ASUS nailed it! - Zephyrus M16 Gaming Laptop
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
1,683 words · ~8 min read
0:00
- Today's a very special day. In our internal system,
0:04
this has only happened twice before, this is number 69.
0:07
Nice. What's also nice, this is the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16,
0:11
which is a stupid name because that's a gun,
0:14
and the Alienware also already has the M15 and the M17.
0:18
But whatever, I think it's a good laptop or maybe not. I guess we're gonna find out.
0:23
Hello. Okay, for our power adapter, we get 240 Watts.
0:27
That's quite a bit. Well then again, this is probably a pretty power-hungry guy here.
0:30
It's charged by a barrel adapter, but I believe you can do 100 Watts
0:34
of USB-C charging. As for other stuff, we get nothing.
0:37
This is a pre-production unit. It is one of the very first laptops
0:41
that we have seen that has Intel's Core H.
0:44
I think that looks really good. Look at the size of this, like,
0:48
foot on the bottom. They must have to do that to suck in air in here
0:52
and shoot it out the back. They don't do the thing where it opens up on the bottom anymore.
0:57
This back is very fingerprint prone. Oh, you can really see it in the overhead.
1:01
Oh yeah. Look at that. (Alexander grumbles)
1:05
So we have two Thunderbolts, I'm guessing a Slender Bolt 4,
1:08
and I'm guessing because they're so close there's only a single Thunderbolt controller
1:13
but that's fine. I also have full size USB Type A, Ethernet,
1:16
that's always nice to see, full-size HDMI as well,
1:20
power input, and around to the other side, you get another full size HDMI
1:23
and a mini SD card reader. Wish that was full size
1:26
for laptop like this, but whatever. Overall, this is extremely similar
1:31
to the Zephyrus G15. Now you might be thinking,
1:34
if this is essentially the same body as the G15
1:38
but is the M16, how did they get that extra inch?
1:42
Well, by giving it a 16 by 10 display.
1:45
This thing is so good looking. Look at that. It comes all the way down here.
1:49
And they have a webcam, too. Look at that. That's something that we haven't seen
1:52
on a Zephyrus in a good long while. Oh, it even has a matte display.
1:57
Awesome. - Yeah. - Thanks, Wren, for sponsoring today's video.
2:00
Wren is a website where to calculate your carbon footprint and then offset it by funding projects
2:04
that plant trees and protect rainforests. By answering a few questions about your lifestyle,
2:08
you can see your carbon footprint and ways to reduce it. Once you sign up and make a monthly contribution
2:13
to offset your carbon footprint, you receive monthly updates from tree planting, rainforest protection,
2:17
and other projects you support. No one can reduce their carbon footprint to zero,
2:21
so you can offset what you have left after reducing.
2:24
Click the link below, and that's actually pretty cool.
2:27
This display is so sick. So it's like tall Quad-HD,
2:31
so it's 2560 by 1600.
2:35
Oh my god that looks good. (Alexander laughs) Massive track pad.
2:39
This right here is the kind of thing that you can, you know, actually use and not hate your life.
2:44
The keyboard also, so good. ASUS also has their Strix lineup
2:47
which has their opto-mechanical key switches. These are so much better.
2:51
This is easily, like, probably tied for my favorite switches
2:54
on a gaming laptop aside from, like, the cherry ones on the M17.
3:00
Great. Yep, love the keyboard. Awesome. Everything that you interact with
3:04
in this little area right here, ASUS has nailed.
3:07
It's so awesome to see, like, gaming laptops that don't, like, suck to use anymore.
3:13
Like this is pretty light, it is just over two Kilograms.
3:16
So this right here has an i9-11900H, which is eight core, 16 threads, 10 nanometer,
3:23
And also, you know, I have no clue how good it is.
3:27
We're not allowed to do performance testing on this guy,
3:30
and also, like, I do have upstairs one
3:33
that I'm allowed to do testing on, but it's not this design. It's one that Intel sent us.
3:38
And it's, it's garbage. It's terrible. Not because of the CPU,
3:41
but because just the references that they gave us is really bad
3:45
and throttles to all hell. So yeah,
3:48
I have no clue how good these chips are right now
3:51
and probably won't for like several weeks. But we'll let you know when we can find out.
3:56
Oh, only 500 Gigabyte SSD. I'd much rather have like a Terabyte
4:00
in something like this, but whatever. This graphics driver could not find
4:03
compatible graphics hardware. - Uh, that sounds - Uh.
