ASUS today announced the U.S. availability of its latest Zenbook lineup, headlined by the all-new Zenbook A16. Setting a new standard for groundbreaking performance, the Zenbook A16 debuts as the fastest Snapdragon -powered laptop on the market, equipped with the top-of-the-line Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme processor for unprecedented local AI capabilities. The new Zenbook series—which also features the Zenbook A14, Zenbook S16, and Zenbook S14—is unified by Ceraluminum, an ASUS-exclusive material that combines the refined touch of ceramic and strength of aluminium to offer a unique tactile experience and lasting durability. As fully certified Copilot+ PCs, these devices are built to harness the full potential of local AI, furthering ASUS's commitment to deliver future-ready computing today and beyond.

ASUS Zenbook A16
ASUS Zenbook A16 (UX3607)—featuring the latest Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme processor, which combines 18 cores and up to 80 TOPS NPU performance to unlock the next era of AI-enhanced computing—bridges the gap between ultra-portability and uncompromised performance. With a remarkable leap in CPU and GPU performance, while also optimized for superior battery efficiency, Zenbook A16 delivers fluid, lag-free performance across every scenario including media editing and rendering as well as productivity tasks. The laptop also features a vibrant 16-inch 3K 120 Hz ASUS Lumina OLED display, six super-liner speakers, and a comprehensive array of full-size I/O ports. Despite its expansive display, the laptop's sleek, all-Ceraluminum 2.65lbs.

ASUS has had a strong presence at CES 2026, presenting updated gaming and creator laptops, including an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395-powered convertible laptop and a new ZenBook Duo with dual 14-inch OLED displays. As it happens, that Intel Panther Lake ZenBook has a Snapdragon-powered sibling as well. The new ASUS ZenBook A16 is a 16-inch Windows-on-Arm PC intended to be used as an everyday general productivity and media consumption laptop. ASUS's goal with the A16 was to design the "best commuter laptop," and balance portability, versatility, and efficiency. The end result is a 1.2 kg laptop that measures just 16.5 mm thick but still boasts 21 hours of battery life from a 70 Wh battery.

The ZenBook A16 will be available with both the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-92-100 and the X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100, both versions with 48 GB of LPDDR5x memory and up to 2 TB of PCIe 4x4 storage. The CPU in the ZenBook A16 aside, there are also a number of interesting features that make the new Arm-powered laptop stand out. For starters, the 3K (2880 x 1800) OLED touch display—there is also an otherwise identical non-touch version—reaches 1100 nits peak brightness and features a 120 Hz refresh rate. The ZenBook A16 is light on ports, though, likely owing to its thin Ceraluminum chassis—which ASUS says is 30% lighter and 3x more durable than regular aluminium. The ZenBook A16 has dual USB4 ports, a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5 mm combo audio jack. The A16's included chiclet keyboard has 1.3 mm of total travel, and the included trackpad has been stretched to the vertical limit, which has become a trend in modern laptops.

Qualcomm recently announced the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Elite Extreme, which appear to be putting up some respectable CPU and GPU benchmarks, but there hasn't been much word on Linux compatibility until now. A recent Linux driver patch sees the start of adding open source driver support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series GPUs in the X2 Elite SoC to the open-source Qualcomm MSM Direct Rendering Management driver. The patch submission specifically calls out changes to the driver that were necessary because of the new slice-based architecture, as well as changes that allow for higher current draw and necessary thermal mitigations.

The development team also mentioned that Mesa and Vulkan support for the Adreno 840 and other 800 series Arm GPUs is currently work-in-progress and "will be posted in the near future". For reference, when it comes to the previous Snapdragon X Elite launch, there were significant driver updates as recently as July 2025, so even if the Qualcomm team is working on Linux driver support, it might be a while before Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme laptops are actually at feature-parity with x86 systems on Linux.

Qualcomm recently unveiled the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme SoC as its latest foray into the world of Windows on Arm hardware. It claimed that the new processor would deliver up to 75% higher CPU performance and a 2.3 × improvement in performance per watt. Now, following the post-launch hype, independent benchmarks are starting to appear and show what Qualcomm didn't on-stage. The most recent set of benchmarks comes from ComputerBase, the German-language outlet known for its in-depth hardware testing, and it shows that Qualcomm's claims of CPU performance were surprisingly impressive. Although it also becomes clear why Qualcomm stuck to performance per watt instead of focusing too much on raw GPU performance.

According to the ComputerBase review, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme was able to outperform Apple's best and brightest, the Apple M4 Pro, in both Cinebench 2024 and Geekbench 6.3 multicore benchmarks, scoring 1,964 and 23,693 points, respectively. Results are a little less consistent when it comes to single-core scores, with the Apple M4 Pro pulling ahead of the Snapdragon SoC by 7% in the Cinebench 2024 single-core test but falling behind the X2 Elite Extreme by 7% in Geekbench 6.5. NPU performance was also impressive, with the X2 Elite Extreme's 80 TOP NPU coming out undefeated, at 128% faster than the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V in the ASUS Zenbook S 14. Unfortunately, that seems to be where the good news for Qualcomm ends—mostly. When it comes to GPU tests, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme remains well behind the Apple M4 Pro in both the 3DMark Steel Nomad Light Unlimited and 3DMark Solar Bay Unlimited tests, scoring 5,687 points and 22,946 points, respectively. While that puts the new Arm silicon a solid 37-40% ahead of the nearest competing iGPU, the Apple M4 10-Core, it is still 37-46% behind the Apple M4 Pro in GPU benchmarks. It remains to be seen how this translates to real-world gaming performance and actual CPU workloads, given the translation layer that Arm SoCs currently still rely on for many non-native Windows apps and games, but it's an impressive showing nonetheless.