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00:00I don't even know if I can review this laptop. I mean look at these stickers. Who put those on?
00:08Absolute travesty. But I might just be able to look past it though because this ASUS ZenBook
00:13S16 is one of my absolute favorite laptops of the year so far. And as these stickers alluded to,
00:20this is one of the first laptops rocking the new Ryzen AI processors which I can finally
00:26test. Because a few weeks ago I shared my hands-on first look video thingy for the ZenBook
00:31S16 but it was an engineering sample and the drivers weren't ready. But wonky stickers aside,
00:36this is good to go. You can order one of these now. But should you? Is the new ZenBook S16 worth
00:42buying? And does this new hardware live up to the hype? Well I will tell you and if you do enjoy
00:47this video a cheeky like and subscribe would be fantastic and a big thank you to ASUS for
00:50sending this out for me to have a play with. So before we nerd out over the benchmarks of the
00:54new Ryzen AI9-HX370 with its Radeon 890M graphics and the NPU's whopping 50 tops of AI horsepower,
01:03let me give you a bit of a tour because this is absolutely stunning. This is a 16-inch laptop.
01:10A 16-inch, 16 by 10, 3K, 120Hz OLED touchscreen no less. 16 inches in this chassis which is just
01:2011 millimeters thick and also weighs 1.5 kilograms. For a 16-inch laptop that's about
01:263.3 pounds in old money which is around the same as the smaller MacBook Air 15 and while it's not
01:33as light as say an LG Gram, the problem with a lot of these super duper ultra light laptops is
01:39the material they use can come across as a bit recycled cardboardy. But ASUS reckon they found
01:45the solution and it is called unobtanium. That's not right, so aluminum. Definitely avatar. They take
01:52the aluminium chassis and using a ceramization process transforms it into a tougher and more
01:58scratch resistant ceramic. So you get the resilience of ceramic with the lightness of aluminium
02:03essentially and I really really like it. There's not a fingerprint or smudge in sight, there's
02:08barely any flex, very little screen wobble and it comes in two colors, Scandinavian white and
02:13Zumiya grey. The only reason I might go for the grey is it doesn't reflect itself quite as much.
02:19Although this actually isn't a paint, it's a different chemical makeup when they go through
02:23this process so it's not going to scuff, it's not going to scratch. This may just be one of the best
02:28design laptops I've ever seen and used and also somehow those crazy cats over ASUS HQ, I've managed
02:34to squeeze in not only a full-size SD card reader as well as a USB-A but also a full-size HDMI 2.1
02:42along with a couple of USB 4s here and the headphone audio jack. Look at how much room they've
02:46got left with that HDMI port there, that is fantastic. Plus Wi-Fi 7 of course and you can
02:52output to three external monitors. I love this design on the lid, we get lovely thin bezels
02:58around the screen, all glass as well, no protruding plasticky bezel that you might get on a cheaper
03:03laptop but there's a slight lip here at the edge to keep the screen safe. We've also got vents at
03:09the top here, over 3,000 individually machined holes to exhaust some of the heat, keep it nice
03:14and cool. Full-size keyboard, no numpad which actually I'm pleased to see because coming from
03:19my Galaxy Book 4 Edge review, having a numpad there basically offsets everything so the touchpad
03:25keyboard was to one side. I can never really get used to that. So massive touchpad as well but it
03:29is all central which I quite like. This is a diving board design style of touchpad which basically
03:35means it's easier to click it at the bottom than it is at the top and there's no haptic feedback or
03:39vibration. It's not my favourite touchpad in the world but it is smooth, it's responsive and I
03:44actually do appreciate just the little things that it is also a 16 by 10 aspect ratio matching that
03:48of the screen. And you have a couple of gesture options, you can swipe up or down on the left side
03:53to change the volume and brightness on the right which is pretty handy actually, it means you don't
03:57have to lean forward and find the function key. As for the speakers, well have a listen.
04:02They're actually really good. Six speakers, two tweeters, four woofers, technically downward
04:10firing because they're on the base here but kind of downward out sort of edge firing. For a laptop
04:14this thin they're actually really good. And then at the top here we have the 1080p webcam which also
04:27has a 3D IR sensor so you can use Windows face unlocking even in lower light, very helpful. So as
04:33you can probably tell, very impressed with the design, the chassis, the build quality but also
04:37equally impressed with this screen, it is absolutely stunning. As I say 16 inch, 16 by 10, a 3k
04:43resolution so I think 2880 by 1800, really nice middle ground between full HD and 4k for sharpness
04:49versus battery life. Also a touchscreen, also OLED so you get those really deep inky blacks and vibrant
04:54colours and also like a 0.2 millisecond response time to make your games and well anything feel a
04:58bit more instant. We get Dolby Vision, it's certified for VESA's DisplayHDR 500 true black
05:03standard. We also get 100% DCI-P3 colour coverage and I do appreciate you can actually jump into the
05:08MyASUS app and change the colour profiles and I recorded just shy of 500 nits of brightness in
05:14regular SDR use and just about 800 nits in HDR which is very impressive for an OLED display. Yes,
05:21Apple's MacBook Pros can peak at 1600s but that's a mini LED not an OLED.
