A few years ago, there was a moment when I felt like the only thing that could make the Steam Deck better was if it would ditch Linux for Windows. That turned out to be one heck of a monkey’s paw. As soon as competing handhelds flooded the market, all equipped with Microsoft’s OS, I realized exactly why Valve didn’t go in that direction. Windows is a total pain to navigate in devices like the Legion Go for countless reasons. The Steam Deck was protecting me from myself all this time.
So forgive me if I was a little skeptical when Microsoft revealed the ROG Xbox Ally. While I used to dream of a portable device like this that was built around Xbox Game Pass, I was filled with some mild dread when the big day finally came. I just didn’t want to struggle with another Windows handheld. Thankfully, Asus and Microsoft have seemingly read the room. Following the device’s announcement at the Xbox Games Showcase, Digital Trends went hands-on with the handheld and learned much more about its internals. The good news? All of the pesky parts of Windows have been cut out in favor of a more focused gaming device.
The most important thing I learned is that this isn’t simply a regular ROG Ally with an Xbox logo slapped on the box. Sure, its guts may have some similarities, but key parts of it have been rebuilt. That starts with the design, as the Xbox Ally trades in rounded edges for traditional controller grips to bring the device more in line with a gamepad. That puts it somewhere between a ROG Ally and a PlayStation Portal in terms of comfort. Impulse triggers further soup the package up, which is a nice touch. The only problem is that it’s quite heavy. Even after no more than 10 minutes holding it up, I could definitely feel some strain forming in my wrist.
There are plenty of specs to pour over here, including the pricier Xbox Ally X’s Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme or its 120Hz display, but the most important thing about it is that Windows has been entirely redesigned for it. Microsoft has taken a page out of Valve’s playbook and crafted its own bespoke gaming UI here. The main menu is similar to that of the Steam Deck’s showing off all recently played games in a tidy little row. Any games downloaded on the device will show up in the UI, so it isn’t only compatible with Game Pass titles. It’s an all-in-one approach to PC gaming under an Xbox branding.
The best part of that is that Microsoft has slashed how many pieces of Windows runs while that view is open. Anything that’s not necessary to gaming simply won’t be active, so you won’t have to worry about the calendar app suddenly taking you out of games. That’s an enormous improvement, as the unwieldy nature of handheld Windows often makes these devices so cumbersome to use. Even the sign in UI has been redesigned and built around controller support, with key features like Wi-Fi accessible with some simple controller clicks. Players can still launch a normal version of Windows, but it’s no longer the default experience when booting the system up.
It’s not just about cutting out some minor annoyances; slashing these features saves 2GB. It makes the machine far more efficient, which finally makes gaming on a portable version of Windows more viable. In my demo, I’d play a small slice of Gears of War: Reloaded, which ran shockingly well considering that it’s a fairly robust remaster. I didn’t have enough time with the system to do a full benchmark test, but I was getting a much clearer image at a stable framerate than I would have expected. Xbox even plans to make it easy to tell how well games can run on it with its own version of Steam Deck’s verification system. The plan is now just to tell people if a game can run on the handheld, but how well it runs too.
Asus’ goal here is to streamline the UI all around and it goes a long way. For instance, I can press the Xbox logo on the left side of the device to pull up a pop-up menu that features just about everything I’d need in an Xbox experience. Even better is that the menu also includes Asus’ Armoury Crate app rather than siloing it off into a separate menu. That’s a small consideration, but it’s one that condenses every key menu in one place. I’ll no longer have to fumble around separate menus to find whatever thing I’m looking to tweak or access.
I only got a short introduction to the handheld, which wasn’t nearly enough time to test its power or see how thoroughly it catalogues games from any service into the Xbox interface. Part of me still feels like there must be some sort of hidden trade off that comes with slashing Windows down. Every portable device has some kind of catch and I’m sure we’ll discover the Xbox Ally’s in due time. For now though, I’m optimistic that Asus has fixed the biggest problem with its devices and invented a viable alternative to SteamOS. If this works as well as it seems to, I imagine that Microsoft may salvage its handheld reputation just yet.
The Windows-11 powered Xbox Ally devices promise access to “all of the games available on Windows,” including “games from Xbox, Game Pass, Battle.net, and other leading PC storefronts [read: Steam, Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect, etc].” But instead of having to install and boot up those games through the stock Windows interface, as you often do on handhelds like the original ROG Ally line, all these games will be available through what Microsoft is calling an “aggregated gaming library.”
Microsoft promises an “integrated library” can be used to access Windows games across a variety of launchers.
Credit:
Microsoft
A tap of the Xbox button brings up the Game Bar for quick access to many functions and settings.
Credit:
Microsoft
Asus and Microsoft are stressing how that integrated experience can be used with games across multiple different Windows-based launchers, promising “access to games to can’t get elsewhere.” That could be seen as a subtle dig at SteamOS-powered devices like the Steam Deck which can have significant trouble with certain titles that don’t play well with Steam and/or Linux for one reason or another. Microsoft also highlights how support apps like Discord, Twitch, and downloadable game mods will also be directly available via the Xbox Ally’s Windows backbone.
Brash and bold has been the signature trait of Asus’ ROG line-up of gaming laptops for years. With the ROG Strix Scar 18, Asus took that formula, gave it the bleeding edge silicon treatment and added a dash of upgradability, without compromising a bit on the gamer aesthetics.
There’s still plenty of RGB fun here, and the cool AniMe Vision LED matrix on the display is here to stay. You can’t mistake this 8-inch behemoth for any other laptop out there. Of course, performance is why you’re splurging on this laptop, and you get just that by the oodles. But there are more reasons to get this machine than meets the eye.
Hello, ease of upgrades!
One of the biggest advantages of investing in a gaming laptop, especially a big and bulky one, is the upgrade flexibility. Yet, it’s not always convenient. And definitely not without its own set of risks. I learnt that lesson the hard way.
Asus
About four years ago, I tried to upgrade my Asus ROG Zephyrus GA502, one of the slimmest and lightest gaming laptops back then. I ended up breaking the latches and few other plastic bits flew, while the screws could never fully go back in place. In retrospect, I should’ve read the manual, but at the same time, removing the back panel shouldn’t have been an exercise in fragility.
The latest iteration of the ROG Strix SCAR 18 solves that dilemma for anyone who is interested in DIY upgrades but lacks the nimble hands of a seasoned electronics repair guy. The hefty gaming laptop from Asus goes for a tool-less design, which lets you replace the storage and RAM modules in a few seconds.
Thanks to the next-gen Q-Latch engineering, which is a mainstay on Asus’ desktop motherboards, users can easily access the RAM, SSD, and fans without requiring screen drivers. “A specially designed frame covers the rest of the mainboard to protect the other components, but can easily be removed with a few screws for users who want to tinker further,” says Asus.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Also, both the SSD slots can take PCIe Gen 5 modules, so it’s pretty future-proof, as well. We love to see the focus on designs that ease repair and replacement, and it’s great to see Asus following in the footsteps of Framework, even if these are baby steps.
Dazzling, in the right ways
This one is an unabashedly gaming brute, which means it matches all the braws with the most outlandish gamer-pleasing aesthetics you will find on a gaming laptop. In addition to the per-key RGB lighting flexibility for your keyboard, you get an RGB strip that surrounds the entirety of the base.
Think of those flashy JDM rides that light up the motorway. But if you look closely at the lid, it’s not just the backlit logo that stands out. Asus has equipped the ROG Strix Scar 18 with a secondary dot-screen that is made up of 810 LEDs bleeding light through over nine thousand tiny holes.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Asus calls it the Anime Vision display, and in the true spirit of gaming customizability, this secondary screen can dance to your creative tunes. Flash your name across it, put up a fun GIF, or animate any other image of your choice. Just make it fun, will ya?
Talking about display, the 18-inch QHD+ (2560 x 1600) panel is nothing short of a visual treat on this one. It’s a mini-LED panel, the same tech that you will come across on the MacBook Pro. In a nutshell, it’s gorgeous, thanks to deep contrast, wide viewing angles, and stunning color reproduction.
It offers nearly double the sustained SDR brightness compared to its Apple counterpart, and also beats it at contrast levels, based on lab tests. Overall, if you’re eyeing creative work where color accuracy matters, the ROG warrior fares better than the MacBook Pro in our sRGB, AdobeRGB, and DCI-P3 color gamut coverage tests.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Oh, this vibrant panel is pretty fast too, thanks to the 240Hz refresh rate. “For gamers, it promises outstanding high dynamic range (HDR) performance along with a super fast refresh rate that supports Nvidia G-Sync for tear-free gaming,” says Digital Trends’ review of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18. Another underrated perk? There’s also an IR camera atop the display for Windows Hello facial recognition.
You want performance? Cool!
Digital Trends’ reviews expert, Mark Coppock, labeled the ROG Strix Scar 18 as “very large, and very awesome, gaming laptop.” This machine certainly has the substance to go with its flashy looks. Lots of it, actually.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Asus will let you max this one out with Nvidia’s top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 5090 GPU, though you can pick up configurations with the RT 5070 Ti and the RTX 5080 graphics cards. Running the processing duties is Intel’s Core Ultra 9 275HX, a beastly 24-core Arrow Lake chip and a peak clock speed of 5.4 GHz.
On synthetic tests, it fared better than AMD’s Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 silicon, and expectedly outpaced its Core-i9 predecessor. On the PugetBench Premiere Pro benchmark, it even raced past Apple’s mighty M4 Max processor.
Of course, you’re buying this beast to play games, so let’s get into it. The Blackwell 5000-series GPU in this machine is loaded to the neck with upscaling and frame generation tech, and coupled with the DLSS4 goodness, you are assured of immersive visuals in games.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Playing Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra presets and ray-tracing enabled, this machine provides an average 70fps output, while Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1600p resolution and Ultra graphics settings maintains a respectable 87fps output. Playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at 1440p resolution and Ultra High settings managed a cool 122fps.
This machine also maintains its cool under stress. Asus has fitted an end-to-end vapor chamber, assisted by liquid cooling (on both the CPU and GPU), triple cooling fans, and plenty of vents on the ROG Strix Scar 18. Thankfully, the fans won’t hurt your ear canals to the point of shutting down the lid and escaping the desk.
I’ve reviewed two laptops running both Intel’s Arrow Lake-HX chipsets and Nvidia’s second-fastest Blackwell GPU, the GeForce RTX 5080. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i and Asus ROG Strix SCAR 18 are both very impressive gaming laptops, but they’re also very expensive at over $3,000.
