{"video_id":"-8uDibZjHJI","title":"Oh Snap, Snapdragon Can Game Now - ASUS Zenbook A16","channel":"ShortCircuit","show":"ShortCircuit","published_at":"2026-04-13T14:58:16Z","duration_s":637,"segments":[{"start_s":0.0,"end_s":7.12,"text":"It's been about 2 years since we first saw Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite chips in","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":4.72,"end_s":10.719,"text":"laptops, and it was a pretty important step for ARM. But today, Asus is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":9.2,"end_s":15.92,"text":"sponsoring this video to have us take a look at two of their laptops containing","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":12.48,"end_s":19.039,"text":"the successor to the Snapdragon X Elite,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":15.92,"end_s":20.64,"text":"the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. In","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":19.039,"end_s":26.64,"text":"front of me are the two updated versions of Asus's 14 and A16 laptops. While the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":22.96,"end_s":27.76,"text":"A14 is a very nice spelt small size,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":26.64,"end_s":32.96,"text":"we're going to be taking a look at the big boy today, the ZenBook A16, which is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":30.08,"end_s":35.44,"text":"a 16-in laptop. I think ASUS has been on somewhat of a hot streak with their","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":34.16,"end_s":39.28,"text":"laptops this year. I was really impressed with their ZenBook Duo. We","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":37.2,"end_s":44.719,"text":"also liked their expert books for their business lineup, and I have been pretty","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":41.44,"end_s":47.28,"text":"keen to check out the Zenbook.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":44.719,"end_s":49.76,"text":"Wow. You know, it's pretty it's pretty light. Is there anything else","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":48.48,"end_s":53.12,"text":"interesting in here? No, just documentation. Inside the box, you","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":51.52,"end_s":57.28,"text":"obviously get your laptop and I can feel it's using the same Asus exclusive ser","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":55.12,"end_s":61.12,"text":"aluminum with magnesium material, which makes this thing both much more durable","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":59.28,"end_s":63.68,"text":"than standard aluminum laptops. And it makes this thing really light. I don't","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":62.399,"end_s":68.96,"text":"know the exact weight of this specific unit, but the A16 comes as low as 2.65","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":66.72,"end_s":73.6,"text":"lb, which is a lot lighter than a MacBook. 2.67. You know what? Being 20 g","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":71.92,"end_s":77.6,"text":"off, that's that's pretty close. Also included in the box is a 130 watt","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":76.08,"end_s":81.92,"text":"charger, which is higher than I was expecting, but it does thankfully terminate in a USBC port, which means","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":80.96,"end_s":88.64,"text":"that we don't have any sort of proprietary connection. Love to see that. Speaking of ports, we do have an","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":85.2,"end_s":90.56,"text":"HDMI 2.1 and two USB 4 ports that are","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":88.64,"end_s":96.96,"text":"capable of doing 40 Gbits per second. We have a 3.5 mm combo jack and on the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":92.72,"end_s":98.159,"text":"other side, a single USBA and an SD 4.0","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":96.96,"end_s":102.799,"text":"card reader. Now, you know what I'm going to say? I would love to see a second USBA port cuz then it's really","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":101.2,"end_s":108.0,"text":"easy to attach your peripherals. But this is probably a pretty ideal loadout","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":105.439,"end_s":112.399,"text":"for a laptop of this size. And you can still run three displays through these","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":110.72,"end_s":117.68,"text":"ports without having to use a dock. And I guess once you're hooked up to your display via USB, you can start using","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":115.28,"end_s":120.56,"text":"like the USB ports on your display. So like maybe I'm asking for too much. Ever","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":119.28,"end_s":125.92,"text":"think about that? On the bottom, we have ventilation intake as well as an exhaust that goes out the back of the laptop","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":124.399,"end_s":131.599,"text":"underneath the display as well as venting for our speakers and some very","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":129.2,"end_s":135.28,"text":"slightly very slightly raised feet. Get those fans just barely off the ground.