, Best Buy, the touchscreen-friendly pen isn't always included. That means you have to pony up an additional 100 bucks for an accessory I'd consider a necessity for digital artists planning on buying this ProArt . That feels miserly on the part of Asus, and the PX13 would be even easier to recommend than it already is if this stellar stylus was bundled in at no extra charge from every retailer. In theory, the crowning achievement of the ProArt's pleasingly responsive and quiet touchpad should be the Asus "DialPad". Located on the top left of said touchpad (which attracts fingerprints with a vengeance), and activated with a leftwards downward diagonal motion until its little light blinks, the DialPad's smart gesture support certainly sounds cool on paper. Sadly, I've found the real-world results are ambitious, if a little too fiddly to make me want to consistently interact with it. Perhaps my digits are just getting a tad shaky in my advancing years, but in most usage cases, I find the DialPad is overly sensitive. To Asus' credit, the company has clearly put a lot of effort into the circular sensor -- it has its own dedicated control panel that lets you create per-application custom shortcuts. A good example? You can set it to adjust brush stroke sizes in Photoshop with a swirl of your finger and a subsequent click, while it also allows you to reopen recently viewed documents in a flash. The trouble is, it just feels too damn twitchy to interact with, and on multiple occasions I've found myself selecting a custom shortcut I didn't want to open because it feels too sensitive to operate. I commend the innovation and commitment Asus has dedicated to the DialPad, but execution and practical benefits feel a little off. Currently, this feels like a quirky and inconsistent time-saving tool, which I hope the company can dial in and realize its full potential in the future. While there are flaws, I wouldn't let the PX13's 60Hz refresh rate or middling battery life put you off buying it if you make a living creating content. This is a gorgeous and performant laptop I think is the absolute business. Looking for cheaper alternatives? You can't go far wrong with the MacBook Air 13-inch M3 (from $1,099), while the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 (from $999) remains a compelling 2-in-1 choice. After an AI laptop that's a little bigger? Then look no further than the excellent Asus ProArt P16 (from $1,899). Now if you'll excuse me, I've got more crappy dinosaurs for the PX13 to work its AI magic on.

Asus Zenbook S 16 Review

If you buy through our links, IGN may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more. With AI taking over the tech world this year, Intel, AMD, and most laptop manufacturers have wasted no time making the most of it. We've seen what Intel has to offer with its Core Ultra series and now we can finally see AMD's answer in the Asus Zenbook S 16. It's a high-end ultrabook that drips with premium fit and finish, and thanks to a powerful combination of ample memory, a fast SSD, and the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, it has the performance and battery life to back up its good looks. Asus Zenbook S 16 Review - Design and Features For all intents and purposes, the Asus Zenbook S 16 is designed to be a MacBook Pro competitor. It's thin, light, and has a classy design that's simple but elegant yet doesn't hold back on processing power. It has a beautiful OLED display, plenty of connectivity, memory, and storage space. Most importantly, it features AMD's latest high-end mobile CPU, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. The Zenbook S 16 comes in two configurations. Our sample came with the following specs: The Zenbook S 16 comes in two versions, an introductory model for $1,399 and the upgraded version we were sent which retails for $1,699. The biggest difference between the two is that the entry level model uses a slightly slower processor, the AMD Ryzen 9 HX 365. Unlike the HX 370 found in the more expensive version, which has 12 cores and 24 threads, the HX 365 only has 10 cores and 20 threads. Its maximum clock speed is also slightly lower at 5GHz instead of the 5.1GHz of the HX 370. System memory is also lower but still ample at 24GB instead of 32GB, but both models feature 1TB of fast NVMe storage. No matter which you choose, first impressions are impressive. It's ridiculously thin, measuring only 12mm at the front and 13mm at the back. Despite being slightly larger than most laptops, it's significantly lighter, weighing only 3.31 pounds. That's a full pound and a half less than the MacBook Pro 16 and about 3mm thinner. With such an airy, slim design, it's exceptionally portable. I've loved carrying it through the day. As thin as it is, I had no trouble fitting it into my bag, whether I was carrying a backpack or a messenger bag, I never once felt weighed down. My last laptop, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, was even lighter by about a pound, but I could barely tell the difference once it was in my bag. The screen size and larger keyboard are definitely worth the trade-off. The S 16 features a large 16-inch OLED display that comes calibrated for creative work out of the box. It covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color space and is