What if you want something that’s a little more affordable? That’s where the Asus ROG Strix G16 comes in, running AMD’s very fast Ryzen 9 9955HX3D chipset and Nvidia’s midrange RTX 5070 Ti. It’s fast as well, but it doesn’t have the outstanding displays of the other two and so it’s a bit harder to recommend even at its lower price.
Specs and configurations
Asus ROG Strix G16
Dimensions
13.94 x 10.39 x 0.89-1.20 inches
Weight
5.51 pounds
Processor
AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D
Graphics
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
RAM
32GB DDR5-5600
Display
16.0-inch 16:10 QHD+ (2560 x 1600) IPS, 240Hz
Storage
1TB SSD
Touch
No
Ports
2 x USB4
2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2
1 x HDMI 2.1
1 x 1G RJ45
1 x 3.5mm audio
The Asus web store still several ROG Strix G16 configurations as unavailable. The base model is $2,400 for an AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU, and a 16.0-inch QHD+ IPS display. Opting for the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D chipset raises the price to $2,500. That’s the configuration that I reviewed, and both of those models are currently out of stock. The one configuration that can be purchased includes a slower AMD Ryzen 9 8940HX chipset and costs $2,000.
Those are okay prices for a very fast gaming laptop. You’ll compromise on the display, as we’ll see below, and the midrange GPU is a bit slower, but you’ll have to spend a lot more to get something faster.
Design
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
At first glance, the ROG Strix G16 bears a strong resemblance to the much larger Asus ROG Strix SCAR 18 that I previously reviewed. At least, it does if you focus on the per-key RGB backlighting on the keyboard and the row of RGB LEDs that light up the front of the laptop. Looking more closely at the rest of the chassis, though, the smaller machine has its own aesthetic. To begin with, it doesn’t have the Asus AniMe Vision LEDs on the lid, which is a lot simpler on the ROG Strix G16 with just a subdued logo. There’s aggressive geometric venting on the back, along with more vents along the sides. That makes the smaller laptop more minimalist in some ways, while also coming across with a slightly more aggressive gamer look.
The lid is offset a bit from the rear, as you’ll find in many larger laptops. Inset along the inside rear edge are a set of speakers and some anachronistic LEDs that show power and storage accesses. That’s unusual today and, really, I found the blinking light distracting. We’re really not so worried today about shutting down a laptop before data is written, compared to when we were relying on much slower spinning disks. Overall, I think the aesthetic is good for gamers, but anyone who’s looking for a less ostentatious design will want to consider something like the very MacBook-like Razer Blade 16.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The ROG Strix G16 is constructed of plastic in the external chassis and aluminum in the lid, which is fine. Interestingly, the lid is a little flexible, but the bottom chassis and keyboard deck are plenty stiff. Some users might prefer a more premium feel, as with the Razer Blade 16, but it’s not a significant concern. I suppose the plastic does keep the palm rests cooler than if they were aluminum, which is a plus.
Unsurprisingly, this is a very thick laptop at up to 1.2 inches, and it’s very heavy at 5.51 pounds. The top and side display bezels are thin, but the bottom chin is quite large. That makes the ROG Strix G16 a very large laptop in all dimensions. It’s a bit to carry around, especially when you include the very large power brick.
Of course, Asus built in a robust cooling system. There’s Asus’s Tri-Fan technology, full-width heatsink and Condoctonaut Extreme liquid metal. Combined with the copious venting, the laptop is able to keep the internals reasonably cool with some serious fan noise when the laptop is working particularly hard.
Keyboard and touchpad
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
Unlike many gaming laptops, the ROG Strix G16’s version doesn’t have a numeric keypad. That’s a strange omission given that many gamers like to bind those keys to macros. It does make for a more spacious keyboard for non-gamers, with large keycaps and springy switches that make for comfortable typing. With other gaming laptops, I typically say that it’s a great keyboard for gamers but not for writers. The opposite is true here, which might not be the best choice given the laptop’s intended target.
The touchpad is okay, being a large enough mechanical version. It’s better than the touchpad on the ROG Strix SCAR 18, which had buttons that were hard to reliably engage. This one’s fine, but I suspect most gamers will choose to use a dedicated gaming mouse.
Connectivity and webcam
Large, 16-inch laptops that are this thick and heavy typically have a lot of connectivity. The ROG Strix G16 is good enough, with a couple of fast USB4 ports to go with a selection of legacy ports. There’s an Ethernet port for anyone who wants to connect directly to a router and avoid wireless latency. It’s not the most connectivity I’ve seen in a gaming laptop, but it’s fine. The wireless connectivity is one generation behind, which might disappoint some users.
The webcam is okay at 1080p, which is the new baseline. Videoconferencing clearly isn’t a focus of this machine, but it’s serviceable. There’s no fingerprint reader or infrared camera, so you’ll be limited to typing in a PIN to login.
Performance
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
So far, I’ve reviewed a couple of gaming laptops with the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX chipset, the latest high-end part that’s aimed at gaming and other performance-intensive tasks. But it’s not alone. There’s also the AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D, which is perhaps even faster for gamers thanks to several unique features. To begin with, the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D is a 16-core/32-thread part built on the Zen 5 architecture. That compares to the Core Ultra 9 275HX that has more cores at 24 but is single-threaded. Both run at up to 5.8GHz, and both consume 55 watts of base power with the AMD chipset bursting to 130 watts and the Intel chipset up to 160 watts. The CPU can get up to 110 watts and the GPU can get up to 140 watts, but in total, the ROG Strix G16 maxes out at 195 watts. That’s considerably less than the 250 watts the ROG Strix SCAR 18 can provide.
The Ryzen 9 55HX3D’s hyper threading optimizes parallel tasks, while the 3D V-Cache architecture reduces memory latency and thus boosts gaming performance. That’s particularly true at 1080p, but 3D V-Cache makes the AMD chipset faster at gaming across the board. It also performs well in various CPU-intensive tasks, but the Core ultra 9 275HX is faster overall thanks to its higher core count.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
In our suite of non-gaming benchmarks, the ROG Strix G16 fell behind the Asus ROG Strix SCAR 18 and Lenovo Legion Pro 7i running the Intel chipset. Single-core speeds are similar, while multi-core tasks favor the Intel-based laptops. Interestingly, the ROG Strix G16 was faster in the Pugetbench for Photoshop benchmark, that runs in a live version of Adobe’s application. That attests to the impact of the CPU in photo editing tasks where the slower RTX 5070 Ti wasn’t as important. In the Pugetbench for Premiere Pro benchmark, however, the ROG Strix G16 fell behind. In video editing, the faster GPU is more of an advantage.
If you care about non-gaming performance, then, the ROG Strix G16 won’t be quite as fast. But it will still be very fast, particularly for photo editors, making it a solid choice.
Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 9 (Core i9-14900H / RTX 4090)
1,873 / 13,175
71
117 / 916 / 8,873
9,122
N/A
6,622
Asus ROG Strix 18 (Core i9-14900HX / RTX 4090)
2,946 / 17,622
N/A
Bal: 124 / 1,533 / 22,067
N/A
7,430
N/A
Asus ROG Flow Z13 (Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 / Radeon 8060S)
2,993 / 20,659
36
121 / 1,568 / NA
N/A
7,250
7,250
Alienware m16 R2 (Core Ultra 7 155H / RTX 4070)
2,366 / 12,707
N/A
103 / 1,040 / 10,884
7,028
5,590
5,590
Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M4 Max 16/40)
3,626 / 25,332
48
179 /2,072 / 16,463
N/A
9,347
13,856
Gaming
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
In terms of its gaming performance, the ROG Strix G16 made a strong showing. While its Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti naturally fell behind the RTX 5080 in the other two gaming machines, it still performed admirably. Probably, the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D helped out here, balancing the drop in GPU performance with an overall boost from the AMD chipset. As I’ve noted in those other reviews, the Nvidia Blackwell 5000-series GPUs are aimed more at improving image quality via AI-powered processes like DLSS 4, upscaling, and frame generation. There’s something of an uptick in framerates compared to the previous generation, but it’s not remarkable — at least with the current state of drivers and game optimizations.
Asus includes the same Armoury Crate utility as in the larger machine, and it provides the same fine control over various CPU and GPU settings. I ran each benchmark in various performance modes, and I reported the results in the fastest Turbo mode. I also tried out the option to optimize the GPU, but I didn’t find that setting to make a difference. In fact, some scores were reduced, so I kept it at the default setting for most of these tests. If you want to optimize the laptop for various uses, Armoury Crate provides most of the settings you’ll require.
In terms of performance, we’ll start with the 3DMark Time Spy synthetic benchmark. Here, the ROG Strix G16 is much faster than the MSI Creator Z17 HX Studio running the RTX 4070, again likely benefiting as well from the much faster AMD chipset. It’s behind the two other modern laptops, but it’s faster than the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 with an RTX 4080 and closer Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 with the RTX 4090.
Looking at the individual titles we use due to their built-in (and therefore more objective) real-world benchmarks, the ROG Strix G16 performs very well. It benefits from its fast CPU in the Civilization VI test running at 1600p Ultra, beating out every previous-generation laptop in our comparison group. The same holds true in Cyperbunk 2077 at 1600p Ultra RT (ray tracing), Red Dead Redemption 1600p Ultra, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 1600p Ultra High.
Ultimately, you can game at 1440p or better on the ROG Strix G16 with graphics turned up, and if a title supports Blackwell, you’ll enjoy incredible image quality as well.
MSI Creator Z17 HX Studio (Core i9-13950HX / RTX 4070)
11,630
157 fps
N/A
N/A
73 fps
Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (2023) (Core i9-13900HX / RTX 4080)
18,382
223 fps
45 fps
99 fps
126 fps
Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 9 (Core i9-14900H / RTX 4090)
20,293
N/A
88 fps
N/A
N/A
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (Core i9-13900H / RTX 4090)
18,372
191 fps
N/A
99 fps
N/A
Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 (Core i7-13800H / RTX 4080)
13,615
170 fps
57 fps
N/A
N/A
Asus ROG Flow Z13 (Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 / Radeon 8060S)
10,532
88 fps
N/A
73 fps
67 fps
Battery life
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
There’s a 90-watt battery packed away inside the ROG Strix G16, and that’s only a little smaller than some that offer the maximum that can be put into a laptop — 100 watts. There’s a high-res IPS display and very powerful components, so I wasn’t expecting great battery life.