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":133.28,"end_s":138.959,"text":"Man, it's so light. So light. And it's like","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":137.28,"end_s":142.48,"text":"Look at how thin this is. This is This is like not This is going to happen in","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":140.48,"end_s":145.599,"text":"life, Glenn. You got to You got to understand the keyboard's a standard","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":144.0,"end_s":148.879,"text":"chicklet style keyboard. I find that the ASUS keyboards tend to be pretty nice.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":147.599,"end_s":153.599,"text":"That's just my preference. And there's not too much flex. You kind of have to give her, but it is present. Also, ASUS","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":152.4,"end_s":158.48,"text":"missed opportunity. Could have made that a button. or like a fingerprint reader, which this doesn't have, but it does","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":156.239,"end_s":162.959,"text":"have Windows Hello builtin into the top of the display, which is got tiny little","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":161.12,"end_s":166.879,"text":"bezels. Should we turn it on? Let me know in the comments below if we should","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":164.48,"end_s":173.519,"text":"turn this laptop on. The A16 features a 16in ASUS aluminina OLED display that is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":169.92,"end_s":174.8,"text":"certified display HDR, true black 1000.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":173.519,"end_s":180.56,"text":"Because it's OLED, it means you're going to have really great contrast ratios. You're going to get 1100 nits of HDR","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":177.92,"end_s":184.319,"text":"peak brightness as well as 100% coverage of the DCIP3 color space. And it comes","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":182.72,"end_s":189.36,"text":"factory calibrated. if you care less about the productivity side of things and you just want to know if you can","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":186.4,"end_s":192.08,"text":"game on it. You do get 120 Hz with a 0.2 millisecond response time. So, it's","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":191.04,"end_s":197.28,"text":"going to be good for pretty much anything you're going to throw at this class of laptop. Qualcomm's been like","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":194.959,"end_s":201.36,"text":"pretty hard at work on their new chips, and they promise a lot of improvements","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":199.92,"end_s":205.84,"text":"to performance, especially when it comes to the GPU. The Snapdragon X2 Elite","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":203.44,"end_s":210.48,"text":"Extreme comes with 18 cores on its CPU. 12 of those are high performance prime","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":207.68,"end_s":214.0,"text":"CPUs, and six of those are highly efficient performance cores. Their","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":212.159,"end_s":217.36,"text":"naming is very funny. They claim that it will deliver up to 64% faster","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":215.92,"end_s":224.239,"text":"performance in creative applications compared to the last gen and 2.3% higher","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":222.08,"end_s":229.519,"text":"gaming performance versus the prior gen Adreno GPU. 2.3 times, what did I say?","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":226.64,"end_s":233.599,"text":"Correction, 2.3 times the performance, not percent, it's much higher than that.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":231.84,"end_s":238.64,"text":"And they also claim that the GPU is getting that much more performance while","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":235.12,"end_s":240.319,"text":"being 125% more efficient. But even with","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":238.64,"end_s":244.0,"text":"all of the efficiency that you'd find on a Qualcomm powered laptop, that didn't","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":242.319,"end_s":248.64,"text":"stop ASUS from packing this thing with a nice large 70Wh battery. Sure, it's not","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":247.519,"end_s":252.72,"text":"the biggest batteries. We're seeing a lot of laptops with 99W hours, but I'm","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":250.959,"end_s":255.76,"text":"going to hope that the general efficiency of the Snapdragon chip is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":254.4,"end_s":262.4,"text":"going to mean that this is going to get pretty good battery life. I mean, Asus claims 21 plus hours of offline video","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":260.72,"end_s":266.72,"text":"playback, which is how everyone uses their laptop, and 12 plus hours of web","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":264.8,"end_s":270.4,"text":"browsing for those weirdos out there. In our battery