ASUS Zenbook S 16 (UM5606) Review – Quintessentially Premium

After Intel Core Ultra and Qualcomm Snapdragon X series, here’s AMD answer: the Ryzen AI. Investor appeasement aside, the new Zen 5-powered chip is what powers the new ASUS Zenbook S 16 (UM5606) today, and it’s got a pretty high bar to hit given the new standards set by its competitors. Let’s see how this laptop and the Ryzen AI processor stack up.

Unboxing

At the outset, the packaging for the new Zenbook isn’t all that different from the 13th Gen Intel variant (UX5304), with a separate box packing the everything else outside of the laptop. The bigger box naturally houses the laptop, though taking the laptop out of the box reveals one smaller box introducing the new material that the company is fairly proud of, called ‘Ceraluminum’, which is a portmanteau of ‘ceramic’ and ‘aluminum’.

Here’s all the items you’ll be getting:
– Type G (UK) socket adapter
– 65W GaN charger
– USB-C charging cable
– USB-A to LAN adapter
– ASUS Pen 2.0
– ASUS Pen 2.0 user guide
– Laptop user guide
– Laptop quick start guide
– MyASUS leaflet
– The ASUS Zenbook S 16 (UM5606) laptop

Walkaround

The ‘Ceraluminum’ material that is prominently used on the Zenbook S 16 is, on the surface (pun not intended), not too much different than a regular aluminum or magnesium-based chassis; however, the surface texture does feel smoother in comparison (and more resistant to fingerprints, too).

Inside, you’re greeted with a 2.8K 16:10 HDR OLED panel, with an array of webcam-plus-sensors that supports several presence detection features (including one that turns off the screen if it sees you’re away) on top of the Windows Hello facial recognition. No mechanical webcam shutters here, but there is a killswitch via F10 shortcut key.

The redesign further enlarges the touchpad to basically achieve edge-to-edge surface area, and ASUS also adds several functions by swiping at the edges. Swiping the top side towards both sides get you seek navigation, left edge adjusts volume, while right edge is responsible for display brightness. You already have a shortcut for volume and brightness controls on the keyboard though, so this is probably a bit redundant – but hey, the choice is yours.

Like all new laptops in 2024, you’ll also find the Microsoft Copilot key here, but everything just screams ‘afterthought’ to me when Microsoft mandated all OEMs to include this key to qualify as a so-called “AI PC”. Now, pressing the key literally just opens a web app that directs you to copilot.microsoft.com, and you’ll have to sign in to even use it. You can’t even press the key again to close it – what’s the point then, Microsoft?

On the top side of the keyboard is the CNC-machined intake vents with 3,522 cut holes that complement the bottom intake for greater cooling effect. Exhaust heat are dumped on the rear hinge like most lightweight laptops do, so this part is mostly invisible in plain sight, as seen below. Like the Acer Predator Triton Neo 16 we recently reviewed, this laptop uses Torx screws, so make sure you have the appropriate screwdriver in case servicing is needed.

One small downside of the Zenbook S 16 is the hinge: unlike the Vivobook S 14 OLED that opens flat, this one doesn’t – 135° is the most you can open up the laptop, and it’s the tall rubber legs that barely prevent the lower overhang of the display panel from scraping the desk surface.

For I/O, you get a decent set of ports that include HDMI 2.1, two USB4 40Gbps ports (which supports Thunderbolt, DisplayPort and charging), and 3.5mm combo jack on the left; on the right side, you get a single USB-A port and a rather surprising appearance: a full-size SD card slot. Photographers rejoice!

Specifications

ASUS Zenbook S 16 (UM5606W-ARJ108WSM)

Note: Full specifications are available on product webpage.