In our suite of battery tests, the ROG Strix G16 lasted for 4.75 hours in our web browsing test and five hours in our video looping test. In our most demanding test, looping the Cinebench R24 multi-core test, the laptop couldn’t quite hit two hours. Those are actually better results than many gaming laptops that barely make it to two hours. It means that you can get some work done without being plugged in, but you’ll want to run with the power brick connected when gaming or doing serious creative work.
Display and audio
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The ROG Strix G16 is built around a 16.0-inch 16:10 QHD+ (2560 x 1600) IPS display that runs at up to 240Hz. Subjectively, it looks fine, although it’s a significant drop down after reviewing the spectacular mini-LED display on the ROG Strix SCAR 18. It’s not as bright and the colors aren’t as dynamic.
According to the Datacolor SpyderPro colorimeter I use to evaluate displays, this one’s a mixed bag. First, it’s not very bright at just 248 nits — one of the few displays I’ve reviewed in the last couple of years that fails to hit our 300-nit baseline. That’s going to limit its effectiveness in running HDR content (which, although the specs indicate Dolby Vision support, can’t actually be switched on in Windows Settings). Contrast is very good for IPS, though, at 1,600:1. Colors are wide at 100% of sRGB, 89% of AdobeRGB, and 100% of DCI-P3, well above the IPS average. But, they’re not very accurate at a DeltaE of 3.79. Most IPS displays today come in at less than 2.0. And, unusually, the gamma is way off at 3.0, which is a lot darker than the optimal 2.2 gamma.
Overall, this isn’t a terribly impressive display. In fact, I’d say It’s one of the compromises you’ll make to squeeze in so much power at well under $3,000.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The audio is just okay, with four speakers including two woofers. But as with the keyboard and touchpad, you’ll probably want to consider plugging something in.
Less money, less performance, a lesser display
The ROG Strix G16 is plenty fast for most gamers, with the AMD chipset and Nvidia midrange GPU providing a real boost for modern titles. They’ll look good, as well, with support for Blackwell’s various AI-driven features. And the laptop has a good gaming aesthetic and a solid enough build.
But, the display disappoints a bit, even at the $2,500 price. It should be brighter and the colors should be more accurate, the latter weakness limiting the ROG Strix G16’s usefulness to the creators who would also appreciate the laptop’s speed.
I’ve now reviewed my second laptop built around Intel’s newest Arrow Lake-HX chipset and Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU architecture. The first, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i, was very fast and lived up to the hype, while being a very large 16-inch gaming laptop with some nice aesthetic flair.
The second is the Asus ROG Strix SCAR 18, and it’s even larger, with a spectacular 18-inch mini-LED display that’s the best one I’ve reviewed yet. It’s also very fast, although a tiny bit behind, and it, too, offers up a lot to gamers looking for a great, kind of portable gaming machine.
The ROG Strix SCAR 18 will be available in a few configurations, only some of which are available as this review is being written. The base model will include an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX chipset, which is common to all configurations, along with 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, a 16.0-inch QHD+ mini-LED display (the only option), and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti. Upgrading to an RTX 5080 and a 2TB SSD brings the price to $3,400, while an RTX 5090 boosts the price to $4,500.
Those are expensive prices, but of course, you get a lot of gaming laptop. It’s a lot more expensive than the Legion Pro 7i, which comes in at $3,399 with a Core Ultra 9 275HX, 32GB of RAM, two 1TB SSDs, the RTX 5080, and a 16.0-inch QHD+ OLED display. But I imagine much of that price difference is down to the larger and very good mini-LED panel that Asus is using with the ROG Strix SCAR 18.
Design
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
There’s no way around it: the ROG Strix SCAR 18 is a very large laptop. Of course, packing so much power into a chassis that also needs to house an 18.0-inch display would be pretty hard to do and keep things svelte at the same time. The Razer Blade 18 is a little thinner at 1.1 inches versus 1.26 inches, and lighter at 7.06 pounds versus 7.28 pounds. But these 18-inch gaming laptops are just big. You’ll have to deal with it if you want such a large display that can be carried around in one piece.
The ROG Strix SCAR 18 is constructed of a mix of materials, including aluminum in the keyboard deck and plastic in the bottom chassis and lid. It’s solid enough, with no bending, flexing, or twisting. I’m sure the Razer Blade 18 might come across as better made, given Razer’s devotion to make the most MacBook Pro-like gaming laptops. But there’s nothing wrong with Asus’s construction.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
In terms of its aesthetics, the ROG Strix SCAR 18 incorporates most of the things gamers want to see in their machines. First, there’s plenty of RGB lighting, including the per-key RGB lighting on the keyboard, the full-surround RGD LED’s lining the underside of the chassis all the way around, and the large ROG logo on the lid that pulses according to what’s setup in the Armoury Crate utility. And the white Asus AniMe Vision LEDs on the lid are quite striking, showing a variety of present and custom messages that flow like a high-tech ticker tape.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
At the same time, the overall design doesn’t include some of the more aggressive gamer touches like jet fighter exhaust venting on the back. The vents on the ROG Strix SCAR 18 are more pedestrian and functional, and neither add to nor detract from the overall gamer aesthetic. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i has RGB LED lighting around its fighter jet exhausts and it looks pretty cool. The ROG Strix SCAR 18 lacks those kinds of touches. Whether that matters will be down to individual tastes.
Overall, I like the design. Yes, it’s large and bulky, but like I said, that’s really unavoidable.
Keyboard and touchpad
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The ROG Strix SCAR 18 keyboard is a bit of a mixed bag. As mentioned above, it has per-key RGB lighting that looks great. And it’s pretty expansive, even with the numeric keypad for macro binding in various games. If found the keycaps oddly small, though, which made it harder than necessary to keep my fingers on home row. And the switches are deep and springy enough for gaming, but not quite as satisfying as I like. I didn’t really enjoy typing this review on the keyboard, but gamers will probably find it good enough, if not the best they’ve used.
The touchpad was disappointing. It’s large, but the buttons weren’t very responsive. I took to using an external mouse because I found myself repeatedly trying to click to get things done, and it was frustrating. Most gamers will use gaming mice, so that’s probably not as much of an issue. But it’s certainly not a strength.
Connectivity and webcam
There’s plenty of connectivity, with a mix of ultramodern Thunderbolt 5 ports and legacy connections. That includes a 2.5G RJ45 Ethernet port, which will be appreciated for those who don’t want to game wirelessly. My biggest complaint is that all the ports are on the side, where putting them on the back would keep them out of the way. Wireless connectivity is fully up-to-date.
The webcam is a 1080p version, and it’s fine. It has an infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition, which I appreciate. The Arrow Lake-HX chipset doesn’t have a fast Neural Processing Unit (NPU), and so the ROG Strix SCAR 18 isn’t a Microsoft Copilot+ PC laptop. That’s probably fine, because if you want to use this laptop for AI processing, you’ll want to use the incredibly fast Nvidia Blackwell GPU.
Performance
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
This is just the second laptop I’ve reviewed with Intel’s Arrow Lake-HX chipset, the Core Ultra 9 275HX. It has 24 cores (eight Performance and 16 Efficient), running at up to 5.4 GHz and consuming 55 watts of power, boosting to a maximum of 160 watts. Asus gives it up to 65 watts in its configuration. The Core Ultra 9 275HX is a very fast chipset, with slightly faster cores that result in slightly faster multi-core scores over the previous generation Core i9-14900HX with around the same basic specs. I noticed a discrepancy between Asus’s web site where it says the CPU can get up to 80 watts, while my press materials say it’s 65 watts.
The Strix SCAR 18 is also the second I’ve reviewed with an Nvidia Blackwell 5000-series GPU, the GeForce RTX 5080. It has Nvidia’s newest CUDA cores, streaming multiprocessors, and RT and tensor cores, and it powers Nvidia’s DLSS 4 that leverages on-device AI processing speeds for much faster scaling and frame generation with an eye toward dramatically improving visual quality while running at similar framerates to the previous generation. It also boosts performance in tasks like video editing with advanced encoding/decoding engines. Asus gives the RTX 175 up to 175 watts, totaling 240 watts — just a bit less than the 250 watts Lenovo gives to the Legion Pro 7i. Again, that’s per my press materials, while the Asus web site says it’s up to 255 watts. If I can get that clarified, I’ll update the review.
Asus includes its Armoury Crate utility that provides finder control over performance than Lenovo’s LegionSpace utility in the Legion Pro 7i. In addition to several performance-based presets, you can enter a manual mode where you can get more granular in configuring the CPU and GPU. I didn’t dig into the settings, but they there for anyone who wants to fully optimized performance. In our benchmarks, I used the Windows, Performance, and Turbo settings and reported the latter in the table below.
The Asus ROG Intelligent Cooling system makes great use of all that interior space, with an end-to-end vapor chamber, triple fans, and Liquid Metal helping to keep things cool. The fans spun up during intense sessions, especially in Turbo mode, but they were slightly quieter than with the Legion Pro 7i. I’ve used gaming laptops that were a lot louder and where the fan noise was harsher.
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
In our standard suite of benchmarks, the two Arrow Lake-HX/Blackwell laptops perform similarly, with the Lenovo machine being slightly faster across the board. That might be down to either the slight increase in power or more aggressive tuning. Both are much faster than previous generation Windows laptops in most of our benchmarks, with only the Asus ROG Flow Z13 (a very diminutive machine) being faster in Geekbench 6 multi-core with its AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ 935 chipset. But there’s no doubt that the Strix SCAR 18 will be very fast for the most demanding productivity tasks.
Creative professionals looking for a fast Windows laptop for photo editing and video editing, along with users that use 3D design and rendering software, often look to gaming laptops given their high-end components and focus on pure performance. The Pugetbench Premiere Pro and Photoshop benchmarks run in the live versions of each Adobe app and give a good indication of a laptop’s performance for demanding creators. The Strix SCAR 18 is very fast in both, even beating out the Apple MacBook Pro 16 in the Premiere Pro benchmark where the M4 Max chipset benefits from fast encoding/decoding circuitry. Again, the Legion Pro 7i was faster.
Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 9 (Core i9-14900H / RTX 4090)
1,873 / 13,175
71
117 / 916 / 8,873
9,122
N/A
6,622
Asus ROG Strix 18 (Core i9-14900HX / RTX 4090)
2,946 / 17,622
N/A
Bal: 124 / 1,533 / 22,067
N/A
7,430
N/A
Asus ROG Flow Z13 (Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 / Radeon 8060S)
2,993 / 20,659
36
121 / 1,568 / NA
N/A
7,250
7,250
Alienware m16 R2 (Core Ultra 7 155H / RTX 4070)
2,366 / 12,707
N/A
103 / 1,040 / 10,884
7,028
5,590
5,590
Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M4 Max 16/40)
3,626 / 25,332
48
179 /2,072 / 16,463
N/A
9,347
13,856
Gaming
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
As mentioned above, the Nvidia Blackwell 5000-series is aimed at providing comparable framerates to the previous 4000-series GPUs, but dramatically enhancing visual quality. It does this by using various AI-powered processes for upscaling and frame generation, using Blackwell’s very fast AI performance. The visual improvements are striking, for sure, but we don’t currently benchmark performance using any games that fully support DLSS 4 and so will show off the visual impact.
So far, the two RTX 5080 laptops I’ve reviewed have been very fast, but not necessarily much faster in various games than previous 4000-series laptops. Which is to say, you’re not giving up performance across the board, you’re getting much better visual quality, and you’ll see performance increases as games become more optimized. There’s nothing wrong with that. Note that I ran some benchmarks with the Strix SCAR 18 GPU set at the highest setting, but it made no difference in the benchmarks.
In the synthetic 3DMark Time Spy benchmark, the ROG Strix SCAR 18 was slightly behind the Legion Pro 7i, and we’ll see that this pattern held in all of our benchmarks. As with our non-gaming benchmarks, the Asus is just a little slower than the Lenovo. That’s likely down to tuning, but the differences likely won’t be enough to force a decision.
Breaking down by individual games — and all listed results are in each laptop’s highest performance mode — we’ll start with Civilization VI. This title benefits from bother very fast CPU and very fast GPU performance, and like the Legion Pro 7i, the Strix SCAR 18 was very fast at running it.
In Cyberpunk 2077, the Strix SCAR 18 was slightly behind the Legion Pro 7i, while the Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 9 with an RTX 4090 was the fastest in this comparison group. I suspect that the RTX 5090 will take the top spot in this game, although again, I wouldn’t expect a massive increased.
In Red Dead Redemption, the Asus was actually the second-slowest laptop. For whatever reason, it fell further behind than in the other titles. It’s still quite playable at 1600p and Ultra graphics, but this game wasn’t it’s best showing,
Finally, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla showed that the laptops we’ve tested have been around the same level of performance. And it’s very fast.
Overall, once again, the ROG Strix SCAR 18 didn’t break any records, and in fact didn’t keep up with some RTX 4000-series laptops, but it was more than fast enough for most gamers in these older titles. I suspect that these results will only improve.
Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (2023) (Core i9-13900HX / RTX 4080)
18,382
223 fps
45 fps
99 fps
126 fps
Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 9 (Core i9-14900H / RTX 4090)
20,293
N/A
88 fps
N/A
N/A
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (Core i9-13900H / RTX 4090)
18,372
191 fps
N/A
99 fps
N/A
Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 6 (Core i7-13800H / RTX 4080)
13,615
170 fps
57 fps
N/A
N/A
Asus ROG Flow Z13 (Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 / Radeon 8060S)
10,532
88 fps
N/A
73 fps
67 fps
Battery life
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
We test battery life with gaming laptops, and invariably, we reach the same conclusion. These aren’t laptops that you should plan to carry around and use without being plugged in, especially for their primary purpose of gaming which pushes every component to its limits. And then considering the size and weight of the ROG Strix SCAR 18, this isn’t really meant to be carried around all that much at all. You can move it from place to place for gaming sessions, but you’ll be carrying the very large and heavy power brick along with you regardless.
In our web browsing and video looping battery tests, the laptop barely made it to two hours, and in our more demanding Cinebench R24 test, it didn’t make it to an hour. A 90 watt-hour battery just can’t keep up with powerful components and a very power-hungry 18-inch mini-LED display. Just plan on keeping the thing plugged in.
Display and audio
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
I’ve reviewed a few mini-LED displays, and they all been pretty good. That includes the MacBook Pro 16, which until now has had the best example. The Strix SCAR 18, though, might beat them all in some very important metrics. It’s an 18.0-inch 16:10 QHD+ (2560 x 1600) mini-LED panel running at up to 240Hz. It’s incredibly bright and has brilliant colors. It’s not as sharp as the MacBook Pro 16’s display, being both lower resolution and much larger. But for gamers, it promises outstanding high dynamic range (HDR) performance along with a super fast refresh rate that supports Nvidia G-Sync for tear-free gaming.
My Datacolor SpyderPro colorimeter captured the objective excellence of this panel. It’s incredibly bright at 1,084 nits, which is brighter than the MacBook Pro 16’s 585 nits. Apple’s panel can peak as high at 1,600 nits, but in terms of sustained brightness as measured, the Asus comes out on top. And, its contrast ratio is incredibly hight at 16,310:1, beating out the MacBook Pro 16’s 12,940:1. Both have deep blacks, but the Strix SCAR 18 is a bit deeper. The colors are also wide at 100% sRGB, 89% AdobeRGB, and 100% DCI-P3, with excellent color accuracy at DeltaE 1.05 (less than 1.0 is indistinguishable to the human eye). The MacBook Pro 16 comes in at 100%, 87%, and 99%, respectively, along with DeltaE 1.18.
The one negative of mini-LED versus, say, OLED displays, is that there can be some blooming on bright objects against black backgrounds. I didn’t notice anything significant, and unless you’re in a very dark environment, you may not notice it either. Instead, everything looked spectacular, and HDR content was great. That’s for both gaming and HDR media content. This is a very good display that will show off every game you play, and will take advantage of all the power this laptop provides.
Audio is provided by dual tweeters and downward-firing speakers, and quite frankly, it’s not all that impressive. It gets loud, but there’s some distortion at full volume, and bass was noticeably lacking. I strongly suggest a good pair of gaming headphones — which you’ll probably already plan on using.
A very large, and very awesome, gaming laptop
If you want a gaming machine that you can lug around with you and don’t might the girth and weight, the ROG Strix SCAR 18 will reward you even while it gives you a little exercise. To begin with, the large size is necessary to gain access to that awesome mini-LED display that’s as bright and colorful as any I’ve reviewed — and even better than most.
And then the performance is also excellent, even if it’s not the fastest I’ve reviewed. It will keep up with everything you throw at it, from gaming to creative workflows, without breaking a sweat. It’s not inexpensive, but that’s not to be expected with such a well-designed gaming machine.
Over the past four years, the MacBook Air has been the primary driver of my computing duties. My prerequisites for finding a light, powerful, and reliable laptop that suits my digital nomad lifestyle often led me to the Apple Store, despite testing my fair share of Windows laptops over the years.
Things started to look promising when I tested my first Windows on Arm machines powered by the Snapdragon X series processors. After spending some time with the stunning Dell XPS 13 and Asus ProArt PZ13 tablet, I switched to the Asus ZenBook A14.
It’s the best anti-MacBook Air I’ve come across so far. But this stunning laptop has a lot going for it besides eyeball-grabbing looks. In fact, it eclipses the Apple rival in a few practical areas that make or break buying decisions. Plus, the price tag attached to the laptop in my home market is even lower than Apple’s machine, so there’s that crucial advantage.
It’s a breath of fresh air
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
By far, the best-kept virtue of the ZenBook A14 is its fantastic build and featherweight bulk profile. The ZenBook A14 is over 23% lighter than the MacBook Air. That’s no small feat, but you really need to hold this laptop in your hands to realize the sheer engineering excellence here.
You almost don’t feel the weight of this laptop in a backpack. It’s so thin and light that I exclusively carried it like a notebook everywhere I went. Asus has experimented with some bold laptop designs over the years, but for the ZenBook A14, it has taken a unique route to minimalism.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Complementing the looks is the material and the one-of-a-kind surface finish. The material is called Ceraluminum. Technically, a specialized alloy of Magnesium, this material is 30% lighter than aluminum, but nearly thrice as strong.
I was worried that this lightweight laptop wouldn’t be able to take mechanical stress or accidental bumps. I am particularly concerned about this aspect due to my on-the-move workflow. Moreover, every MacBook I have owned so far has suffered flattened corners, scratched paint, and scuff marks.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
With the ZenBook A14, I haven’t seen any such battle scars so far. And I am sure it will fare a lot better owing to its US MIL-STD-810H military-grade build. The surface finish is another standout aspect. The trim I used had a beautiful cardboard-like color with a lovely matte texture over it.
It does a better job of avoiding smudges than my MacBook Air in its light blue shade. Asus says it performed a test entailing 18,000 sessions of rubbing to ensure that the surface color doesn’t fade off, so there’s that assurance.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Overall, this is one of the nicest-looking laptops out there, which also happens to be extremely light, yet surprisingly resilient. There is nothing quite like it in the laptop ecosystem out there.
A nice dose of practicality
One of the biggest wins that Asus landed with the ZenBook A14 is the focus on practicality. Despite its slim waistline, the laptop offers a pair of USB-C (v4.0) ports, a USB-A port with 10 Gbps output, and an HDMI 2.1 port. The Apple competition restricts users to a pair of USB-C ports.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
It’s not just the number of ports that matters here, but also the versatility. I recently found myself in a situation where I had to plug in a much larger dock so that I could use my wireless mouse and keyboard while the MacBook Air was connected to an external device.
With the ZenBook, two of the most common types of peripherals — external screens and 2.4GHz wireless input — are independently covered. That means even if one of the USB-C ports is permanently occupied for power draw, the other one is still vacant for hooking up more devices.
I also love the keyboard. The keys are well spaced out, offer a springy feedback, and offer a decent amount of travel. In fact, I managed to hit a higher typing speed on the ZenBook A14 than I have achieved on my MacBook Air, the 13-inch Magic Keyboard, or even the Satechi SM3 Slim mechanical keyboard.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
I just wish the button layout were a bit different, with just one Ctrl key in the far left corner. However, I quickly got used to this format within a day. The touchpad is also spacious and offers a proper physical click experience across each half.
Then we have the Windows Hello authentication system powered by an infrared camera array. It works just as well as the Face ID system on Apple hardware. I actually find it more convenient than having to reach out for a fingerprint sensor embedded in the power button.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
I rely heavily on Passkeys for all my web log-ins, and some of the native Windows features, such as Recall, are also now locked behind biometric authentication. Even in a completely dark room where my face was lit only by the display at nearly 40% brightness, the face unlock worked flawlessly.