endurance test where we're","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":268.0,"end_s":275.759,"text":"doing Plex playback at 1080p in Windows battery saver mode, we saw this laptop","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":272.16,"end_s":277.36,"text":"get 13 and 12 hours of battery life. And","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":275.759,"end_s":283.28,"text":"in our battery stress test where we just run Cinebench on repeat until the thing","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":279.919,"end_s":285.199,"text":"dies. The Asus A16 got an hour and 15","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":283.28,"end_s":289.44,"text":"minutes, which is also pretty good and also indicates that this is probably","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":287.28,"end_s":293.919,"text":"running at around 65 watts because it's a 70Wh hour battery and if this thing","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":291.28,"end_s":297.199,"text":"was pulling 70 watts for a full hour, that would make it die. the math maths","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":295.84,"end_s":300.8,"text":"which is kind of crazy. I just don't associate like Snapdragon with like such","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":298.96,"end_s":306.08,"text":"high powered chips but actually the Snapdragon XLite 2 can go up to 95 watts","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":304.4,"end_s":310.4,"text":"depending on the configuration which is crazy. Compatibility is a fair concern.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":308.96,"end_s":314.479,"text":"I have found that for the most part my apps perform basically identically as","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":312.32,"end_s":318.24,"text":"they would on an x86 system. Though I have encountered specific issues with","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":316.16,"end_s":322.08,"text":"games like uh UFO 50 where it like boots but like for some reason it doesn't","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":319.759,"end_s":325.199,"text":"accept like any inputs so I have to like force close it. It's It's kind of","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":323.44,"end_s":329.52,"text":"frustrating cuz I love that game. But there are ongoing efforts to improve","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":327.039,"end_s":333.68,"text":"compatibility. In October 2025, Microsoft added AVX2 emulation to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":332.16,"end_s":337.84,"text":"Windows, which allows these chips to have far better performance in software","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":335.44,"end_s":342.52,"text":"that requires AVX2. It's like it's getting better. Take a listen to the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":339.199,"end_s":342.52,"text":"speakers here.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":342.96,"end_s":348.12,"text":"At 100%, they're not very good, but up to like","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":348.88,"end_s":353.28,"text":"40, they're decent, especially for something this thin. I think that the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":352.0,"end_s":358.08,"text":"speakers on this are completely serviceable, but they're um perfectly","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":355.52,"end_s":362.32,"text":"chromulent speakers. Webcam. Webcam. This is a recording on the webcam and","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":360.08,"end_s":366.0,"text":"also on the laptop microphones. Uh let us know in the comments how you think it","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":363.52,"end_s":369.36,"text":"sounds. For the webcam quality, I have a lot of issues with the image quality.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":367.52,"end_s":372.24,"text":"There's some very clear white balance issues. Like I'm there's like weird","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":370.88,"end_s":375.84,"text":"areas where I'm like kind of totally blown out and the color is really off.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":374.0,"end_s":381.44,"text":"It's to me the webcam right now looks like there might be something that's like not quite finalized in terms of","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":378.96,"end_s":385.6,"text":"drivers. However, it is still like serviceable webcam and that it shows","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":384.0,"end_s":391.759,"text":"images of you. So, hopefully they'll be able to fix this up and make it look a little bit nicer. Cool. I want a game","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":388.479,"end_s":394.16,"text":"now. Whoa. Honestly, this looks really","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":391.759,"end_s":397.68,"text":"good. There is some upscaling going on, is there? There isn't. There's just some","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":396.08,"end_s":401.44,"text":"really bad artifacts in these lights. That's not how that's supposed to look.