Pantone certified for accuracy, making it perfect for creative professionals. It's rated for 500-nits at its peak (I measured it at 487 nits peak and around 350 nits for typical SDR brightness). Here, it falls a little short for use in direct sunlight but it's very vibrant and color rich. It also uses a glossy panel which looks great but forces you to contend with reflections. If you're worried about burn-in, Asus has built in a number of OLED safety features to help keep it at bay. Pixel shifting is on permanently, but you can also enable pixel refresh cycles that engage when the laptop hasn't been used for 30 minutes, as well as automatic taskbar hiding and transparency. There's a target mode you can enable, which darkens everything but your current window - but it was still a bit buggy, so I left this off. The software also warns you not to leave static elements on the screen for extended periods of time, so hiding desktop icons and using animated wallpapers are still best practices. Inside, its HX 370 processor is a step forward from the previous Ryzen 8000 series mobile APUs. It has more cores and threads, a more powerful built-in GPU, and dedicated AI cores for enhanced performance in AI applications. Though the pool of compatible apps is currently limited, it's inevitably going to be included in more applications going forward, so its utility should increase over time. Its improved integrated graphics are one of the most exciting parts and one of the biggest reasons why you might want to pay extra for the higher-spec version. The Zenbook S 16 features Radeon 800M series graphics built on the RDNA 3.5 architecture. Depending on which version of the S 16 you choose, you'll either get the 880M or 890M, the latter coming with the HX 370 version and offering the best performance in an integrated GPU today. The 800M series is a half-step - a refresh and optimization of the 700M series that is used in most Windows gaming handhelds today. But despite not being a full generational leap, the 890M offers more graphics cores, 16 instead of 12. The 880M doesn't increase the core count. As you can imagine, the 890M has sparked a fair amount of excitement in the integrated graphics and handheld communities. The 780M was already good for mid-spec gaming and the added cores of the 890M promise even better performance. Its construction exudes quality. The lid is made of Ceraluminum, a new material that Asus says is a combination of ceramic and aluminum. The texture is smooth and has a granular finish with a minimal, stone-like pattern. The lid is traced with diagonal accents that are etched to reveal gleaming aluminum that catches the light. The laptop comes in dark or light variants. I was sent the dark version, and it looks and feels great. Asus claims this new material is more scratch-resistant and I can see that. It feels robust, and is also more resistant to fingerprints, which is another nice touch. Opening it up, you'll find a spacious deck with an exceptionally large touchpad. The touchpad measures 6 x 4 inches and is centered below the keys ensuring that it's always under your thumb. It uses integrated buttons with full gesture control, and I found it reliable to use. The keyboard is set a little higher up to accommodate its large size, but doesn't feel awkward at all. Making the most of its size, Asus has embedded touch sliders into the sides of the touchpad. Sliding up and down on the right adjusts screen brightness while the left adjusts volume and top offers track controls. Pulling down from the right corner also launches ScreenXpert, which can be used to configure two displays. It's a neat idea, but with the trackpad being so large, I frequently found myself adjusting screen brightness by accident, so I had to turn this feature off. I wish you could turn off individual sliders to keep the embedded media controls - but it's all or nothing. The keyboard is quite good. There's a bit of flex that's visible when pressed upon because of its exceptionally thin frame, but I didn't notice it at all when typing. The keys have a 1.1mm travel distance and nice tactility. I was able to transition from my last laptop, the 14-inch Zenbook, seamlessly without losing typing speed or accuracy. It has a white backlight that can be adjusted for brightness, and uses an ambient light sensor to automatically brighten or darken the backlight depending on the amount of light in your room. There are no dedicated media controls outside of the touchpad but, like most laptops, it has a selection of secondary commands embedded into the function row. You can control screen brightness, keyboard brightness, enable or disable the webcam and microphone, and launch the MyAsus configuration app. The keyboard also has navigation commands built into the arrow keys. The chassis of the laptop is well ventilated to keep its components cool. There are two large vents, one on the top just above the keyboard and another on the bottom directly below it. The top vent at first looks like any other but on close inspection you can see that every milled hole actually has two smaller milled holes inside of it. It's a small detail but one that speaks to the fine detail Asus applied to its design. You'll also find that it offers expanded connectivity compared to the MacBook Pro and many