05:28The only bit of feedback I could give in order to make this an even better
05:32screen is perhaps if they could work on the reflections a little bit. So that will possibly
05:36be my only bit of feedback for next time. Okay, I've made you wait long enough. Let's talk about
05:43these new chips, this new hardware and in here I have a Ryzen AI 9 370 along with the new Radeon
05:50890M graphics and also an entirely new NPU or Neural Processing Unit giving us 50 tops of AI
05:57performance. That's trillion operations per second which in the grand schemes of these companies and
06:02they're a bit of a measuring contest when it comes to AI performance. The Snapdragon X Elites are
06:07like 45 tops, the upcoming Intel Lunar Lake around 48 so this technically comes out on top there
06:13although actually right now this does not support the Copilot Plus features from Windows. That'll
06:17be coming later in the year with an update and in fact we get most of the good stuff already on
06:21here including Copilot actual chatbot and also live captions. But we'll come back to the AI
06:26stuff in just a second because if you'll bear with me I just need to give you a bit of context
06:30about these new chips and also what a crazy year we've been in because at the start of the year
06:34Intel launched their Meteor Lake chips which we've had in a handful of laptops that have come
06:39out and they've been pretty good. Just this summer Snapdragon have released their X Elite and X Plus
06:44series laptops. I've reviewed a couple of them, click up there if you fancy checking it out.
06:48Really really interesting to see the PC market shake up and now we have AMD's offering with these
06:54new Ryzen AI processors. But however fast this is, and I will tell you in a second, right now I'm
06:59comparing it to Intel's current Meteor Lake chips which came out you know a few months ago but just
07:05in a couple months time around September-ish we're going to have their successes with Lunar Lake.
07:09So this new AMD hardware kind of comes halfway between the cycles from Intel, goes right up
07:15against the Snapdragon X Elite and of course we've not even mentioned what Apple are doing with their
07:19M3 and upcoming M4. The bottom line is it's been a crazy year for hardware and actually it's very
07:24exciting particularly for us consumers because it means all these companies are being extra
07:28competitive and hopefully giving us better products. This ZenBook S16 is one of the first
07:32laptops to come with this new AMD hardware built on their new Zen 5 architecture with 12 cores and
07:3824 threads but what I'm most excited about is the new graphics. With AMD's RDNA 3.5 architecture
07:44the base model comes with 24 gigs of RAM and also the 10 core Ryzen AI 9 chip as well as the Radeon
07:51880M whereas the higher spec version I have here comes with the 12 core Ryzen 9 AI chip and also
07:57the 890M Radeon and 32 gigs of RAM. And with the power mode set to performance which gives us the
08:03chip's full 28 watts and oddly enough I actually found performed better than the full speed mode
08:08let me show you a few numbers and for context let's bring in its closest rival the Intel Core
08:13Ultra 7 155H and also a Snapdragon X Elite laptop just to give us a rough picture of how they stack
08:20up and in these tests the X Elite comes out on top with the Ryzen AI in close second and Intel
08:26lagging behind. You'll notice though a bit of an anomalous reading with the Geekbench OpenCL
08:31and also a couple of missing tests for the Snapdragon because right now app compatibility
08:35optimization is the Achilles heel of these Snapdragon chips. But what about gaming? Not
08:40something you'd typically associate with a thin and light ultrabook like this but actually over
08:45the last couple of years the integrated graphics have come a long way to the point where they
08:48actually compete with some low-end dedicated GPUs and AMD actually have been right at the top
08:54in terms of class-leading integrated GPU performance so how is this new Radeon 890M?
08:59Well across Hitman, Cyberpunk, Siege, Tomb Raider and Spiderman Remastered we're looking at an
09:04average 20%-ish boost over Intel's ARC graphics with the current Meteor Lake translating to some
09:10pretty playable frame rates at full HD and in games with FSR which is AMD's upscaling tech
09:14similar to Intel's XDSS or Nvidia's DLSS it can literally double your frame rate.
09:20Moving away from games and firing up a bit of Blender to render 500 frames of this ripple
09:25demo it took 10 minutes and 18 with the new Ryzen versus 14 minutes and 6 seconds on the
09:30Core Ultra 7. That's about 37% faster and finally while there aren't a ton of AI benchmarks right
09:37now in Geekbench's direct ML test the Ryzen AI is over twice as fast. And breathe that was a lot
09:43of numbers. Basically this is very fast. Is it a nine day game changing difference amount of fast?
