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The Asus Zenbook S 16 is one of the first laptops to feature AMD's flagship Ryzen AI processor, which is expected to be faster than Intel and Qualcomm for gaming, content creation and AI, and it fits into a laptop that AMD says is lighter and thinner than the MacBook Air. That sounds like the perfect all-around Windows laptop.
Design
If the designers of the next Star Trek series -- and let's be honest, there's always another Star Trek series on the horizon -- wanted to look for a simple spaceship accessory, they could do a lot worse than considering the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA Firm. It's a large laptop (35.36 x 24.30 x 1.29) with a gray or white finish that ASUS awkwardly calls "Cera Aluminum." Yes, marketers really can make up words at any time The feel of this Ceraaluminium, silly names aside, is very nice, and it looks great too, with angular lines that really give it a Star Trek-lite feel. My only gripe here – and it’s a small one – is that the Zumaia Grey model I tested tends to pick up fingerprints quite easily, which is quite a detractor from the style.
Performance
The Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA is powered by a new AI-compatible AMD Ryzen 300 series processor, namely the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 or AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 365. As far as I know, only the more expensive 370 model is available on the Australian market, and this is exactly what Asus sent me to test. This is paired with 16GB or 32GB of RAM (32GB in the model we tested) and an AMD Radeon 890M or AMD Radeon 880M integrated graphics solution. Much of the hype here is about the AI capabilities, but this isn't a CoPilot+ laptop like the Surface Laptop 7. Instead you’re looking at the more regular set of CoPilot features on board the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA, at least for now. As yet, I’m not exactly thrilled by what’s on offer here, and Asus’ own AI-led offerings such as the photo organising StoryCube app just isn’t that exciting.
Battery
The Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA comes with a 78Wh battery, which Asus says will last up to 20 hours. A laptop's power efficiency is always dependent on application usage, and in my many years of reviewing laptops, I've rarely seen a laptop come close to the manufacturer's claims. This is not a claim that the Zenbook S 16 UM5606WA surprised me with better-than-advertised battery life, because it didn't, but I want to point out that it's not noticeably better or worse than many others I've tested. I'd argue against the claim in this regard. Battery life depends on real-world usage, so I subjected the laptop to two specific battery tests to provide comparative figures.