other ultrabooks. For physical connectivity, it supports two USB4 Type-C ports that both support video and power delivery, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, a full-size SD card reader, an HDMI 2.1 video out, and a 3.5mm combo audio jack. Wireless connectivity is forward-looking. It supports WiFi 7, which is such a new WiFi protocol that your devices probably don't even support it yet. It's capable of 46 Gbps maximum speeds, which is a massive uptick from the 9.6 Gbps of WiFi 6E. If you don't have a WiFi 7 router yet, don't worry. It's backwards compatible. It also supports Bluetooth 5.4 for a reliable, low energy connection. The speakers in the laptop are surprisingly good. Despite being so thin, they can get loud and then louder still if you opt for Extra Volume in the MyAsus software. They offer a decent amount of bass too, though still sound thin in comparison to a good pair of speakers or gaming headset. Still, for streaming, they work better than many even more expensive laptops I've tested. Finally, the S 16 supports a 1080p webcam that can record up to 30 fps and supports Windows Hello facial recognition. I found it to be color accurate and handled background lighting surprisingly well. Some details, like my facial hair, were a little bit soft, but overall it offers good clarity and vocal pick-up from its mics. Biometric login was also the most reliable I've found on a laptop yet. Essentially, as long as its IR sensor could see my eyes, it worked, glasses or no glasses. Asus Zenbook S 16 Review - Software The Zenbook S 16 uses the MyAsus app for configuration, troubleshooting, registration and warranty access, and keeping the laptop up to date. It's a far cry from most gaming software suites I've seen, even Asus's own Armoury Crate, but it provides you with all of the options you would expect. Just don't go looking for fancy lighting effects or recording macros to the keyboard because those options are nowhere to be found. The Zenbook S 16 is a productivity and creation laptop and the options are presented a bit more simply as a result. It gives you access to just about everything you'll need, from performance mode (fan profile), to the presentation of the screen, to EQ and volume, and even the pickup pattern of the microphone. It is fairly full-featured with plenty of options for just about everything short of overclocking. One feature I especially liked is its ability to diagnose different problems you may encounter. You can either run a whole system diagnostic, break it down into specific components, or simply choose a common problem you may be experiencing. My system didn't have any issues during testing to experience how accurate and effective it may be, but it's the kind of consumer-friendly feature that could be very helpful for users that are less tech savvy. Asus Zenbook S 16 Review - Performance The Zenbook S 16 is a fantastic laptop with plenty of power for most applications. It can even handle some gaming if you don't mind turning down some settings and playing at a lower resolution. The Ryzen 9 HX 370 processor does the work, even if its AI features really don't come into play most of the time, and does so consuming less power than many competing high performance processors. In its highest performance mode, it runs at a maximum of 33W. The chip itself is specced up to a 54W by AMD, so Asus made a deliberate decision to keep the power draw lower for quieter performance and longer battery life. It's likely that we'll see other laptops using this chip that fully leverage its TDP and push performance even higher. To test the performance of the laptop, I ran it through our usual sequence of synthetic tests and real world gaming benchmarks. Since most of what we test here are gaming laptops with dedicated GPUs, the comparison here isn't 1:1 with most of the competitors we've benchmarked. In comparison, I chose the recent Samsung Galaxy Book 4 and another recent thin and light laptop with a similar AMD chip, the Asus TUF Gaming A14. A couple of salient points before taking a closer look at gaming. First, the PCMark 10 benchmark. This is a whole system test that leans heavily on the processor. The S 16 is exceptionally close, near the margin of error, to the Asus TUF Gaming 14 despite using about 25% less power. Compared to the Galaxy Book 4, running Qualcomm's new Snapdragon CPU, it outperforms it in all but battery life. But, as is clear from the many instances of programs not running, compatibility is still leagues better on a dedicated x86 processor. For gaming performance, I chose to compare it with several of the gaming handhelds out today. While they're different form factors, the specs on many of these handhelds are quite competitive with the S 16. Since they're essentially just tiny laptops with a gamepad instead of a keyboard, and expectations of their performance are more widely understood, the comparison is apt. Not to mention, this gives us a peek into what kind of performance we can expect from handhelds using the HX 370 in the future. All of our gaming tests are conducted at max settings, including ray tracing, with FSR on Balanced mode. This provides a useful basis for comparing relative performance but it isn't how you should expect to play most games. At 1600p ultra settings, frame rates are