4:06
(Alexander laughs) I was planning on not showing you performance testing because they asked,
4:10
but I guess I'm just not doing performance testing. Uh, well, I guess while it figures that out
4:15
we can always do a nice little sound test.
4:18
I think they said this is like a six speaker setup.
4:22
Apparently it's good. ("Crab Rave")
4:32
Yeah, the XPS wins. This is really good though.
4:36
It doesn't quite have, like, the deep base-y sounds,
4:39
but clarity, excellent. Overall, good showings,
4:45
not the best. We can also see here the displays are very comparable.
4:51
It makes sense. I believe that they're both color calibrated. So they're both accurate.
4:55
The Dell is a bit, like, richer. It feels more saturated
4:59
and the blacks are deeper, but that's the trade-off that you have
5:03
with this being a matte display. Everything's not quite as, like,
5:06
crispy, inky black, but also, like, when I move over here,
5:11
it's not just I don't see that light in this screen
5:14
but I see it really bad in the XPS. Okay, well, I did a bit more, like,
5:19
updating, firmware crap, one device manager.
5:22
No clue why we can't find the GPU. It's just not showing up at all.
5:26
Maybe it was just hard-disabled? I have no clue. But either way, we're not playing games today,
5:32
which makes me sad because I wanted to play Valheim. (Alexander laughs)
5:36
Now I checked and you don't get Windows facial recognition with this webcam,
5:40
but it doesn't really matter because you get this fingerprint reader here
5:43
and it's just the best fingerprint reader ever. Because you hit the power button
5:47
and it caches your fingerprint for when Windows asks for it
5:51
like after it's booted up. So you don't need to come in and touch it again.
5:54
Frickin awesome. Really good. Now how is the webcam?
5:59
I'm guessing it's terrible. But at the same time, this seems totally usable.
6:05
It's not fantastic. It's really grainy, but it also isn't having a lot of trouble.
6:10
Like I'm moving around here, there's a lot of bright light there, there's a lot of dark there,
6:13
a lot of a dark there, and it's not doing, like, terrible stuff.
6:19
Like for a camera on a webcam. My face is kind of blown out when you come over here,
6:24
but, like, it's fine. I'd say this is pretty good.
6:29
What to see? Respectable. Very respectable.
6:32
It's a lot of heat pipes. One, two, three, four, five, six.
6:36
Six. This one wraps around underneath. That's a lot of heat pipes,
6:40
especially for something that's this thick. Now, it does look like you get
6:43
MDOT2 slot here that's filled, and another one right here
6:47
if you want to, you know, upgrade it. You also get one RAM slot.
6:50
This is one of those stupid, ASUS has this thing where they have
6:53
half the RAM on the backside of the motherboard. So I guess this one, since it currently
6:57
has 16 Gigabytes on it, if you got it up to what,
7:01
like 48 Gigabytes of RAM, if you put, like, a 32 Gigabyte in this slot
7:08
but then if you buy the more expensive one that comes with 32 Gigabytes,
7:12
wait, that's the one that goes up to 48. This one would be what, 24?
7:15
- Yeah. - Yeah. Okay, math. It's hard.
7:18
Now you also get a 90 Watt hour battery. That's almost as big as you can get.
7:22
I have no clue what the battery life on this is gonna be like.
7:26
Intel's new processors. I don't know.
7:30
They might be good. They're probably not. Intel didn't say anything
7:33
about battery life in their slides. So I'm guessing it's just terrible.
7:37
If they had improvements over the previous generation I'm sure they would have told us.
7:41
So, like, I don't know. It might be six hours of battery life,
7:44
like it's probably fine, but at the same time the AMD version of this has 10.
7:49
So, like, I don't know. I can't really tell you
7:52
because I don't know enough about these processors yet. Oh, there's actually a GPU in there.
7:56
There is for sure a GPU in here. It's right there. But at the same time we can't use it for whatever reason.
8:01
So yeah, that sucks. I guess that's about the end here.
8:05
This is a really good laptop, I think. The display, awesome.
8:10
One of the best I've ever seen on a gaming laptop. Maybe the best.
8:13
We do have the Lenovo one with 16 by 10 coming in soon. So get subscribed to check that out.
8:18
This is an extremely compelling device and it might be my gaming laptop of the year
8:25
depending on how good 11th Gen Core-H is.
8:28
We'll know that in like a month or something. Sorry, I can't tell you.
8:31
(Alexander laughs) But anyway, have a great day, get subscribed,
8:35
hit Like, and so long. Bye.