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":399.199,"end_s":405.199,"text":"Like, they're like goes to show that there's still some","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":403.039,"end_s":409.52,"text":"weirdness with the with Qualcomm. But overall, the fact that I am on a laptop","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":407.12,"end_s":414.96,"text":"this thin, this lightweight, running a Snapdragon CPU, and I am playing","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":411.84,"end_s":416.319,"text":"Cyberpunk at 1920 x 1200 and it's like","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":414.96,"end_s":421.759,"text":"totally playable. Sure, it's not the best experience of all time. It's not running at like 120 or anything. It","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":419.759,"end_s":425.68,"text":"might not even be all the way at 50. Yeah, this is honestly pretty crazy. It","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":423.52,"end_s":428.88,"text":"is not the quietest laptop, but also we're running a pretty thin laptop. If","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":427.44,"end_s":432.88,"text":"this is how good it plays Cyberpunk, I'm really interested to see how it performs","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":430.8,"end_s":436.8,"text":"in the rest of our gaming tests from Labs. And looking at the Labs results,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":434.88,"end_s":442.16,"text":"it performs pretty dang well. In Cyberpunk 2077, at 1080p, we're getting","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":439.36,"end_s":444.96,"text":"50 average FPS with 41 on the 1% lows. That's actually pretty good. On Dota 2,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":443.68,"end_s":448.8,"text":"at the best looking preset, we're getting 88 average FPS, which isn't","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":446.72,"end_s":451.36,"text":"particularly high for Dota, but also you could just crank the settings down a","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":450.0,"end_s":456.8,"text":"little bit. In Rocket League, at max settings with no anti-aliasing, 151","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":454.16,"end_s":460.319,"text":"average, 114 low. Obviously, we know that Qualcomm is capable of like strong","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":458.56,"end_s":464.88,"text":"gaming chips with things in VR headsets and stuff, but I'm really surprised to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":462.4,"end_s":468.24,"text":"see them doing so well on the window on like a platform that isn't tailor made","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":466.4,"end_s":472.319,"text":"for them. It's on Windows, but I don't think there's a ton of people buying this laptop for gaming, even though","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":470.4,"end_s":476.72,"text":"apparently it can. You're probably buying it for, you know, other laptop","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":474.8,"end_s":480.0,"text":"stuff. In our benchmarks, like our CPU benchmark performs really well in","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":478.319,"end_s":484.639,"text":"Cinebench. In Blender, we render our scene in 4 minutes and 34 seconds, which","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":481.84,"end_s":488.72,"text":"is nearly half of last gen. So, that's that's crazy. Now I feel my laptop is","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":486.56,"end_s":492.479,"text":"inadequate. In Puget Bench though, we see kind of the first set of caveats. It","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":490.96,"end_s":497.28,"text":"does really well in our Photoshop benchmark, but it uh would DNF in both","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":495.039,"end_s":502.639,"text":"Da Vinci and Premiere. Now, it actually runs both of these programs pretty well","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":500.08,"end_s":507.68,"text":"overall in general use, but there's some sort of compatibility issue with our","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":504.8,"end_s":510.96,"text":"specific Puget benchmark, and we're not really sure. And that's the exact kind","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":508.8,"end_s":516.399,"text":"of downside that you might encounter on a Qualcomm laptop is like your program","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":512.8,"end_s":517.839,"text":"works 99% of the time. And there's one","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":516.399,"end_s":521.12,"text":"small weird thing where it's really going to just like struggle. But as we","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":519.76,"end_s":526.0,"text":"said, it's getting better. And with chips getting this powerful, we're probably going to be seeing more of","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":523.919,"end_s":528.64,"text":"them. And that's going to hopefully mean more interest in supporting the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":527.36,"end_s":531.44,"text":"software. And in the interest of improving this compatibility, Qualcomm's","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":530.48,"end_s":536.72,"text":"actually going to be taking over the driver updates instead of asking