The list of certified bangers in the laptop space grows by one more today. The Asus Zenbook A16 (2026) is just as "deliciously thin and light" as last year's Zenbook A14, but now it's powered by the top-tier Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme processors, and both are being sold in the United States.

The same winning recipe from last year's devices is still here. Ceraluminum instead of magnesium for the body, a gorgeous OLED display, a great keyboard, and a huge, accurate trackpad. The only thing we dinged that model for was the graphical prowess of the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core, in that there wasn't any.

That's been fixed in the X2 Elite Extreme, and the Zenbook A16 is a fantastic laptop for regular productivity tasks, photo and video editing, and yes, gaming. The only thing is the price, but it's lighter, has better battery life, and more processing power than other comparable models, so perhaps this is the new normal for 2026.

About this review: Asus sent XDA the Zenbook A16 used for this review. The company did not see its contents before publication, nor did it have input on them.

Asus Zenbook A16 (2026) pricing and availability

The Asus Zenbook A16 comes in two configurations, but you'd have to really squint to see what the differences are. For $1,700 at Best Buy, you can get the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100, 48GB of RAM, and Windows 11 Home. Asus has a slightly bumped version at their own webstore for $2,000, with the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100 and Windows 11 Pro. Oh, and the Asus exclusive is 0.22 lbs lighter, although I have no idea where they're trimming that from.

It has no business being this light and thin

Still feels like a dummy unit

The market is full of thin and light laptops. Everywhere you look, they pop up, from the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, the HP Dragonfly range, and Asus' business-focused Expertbook. There are a grand total of two thin and light laptops with a 16-inch screen, and the Asus Zenbook A16 is one of them.

I love how portable that makes it, knowing it won't break your shoulder while carrying it around all day. Our review unit is 2.87 lbs, but I don't think I'd be able to tell the difference between the two Zenbook A16 models without a scale. That's less than the Dell XPS 14 weighs, which was already a lightweight, and nearly a full pound lighter than the XPS 16.

That's partly down to the Ceraluminum material the chassis is made of, which feels sturdier than magnesium and more like polished stone to the touch. It's a fantastic feel, and one that I enjoy resting my hands on. You also get a full complement of ports here, with two USB-C ports (USB4 with DP alt mode), USB-A 10 Gbps, HDMI 2.1, a 3.5mm port, and even an SD card reader.

The keyboard is good, with a satisfying 1.3mm of key travel, and it's well-spaced for touch typists, with a standalone arrow cluster. The touchpad is huge and accurate, and nicely centered, and Asus hasn't tried to stuff a numpad or speakers on either side to squish the QWERTY, which I really appreciate.

I'm also with EIC Rich Woods on his love of the Zabriskie Beige color, which is more sandy-beach than boring beige and fits perfectly with the texture of the Ceraluminum. Not every laptop needs to be silver or black, and I want more variety, please.

OhhhLED is superb here

Last year's display is supercharged

Last year's Zenbook A14 had a 16:10, 1920x1200 OLED with a 60Hz refresh rate, which was good, and didn't drain the battery. But that's not a panel befitting the X2 Elite Extreme, so the bigger Zenbook A16 keeps the same aspect ratio but offers a 2,880x1,800 OLED with a 120 Hz adaptive refresh rate. It's also a touchscreen, and the glass panel doesn't have anywhere near as much glare as I'd expected.

And it's bold and beautiful, covering 100% of sRGB and P3, with 94% of AdobeRGB. It measures 503 nits peak brightness in SDR, is within a few percent of luminance accuracy, and has an average DeltaE color accuracy of 0.62. The Asus Zenbook A16 has a screen that you just want to stare at, whether it's spreadsheets or streamed video.

Okay, but what about that new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme?

It's got style, it's got grace, but has it got power in yo' face?

Okay, keep in mind that this isn't even the full-fat Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, which is limited to the Asus webstore and wasn't available to review. Even with that, it beat every other laptop I've tested in our testing suite to date. Every test (well, except the ones that won't run on Arm).

That's the polar opposite to the lackluster Snapdragon X Plus chips from last year's Zenbook A14, which was good at "writing articles in Chrome" and not much else. The Asus Zenbook A16 handled everything I normally do during a week.

But that's not all it can do. I've tried gaming with other Windows on Arm devices before. It's not a fun time. Or it was. The X2 Elite Extreme with the new Adreno X2-90 GPU can finally game.

I happily played Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p in Steam Deck mode at an average of 62 fps, which looked spectacular on this OLED screen. BTW, I tried the low ray tracing setting at native 2880x1800, and it averaged 18 fps, which was unplayable but still impressive, since the normal settings barely managed that on last year's chips. And the super-optimized DOOM (2016) managed 67 fps at 1440p, which is fantastic for this class of laptop.

Okay, the million-dollar question. We know Arm-based laptops have great battery life, but what about this year, with the extra power of the X2 Elite Extreme, paired with a normally battery-draining 2.8K OLED. Well, the Asus Zenbook A16 is on the top of my testing so far this year, and that's impressive with the efficiency gains from every other CPU manufacturer. It lasted for 25 hours while playing back looped video at 203 nits of brightness, which is staggering for how much power this CPU has.

Should you buy the Asus Zenbook A16 (2026)?

You should buy the Asus Zenbook A16 (2026) if:

• You want a laptop that will do anything you throw at it
• You value battery life
• You want a gorgeous OLED screen to work on

You should NOT buy the Asus Zenbook A16 (2026) if:

• You use CAD software or other tools that have trouble with the Arm translation layer
• You need a discrete graphics card
• You prefer macOS

The Asus Zenbook A16 is my favorite laptop of the year (so far), but it's going to take something really special to surpass it. It's got the power, the style, and the portability that any great thin-and-light needs, but it packs in a 16-inch display to get work done in the process.

The improvements Qualcomm has made in a year with the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme are impressive, not just for bypassing all the CPU benchmarks set by other manufacturers, but also the quantum leap in the Adreno GPU since last year's lackluster offering. This is a fantastic laptop, with every piece of the puzzle to make it a polished whole.