mostly too low to be playable. At 1200p, the 16:10 equivalent of 1080p, they become more so. Hitman 3 even manages to average 60 fps. Still, the gains are a bit closer than I was hoping. In fact, they're close enough that you could say the performance is close to the same for gaming. But, for an ultrabook, these results indicate that the HX 370 is capable of gaming by trading off some graphics features. They're also exciting for laptops and handhelds that are able to dial up the wattage to achieve even better performance. Realistically speaking, you'll want to adjust these settings to achieve the best frame rates and turn on AMD's Fluid Motion Frames (FMF) whenever it makes sense to do so. You should also plan on playing at 1200p, which still looks good on this display. Like anything with integrated graphics, you have to find the balance between visual and frame rate. Cyberpunk 2077 might not be playable at Ray Tracing: Ultra, but dropping to Medium boosted that to 44 fps. Turning on FMF bumped that to 50 to 69 depending on how busy the scene was. Hitman 3 ranged from 84 to 120 with Fluid Motion Frames. Total War: Warhammer III was able to achieve 43 fps on low. Performance can be bumped further by dropping the resolution another step to 1680 x 1050, though the image does become softer and I wouldn't recommend it without adding image sharpening from the AMD Radeon software. The S 16 is also a great machine for cloud gaming. Its processor is powerful enough, and its wireless networking fast enough, to support the highest tiers of GeForce Now. I spent many an evening playing Baldur's Gate over the cloud and finishing up my playthrough of Still Wakes the Deep on Xbox Cloud Gaming. These services worked flawlessly with the S 16. For day to day use, it worked very well. It started up quickly and ran smoothly for all of my productivity. This included Google Sheets and Google Docs, as well as the Microsoft Office suite. The large touchpad was especially nice for quick navigation. Browsing different websites and managing emails were also seamless and hitch free. The battery life is also good, though isn't quite as impressive as I had hoped. In the Procyon Office Battery test, it lasted 13 hours and 37 minutes. In normal use throughout the day, allowing it to turn off the display when I was inactive, I found that it lasted about 11 hours on average. The included charger isn't bulky at all, however, so I didn't have any issue plugging it in when it started to run short on the second work day. The system runs very quietly. Even when its fans are on full blast, it produces a fraction of the sound a typical gaming laptop does. It's audible but didn't bother my wife on the other end of the couch as I enjoyed some evening gaming. The biggest issue is that the chassis can get uncomfortably hot. Both vent areas became so warm that I avoided touching them wherever possible. This wasn't an issue in the Standard or Whisper modes, but for playing games with higher performance settings or running intensive tasks like longer 4K video renders, I learned to have something else on my lap underneath it, or to just use a desk. The final thing to note is just how capable it was for creative work. I do a lot of photo editing for my job and edit a fair amount of 4K video. Working in Adobe Photoshop was seamless, even when adding multiple layers and integrating AI fills and neural filters. Rendering videos in Premiere Pro was also fast, though the MacBook Pro certainly wins out with lowering rendering times. Still, renders were quicker than I expected without a dedicated GPU to accelerate the process and didn't leave me feeling handicapped compared to my beefier desktop PC.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) GA605 review

PC Gamer's got your back Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware. The ROG Zephyrus G16 is a lovely thing. A 16-inch laptop with an aluminium chassis, vibrant OLED screen and genuinely decent speaker system -- it's easy to see why it's coveted by so many. Though we've reviewed this laptop before and come to much the same conclusion, before me sits a new model. This is the G16 GA605, and it comes with a new AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 processor inside it. I've run through what's new in AMD's Ryzen AI 300-series in greater detail in my recent story all about testing AMD's Strix Point chip. But let me quickly break it down for you here: Got all that? A great deal of new silicon stuffed inside one monolithic mobile processor, that's for sure, and it shows when it comes to the benchmarks as we'll get to shortly. But let's look at the Zephyrus G16 itself. It offers a thin chassis for a 16-inch laptop, which even at its thickest point including the rubber feet, by my own measurements, is just 2 cm thick. It tapers down to a thickness much thinner than that, though. It also weighs just 1.8 kg, which is great considering its 16-inch size. The G16 is slim and light enough to slip into my backpack without much of a second thought. I've taken it to and from the office and once found myself checking I hadn't been robbed on the bus because my backpack felt suspiciously light. Not to worry, it was still there -- I managed to avoid a very awkward conversation with Asus -- though this laptop was light enough