Delivers where it matters
The strongest leg-up that the Asus ZenBook A14 has over its Apple rival and a bunch of other x86-based Windows laptops is the screen. The laptop offers a 14-inch OLED display with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. It’s a gorgeous screen, also happens to be less reflective than the IPS LCD panels on machines such as the MacBook Air.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
It produces beautiful colors, deep blacks, and offers wide viewing angles. Thankfully, the bezels flanking it are also quite slim, and there is no notch to contend with. I only wish this were a faster panel, but for my day-to-day work, a 60Hz refresh rate works just fine.
Talking about workflow, this machine handled mine smoothly. All the apps that I require on a daily basis work without any stutters across the Microsoft 365 portfolio and Google Workspace ecosystems. Irrespective of whether they are now native on Arm or run atop the Prism emulation layer, the performance was usually without any red flags.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The dual-fan design definitely lends a hand, especially when Chrome was aggressively eating into the memory, while other apps such as Slack, Teams, Trello, Outlook, and Copilot were running in the background. Compared to the MacBook Air or the Snapdragon X Elite-powered Dell XPS 13, the Asus machine ran cooler
Single-core performance, thanks to the Oryon cores, is quite impressive. Under sustained load, however, the multicore performance takes a dip. The Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite fare much better, though their graphics performance still has some catching up to do.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Editing tasks across the Adobe suite run fine, and you won’t have much trouble editing full-HD clips across AV1 and H. 264 codecs. Technically, you can go up to 4K 60fps decoding and encoding at 30fps, but the system memory starts becoming a bottleneck and creative effects addition show signs of fatigue.
I tried editing a few short clips for social media, and things were mostly smooth. However, for some reason, Da Vinci Resolve kept crashing when I installed it for heavier workloads. An overwhelming majority of Adobe’s apps are now running natively on Windows, so you’re covered on that front.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
What I loved the most was that the internal fans run pleasingly quiet in the default mode. Battery life is another aspect that I love about the laptop. I was able to easily get eight hours of sustained work, and idle power draw is also on the lower side.
For its target audience, this machine can easily last a full day. Asus also provides a neat battery care mode that limits charging to the 80% mark. Apple offers this battery health convenience on its newer iPhones, but not on the MacBook lineup.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
On the software side, this is a Copilot+ machine, so you are getting meaningful benefits such as Live Captions, image generation and editing, native AI-assisted search, to name a few. Asus also offers its own set of touchpad and related shortcut customizations within the MyAsus app that come in handy.,
Overall, there is a lot to like about the Asus ZenBook A14. For my workflow, which is heavily dependent on the web and cloud-based applications, it got the job done without any major hiccups. But it’s the phenomenal build and breezy weight profile that truly won me over. And to such an extent that every other Windows laptop now seems boring to me.
Over the years, I have curated a rather non-envious track record with handling electronics around me. From shattering the screen on iPhones, breaking the hinge of a foldable phone, a torn laptop lid, flattening the edges of MacBooks, and forgetting items in transit, the history of my misadventures is pretty diverse. And expensive.
But nothing hurts more than the damage incurred to a laptop, which you can’t just hide behind a skin or case. I’d like to believe there are a few others like me, seeking a machine that can handle rough usage, or just happens to be sturdier than the rest. Asus certainly sees an opportunity in that bracket.
The company recently introduced a trio of laptops in the ExpertBook P series. To my surprise, the company focused less on the usual performance-centric presentations, and more on the practical side of things, such as durability.
Is it performant?
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
A few days after the launch, I got my hands on the ExpertBook P1. I was in for a pleasant surprise. It’s a fairly competent laptop, but more than that, it can brush off mechanical stress with ease. And on top of that, it fortifies a few areas that most brands barely pay any special attention to.
The configuration I tested came equipped with an Intel Core i7 (13620H) processor, ticking alongside 32GB of RAM and 512GB of M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD. Thanks to extra slots, the RAM and storage are upgradable up to 64GB and 2TB, respectively. Over at the front is a 14-inch full-HD panel.
Now, this is neither the latest Intel chip nor the fanciest display out there. It is sharp and offers wide viewing angles without any noticeable color crushing. I wish it were a glass-based panel, but I would take Asus’ anti-glare approach any given day.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The 10-core silicon is fairly powerful, though not the latest that Intel has to offer. When pitted against the 14-core Intel Core Ultra 5, it barely manages to achieve a higher single-core performance, but delivers a 30% lower multi-core performance.
The aging Intel processor again serves a higher single-core tally at Cinebench 2024 compared to Qualcomm’s top-end Snapdragon X Elite, but underwhelms with its multi-core chops, yet again.
On the graphics front, the integrated Intel UHD graphics unit is roughly 18-20% behind the Arc graphics shipped with the second-gen Arrow Lake Ultra Series 2 processors. But numbers aside, this is still a pretty capable combination.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
If you aren’t diving into any demanding creative software suite, the configuration will get past most productivity software with ease. My workload involved Chrome (across two screens and three windows), Slack, Trello, Teams, and a handful of web instances for tools like Asana and consistent wireless music playback.
Running the laptop in Balanced profile, I easily got a full day of usage without any stutters or UI crashes. The battery, on the other hand, is promised to last three years without its electrochemical health falling below the 80% mark. It usually lasted me about 9-10 hours of continuous usage, but you can definitely extend it with a slightly modest brightness and performance tuning.
What I like the most is the charging flexibility. Natively, the triple-cell 50Whr battery supports 65W fast charging, but it allows the full spectrum of 5V-24V power input. I was able to charge the laptop with a power bank and gave it some last-mile juice. I hope more brands hop on to this trend this year!
What makes the ExpertBook P1 stand out?
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The Asus laptop is not out there to turn eyeballs with aesthetics. It’s clean and industrial, with a familiar Asus design. What sets it apart is the sturdy engineering, despite the laptop weighing just around three pounds.
This is a US MIL-STD 810H military-grade kit, covering nearly a dozen categories of tests. In addition to the usual temperature and altitude tests, the fortified build allows it to handle strong vibrations (500Hz) for a sustained period, mechanical shocks, and ingress protection against dust.
Asus says the base can survive a drop from a height of over a meter on a concrete floor. The build is plastic, but the chassis has been reinforced using metallic parts. It’s hard to discern that the ExpertBook P1 offers all that, but after using it as my daily workhorse, I am confident that it can brush off a few accidents.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
On the more practical side of things, both sides of the laptop can endure a smushing force worth around 110 pounds. This comes in handy for situations such as rough luggage handling, like the infamous airline baggage transport, packed under-carrriage in buses, or cramped slots in trains.
The lid itself can sustain a load of up to 55 pounds without causing any damage to the screen. For business professionals on the move or students in college, such structural hardiness is nothing short of a reassuring boon.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
I tried to simulate the load test with some of my gym equipment, and the laptop came out unscathed. The base is certainly more sturdy, while the display lid is quite flexible. Asus says the laptop is tested to survive over 50,000 chassis twisting tests.
Laptop lids and the linked hinge mechanism are often a weak link. I have broken two in the span of five years, so I know the hurt and learned the pricey lesson. On the ExpertBook P1, Asus has used 1.2mm stainless steel hinge inserts and thicker screws, which are touted to survive 66% higher pulling force than an average laptop.
The hinge mechanism is indeed pretty durable. The flexing is visible, but there is no worrisome creaking to be heard. This is me holding the laptop at the hinge point, while exerting base pressure on the lid part:
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The components are also locked tightly in place, and even when the laptop is dropped, there are no chinks or chimes to be heard, save for a flat thud.
Practicality, above anything
As laptops started to get smaller and slimmer, the industry adopted a trend of culling the ports. Asus has dodged that trend on the Expertbook P1. There are a couple of USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports and an equal number of USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports on the laptop.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
You also get an HDMI 1.4 and an RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet port, alongside a 3.5mm combo jack and a Kensington Nano lock. While the port diversity is a welcome move, Asus didn’t cram them on one side. Instead, they are spaced out across the left and right edges.
I have often struggled with laptops that position the ports on one side. The MacBook Air is the best example. Anything thicker than an average USB-C cable blocks access to the other port. The only option left is to invest in a pricey port hub.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Interestingly, the Asus ExpertBook P1’s I/O ports are also special. They have been certified to last 5,000 insert-eject cycles, but more importantly, they offer a pretty secure lock-in for the cables and accessories.
When I first saw the ExpertBook P5 dangling by a USB cable, I was surprised. Then I tested my P1 variant at home, and it didn’t disappoint. Have a look:
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The resilient character also extends to the keyboard, which can handle liquid spills. Personally, that’s a huge sigh of relief. My cat recently orchestrated a soda spill on a laptop, and it ended up frying the circuits on the motherboard. I could never get it repaired.
The ExpertBook P1 integrates a FIDO-compliant fingerprint sensor within the trackpad area. It’s a tad small, but it gets the job done. Asus also offers a whole bunch of security protection at both software and hardware levels. Among them is intrusion detection against unauthorized devices, and a discrete Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip built within.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
For BIOS attacks, downgrades are prevented to block exploits, and there’s also an automatic recovery system in place if the BIOS is corrupted. For added privacy, there’s a physical webcam shutter at the top.
Overall, with the ExpertBook P1, Asus has created a rather compelling laptop that is geared at professionals as well as students alike. It undercuts the MacBook premium, while also offering a handful of practical perks that are hard to find in the laptop market.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 has been one of the best laptops you can buy, along with the best example yet of the new wave of Windows on ARM laptops. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X lineup has been the driver of this movement, and the Surface Laptop 7 makes great use of the platform.
But it’s not alone. The Asus Zenbook A14 combines the Snapdragon X with a lightweight chassis and a reasonably efficient OLED display for a great build and battery life. Can it compete with Microsoft’s best laptop?
Specs and configurations
Asus Zenbook A14
Microsoft Surface Laptop 7
Dimensions
12.23 x 8.42 x 0.63 inches
11.85 x 8.66 x 0.69 inches
Weight
2.4 pounds
2.96 pounds
Processor
Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100
Snapdragon X Plus
Snapdragon X Elite
Graphics
Qualcomm Adreno
Adreno GPU
RAM
16GB
32GB
16GB
32GB
64GB
Display
14.0-inch 16:10 FHD+ (1920 x 1200) OLED, 60Hz
13.8-inch 3:2 (2304 x 1536) IPS, 120Hz
Storage
512GB SSD
1TB SSD
256GB
512GB
1TB
Touch
Yes
Yes
Ports
2 x USB4
1 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2
1 x HDMI 2.1
1 x 3.5mm headphone jack
2 x USB4
1 x USB-A 3.1
1 x Surface Connect
1 x 3.5mm audio jack
Wireless
Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetoth 5.3
Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4
Webcam
1080p with infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello
1080p with infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello support
The Zenbook A14 only has two available configurations. There’s the $1,000 base model with a Snapdragon X Plus chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 14.0-inch FHD+ OLED display. For an extra $200, you get 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.
