ASUS announced their updated Zenbook A16 (UX3607) at CES earlier this year and with the laptop now available it’s time to take it for a spin.
Priced at $4,299, the ASUS Zenbook A16 2026 is powered by the fastest-ever Snapdragon-powered laptop offering multitasking, gaming, and creation in a stylish ultraportable, ceraluminum wrapped package.
The showpiece is the 16” 3K resolution Lumina OLED display which comes with Dolby Vision and complimentary Dolby ATMOS audio to really showcase the system.
Powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite processor, the Zenbook A16 2026 promises up to 21 hours of battery life and comes with a full array of ports.
I got to spend just over a week with the ASUS Zenbook A16 2026 and here’s how it went.
Hardware
Design
To start with, the Zenbook A16 is gorgeous and super-light. It’s easy to move it around in one hand, a feat you don’t normally associate with 16” laptops. It only comes in one colour: Zabriskie Beige, which seems a bland option, but it really looks good and different enough from the usual ‘black’ laptops that it has a little individuality without being too ‘loud’.
That large 16” Lumina OLED display is really the thing that’s going to draw you in. It has all the specs you want, support for 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut, ability to reproduce up to 1.07 billion colours and VESA certified HDR True Black 1000.
Suffice to say, the screen looks gorgeous, and has an 1100nits peak brightness on HDR – but it works well in most lighting.
It’s not a touch display, but has a gloss finish which is a fingerprint magnet if you’re prone to touching your screen – or work with those who do. There’s minimal bezel around the sides but the small FHD resolution IR webcam in the top makes it a little thicker.
It’s a good quality webcam, offering full Windows Hello support allowing contactless login but it doesn’t include a privacy shutter, but is off by default in settings.
The lower deck includes a full-sized backlit Chiclet Keyboard which has a precise 1.3mm key-travel making for a smooth and comfortable typing experience. Below there’s a simply massive ‘Precision touchpad’ below which supports multi-touch and is very responsive.
I did have some issues with phantom touches when the laptop was under 15% power. It’s an odd glitch, but seems to disappear once the laptop was fully charged.
There’s plenty of connection options including a USB Type-A port and full-sized SD card reader on the right, and dual USB-C 4.0 ports, audio jack and HDMI 2.1 port on the left.
Underneath you get the outputs for speakers, with ASUS including ‘6 super-linear speakers’ which include Dolby ATMOS support. The speakers are placed facing downwards aiming to use the desk to bounce sound up towards you for a fuller sound.
The sound quality is good. I’ve found ASUS sound systems to have really upped their game in the past few years, and while it’s not the best sound I’ve heard, it’s still incredibly impressive, offering clear mids and highs and decently impressive bass.
You get the Dolby Atmos app for tuning, which includes a number of preset EQ’s, or you can roll your own.
The bottom of the laptop is also where the air intake is. The rubberised feet on the base lift it up from the desk to allow air-flow, and the system stays under 25db for the most part, except when you’re really stressing the system out.
Under the hood there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E94100 with 48GB RAM and 1TB M.2 PCI Express 4.0 solid-state drive, with Qualcomm Hexagon NPU offering up to 80TOPS for any local AI work.
Performance wise, the system runs like a dream. Boot times from off are under 20 seconds and it runs all your office, media and even some light gaming when you need it.
That’s not to say it’s a gaming machine. Does Crimson Desert run? No. Does Minecraft run? Yes! So your gaming experience will be somewhere in between there.
Of course Benchmarks don’t mean a huge amount, but are a great way to standardise between systems and here’s how it went in 3DMark and Geekbench.
The other thing to consider is that the ASUS Zenbook A16 is running an ARM based processor – something we’ve had compatibility issues with in the past.
Issues I’ve previously encountered included Fortnite not running, Adobe Premiere Pro still waiting for an update for ARM64, Minecraft not working and even Microsoft’s Xbox app not offering a search bar.
Thankfully you can actually do a lot of this now. As of March 2026, Adobe Premiere Pro (version 26.0 and later) now supports Windows on ARM64. Fortnite and Minecraft now run and Microsoft gives you a search bar in their XBox app!
So all the issues I’ve previously encountered with Windows on ARM64 have been resolved.
That ARM64 processor also offers some improvements in battery life, with ASUS and Qualcomm listing up to 21 hours of battery life.
This is from the 70WHr 3-cell Li-ion battery inside. It’s not the largest battery we’ve seen in a laptop, but giving stats like 21 hour of battery life in such a thin, light body makes up for a lot.
In practice you do get to 21 hours, although I did this over a couple of days and tested out the standby time – which is excellent, only losing a couple of percent overnight.
It also charges from the included 135W USB-C charger quickly, with a fast charge giving you up to 50% charge in 30 minutes. As usual, as you get closer to full it takes longer and a full charge takes a shade under two hours.
Software
The laptop comes pre-installed with Windows 11 Home 26H1 with support through to March 2029 – though you’ll see updates each half, so don’t stress too much on the updates front, you’re covered.
MyASUS
The laptop comes pre-installed with ASUS’ customer care software MyASUS which acts as a central place to find system settings, update your devices and customise features.
You can also do diagnostics to check battery health and if you need to, get in touch with the ASUS customer care team.
Apps
There are of course the usual suspects installed including Microsoft offering an Office 365 trial. You DON’T get an Xbox Game Pass trial on the Zenbook A16 though – a first after many years of having my account topped out.
There is no Mcafee or Norton pre-installed, so make sure your Microsoft updates are current and let Windows Defender do the work.
The rest of the apps installed are simply utilities for the hardware or leftovers from Windows which you can uninstall as you see fit.
Final Thoughts
A gorgeous OLED display in a thin and light body that offers battery life for days and performance to meet today’s needs, with some headroom for tomorrow. It’s a winner.
The Zenbook A16 is a heck of a laptop, but that $4,299 price tag isn’t for everyone. It’s certainly one to consider if you want an ultra-light travel companion that’s going to keep up with you though.
There’s a lot to love about the ASUS Zenbook A16, and not a lot of drawbacks, so if you’re in the market for your next laptop, this is one to check out.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