each specific vendor to make their own","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":534.72,"end_s":540.16,"text":"drivers. So hopefully we're going to see more rapid improvements that are going","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":538.16,"end_s":543.2,"text":"to broadly apply to all of the Snapdragon chips and they're going to","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":541.68,"end_s":549.2,"text":"come out more faster. For our encoding benchmarks, we see great performance in H.264, but lackluster performance with","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":546.959,"end_s":554.16,"text":"AV1. And in our archival benchmark, it does a great job with 7zip. And that","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":550.959,"end_s":557.6,"text":"might be in part due to the 48 GB of RAM","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":554.16,"end_s":560.32,"text":"that is on the chip. It's not soldered","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":557.6,"end_s":565.519,"text":"on the board. It is on the SoC itself, which means that it runs really fast.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":562.959,"end_s":568.32,"text":"It's running at 9500 mega transfers per second. A little bit","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":566.959,"end_s":573.68,"text":"faster than that actually, which might not make a huge difference in day-to-day usage, but also 48 gigs of RAM is hard","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":572.24,"end_s":576.959,"text":"to come by these days. It's interesting to see how the two platforms of x86 as","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":575.68,"end_s":582.959,"text":"well as like Snapdragon have been kind of like playing cat-and- mouse. X86 finally has good battery life, but","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":580.64,"end_s":585.839,"text":"Qualcomm has really improved their gaming performance, but also they're","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":584.48,"end_s":592.24,"text":"still kind of king in performance per watt. Depending on your workload, this thing could be a great choice.","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":590.16,"end_s":596.08,"text":"Personally, for my job, this thing's awesome. And it's almost a problem that","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":594.24,"end_s":599.279,"text":"it can gain because I'm going to be so much more distracted. Now, we can talk","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":597.68,"end_s":604.839,"text":"all we want about power efficiency, but what's also important to know is the price. And this thing comes in at","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":601.839,"end_s":604.839,"text":"$1,999.99,","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":604.88,"end_s":610.88,"text":"which ain't cheap, but also it's a top-of-the-line CPU in a pretty nice","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":609.2,"end_s":616.16,"text":"form factor. If you want to save a couple bucks, you can get basically the","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":612.959,"end_s":618.16,"text":"same chip just slightly clocked down for","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":616.16,"end_s":621.36,"text":"$1,600. It's still an X2 Elite Extreme. It's","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":619.839,"end_s":626.56,"text":"still going to have the same great GPU as well as the same 48 GB of RAM. It's","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":625.2,"end_s":631.04,"text":"just going to be a little bit slower. And honestly, seeing how fast this thing is, something to consider. Thanks for","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":629.92,"end_s":638.24,"text":"watching ShortCircuit. If you enjoyed this, why don't you check out my video on the Asus Zenbook Duo, a machine that","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0},{"start_s":635.04,"end_s":638.24,"text":"I am absolutely smitten","speaker":null,"is_sponsor":0}],"full_text":"It's been about 2 years since we first saw Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite chips in laptops, and it was a pretty important step for ARM. But today, Asus is sponsoring this video to have us take a look at two of their laptops containing the successor to the Snapdragon X Elite, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. In front of me are the two updated versions of Asus's 14 and A16 laptops. While the A14 is a very nice spelt small size, we're going to be taking a look at the big boy today, the ZenBook A16, which is a 16-in laptop. I think ASUS has been on somewhat of a hot streak with their laptops this year. I was really impressed with their ZenBook Duo. We also liked their expert books for their business lineup, and I have been pretty keen to check out the Zenbook. Wow. You know, it's pretty it's pretty light. Is there anything else interesting in here? No, just documentation. Inside the box, you obviously get your laptop and I can feel it's using the same Asus exclusive ser aluminum with magnesium material, which makes this thing both much more durable than standard aluminum laptops. And it makes this thing really light. I don't know the exact weight of this specific unit, but the A16 comes as low as 2.65 lb, which is a lot lighter than a MacBook. 