to make me second guess myself. For a regular traveller that lightweight frame is awfully appealing. The chassis is made possible through the use of LPDDR5X memory. This is a type of RAM we more often expect to find in office thin-and-light laptops, though increasingly it is becoming commonplace in gaming devices, namely handheld gaming PCs but also some thinner gaming laptops, such as this. The reason it's not so frequently used in gaming machines is due to the fact it's non-replaceable -- or at the very least non-replaceable without some industrial soldering techniques. You can't just replace the RAM in this laptop yourself. The non-replaceable RAM is definitely one of the bigger downsides to the G16. The 32 GB capacity is more than enough for my uses and I'm unlikely to want to upgrade that down the line, but I know opinion swings wildly person-to-person on this. I said the same thing in my Zephyrus G14 (2024) review, as both new models have fully soldered memory. That said, whereas the G14 only has a single NVMe slot and it comes occupied by the boot drive, the G16 comes with a spare. Phew. That saves a lot of hassle when upgrading the storage capacity on this thing, which isn't bad out of the box at 2 TB but could always be bigger. Removing the underside of the laptop is a bit of a pain, as the clips holding the rear on are quite stiff, though with a bit of luck and muscle you'll do alright. There are a few areas where the G16 is surprisingly stellar. One is the speaker system, complete with reasonably large woofers (for a laptop). To avoid relitigating Andy's ROG Zephyrus G16 review for the RTX 4090/Intel Meteor Lake model, I'll instead broadly agree with his sentiment: "these are actually surprisingly punchy. While I wouldn't go as far as to say they could replace a portable Bluetooth unit, unlike most laptop speakers I've heard they actually have some genuinely meaningful bass and mid-range, enough to give you a bit of a kick underneath your wrists when listening to music or cranking up the game audio." Well said, Andy. Another area of excellence is the trackpad. Obviously it's huge, at 15 x 10 cm, but it's hella responsive too. My only complaint here is that the deadzone for the physical trackpad click is quite large, at around 1.5 cm from the top of the trackpad, though it isn't such an issue on a trackpad of this size. The OLED screen is another highlight. It's a Nebula Display, according to Asus, which is a fancy name for a 16:10, 240 Hz glossy OLED. Whatever you want to call it, it's gorgeous for gaming. What I find more than anything is how much I appreciate the larger 16-inch screen size when playing competitive shooters, which this speedy 0.2 ms panel is well cut-out for. The 14-inch panel is convenient as all heck but 16-inch feels like a much more natural fit for FPS gaming. What's left to comment on but the GPU? Usually the star of the show, the RTX 40-series is a well-known quantity by now. This laptop comes with an RTX 4070 rated to 105 W. That's lower than some we've tested, including the Gigabyte Aorus 16X at 140 W and Lenovo Legion 7i 16 Gen 9 at 130 W. The slimmer power budget does make a difference when it comes to game performance, as you can see in the charts below. The G16 can be anywhere between less than 1% slower and 10% slower than the Lenovo Legion 7i, despite containing the same GPU. The Legion does come with a beefier Intel CPU, however. The G16's power-savvy RTX 4070 does have the benefit of allowing for quieter, less intensive cooling. It's also a boon to battery. However, Asus has trimmed down the G16's thickness to such an extent that this RTX 4070 actually runs hotter than most we've tested. That's despite three fans and liquid metal from Thermal Grizzly. That's not really a massive surprise, but it shows you're paying for this laptop's thin chassis in more ways than one. This model with an RTX 4070 inside it is is preferable to the alternative, which is an RTX 4060. The RTX 4060 will age quicker and you're stuck with your choice of chip in any gaming laptop. You could buy an RTX 4070 gaming laptop from another manufacturer for less than the price of either model of G16, too -- so I'm not sure there's really a 'budget option' to be had here. Stick with the RTX 4070 and you'll go just fine, however. But it's time to face the music. Pricing is a big factor in the gaming laptop biz, and Asus knows it has a competitive package in the G16, even compared to stalwart premium models from Razer. It's asking for $2,300 for our American friends, and while I'm yet to find a specific listing, I'm told it will start out at £2,400 in the UK. That's a lot of cash, even by gaming laptop standards. I can see where the money goes, and compared to premium offerings from Razer and the larger 16-inch Blade models, the G16 is not that expensive. Though you are undeniably paying for that luscious chassis, sleek form factor and gorgeous screen. That feels a fair deal, and this sensible RTX 4070 and Ryzen AI combo more so than the slightly absurd RTX 4090/14900HS model our Andy reviewed initially. No doubt if I could pick any gaming laptop to buy with a view to working across both my gaming and work lives, it'd be the Zephyrus G16. And in this exact spec -- shame I'll have to send it back almost imminently, then, isn't it?