For the same $1,000, you can get the Surface Laptop 7 base model wit ha Snapdragon X Plust, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 13.8-inch 2304 x 1536 IPS display. You can upgrade to a 512GB SSD for an additional $200 and to 1TB for $400 more. The Snapdragon X Elite ups the base price to $1,400 with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, and then you can choose 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD for a grand total of $2,400.
That makes the Surface Laptop 7 the more expensive laptop by a fair margin, at the highest configuration.
Design
Surface Laptop 7Luke Larsen / Digital Trends
The Surface Laptop 7 is the culmination of several generations of refinement, resulting in a laptop that’s incredibly well-built — as are all Surface devices — and enjoys a rather iconic aesthetic. It’s all-aluminum and comes in several attractive colors, with just the right blend of tones to give the laptop a modern, elegant look. The small display bezels framing a taller 3:2 aspect ratio stands out, and handling the Surface Laptop 7 attests to Microsoft’s attention to detail in its premier hardware lineup. Everything just feels great, including the hinge that allows opening the lid with one hand and keeps it firmly in place.
But, Microsoft isn’t the only company that makes quality Windows machines. Asus Zenbooks have long rivaled Surface in terms of build quality, with all-metal designs that feel as robust. The Zenbook A14 uses a new material that Asus developed, called Ceraluminum, which puts aluminum through a process that creates a unique, ceramic-like feel that’s also incredibly strong. That makes it incredibly light at 2.4 pounds versus the Surface Laptop 7’s 2.96 pounds. And, it does so without sacrificing a solid feel, with a warm touch that feels weird at first glance but grows on you the more you use it. My one complaint is with the Zenbook A14’s hinge, which is too loose and allows the lid to flop around a bit. Aesthetically, the Zenbook A14 is more minimalist and doesn’t feature the wide range of color ways.
The Surface Laptop 7 is just a little better in terms of its build and aesthetics. But you can’t go wrong with the Zenbook A14, either.
In terms of their keyboards, it’s another close battle. The Zenbook A14 has a spacious layout with large keycaps, and its switches are light and snappy. The Surface Laptop 7 has an equally comfortable layout, and its switches are firmer and deeper. I’d give Microsoft’s keyboard the nod here, given the Asus switches’ bottoming action that I didn’t quite find as precise. Both are very good, but again, the Surface Laptop 7 comes out on top.
The Zenbook A14 has a slightly larger touchpad than the Surface Laptop 7, but it’s a mechanical version. I tend to prefer haptic touchpads, and the Surface Laptop 7 has a very good example with all of the customization options that the technology affords. This is a bigger advantage for the Surface Laptop 7 than we’ve seen so far.
I’d give the Zenbook A14 the nod in terms of connectivity, primarily given its inclusion of an HDMI 2.1 port. But, the Surface Laptop 7 has a Surface Connect power connection that keeps both fast USB4 ports available for use. That’s a plus. The Surface Laptop 7 also has the latest wireless connectivity, while the Zenbook A14 is one generation behind.
Finally, both laptops have 1080p webcams that offer up excellent video quality. And, both have the same 45 tera operations per second (TOPS) Neural Processing Unit that powers Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC AI features. You’ll get full support for everything Microsoft has to offer in terms of efficient on-device AI processing, although Asus does add in some additional AI-enabled features.
Performance
Both laptops are built around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chipset, but the Surface Laptop 7 offers the Snapdragon X Elite with 12 cores and the fastest available speeds. The Zenbook A14 uses the 8-core Snapdragon X Plus with just eight cores and running at a slower speed. The Adreno integrated graphics on the Snapdragon X Elite is also faster than the Plus model.
Overall, that makes the Surface Laptop 7 a faster laptop overall. I’m providing results from the larger 15-inch model, but performance will be similar on the smaller Surface Laptop 7. It will be faster for the most demanding productivity users, although gamers won’t find a huge difference in performance and neither will creators.
Geekbench 6
(single/multi)
Cinebench R24
(single/multi/battery)
3DMark
Wild Life Extreme
Asus Zenbook A14 (Snapdragon X Plus / Adreno)
2,436 / 11,242
108 / 690
3,262
Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (Snapdragon X Elite / Adreno)
2,388 / 13,215
105 / 826
5,880
Display and audio
The Zenbook A14 has 14.0-inch 16:10 FHD+ (1920 x 1200) OLED display that has the technology’s usual bright, dynamic colors and inky blacks. Asus compromised with a lower resolution to save on battery life, so if you want a really sharp display, it won’t stand up to the Surface Laptop 7. That laptop has a 13.8-inch 3:2 IPS display running at 2304 x 1536. So, it’s sharper, and it’s also a very good IPS panel with its own very good colors. Both laptops look great for most uses, and the Surface Laptop 7’s display benefits from a faster 120Hz refresh rate that makes the Windows user interface run more smoothly.
According to our colorimeter, the Zenbook A14 has wider and more accurate colors that will be better for creative work, and it has near-perfect blacks and very high contrast. The Surface Laptop 7 has a brighter display with slightly narrower and less accurate colors. Its contrast is very good for an IPS display, but can’t match the Zenbook A14.
If you prefer OLED and don’t mind seeing more pixels, then you’ll love the Zenbook A14’s display. The Surface Laptop 7’s display is also very good, and it’s sharper and faster. Some might consider this to be a draw.
Asus Zenbook A14 (OLED)
Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (IPS)
Brightness
(nits)
411
561
AdobeRGB gamut
97%
85%
sRGB gamut
100%
100%
DCI-P3 gamut
100%
95%
Accuracy
(DeltaE, lower is better)
0.88
1.27
The Zenbook A14 has dual downward-firing speaker that are just okay, compared to the Surface Laptop 7’s audio system that projects sound up from speaker behind the keyboard. It has louder and clearer audio and more bass, and so you’ll be less likely to reach for a pair of headphones.
Portability
Both laptops are very portable, with the Surface Laptop 7 being slightly narrower and shallower but the Zenbook A14 being thinner and lighter. You’ll likely appreciate the Zenbook A14’s lighter weight more than anything.
Even though it’s lighter, the Asus packs in a larger 70 watt-hour battery that helps offset the more power-hungry OLED display. The Surface Laptop 7’s smaller 54 watt-hour battery benefits from the more power-efficient IPS panel.
I list the battery test results for the larger 15-inch Surface Laptop 7, which might be an hour or so less with the smaller machine. So, it’s likely that it’s going to last around the same time as the Zenbook A14, making them both some of the longest-lasting Windows laptops ever. We’re talking multi-day battery life when doing lighter productivity tasks.
Web
Video
Asus Zenbook A14 (Snapdragon X Plus)
15 hours, 4 minutes
21 hours, 55 minutes
Apple MacBook Air 13 (M4 10/8)
14 hours, 21 minutes
22 hours, 39 minutes
It’s very close, but the Surface Laptop 7 comes out ahead
These are two very good laptops. They’re well-built, have great performance and even greater battery life, and they’re attractive enough. In many ways, they’re very closely matched.
But, the Surface Laptop 7 just has some finer points, like a better haptic touchpad, an overall more comfortable design, and faster performance that gives it the edge. Note, though, that you’ll pay a price. If you want the least expensive laptop, then the Zenbook A14 is well worth your consideration.
I recently gave the Apple MacBook Air 13 (M4) a rare perfect 5-star rating and called it the best 13-inch laptop you can buy today. And I stand by that review, because the MacBook Air 13 really is as close to perfect as you’ll find in a small laptop.
But the Asus Zenbook A14 also impressed me, with its really light weight that avoids feeling flimsy, and its combination of a beautiful OLED display and excellent battery life. Is it good enough to dethrone the MacBook Air 13?
The Zenbook A14 only has two configurations. The base model costs $1,000 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 14.0-inch FHD+ OLED display. You can upgrade to 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD for $1,200.
The MacBook Air 13 is a more configurable laptop. The $1,000 base configuration has a 10-core CPU/8-core GPU M4 chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 13.6-inch Retina IPS display (the only option). Upgrading to a faster 10-core CPU/10-core GPU M4 adds $100, while upgrading to 24GB RAM is $200 and to 32GB RAM is $400. Storage can be upgraded to 512GB for $200, and the largest 2TB SSD adds $800. That makes the most expensive MacBook Air 13 cost $2,199.
The Zenbook A14 is better configured at the low end and costs significantly less at the high end. You do get more storage with the most expensive MacBook Air 13, but you’ll pay more for it, as well.
Design
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
I’ve lauded the MacBook Air 13 for its near-perfect design. It’s the thinnest laptop you can buy today, and yet it manages to feel incredibly solid in hand with a kind of density that excudes quality. And it looks great, with a simplistic yet elegant aesthetic that benefits from several attractive colors. The hinge is remarkably smooth and holds the lid in place, and carrying it around proves Apple’s meticulous attention to design given its amazing balance. Obviously, I like that laptop a lot.
But it’s not alone. The more I handled the Zenbook A14, the more I liked it. The Ceraluminum material felt strange to me at first, with its odd yet comfortable texture. And the laptop’s extremely light weight was a little surprising, but I pretty quickly realized that it’s a well-built laptop and not at all flimsy, unlike some other very light laptops I’ve carried around. It doesn’t have quite the same overall feel as the MacBook Air 13, and it’s not quite as cohesive in its aesthetic. Even so, it still felt great in hand and it quickly grew on me. I like it a lot, as well. I did have one complaint, and that’s that the hinge was way too loose and it didn’t hold the display firmly in place.
In comparing these laptop designs, I’m reminded that it’s the littlest things that can make a big difference. And while I still prefer the MacBook Air 13, I can imagine many people disagreeing. Both laptops have their charms.
Speaking of little things, the Zenbook A14 has one of the better keyboards I’ve used on a Windows laptop. The layout is spacious and the keycaps are large enough. But the switches, while reasonably light and snappy, had a bottoming action that just didn’t feel quite right. Apple’s Magic Keyboard, on the other hand, is just perfect in its layout and consistency, and the switches let me type at full speed, without errors, for a long time without getting fatigued.
Switching to the touchpad, Apple’s Force Touch haptic version with its Force Click feature is large and perfect. It’s the best touchpad on a laptop today, no matter the size. The Zenbook A14’s mechanical touchpad was okay, but it really couldn’t compare. The difference is a little larger this time around.