2.67. You know what? Being 20 g off, that's that's pretty close. Also included in the box is a 130 watt charger, which is higher than I was expecting, but it does thankfully terminate in a USBC port, which means that we don't have any sort of proprietary connection. Love to see that. Speaking of ports, we do have an HDMI 2.1 and two USB 4 ports that are capable of doing 40 Gbits per second. We have a 3.5 mm combo jack and on the other side, a single USBA and an SD 4.0 card reader. Now, you know what I'm going to say? I would love to see a second USBA port cuz then it's really easy to attach your peripherals. But this is probably a pretty ideal loadout for a laptop of this size. And you can still run three displays through these ports without having to use a dock. And I guess once you're hooked up to your display via USB, you can start using like the USB ports on your display. So like maybe I'm asking for too much. Ever think about that? On the bottom, we have ventilation intake as well as an exhaust that goes out the back of the laptop underneath the display as well as venting for our speakers and some very slightly very slightly raised feet. Get those fans just barely off the ground. Man, it's so light. So light. And it's like Look at how thin this is. This is This is like not This is going to happen in life, Glenn. You got to You got to understand the keyboard's a standard chicklet style keyboard. I find that the ASUS keyboards tend to be pretty nice. That's just my preference. And there's not too much flex. You kind of have to give her, but it is present. Also, ASUS missed opportunity. Could have made that a button. or like a fingerprint reader, which this doesn't have, but it does have Windows Hello builtin into the top of the display, which is got tiny little bezels. Should we turn it on? Let me know in the comments below if we should turn this laptop on. The A16 features a 16in ASUS aluminina OLED display that is certified display HDR, true black 1000. Because it's OLED, it means you're going to have really great contrast ratios. You're going to get 1100 nits of HDR peak brightness as well as 100% coverage of the DCIP3 color space. And it comes factory calibrated. if you care less about the productivity side of things and you just want to know if you can game on it. You do get 120 Hz with a 0.2 millisecond response time. So, it's going to be good for pretty much anything you're going to throw at this class of laptop. Qualcomm's been like pretty hard at work on their new chips, and they promise a lot of improvements to performance, especially when it comes to the GPU. The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme comes with 18 cores on its CPU. 12 of those are high performance prime CPUs, and six of those are highly efficient performance cores. Their naming is very funny. They claim that it will deliver up to 64% faster performance in creative applications compared to the last gen and 2.3% higher gaming performance versus the prior gen Adreno GPU. 2.3 times, what did I say? Correction, 2.3 times the performance, not percent, it's much higher than that. And they also claim that the GPU is getting that much more performance while being 125% more efficient. But even with all of the efficiency that you'd find on a Qualcomm powered laptop, that didn't stop ASUS from packing this thing with a nice large 70Wh battery. Sure, it's not the biggest batteries. We're seeing a lot of laptops with 99W hours, but I'm going to hope that the general efficiency of the Snapdragon chip is going to mean that this is going to get pretty good battery life. I mean, Asus claims 21 plus hours of offline video playback, which is how everyone uses their laptop, and 12 plus hours of web browsing for those weirdos out there. In our battery endurance test where we're doing Plex playback at 1080p in Windows battery saver mode, we saw this laptop get 13 and 12 hours of battery life. And in our battery stress test where we just run Cinebench on repeat until the thing dies. The Asus A16 got an hour and 15 minutes, which is also pretty good and also indicates that this is probably running at around 65 watts because it's a 70Wh hour battery and if this thing was pulling 70 watts for a full hour, that would make it die. the math maths which is kind of crazy. I just don't associate like Snapdragon with like such high powered chips but actually the Snapdragon XLite 2 can go up to 95 watts depending on the configuration which is crazy. Compatibility is a fair concern. I have found that for the most part my apps perform basically identically as they would on an x86 system. Though I have encountered specific issues with games like uh UFO 50 where it like boots but like for some reason it doesn't accept like any inputs so I have to like force close it. It's It's kind of frustrating cuz I love that game. But there are ongoing efforts to improve compatibility. In October 2025, Microsoft added AVX2 emulation to Windows, which allows these chips to have far better performance in software that requires AVX2. It's like it's getting better. Take a listen to the speakers here. At 100%, they're not very good, but up to like 40, they're decent, especially for something this thin. I think that the speakers on this are completely serviceable, but they're um perfectly chromulent