Asus Zenbook S 16 (2024) review: A well-balanced Windows laptop

Asus’s Big Boost to recreate it laptop technology finally came true and the Zenbook S 16 has made the company a formidable competitor in the mid-range laptop space and more.

It’s probably best to start with the most obvious upgrade: the chassis. Instead of relying on the usual metal or plastic design, Asus has invented a new material called Ceraluminum, which Asus says is the result of four years of work combining aluminum and a type of ceramic into a new compound.

The details are intricate and not entirely transparent, but essentially it fuses two materials into something that is theoretically stronger, lighter, and more resistant to wear and corrosion. Ceraluminum is only used on the top cover of the new Zenbook S, but you’ll notice it right away. It looks like plastic but has the stiffness of metal, and it’s easy to see how thin and light it is, allowing for a thin and light display and lid.

The laptop comes in two colors: Zumaia Gray and Scandinavian White. I got the latter, which is a lighter silvery gray, while the Zumaia option is very dark.

Photo: Christopher Null

The 16-inch display provides enough space for a spacious keyboard, although there’s no number pad, leaving plenty of room on either side. The half-height arrow keys are offset, below the Shift key, making them easier to reach than those on many other laptops that cram them in between everything else. However, I found the keyboard action a little soft. The keyboard backlight is extremely bright and, frankly, too strong at full power. Finally, the large touchpad includes Smart Gesture support, which supports three-finger and four-finger shortcuts that can be customized by the user. Once you get used to them, they can really speed up your workflow.

Inside, Asus has equipped the Zenbook S 16 with the new AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 CPU (paired with a Radeon 880M GPU), 24GB of RAM, and a 1 terabyte solid-state drive. The touchscreen has a resolution of 2,880 x 1,800 pixels. All expansion ports are mounted on the side, including two USB-C ports. USB4 support connector (needs one port for charging), one USB-A port, HDMI output (full size), and one full size SD card reader.

Photo: Christopher Null