09:49Probably not. Around 10-20% as I say although in some cases like rendering and AI performance and
09:55in some games it is pretty significant but then again for context we're going to get Intel's
09:59Lunar Lake chips which will compete directly with this in just a couple of months. But wait
10:04I think what I'm most impressed by is the performance on both of these games.
10:09But wait I think what I'm most impressed by is the performance on both of these games.
10:14In fact running 3DMark Time Spy there was like a 1 or 2% difference within the margin of error
10:19really. Here you can see my FPS at the top left. This is with it connected to the power. Unplugging
10:24it. No change. No sudden drop. The performance of these new Ryzen AI chips in this ZenBook
10:30is pretty much on par whether you're running it on battery or connected to the power. Good stuff.
10:36My only complaint is when you are playing games or running more demanding programs
10:40it can get quite hot. I actually recorded around 51 degrees Celsius coming out of the vent
10:45underneath which means if you're using it on your lap it's gonna get sweaty. So much so that my
10:50heat-seeking cat decided to make the ZenBook its bed and soak up all that nice warmth. However this
10:56was me using it in the full 28 watt performance mode. If you pull it back to the 15 watt balanced
11:01or super quiet modes then it will reduce the power and you will get a lot less heat. And fair
11:06play actually. The fans were nice and quiet throughout. Pretty much silent in everyday use
11:10and not overbearingly loud at all even in performance mode. Inside here we have a 78 watt
11:16hour battery which is a pretty good size actually for how thin it is and the overall battery life is
11:22good if not great. AMD have been a little bit sketchy about their promises for battery life
11:28with this new hardware. They basically have just been saying all day battery life but that is very
11:32vague. I fired up YouTube and let it run overnight side by side with the Intel powered MateBook X Pro
11:38which is a smaller 14 inch laptop but also has a smaller 70 watt hour battery. Again lots of
11:42variables but it's just to give you an idea. And the Ryzen AI ZenBook conks out at a pretty average
11:47seven and a half hours with the MateBook lasting around an hour and a half longer. Okay it's just
11:52gone nine o'clock. I think that'll do for today. I've been working on my review for this, all my
11:59notes and benchmarks but I want to see what the standby battery life is. We're in standard mode
12:05that's how I've been using it. Let's see it's three minutes past nine. We are on go away what
12:12are we on? We're on 83% battery so let's come back in should we say 12 hours and see how much it drops.
12:21Okay 83% see you in a bit. And through the miracle of editing we are back 12 hours later and what do
12:28we think we're on what's the guesses 83 down to 79. So for me with light-ish use I can get about
12:3710 hours of life from this which is not bad at all especially for the performance that we have on tap
12:42it doesn't compete with what you'll get from a snapdragon laptop. Before we wrap up just a quick
12:46word on AI because as I say they are very proud of their 50 trillion operations per second NPU for
12:52all your AI accelerated tasks. The problem is there isn't a whole lot that really utilizes it right
12:57now it is much more about future proofing. You can easily get confused by all this AI marketing spiel
13:03from the brands but essentially what can be offloaded from the CPU or the GPU onto the NPU
13:08and accelerated with AI usually much more efficiently. The main advantage of local AI
13:13right now on laptops is improving your battery life so as more apps and more features take
13:18advantage of the NPU and it's kind of like a chicken or the egg you've got to have the hardware first
13:21uh for you know developers to actually optimize their software for it we should see improvements
13:25to battery life and efficiencies over time this is more of a future proof thing. And I mentioned
13:30earlier while we do have windows copilot we don't get the copilot plus features which are currently
13:35exclusive to snapdragon laptops until later this year. I mentioned story cube this is asus's new
13:40app which is actually pretty neat for sorting your photos and videos creating memories as they
13:45like to call it and it uses AI to smartly organize your files and media which makes it not only much
13:50easier to search for but you can also create highlight reels and videos automatically so if
13:54you do pick one of these up definitely worth having a play around with asus story cube. So
13:58i was just on asus's website here and you can buy this zenbook s16 for 1600 pounds for the entry
14:04level spec but what i would do actually is go for the higher spec because it only costs you an extra
14:10100 quid but you get 32 gigs of ram rather than a 24 you get a 12 core hx370 rather than the 10 core
14:18hx365 and also the more powerful radeon 890m rather than the 880m so more ram two extra cores
14:25faster integrated graphics for just 100 quid. Overall though i think it's a terrific laptop
14:31the ryzen ai hardware may not be a full game changer per se but certainly we're getting the
14:36best in class integrated graphics excellent all-around performance and in what is probably
14:41the best looking laptop of the year so far. So what do you reckon? Tempted? Reckon you might
14:45want to pick one of these up? Let me know what you make of the zenbook s16 in the comments below if
14:49you enjoyed this video a cheeky like and subscribe would be fantastic and i'll see you next time
14:53right here on the tech chat thanks for watching