In terms of connectivity, the Zenbook A14 has legacy ports that the MacBook Air 13 lacks. Also, it has two fast USB-C port, one of which is used for charging. The MacBook Air 13’s dedicated MagSafe 3 charging connection leaves both its Thunderbolt 4 ports available, but overall, the Zenbook A14’s connectivity is better. Both have wireless connectivity that’s one generation behind. For logging in without a password, the Zenbook A14 uses Windows 11 facial recognition while the MacBook Air 13 has Apple’s Touch ID built into the power button. Both methods worked well.
Finally, the MacBook Air 13 has a higher-resolution 12MP webcam with support for Apple’s Center Stage and Desk View videoconferencing features. Its image quality was better overall than the Zenbook 14’s 1080p webcam. But, the Zenbook 14 has a faster Neural Processing Unit (NPU) than the M4 chipset’s Neural Engine, and right now, Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC AI initiative has more AI-powered features than Apple Intelligence. If you’re into AI, then the Zenbook A14 will provide a more complete experience.
Performance
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The Zenbook A14 uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus chipset, which is an 8-core ARM architecture aimed at balancing efficiency and performance. Its Adreno integrated graphics aren’t the fastest, and the Zenbook A14’s version doesn’t impress in terms of its graphics performance. It’s pitted against Apple’s latest M4 ARM-based architecture with 10 CPU cores and eight graphics cores (a 10-core GPU is available).
In our benchmarks, the MacBook Air 13 was significantly faster. That’s in both single-core performance, which will show up most in common productivity tasks and image editing, but also in multi-core tasks like video editing. And, its graphics cores were a lot faster, making it a more viable lightweight gaming machine (although not in the same class as Windows laptops with discrete graphics or the faster M4 Pro or Max chipsets).
Overall, the MacBook Air 13 is snappier and more responsive. I noticed the difference in my day-to-day usage. But the Zenbook A14 would likely be fast enough for a lot of users. I should add that the MacBook Air 13 has no fans but still stays cool, making it a more silent option than the Zenbook A14.
Geekbench 6
(single/multi)
Cinebench R24
(single/multi/battery)
3DMark
Wild Life Extreme
Asus Zenbook A14 (Snapdragon X Plus / Adreno)
2,436 / 11,242
108 / 690
3,262
MacBook Air 13 (M4 10/8)
3,751 / 14,801
172 / 854
7,827
Display and audio
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The Zenbook A14 is notable for the very intelligent choice of compromising with a lower display resolution in an OLED display that has that technology’s bright, dynamic colors and inky blacks. While its 14.0-inch 16:10 FHD+ (1920 x 1200) OLED display isn’t the sharpest around, that might matter less to many users than just how awesome it looks when displaying photos and streaming high dynamic range (HDR) video. The MacBook Air 13’s 13.6-inch 16:10 2560 x 1664 IPS display is a lot sharper, and it’s also a good example of that technology, it can’t quite match the Zenbook A14 display’s vibrancy.
You can see that in our objective colorimeter results, both taken with a Datacolor SpyderX Elite. The MacBook Air 13’s display is brighter, but the Zenbook A14’s has wider and more accurate colors. With near-perfect blacks, the Zenbook A14 also had much higher contrast.
These are both very good displays. But, the Zenbook A14’s display is just better for more users.
Asus Zenbook A14 (OLED)
MacBook Air 13 (IPS)
Brightness
(nits)
411
468
AdobeRGB gamut
97%
83%
sRGB gamut
100%
100%
DCI-P3 gamut
100%
94%
Accuracy
(DeltaE, lower is better)
0.88
1.34
Portability
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The Zenbook A14 is incredibly light, while the MacBook Air 13 is incredibly thin. Overall, in part because of its slightly smaller display, the MacBook Air 13 just feels like the more portable laptop. In fact, though, both are easy to carry around.
One of the MacBook Air 13’s primary strengths with the advent of Apple Silicon has been its incredible efficiency. It’s been the class leader for a while, with few peers. However, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chipset has given Apple Silicon a run for its money.
The Zenbook A14 was surprisingly competitive, especially considering its OLED display. The MacBook Air 13 lasted a lot longer when you push it really hard, as in our Cinebench R24 battery test, but otherwise the Zenbook A14 did quite well. Both laptops will last you more than a full day’s work, and that’s impressive.
Web
Video
Cinebench R24
Asus Zenbook A14 (Snapdragon X Plus)
15 hours, 4 minutes
21 hours, 55 minutes
1 hour, 32 minutes
Apple MacBook Air 13 (M4 10/8)
16 hours, 30 minutes
20 hours, 31 minutes
3 hours, 47 minutes
The Zenbook A14 gets an A for effort, but not quite an A+
The Zenbook A14 is a great lightweight laptop, with solid productivity performance, great battery life, and a bright, colorful OLED display with inky blacks. It’s a solid representative of a new wave of much better Windows laptops.
Even so, the MacBook Air 13 has just enough to keep it at the top. It’s a lot faster, for one thing, and it runs perfectly silently. It’s more balanced and has a more elegant feel. And it lasts longer when you’re working it harder. It remains the best laptop in this class that you can buy today.
“The Asus Vivobook 16 (Snapdragon X) is a regular-looking budget laptop with a striking performance and battery life.”
✅ Pros
Reliable build, even with plastic
Two Thunderbolt-4 ports
Convenient USB-C charging
Runs quietly
Goodish battery for budget laptops
❌ Cons
Bad display colors
Limited upgrade options
Not for gaming
Buy at Amazon 2024 witnessed the emergence of Snapdragon-powered thin-and-light laptops but at steep prices. This year, the technology is flowing down to the budget segment with Qualcomm announcing a stripped-down Snapdragon X chipset, while it prepares to launch more high-end chips next year. The low-powered chipset is opening the gates to a new category and adding to some of the best value for money laptops, such as the Asus Vivobook 16 (X1607QA).
The Vivobook 16 comes with traits that seem unflattering at first glance. But its performance in line with Intel’s entry-level laptop chips as well as a decent battery put make it pretty desirable for a budget laptop.
Specs and configuration
Asus Vivobook 16 X1607QA
Dimensions
14.06 x 9.87 x 0.70–0.78″ inches
Weight
4.14 pounds
Display
16.0-inch 16:10 FHD+ (1920 x 1200) IPS, 60Hz
CPU
Qualcomm Snapdragon X
GPU
Adreno
Memory
16GB
Storage
512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD
1TB SSD
Ports
2 x USB Type-C with Thunderbolt 4
2 x USB Type A 3.2 Gen 1
1 x HDMI 2.1
1 x 3.5mm headphone jack
Camera
Full HD camera with Infrared scanning for Windows 11 Hello
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3
Battery
50 watt-hour
Operating system
Windows 11
Price
$800
The Asus Vivobook 16 (X1607QA) comes with two storage sizes, with the 512GB variant starting at $800. Asus also lists a 1TB model on the product page, but it’s not immediately available to buy on online retail sites.
Design
Let me begin with honesty. The Vivobook 16 with a Snapdragon X chipset lacks any special features to help it stand out in a sea of budget laptops. Rather, its specialties include good performance, respectable I/O options, and an excellent battery that I will discuss in the later sections.
The body is made of plastic; shiny materials cover the top case and display’s lid while body-colored matte finish drapes the bottom, with two color options: bright silver and dark blue. The bottom plate gets two elevated ridges along the breadth, with rubber feet at both ends.
Despite the materials used, the Vivobook 16’s body flexes only under significant pressure. Asus boldly claims that the laptop snags a MIL-STD-810H certification. The accreditation process involves testing in extremely high and low temperatures, at high altitudes, and subjecting the laptop to shock, such as from a sudden unexpected drop. Of course, these tests must be treated like assurances and not guarantees, and Asus will not cover any damage under warranty.
Meanwhile, the body feels resistant to everyday instances of mishandling and carelessness. Scratches from fingernails are not visible from my four weeks with the machine, but the shiny bits are prone to sweat prints. Wiping it with a microfiber cloth — or in certain cases, rubbing alcohol — should clean it considerably.
The bezels around the display use a plastic shell with a dotted patten. Its quality is suited to the price, though the slimness on the sides worries me about potential cracking or peeling off over extended usage. The top bezel nestles the Full HD webcam with a physical sliding cover. On the side, there is an infrared projector and an infrared camera for facial authentication with Windows Hello. Another circular cutout appears to shield the ambient sensor responsible for adjusting the screen’s and keyboard’s brightness.
The hinge tends to shake when you type quickly, when there are subtle vibrations on the table, or under the overhead fan, which I found a bit distracting.
On the positive side, the lid opens up to fill 180-degrees, allowing for more flexible setups, or postures. The bottom half stays glued to the table when you’re lifting the lid with a single hand, which is another plus.
While the design isn’t truly awe-inspiring — or as premium as some of Asus’ smaller 14-inch notebooks in the Zenbook series, it does not feel lacking much. Yes, a metal case would be more exciting but would also add to more weight. Overall, the design feels practical even while lacking the glamor of some of the similarly priced laptops. Instead, it makes up for those shortcomings with other strengths that I will discuss below.
Display and audio
As implied by its name, the Vivobook 16 gets a 16-inch display. This is an LED-backlit IPS-level panel with a WUXGA (1920 x 1200) resolution, a 16:10 aspect ratio, and a 60Hz refresh rate. It also gets an anti-reflective coating to diffuse intense beams of light.
The display doesn’t waver much from other 1200p LCDs in a 16-inch format. It gets the job done, but is uninspiring in terms of sharpness. The colors aren’t impressive either, and while they don’t necessarily seem dull, they are nowhere as striking as on the M4 MacBook Air. At the time of this review, I did not have a colorimeter handy, which is why I can’t share the exact color gamut coverage this display offers. However, if I were to believe Asus’ words, the display covers only 45% of the NTSC gamut, which is not very exciting.
Display comparison between 13-inch MacBook Air M4 (left) and Asus Vivobook 16 X1607QA.Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends
Despite that, the display is sufficiently bright for indoor usage. While Asus claims a 300 nits brightness, my light meter read 267 nits at max. There are inconsistencies in whites, leading to different brightness, across different spots on the panel, which can be ignored easily. The sensors automatically adjust the brightness with ambient light, while the IR scanner for face unlock also serves as a proximity sensor that dims the display when you’re not around.
It’s hard to recommend the Vivobook 16 for creative endeavors, primarily because of the of colors. This is a shame because the internals have sufficient power to run apps, including ones from Adobe. You may also find yourself yearning for better visuals while playing video content, especially at lower brightness levels.
