ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 Review

 

A little while ago I came to get my hands on ASUS’s new gaming laptop which is the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16. Now the idea behind this product and the G15 (Released earlier this year) is very similar, the same kind of design language, same footprint, a lot of it is identical between the two 

but there are two big differences, (1) it's running an intel CPU instead of AMD,  (2) the screen is a lot nicer like this is a full screen no chin thin bezels, it's just an excellent  really nice looking screen. 

CPU

Now the first thing I want to talk about is the CPU, so on this particular unit, this is running the intel 11900h, it's a fast CPU and the temperature is actually a little bit lower than the AMD-based G15.

It's a great performer and if you do stuff like video editing then you can take advantage of hardware-based encoding, the Intel product is going to be better and it also has under-volting something that I'm glad to see because it does help with temperatures.

GPU

Let's talk about the GPU, so this is where things get a little bit interesting, this product the ROG Zephyrus M16 is equipped with an RTX 3060. The ROG Zephyrus G15 at an equivalent price point has an RTX 3070 and my initial reaction to this was the G15 has got to be better, it's got to be noticeably faster right because 3070s are better than 3060s. Here's the cool thing, because the clock speed on the intel chip is a little bit faster it can keep up really close to an RTX 3070 equipped G15, it is quite impressive. 

Keep in mind this is only for rasterized graphics where if you're talking about ray tracing it's a completely different story, the RTX 3070 is going to outperform the RTX 3060. But when it comes to regular graphics, it's very close between the two systems. 

Now keep in mind the ROG Zephyrus M16 does not have the option of an RTX 3080 configuration, you can only get it with an RTX 3060 or an RTX 3070 whereas with the ROG Zephyrus G15, you could get all of the video cards the Rtx 3060 or 3080. 

Built

Whatever you get in here you have to do a couple things to this product to make it work, (1) they’ve made this back rubber strip here a little bit thicker so it's made the device slightly taller on the back end but it allows for more airflow. 

(2) the fans are noticeably louder in the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 than the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15, like we're talking in terms of perceived volume, I want to say it's like 50% louder at the top end than the ASUS G15, that's not an exaggeration like if you look at the decimal ratings the numbers aren't that far apart but in terms of perceived volume because it's logarithmic it's noticeably louder than the G15,

and then the third thing is that you can't get an Rtx 3080 in this system. Now it's possible that it's related to supply chain issues but my gut feeling is that if they put a 3080 in here it would not be able to keep up with the thermal requirements of the Intel chip. 

Display

The screen (this is my favorite part about this device) is bright, it's color accurate, it's fast, it's just an awesome screen, it's 16 by 10 aspect ratio, it's got a webcam up top, it's great for games, great for video editing and it's a screen that's actually so bright that when I'm playing certain games I have to dim down the screen a bit. It's just a really nice-looking screen. 

Keyboard

The keyboard is slightly improved over the G15, it's a great layout and the responsivity is slightly better and it also has an RGB variant if you're into that kind of stuff, 

but there is one thing, there is no print screen key on it. So I'm someone that uses the print screen frequently, people will say oh just hit windows + shift + S, everyone knows about that shortcut but it's not the same, the windows print screen button would put a file directly into a folder just without any other clicks or buttons, windows + shift + S just puts it into your clipboard, they're completely different. The keyboard though it's awesome and I think most people that touch this thing are going to like it, it's just a nice feel and great layout,

 

I should mention that the keyboard deck has a soft-touch finish, I like this material but it does show oily fingerprints and smudges quite readily, the trackpad is also well done, it has got clean mechanics on it with a nice glass surface texture.

Sound

It has great speakers, for a gaming laptop I would say these are like a B+ at least, there's just not much competition out there in terms of gaming laptop speakers, these are pretty good, they're just nothing like an actual set of good laptop speakers like Apple is producing.

Battery & Panel

Alright, inside we have two drive bays that are super-fast, there's also a single replaceable ram slot the other component of the ram is soldered on board, there's also a replaceable Wi-Fi and the battery down here is 90 watt. 

I ran my battery test a couple times just to be sure but got noticeably shorter battery life on the ROG Zephyrus M16 as compared to the ROG Zephyrus G15. I don't know if it's because of the screen difference or it's an Intel chip difference but it is a lot shorter, so with ROG Zephyrus G15 I got 6 and a half hours on multiple tests but on the ROG Zephyrus M16, I got 5 and a half hours. That's like almost 15 to 20 percent less battery life on the same battery size.

Conclusion

So my overall take on this product is that I like the M16 a lot and considering it's at a fairly reasonable price point, I would actually consider it to be (for a lot of people) the better choice than the ROG Zephyrus G15, but it really depends on what you want to get out of your gaming laptop. There are trade-offs like you don't get the top-end GPU performance if you want an RTX 3080 you have to go with the G15, you do have a slightly thicker feeling device like there's that extra rubber strip on the bottom, 

plus it's also a slightly louder machine and it's hard to convey this stuff like you know the importance of it right because everyone's different about how annoying is fan noise to you. I will say one thing when I edit videos, I require silence because listening to the audio while I'm doing it, I need my computer to be as quiet as possible and on the ROG Zephyrus M16, I found that the frequent fan noise is just a little bit too much. 

I hope this review will help you to make a decision whether  ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 is the best choice for you or not. Do let me know your opinions in the comments below.