speakers. Webcam. Webcam. This is a recording on the webcam and also on the laptop microphones. Uh let us know in the comments how you think it sounds. For the webcam quality, I have a lot of issues with the image quality. There's some very clear white balance issues. Like I'm there's like weird areas where I'm like kind of totally blown out and the color is really off. It's to me the webcam right now looks like there might be something that's like not quite finalized in terms of drivers. However, it is still like serviceable webcam and that it shows images of you. So, hopefully they'll be able to fix this up and make it look a little bit nicer. Cool. I want a game now. Whoa. Honestly, this looks really good. There is some upscaling going on, is there? There isn't. There's just some really bad artifacts in these lights. That's not how that's supposed to look. Like, they're like goes to show that there's still some weirdness with the with Qualcomm. But overall, the fact that I am on a laptop this thin, this lightweight, running a Snapdragon CPU, and I am playing Cyberpunk at 1920 x 1200 and it's like totally playable. Sure, it's not the best experience of all time. It's not running at like 120 or anything. It might not even be all the way at 50. Yeah, this is honestly pretty crazy. It is not the quietest laptop, but also we're running a pretty thin laptop. If this is how good it plays Cyberpunk, I'm really interested to see how it performs in the rest of our gaming tests from Labs. And looking at the Labs results, it performs pretty dang well. In Cyberpunk 2077, at 1080p, we're getting 50 average FPS with 41 on the 1% lows. That's actually pretty good. On Dota 2, at the best looking preset, we're getting 88 average FPS, which isn't particularly high for Dota, but also you could just crank the settings down a little bit. In Rocket League, at max settings with no anti-aliasing, 151 average, 114 low. Obviously, we know that Qualcomm is capable of like strong gaming chips with things in VR headsets and stuff, but I'm really surprised to see them doing so well on the window on like a platform that isn't tailor made for them. It's on Windows, but I don't think there's a ton of people buying this laptop for gaming, even though apparently it can. You're probably buying it for, you know, other laptop stuff. In our benchmarks, like our CPU benchmark performs really well in Cinebench. In Blender, we render our scene in 4 minutes and 34 seconds, which is nearly half of last gen. So, that's that's crazy. Now I feel my laptop is inadequate. In Puget Bench though, we see kind of the first set of caveats. It does really well in our Photoshop benchmark, but it uh would DNF in both Da Vinci and Premiere. Now, it actually runs both of these programs pretty well overall in general use, but there's some sort of compatibility issue with our specific Puget benchmark, and we're not really sure. And that's the exact kind of downside that you might encounter on a Qualcomm laptop is like your program works 99% of the time. And there's one small weird thing where it's really going to just like struggle. But as we said, it's getting better. And with chips getting this powerful, we're probably going to be seeing more of them. And that's going to hopefully mean more interest in supporting the software. And in the interest of improving this compatibility, Qualcomm's actually going to be taking over the driver updates instead of asking each specific vendor to make their own drivers. So hopefully we're going to see more rapid improvements that are going to broadly apply to all of the Snapdragon chips and they're going to come out more faster. For our encoding benchmarks, we see great performance in H.264, but lackluster performance with AV1. And in our archival benchmark, it does a great job with 7zip. And that might be in part due to the 48 GB of RAM that is on the chip. It's not soldered on the board. It is on the SoC itself, which means that it runs really fast. It's running at 9500 mega transfers per second. A little bit faster than that actually, which might not make a huge difference in day-to-day usage, but also 48 gigs of RAM is hard to come by these days. It's interesting to see how the two platforms of x86 as well as like Snapdragon have been kind of like playing cat-and- mouse. X86 finally has good battery life, but Qualcomm has really improved their gaming performance, but also they're still kind of king in performance per watt. Depending on your workload, this thing could be a great choice. Personally, for my job, this thing's awesome. And it's almost a problem that it can gain because I'm going to be so much more distracted. Now, we can talk all we want about power efficiency, but what's also important to know is the price. And this thing comes in at $1,999.99, which ain't cheap, but also it's a top-of-the-line CPU in a pretty nice form factor. If you want to save a couple bucks, you can get basically the same chip just slightly clocked down for $1,600. It's still an X2 Elite Extreme. It's still going to have the same great GPU as well as the same 48 GB of RAM. It's just going to be a little bit slower. And honestly, seeing how fast this thing is, something to consider. Thanks for watching ShortCircuit. If you enjoyed this, why don't you check out my video on the Asus Zenbook Duo, a machine that I am absolutely smitten"}