For audio, the Vivobook 16 gets two bottom-firing speakers. Asus doesn’t specify the power ratings, probably because the audio quality isn’t worth lauding over. The speakers are fairly loud and filling, and you can utilize Asus’ Smart Amp tech to make the sound even louder.
However, quality is another aspect altogether. The speakers primarily focus on upper mids and highs, while severely compromising bass and lower mids. Vocals and dialogues are audible but not very crisp.
I could salvage some of the sound by using EQ presets from the MyAsus app and make it usable for watching YouTube videos. Music, on the other hand, felt a touch soulless.
Keyboard and touchpad
The Vivobook 16 gets a full-sized chicklet keyboard with a white backlight. There’s plenty of key travel; 1.7mm to be precise, and the keys tend to bounce back in a spirited fashion. Whether you will enjoy that or not will depend on your previous experience with keyboards.
Asus uses slightly dished keycaps that let your fingertips land more naturally, especially if you tend to type faster. However, the small size of the keycaps can counter that effect. The numpad, with even smaller keys, feels especially crammed. These traits could translate to some challenges, at least initially, especially if you are coming from a laptop that lacks a numpad altogether.
During this review, I switched between this laptop, my 14-inch MacBook Pro, and a Keychron K2 with stock keycaps, and often found myself hitting keys on the periphery. You may be less prone after spending some time training your fingers to type on this keyboard.
Despite my discomfort with the keyboard, I did not feel the same about the touchpad. It’s expansive and feels fairly responsive, especially while using multi-finger gestures.
While the Asus uses plastic here as well, I did not feel any stickiness, even while using the touchpad with damp or sweaty fingers. The large size also allowed my palm to easily navigate to the usable area, and did not require any tussle getting used to.
In addition to the standard gestures, Asus also dedicates the left and right edges for sliders that can be used for increasing or decreasing the volume and brightness, while the top edge can be used to scrub the progress in a media player. These gestures are highly optimized, and I never toggled them accidentally when I did not desire to.
Webcam and connectivity
The Vivobook 16 gets a fixed-focus camera up top with a Full HD resolution. This feels like a run-of-the-mill camera, sufficing for video calls as long as you remain adequately lit. Being a Copilot+ PC, it receives Windows Studio Effect for better frame position, improved lighting, and background blurring, all of which are powered by the dedicated neural processor. Without these features, I wouldn’t truly use the webcam, and instead rely on my Android phone.
I adore the fact that Asus offers a physical shutter to block off the webcam when it’s not in use. However, you may need you keep the webcam open to use applications, such as automatic approach detection or screen dimming.
For these functions, as well as for unlocking, the Vivobook 16 gets an infrared camera setup, including a projector and a receptor that work in tandem with the main camera. This is also useful in sensing when you look away or move away from the screen, so the screen is automatic dimmed or locked after a certain time. The screen automatically lights up when it detects you come nearer, and face unlock sets into action.
While the unlock mechanism is reliable, it is not entirely perfect, and often rejects my face unless I am staring dead into the camera. It can be useful for automatic logging into online accounts using your passkeys, but a physical fingerprint scanner would definitely make it simpler.
For I/O, the Vivobook 16 gets the essential ports, including two USB-C with Thunderbolt 4, two USB-A Gen 1 ports with 5Gbps speeds, an HDMI 2.1, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Performance
The Asus Vivobook 16 drives a Snapdragon X ARM64 chipset, which is designed for power efficiency above everything else. The CPU comprises eight Qualcomm Oryon cores, including four performance and four efficiency cores. All cores can clock a frequency of 2.96GHz, though the “LITTLE” cores tend to fall back to lower frequency when in Balanced or Power Efficiency modes, for better battery life. Besides fewer CPU cores compared to the 10-core or 12-core Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite SKUs from Qualcomm, there’s no boost available for the Snapdragon X, which can be limiting if you were hoping to use this for tasks beyond web browsing or office work.
In terms of GPU, the Snapdragon X also gets the slowest integrated GPU in the Adreno family with an output of 1.7 TFLOPS (teraflops) according to Qualcomm. This positions the chipset beneath the least powerful Snapdragon X Plus variant which powers the Asus Vivobook S15 or the thin-and-light Zenbook A14.
To quantify how the Vivobook 16 performs, I ran our staple benchmark tests and compared them with the existing results.
The Vivobook 16 does surprisingly well, especially in CPU-related tests, scoring almost as well as the Vivobook S15. Compared to Intel chips, it performed better than the Core Ultra 5 125H on the Lenovo ThinkBook 13x in Cinebench as well as Geekbench multi-core tests and got much closer to the Core Ultra 7 155H powering the HP Spectre x360 14.
Of course, both of these are from last year, and the gap widens when compared to Core Ultra 200 series “Lunar Lake” chips in Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i or the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360. But I couldn’t help but be amazed by this lowest-order Snapdragon chipset giving much more pricier machines a tough competition.
Cinebench R24
(single/multi)
Geekbench 6
(single/multi)
3DMark
Wild Life Extreme
Asus Vivobook 16 X1607QA (Snapdragon X X1-26-100 / Adreno)
96 / 707
2,126 / 10,741
3,266
Asus Vivobook S 15
(Snapdragon X1P-42-100 / Adreno)
108 / 724
2,417 / 11,319
3,216
Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7441
(Snapdragon X1P-64-100 / Adreno)
Asus Zenbook S 14
(Core Ultra 7 258V / Intel Arc 140V)
112 / 452
2738 / 10734
7514
MacBook Air
(M4 10/8)
172 / 854
3751 / 14801
7827
The Vivobook 16 lets you toggle the various fan modes using the MyAsus utility or by pressing Fn+F key combo, which can also be synced to Windows’ power modes. However, despite setting the fan to “Full Speed,” it rarely revved hard enough, even with intensive tasks, except while running the Cinebench tests. I’m not quite sure if that is by design, and Qualcomm wants to limit power delivery to prioritize better battery.
Admittedly, the GPU felt significantly weaker in comparison, scoring far below than any other device in the table, with the only exception of Vivobook S15, which uses the same GPU.
On the positive side, the Vivobook 16 gets the same neural processing unit or NPU capable of 45 TOPS (trillion operations per second). Some applications of the NPU include functions including Windows Studio effects for webcam, such as improving video calls with better background bokeh, eye contact, and automatic framing, as well as noise suppression during video calls. Since this is a certified Copilot+ PC, the more promising application will remain in on-device processing while using inbuilt Copilot features on Windows or Microsoft Office once they are fully unleashed — Windows’ Recall that records all your activity using screenshots could be a feature that utilizes it — though the applications, as well as ways to measure the NPU’s impact, are limited at the moment.
The chipset’s support for Thunderbolt 4 is splendid, and the Vivobook 16 utilizes it on both USB-C ports.
Finally, the Vivobook 16 gets 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, which is soldered onto the board, and, therefore not upgradeable. There are options between a 512GB and a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD, with brilliant read and write speeds.
Gaming on Asus Vivobook 16
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered on Asus Vivobook 16.Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends
The Vivobook 16 will be a choice far from ideal for gaming, and Asus isn’t to blame for this. ARM64-based Windows PCs are not optimized for gaming and instead positioned to be thin and portable laptops, despite sufficient gaming chops.
You can, theoretically, run games on an ARM machine, but there will be hiccups. I managed to run popular games, including Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered, It Takes Two, Anthem, Counter-Strike 2, and Team Fortress but had to lower down quality to 768p while still getting only 20-30fps along with an inexcusable delay in registering key presses. Other titles, including Valorant, Battlefield 1, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare installed but did not run.
Battery life
The Asus Vivobook 16 packs a 50 watt-hour battery, which isn’t sizable by any means. However, the low-powered ARM64 chipset ensures the laptop delivers a reasonably good battery backup — at least when compared to others of its price — and, thus, the targeted market segment — as well as caliber.
For each charge, the Vivobook 16 easily lasted six to seven hours of basic web-based usage, which includes browsing the web for research, checking emails and work chats, and occasional visits to YouTube, all while setting the keyboard’s backlight and display’s brightness to automatic and the Windows power mode set to Balanced.
I ran Digital Trends’ standard battery tests, and here’s how the Asus Vivobook 16 fared in comparison.
Web browsing
Video
Cinebench R24
Asus Vivobook 16 X1607QA (Snapdragon X X1-26-100)
12 hours, 6 minutes
12 hours, 34 minutes
1 hour, 55 minutes
Asus Vivobook S 15
(Snapdragon X1P-42-100 / Adreno)
13 hours, 10 minutes
16 hours, 19 minutes
2 hours, 47 minutes
Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7441
(Snapdragon X1P-64-100 / Adreno)
Asus doesn’t claim the same exceptional battery as other thin and light Snapdragon laptops, but we see some respectable battery backup in our web browsing test. The Vivobook 16 seemed to score lower than other 16-inch LCDs in video playback, but I suspect the poor color calibration is to blame.
For charging, the laptops get a 65W brick charger with a USB Type-C connector but can also be charged with a regular USB-PD (Power Delivery) brick. Charging typically takes 1.5 to 2 hours before the laptop, which isn’t something I would necessarily grind my teeth over, though faster charging would be exciting. It also works with slower chargers, which means you will be able to use your phone’s power brick or power banks with adequate output in emergencies.
Asus Vivobook 16: A great budget laptop, with quirks
The Asus Vivobook 16 has its benefits and drawbacks, but I’ll start with the former list first. The entry-level ARM machine is ideal for folks who want to run the basic software or get most work done online without exhausting the battery quickly or without spending much on a new laptop. Its toughness ratings make it equally good for students, allowing them to be somewhat careless once in a while. Charging over USB-C is another advantage and lets you forget about carrying a separate charger always.
The Vivobook 16 compromises on the productivity front, and is unsuitable for creative professionals, unless they treat it as a backup machine only. For a little extra, Asus itself has exciting options, such as the Asus Vivobook S15 or the Zenbook A14. If you’re looking for good battery life, portability, and excellent performance without breaking bank, the base MacBook Air M4 is the laptop to consider.
While the Vivobook 16 is not the most powerful budget laptop, it balances value for money, reliability, and battery backup quite well, while cutting back on less important features, such as a vibrant display, a high-resolution webcam, or even very plush keyboard-touchpad combo. It, however, does not skimp on good connectivity options, and offers Thunderbolt 4 for speedy connections alongside HDMI 2.1 for high-refresh rate display, and is a great option if you are on a strict budget.