CPU	AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (4C+8c – 12 cores, 24 threads)
RAM	32GB LPDDR5X-7500 (soldered)
GPU	Integrated: AMD Radeon 890M (16 CUs)
NPU	AMD XDNA NPU (50 TOPS)
Storage	Micron 2400 1TB SSD (MTFDKBA1T0QFM-1BD1AABGB – PCIe 4.0, M.2 2280)
Display	16″ 2.8K 16:10 OLED 2880×1800@120Hz, 0.2ms response time 100% DCI-P3, 10-bit (1.07B colors) 400nits SDR / 500nits HDR max brightness Glossy touch panel with stylus support VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification Pantone Validated TÜV Rheinland cerified SGS Eye Care Display
Audio	Downward-firing stereo speakers tuned by harman/kardon Dolby Atmos Support
Webcam	1080p IR camera Windows Hello support Electronic webcam shutter
I/O	Left: 1x HDMI 2.1 2x USB4 40Gbps (DisplayPort, 65W USB PD, Thunderbolt compatibility) 1x 3.5mm combo jack Right: 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A 1x SD 4.0 card reader
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 (MediaTek MT7925)
Battery	78Wh 4-cell Li-ion
Power Supply	65W, GaN USB-C charger
Operating System	Windows 11 Home
Dimensions	353.6 x 243.0 x 11.9-12.9 mm
Weight	1.50kg

Performance

Note: All benchmark runs are performed and measured on Standard power profile unless otherwise stated.

Storage

Starting with the storage test, we can tell this is a mid-range PCIe 4.0 SSD in the form of Micron 2400, which is a pretty popular SSD for various laptop OEMs. Its performance is unlikely to wow anyone in this day and age, but it’s also perfectly usable as far as daily driving goes.

CPU

With a new name comes with a completely designed CPU, the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is one potent chip. This is the first 12-core laptop CPU from Team Red (which includes 4 full-size Zen 5 cores and 8 downsized Zen 5c cores), and the multicore scores does reflect that: in Standard power mode, you’re looking at the performance that nearly equals the Ryzen 9 8945HS from Razer Blade 2024, at roughly half the power.

At Full Speed mode (which maxes out at ~33W), the Ryzen chip is even capable of keeping up with gaming laptops it has no business competing against. Ryzen 9 8945HS? Check. Core i7-13650HX? Yep. Core Ultra 9 185H? Check that, too. The wilder part is just how silent it is while doing so – despite the MyASUS app reporting the dual-fan system cranking nearly 9,000RPM at maximum speeds, the noise is low enough that you won’t find it intrusive. In Standard mode, it’s hardly noticeable in every use case.

Oddly, the CPU still has plenty of thermal headroom to go, as AMD rated the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with the cTDP range of 15-54W. This might be ASUS’s decision to only limit it at 33W even at Full Speed mode (while Standard uses 28W on stable state), so in practice you can leave it on Standard mode, which maintains the same single-core and GPU performance (see below). Multi-core performance gets a small hit when you take it down a notch, but that’s about it.

GPU

The integrated RDNA 3.5-based Radeon 890M GPU is no slouch, either – with 16 Compute Units on tap, its performance is nearly half of entry-level discrete GPUs like the RTX 4050 (which uses way more power). AMD surely knows a thing or two about building powerful integrated graphics, and signs are pointing that Team Red is about to bring the big guns in the near future. As far as the Radeon 890M goes, you definitely can play some AAA games with low settings and get decently high framerates out of them.

ASUS recently also implemented a new feature for users to manually allocate the system RAM to function as virtual VRAM, with options up to 8GB available. This will require a system reboot that cuts a chunk of your system RAM out, so in the case of 8GB, your system RAM will now be 24GB – which is still plenty, to be fair. Part of the reason why 32GB RAM becomes more common in laptops today is due to companies betting on AI taking lots of memory (which is true), but you’re not likely to run AI models 24/7 anyway, so this is free real estate for regular multitasking workloads.

