{"id":289301,"date":"2026-01-17T13:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T13:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/289301\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T13:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T13:47:10","slug":"early-hands-on-impressions-the-asus-zenbook-a16-with-snapdragon-x2-elite-extreme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/289301\/","title":{"rendered":"Early hands-on impressions: the Asus Zenbook A16 with Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme"},"content":{"rendered":"

At CES, I did what you\u2019re not supposed to do: I brought a pre-production laptop to use as my primary workhorse during a hectic event. The unproven rifle<\/a> in question is the new Arm-based Asus Zenbook A16<\/a>. It\u2019s a 16-inch laptop that weighs less than a 13-inch MacBook Air and comes with a high-end Snapdragon X2 processor. Going into CES with a Windows on Arm laptop running an unreleased processor sounds like a recipe for disaster. But to my surprise, aside from pre-production hardware glitches, I came away impressed.<\/p>\n

The Zenbook A16 that Asus sent me for early testing has a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100 chip. It\u2019s one of the flagship chips<\/a> from Qualcomm\u2019s upcoming X2 processor<\/a> family, sporting 18 cores \u2014 six performance and 12 efficiency. In the A16, it\u2019s paired with a massive 48GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD, and a nice 2880 x 1800 \/ 120Hz OLED display. There\u2019s no price yet, but Asus rep Anthony Spence tells The Verge it might land around $1,599.99 or $1,699.99 \u2014 in the range of a higher-spec 15-inch M4 MacBook Air<\/a> or an entry-level-ish 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Big<\/a><\/p>\n

Big laptop energy. But in a very light chassis.<\/p>\n

First things first: As a pre-production model, this Zenbook A16 is not ready for benchmark testing. And bugs cropped up quickly. To name a few: Windows Hello face unlocking never worked, and the laptop unexpectedly went to sleep mid-use a few times a day. Thankfully, it woke up and resumed where I left off within seconds every time. These are obviously disconcerting problems, but it\u2019s pre-production hardware running a Canary build of Windows 11 26H1<\/a> that\u2019s exclusive to Snapdragon X2 laptops<\/a>. I certainly felt like that canary sometimes, but I expect the issues should be solved on final hardware and software. (If not, I\u2019ll be yelling about it in an eventual review.)<\/p>\n

But despite the bugs, the A16\u2019s performance was very good. It was the only computer I used during the holiday break to prewrite many CES news embargoes, and it was snappy from the start. It had no problem handling my usual workload of dozens of Google Chrome tabs across two or three virtual desktops, writing in Google Docs and WordPress, messaging in Slack and Signal, and simultaneously listening to music in Spotify. But that level of multitasking shouldn\u2019t be a big lift for this chip and that much RAM. The bigger test was editing photos in Lightroom Classic, especially using it on the go in Vegas at CES \u2014 where I occasionally had to do lightning-fast edits of 50-megapixel RAW images shot on my Sony A1 camera.<\/p>\n

I brought the Zenbook with me to CES, but I also brought the M5 MacBook Pro as a fallback. I was ready to carry both, or drop the A16 in favor of the MacBook if needed, but on day one I took a chance and left the MacBook in my hotel room. I brought the Zenbook from my Razer waifu briefing<\/a> to CES Unveiled, where I mostly shot pictures<\/a>for colleagues<\/a>. The Snapdragon X2 chip was snappy when editing through the 70-ish photos I shot while under that time crunch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Love that full-size SD card slot.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And a full-size HDMI too.<\/p>\n

At times, using Adobe Lightroom Classic on the Zenbook felt like the speed I\u2019m used to with Apple\u2019s chips. RAW images were quick to import from the built-in SD card reader \u2014 something I wish all laptops had. I could quickly cull through pictures in the Library module, and making quick brightness and color adjustments in the more demanding Develop module was also fast. The only time things slowed was when I took a more heavy-handed approach to color adjustments (because CES lighting is dreadful), and especially when I used Lightroom\u2019s masking tool with automatic subject detection.<\/p>\n

So my first day at CES (which was two days before the show officially started) worked out great with the A16. But on the following days I shot hundreds more photos. I had a bunch of appointments and briefings, like my chance to photograph the Lenovo Legion Pro rollable gaming laptop concept<\/a>, and various mini missions to hunt things down on the show floor \u2014 like Asus\u2019 Wi-Fi 8 router concept<\/a>. That\u2019s when it started bogging down a little bit.<\/p>\n

Lightroom Classic started leaving me hanging between adjustments and taking whole seconds to load full-res images. But that\u2019s how Lightroom gets sometimes on Windows, and even sometimes on Macs, if you\u2019re trying to work fast and haven\u2019t rebooted in a while to let it clear cache or optimize the catalog.<\/p>\n

On my last full day at the show, I was more judicious about closing Lightroom between edit sessions and not leaving unnecessary apps open in the background. The Zenbook went back to feeling like a nimble editing machine. When showing my colleague Sean Hollister photos from my stroll across the Las Vegas Convention Center show floor<\/a>, I could tell he was surprised with how quickly I was flipping through high-res shots.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The mechanical trackpad is jumbo sized.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d still pick a MacBook Pro for high-demand photo editing, but the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme helped this Zenbook A16 feel more MacBook-like than most other Windows laptops I\u2019ve used \u2014 especially because the bulk of this was on battery power. Like M-series Macs, Snapdragon X laptops offer the same performance on battery and wall power. Intel and AMD processors typically offer noticeably lower performance on battery power. We\u2019ll have to see if it\u2019s the same story with the upcoming Intel Panther Lake and AMD Gorgon Point chips. Getting equal performance on a charger or off makes a huge difference when you\u2019re editing on the fly, which is part of why I\u2019ve always preferred editing on Mac laptops over Windows.<\/p>\n

If this first taste of the Snapdragon X2 processors is an indication, Qualcomm\u2019s new chips should once again impress with performance and battery life \u2014 but, if it matters to you, they\u2019ll likely still falter with gaming (they\u2019re like Macs in that way too). Many games remain incompatible, and graphically demanding ones that actually run, like Cyberpunk 2077 and Resident Evil 4 (2023), are workable but look quite rough.<\/p>\n

Despite those shortcomings, I think the Asus Zenbook A16 shows lots of promise for a thin-and-light Windows laptop with good performance. Though, if price estimates hold true, that performance won\u2019t come cheap. I\u2019m excited to see what a final review unit can do, as this buggy pre-production model already got me through the trenches of CES \u2014 a tricky gauntlet for any laptop.<\/p>\n

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto \/ The Verge<\/p>\n

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