Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 Review – Lock and load

You can look at any laptop these days, and you’ll instantly know what its primary purpose is. Garish and sporting enough RGB LEDs to host its own warehouse rave? Dollars to donuts, that’s a gaming laptop you’re looking at right there. More subtle design quirks, leaning towards the side of plain and average on the design scale? There’s your office laptop right there. The Asus Zephyrus M16 however, sports a more refined shell that nails a delightful balance between the two schools of laptop design.

It’s sleek, sexy, and it looks great in any environment that you place it in, while internally it sports a terrific selection of hardware that’s designed to provide a serious amount of power even when it’s not plugged in. On paper at least, because even cutting-edge notebooks can’t get over a technological hurdle of this era just yet. But before we discuss performance, back to the look and feel of this stunning slab!

As mentioned above, the Asus M16 has a more subtle aesthetic, leaning towards covert black ops with its design. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have some gamer swag to show off, as the top of the lid features a splash of iridescent colour that hits you with a rainbow effect when light shines on it. It’s an RGB effect, and it’s eco-friendly! The rest of the notebook features a mix of matte black surface and gentle angles, while the hinge can be lifted up to a point where it gives the M16 an angled resting position.

On the perimeter, you’ve got your usual array of ports ranging from HDMI 2.0b, ethernet, USB of the type-A and type-C variety, and a 3.5mm input/output for audio on the left. Shift to the right, and there’s another USB-A port and a microSD card slot. Internally, the model that Asus sent my way was packed with an impressive 11th Gen Intel Core i9 processor clocked at 2.5GHz, 32GB RAM that be upgraded to 48GB, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 laptop GPU with 8GB GDDR6 RAM, and a chunky 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD.

The fact that this laptop throws all of this 16-inch screen hardware into a frame usually reserved for svelte 15-inch machines, is nothing short of astonishing. It’s a surprisingly compact device in this size-range, the keyboard has a decent amount of tactile feedback, and the large square of touchpad for mouse control is just the right size so that the bottom doesn’t feel as cramped as a Hong Kong flat. Not too shabby.

The real treat here though is the screen on the M16, which sports a vibrant and Pantone-validated 2560 x 1600 resolution, 165Hz refresh rate, 3ms response, and Dolby Vision. It’s also bright enough to be confused for a Solar Flare attack straight out of Dragon Ball Z, maxing out at 444 nits and covering various colour gamuts at an extremely high level. That last point emphasises just how serious Asus is about attracting the creator market with its new machines, which can cover 100% of the sRGB gamut and 86% of Adobe RGB.

Everything looks fantastic on this screen, especially content that’s designed to take advantage of it, and with its incredibly thin bezels, you’re getting an experience that delivers superb visual clarity and life-like colour. Video creators will love it, while people who consume video content can also sit back and gaze at some amazing projects.

So how does it handle? Exceptionally well all things considered…if you have it plugged in.

There’s no denying that a huge difference can be felt with the laptop hooked up to the grid, and thanks to some Beastie Boys-level sabotage at Eskom, I also had the perfect opportunity to try it out in what is now South Africa’s natural powerless habitat. Here’s a breakdown on things. As expected, running the M16 with all features blazing while untethered from a power supply drains its reserves quicker than your patience when that uncle comes to visit during the holiday season.

It’s a fact of laptop life, and one that Asus is trying to overcome with the Silent mode profile that’s designed to give you a lengthy amount of power and performance. Technically it works great for run-of-the-mill functions such as internet browsing or watching video content, but more demanding functions are barely usable due to the profile applying severe throttling on its end. Can you play games in this mode? Absolutely, if you don’t mind running them at potato mode, but with their average graphical settings applied, they’re borderline unplayable.

The same goes for video editing, which is just fine with regular 1080p content but also unusable once you start working with 4K content that uses the powerful dedicated graphics cards to render the high-resolution footage. The key takeaway is that the M16 is more than capable of lasting longer than a regular gaming laptop when it relies solely on its battery and a full charge, but the added time doesn’t yet feel like a revelatory evolution.

Plugged in though? That’s a different story entirely and one where the M16 shines with all of that power under its hood. As you’d imagine, a dedicated Nvidia GeForce 3070 is no slouch at running graphically demanding games such as Into the Breach, and Stardew Valley, and once I stopped giggling at the thought of PC fanboys screaming at me, I ran a few more demanding games on the M16. Locked and loaded with a direct umbilical cable to the wall outlet, my usual set of games for benchmarking includes Far Cry 5 (soon to be replaced by Far Cry 6), Gears 5, Forza Horizon 5, and Batman: Arkham Knight.

Performance was near-flawless as you’d expect, and with some fine-tuning in the graphics settings department, I had these titles running on par with current-gen consoles and even better in many instances. I personally prefer to play games at 1080 or 1440p on these mobile machines, leaving me plenty of wiggle room to dial up the frames so that my eyes can bask in silky-smooth action, and the M16 more than delivered on that front.

It’s also a dab hand at creative programs as you’d expect, and working with 4K video was an absolute breeze on this system. On the rare occasion where I needed more power, Turbo mode allowed me to crank up the juice and get even more blistering performance, but it came with two caveats. First, the laptop’s fans become loud enough to make you think that it’s cosplaying as a PS4 Pro, and second, Turbo mode doesn’t come with an old-school 1980s button ala Knight Rider to activate it.

So who is the M16 for? The lines between creative and gaming functionality in a laptop package have been blurred, resulting in a device that easily straddles the line between either pursuit easily and delivers excellent performance when plugged in. It definitely leans more towards the gaming enthusiast side, but seeing as how that hobby is now a career with livestreaming and video highlight packages, knowing that you have an all-in-one machine makes for a terrific selling point.

The battery life and its accompanying profile may need some fine-tuning, but everything else about the Asus Zephyrus M16 is first-class excellence. It has killer looks, it can easily carry any current game thrown at it, and it’s a wonderfully compact unit for turning your digital passion into a full-time career with its elegant handling of mainstream creator applications.