Keep in mind that LPDDR5X is no GDDR6 when it comes to bandwidth, so this won’t instantly turn your Radeon 890M into a big discrete GPU. Besides, based on our testing we found that Automatic will do the job just fine, and the system will figure out how much memory iGPU needs on the fly. A Superposition 4K benchmark roughly consumes 4GB VRAM, but our observation tells us that scores are virtually equal when you compare between Automatic or 8GB allocated.

System

Moving on, the comparison here can be largely split into two groups: laptops with discrete graphics, and the ones without. Zooming into the laptops without dGPUs, we can see the scores vary quite a bit depending on the Zenbook’s power profile, with the Intel-powered Vivobook S 14 OLED having similar scores thanks to its greater CPU performance on Standard mode. Full Speed mode raised the total score to slot in between laptops with dGPU and the laptops that don’t, largely thanks to the powerful Ryzen CPU.

It’s a different story for PCMark 10, however: both power profiles present virtually no difference side from Digital Content Creation category, and this benchmark is where Ryzen does particularly well in the Productivity segment. Even the DCC scores managed to get the Zenbook Pro 14 OLED (which has a dGPU on it) within striking distance here, but so does the Vivobook S 14 OLED.

Battery

AMD has managed to squeeze out a lot of efficiency gains from the Zen 5 architecture to stretch the Zenbook S 16 into nearly 14 hours of runtime on a single charge. Not quite the runtime you get from Intel-based Zenbooks and Vivobooks we tested before, but keep in mind this is a 16-inch laptop that demands more power from its OLED display (though its battery is slightly larger at 78Wh), so it can skew the efficiency figures by a small bit in case you want an apples-to-apples comparison between Team Blue and Team Red.

The Good

The ASUS Zenbook S 16 ticks a lot of boxes for premium laptops – the AMD Ryzen processor is impressively fast in such a lightweight machine, and the battery life is right up there as well. All of that is done with a reasonable TDP that doesn’t require aggressive cooling setups, and we find the fans produce very little noise in daily use. Even at Full Speed, it’s no louder than your regular gaming laptop either (and that’s despite spinning at a neck-breaking 9,000RPM).

The display, touchpad, keyboard, and speakers are all solid in general, though I do find the speakers have a slightly different soundstage than I’ve used to. It seems like the soundstage is significantly wider, I do get the illusion that the sound is firing slightly more backwards than the Vivobook we recently reviewed, for example (note that we turn off surround mode via Dolby Atmos app to maintain a more accurate sound profile). It’s a small quirk – but generally, the sound quality out of this six-speaker setup is top-notch.

One of the common complaints for Zenbooks in the past has been its tendency to attract fingerprints, and I’m happy to report that is finally no longer the case here. The ‘Ceraluminum’ material used here is smooth to the touch and is very resistant to smudges in general, so your laptop will look clean even after some daily use. Just be sure to have a microfiber cloth with you though, if you’re using the display’s touchscreen functionality (either by hand or through the included ASUS Pen, your hand will smudge it either way).

The Bad

The only thing that can do with some improvements on this laptop is related to the display hinge, of which I have two things to point out. First of all, the hinge only supports 135° – so no flat screens. Not sure why it wouldn’t go further given the hinge design isn’t all that different from the outside, perhaps it might’ve interfere with the internal parts. Either way, this is something worth looking into.

Another small quirk is the way this laptop closes its lid. You see, in most laptops, when the display lid is nearing its closed position, the hinge will automatically close it with its mechanism; this laptop doesn’t seem to do that, and you’ll have to deliberately push it all the way down for it to properly close. You couldn’t just use the inertia to close it, so it’s a bit annoying at times.

Verdict

The ASUS Zenbook S 16 (UM5606) is a premium laptop that commands a premium price: at RM7,999, this is a fairly expensive laptop, but you do get a lot of performance and features that is not going to hold you back in daily use. As far as premium laptops go, this is damn near perfect in my book.

Special thanks to ASUS Malaysia for providing the Zenbook S 16 (UM5606) laptop for this review.