AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Review: Zen 5 Tested On A Gorgeous ASUS Laptop
ASUS Zenbook S 16 Review: Premium Materials And Great Performance In A Thin-And-Light Package
| ASUS Zenbook S 16 (UM5606): Starting @ $1,399 - $1,699 As Tested The ASUS Zenbook S 16, powered by AMD's Strix Point Ryzen AI 300 Series processors, is an excellent all-around performer, built with premium materials, that offers great battery life and a strong NPU for future AI workloads. |
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AMD officially unveiled its Zen 5 families of mobile and desktop processors at Computex last month, among an array of big announcements from competing chip makers. The Ryzen AI 300 Series, based on AMD’s Strix Point APU design, are the foundation of AMD’s latest mobile processor platform and the Ryzen 9000 series of desktop processors are based on the company's Granite Ridge architecture. For additional details on the entire line-ups with deeper architecture information, check out our recent Zen 5 coverage. With these latest processors, AMD seems to have ticked all the right boxes. AMD's Zen 5-based CPU cores offer more performance with higher efficiency and an array of new features, and the mobile-focused Ryzen AI 300 Series adds enhanced RDNA 3.5-based integrated graphics and AMD’s latest XDNA 2 NPU, boasting up to 55 TOPS for AI workloads.
We have to wait a bit longer to show you what the Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors can do, but today we can take the wraps off the Ryzen AI 300 series as implemented in the gorgeous ASUS Zenbook S 16. The ASUS Zenbook S 16 is a premium thin-and-light 16” laptop built around the new AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 – at least with the model we’ve tested. There will be additional configurations from ASUS available as well.
Here’s a quick look at the ASUS Zenbook S 16’s specifications to show you exactly what we’re working with here. Take a gander and then we’ll dig in and take a tour of the machine before diving into copious performance benchmarks...
ASUS Zenbook S 16 Specifications & Features
Find The ASUS Zenbook S 16 Powered By AMD Ryzen AI @ BestBuy
The ASUS Zenbook S 16 (model UM5606) we’ll be showing you here is built around the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. The HX 370 is a 12-core / 24-thread processor, which features 4 “full” Zen 5 CPU cores and 8 “smaller” Zen5c cores (for the differences between Zen5 and Zen5c – see here). The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Strix Point APU also features an RDNA 3.5-based Radeon 890M iGPU, packing 1,024 shaders, 64 texture units, 32 ROPs and 16 ray tracing accelerators. The processor also features an XDNA 2-based NPU offering 50 TOPS of peak Int8 compute performance, though the entire chip – accounting for CPU, GPU, and NPU offers up to 81 TOPS.
The CPU is attached to 32GB of LPDDR5X-7500 memory and offers PCIe Gen 4 connectivity for storage and an array of USB 4 / 3.2 / 2 options, though on the Zenbook S 16 all of the ports are USB 4 or 3.2 Gen 2. Also connected to the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 in the ASUS Zenbook S 16 is a Mediatek MT7925 WiFi LAN card with Bluetooth and an FHD webcam with IR for Windows Hello support. Powering the entire system is a 78Whr battery.
ASUS is offering these systems in Zumaia Gray or Scandinavian White – the pictures you see here are the Scandinavian White model. The top lid features some angular lines, depicting a cropped Zenbook logo, with ASUS Zenbook etched into one corner. The lid looks good in our opinion, and is distinctive, without being over the top.
Open that lid and you’re greeted by an absolutely gorgeous 16” 3K (2880x1800) OLED panel, with touch and stylus support. The display offers a 120Hz refresh rate (.2ms response time), 500nits of peak brightness, 1M : 1 contrast ration, and 100% DCI-P3 gamut coverage. The display panel is PANTONE validated and incorporates low blue light tech, to minimize blue light output by up to 70%.
To put it simply, this display is awesome. It’s bright, vivid, and well saturated and offers a fast fresh rate and wide gamut coverage. It is high-gloss, so reflections can be a problem, but that’s par the course with glossy displays. If you’re a stickler for contrast and color accuracy, you’re going to love the Zenbook S 16’s display.
Above the display is a small punch out where you’ll find the FHD webcam with Windows Hello support. We should also mention that the Zenbook S 16’s webcam offers ASUS AiSense, which is essentially auto-reframing. The camera can track your movement and keep you centered in the frame if need be. Camera quality is definitely above average, but not on par with a dedicated streaming setup. And we should also mention that the microphone array performs well – the Zenbook S 16 would be great for road warriors that spend a lot of time in video conferences. The Zenbook S 16 also has a proximity sensor built-in and can automatically lock the PC when the user walks away.
The only real “complaint” with the display and lid is that the hinge doesn’t allow the system to fold flat. This normally isn’t a big deal for most users, but since the Zenbook S 16 includes a stylus and touch support, you’d think it would be designed specifically for those use cases, but as it is, the Zenbook S 16 is just a standard clamshell so using touch or the stylus is somewhat awkward. If the machine opened enough to lay flat, or even further back into a "tent" mode, the included stylus would make more sense in our opinion.
As for the keyboard and touchpad, the Zenbook S 16 almost nails it. Despite being so thin and light – the machine measures 13.9” x 9.6 x .47 - .51 and weighs only 3.3lbs – the Zenbook S 16 is quite rigid and feels sturdy for this form factor. The keyboard, wrist rest and touchpad area are nicely spaced out and the keys offer a decent amount of travel, but they are also perfectly flat – we’d prefer if there was some contour to the keys.
The touchpad is large and responsive, and did a great job with palm rejection and tap input. The touchpad also has multi-gesture support, which gives users the ability to adjust volume, advance though videos, and alter screen brightness (among other things).
Just underneath the right and left sides of the Zenbook S 16 are a couple of slits cut out to accommodate the Harman Kardon-tuned speakers. Audio output from the Zenbook S 16 is surprisingly good. The system can reach very high volume levels without any distortion and the highs and mids are very clean. There’s some bass to speak of, but nothing that actually thumps considering how small the drivers are in the system. Still, overall, we’d consider the speakers on the Zenbook S 16 among the best we’ve heard on a notebook this thin.
ASUS Zenbook S 16 With AMD RyzenAI Software Experience
In terms of the included software, there’s not much speak of – which is a good thing. All of the apps and goodies associated with Windows 11 Pro are pre-installed, along with ASUS’ own MyASUS app, a couple of other ASUS utilities, and something called ASUS StoryCube.
The MyASUS app is a handy, easy to use tool and one-stop-shop to help keep the machine updated and to tune performance and fan profiles. There’s a one-click diagnosis button that will check all of the system's hardware and drivers, which makes it simple for any user to keep the Zenbook S 16 updated and running well. The MyASUS app can be launched from a dedicated function key and it’s been around for quite a few generations at this point, so it’s fairly refined and solid at this point.
The ASUS StoryCube application is essentially an intelligent repository for all of your media. StoryCube can access local folders or cloud services, and organize media files in a number of different ways. It gives users the ability to browse through photos, videos, and audio, sorted automatically by location, time, or device, and multiple views are available as well. StoryCube also incorporates some basic tools for tweaking photos and video for easier sharing.
And with all of that out of the way, what do you say we get to some benchmarks?
