AMD laptops just beat Qualcomm in their most important test

AMD is showing what x86 has to offer in this new era of Windows laptops. Ever since the debut of the Snapdragon X Elite and Copilot+ laptops, we’ve been in a holding pattern to see what AMD — and eventually Intel — can bring to the table. And we finally have our answer with the Asus Zenbook S 16 packing the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.

I’ll tell you right now that AMD won’t blow you away with performance with its new Zen 5-based CPU. It’s fast, but being at the top of the chart isn’t what matters most for laptops in 2024. It’s about being efficient and well-rounded, and that’s something AMD and Asus have executed on masterfully in the Zenbook S 16. The future of Windows laptops isn’t quite here yet, though.

Asus ZenBook S 16 specs

Let’s talk about the laptop

I’m mostly focused on the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 inside the Zenbook S 16, but I don’t want to ignore the laptop entirely. It’s fantastic. The first thing you’ll notice is how thin and light it is. It clocks in at less than half an inch thick, and it weighs just 3.31 pounds. That’s a hair thinner and more than a pound lighter than the MacBook Pro 16. In fact, the Zenbook S 16 clocks in at the same weight as the MacBook Air 15, which is seriously impressive.

Looks are off the chart, too, thanks to subtle Zumaia Gray and Scandinavian White colorways, a diagonal design on the lid, and Asus’ fantastic Ceraluminum finish on the lid. The Zenbook range has always stood as a symbol of how far Windows laptops have come, and the S 16 is no different.

Asus is backing up the looks and portability with some excellent specs, too. First and foremost, you’ll getting an OLED display, which has been a staple of the Zenbook range on devices like the Zenbook S 13. Here, it’s a 3K display — 2880 by 1800 with a 16:10 aspect ratio — that can go up to 120Hz. This is far from a gaming laptop, but the 120Hz refresh rate does wonders for the feel of using the laptop.

For connectivity, you get one USB 3.2 Gen 2 port (Type-A) and two USB 4 ports that are Type-C (one of which you’ll use for charging with the 65W adapter). Asus also includes a full-size SD card reader, 3.5mm headphone jack, and an HDMI 2.1 port. Wirelessly, Asus even supports Wi-Fi 7, assuming you have a router actually capable of delivering those speeds.

Otherwise, the keyboard is one of my favorites (read our Zephyrus G16 review for more on that), and the trackpad is massive. The laptop barely makes a whisper under load, too, though it gets a bit hot, particularly near the display.

The only point of contention are the speakers. We’ve seen what Asus can do in a 16-inch laptop with the Zephyrus G16, and the speakers here fall short. They get plenty loud, but they lack low-end and the sound is focused toward the center of the laptop.

Digging into performance

Performance is where it counts for AMD with its new generation. The Zenbook S 16 I took a look at packs the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 — a 12-core CPU that can boost up to 5.1GHz and operates at 28 watts. We don’t have Intel’s Lunar Lake CPUs yet, but we’ve already seen what Qualcomm has to offer with the Snapdragon X Elite. And it’s not a clear-cut win for AMD.

This CPU is able to match the Snapdragon X Elite in the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 16, offering slightly better performance in the default power mode and slightly worse performance in the performance mode. The XPS 13 also offers potent competition despite a much smaller chassis. Elsewhere, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 loses to the Core Ultra 9 185H inside the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i, but it manages to outclass AMD’s last-gen Ryzen 7 8840HS in the Yoga 7 14, and by a fairly wide margin.

Application performance is similarly competitive. AMD was able to match Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H in the Yoga 9i in Premiere Pro, as well as lead the Zenbook 14 OLED with the same chip, showcasing what the extra size does to improve performance. The MacBook Air M3 proves that that there is a large difference between Windows and macOS in some applications, with it posting a much higher score despite having weaker hardware on paper.

Photoshop shows a slightly different side of this chip. It was able to outclass the Core Ultra 9 185H in the Yoga Pro 9i and the Core Ultra 7 155H in the Dell XPS 16. That’s fine, but what’s really surprising is that both of those laptops have a discrete Nvidia GPU. This laptop doesn’t, and Photoshop definitely brings your GPU into the equation. The CPU side of the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 isn’t anything to write home about. But the RDNA 3.5 graphics stand out.

Before getting to those, PCMark 10 provides a look at lighter tasks across the entire system. Here, AMD is winning against everything it’s in direct competition with, from the Core Ultra 9 185 H in the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra to the Ryzen 7 8840Hs in the Lenovo Yoga 7 14.

The CPU performance here isn’t anything staggering, with last-gen options often trading blows with AMD’s latest and greatest. As mentioned, this chip really isn’t about topping the charts. It’s not getting peak performance, and it doesn’t seem like that was ever intended. Right now, it’s competitive with the current landscape of laptop CPUs. The real value here lies in graphics and battery life.

Graphics are a strong point

This isn’t a gaming laptop, but man, the RDNA 3.5 GPU here is impressive. AMD packs its Radeon 890M in with this chip, and it puts the competition from Qualcomm and Intel to shame. In 3DMark Time Spy, you’re looking at close to double the performance with this chip compared to the Snapdragon X Elite in HP Omnibook X, and competitive performance with the Core Ultra 7 155H in the Zenbook Duo. I’ve also included the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i to ground this conversation — these may be solid integrated graphics, but even a low-end discrete GPU mops the floor.

The latest 3DMark test, Steel Nomad Light, also shows the gains for AMD. The MacBook Air M3 is surprisingly a bit faster, but the Intel and Qualcomm competition doesn’t hold up. AMD also managed to beat its last-gen Ryzen 7 8840HS in the Lenovo Yoga 7 14, showcasing that the RDNA 3.5 update is indeed doing something.

This isn’t close to a gaming laptop, and that’s worth repeating, but the integrated graphics are competent enough. You’re looking at slight improvement over AMD’s previous generation, a competitive jump over Intel’s integrated Arc graphics, and a massive leap over what Qualcomm has to offer.

In real games, I was able to pick up lighter indie titles without any issue, as well as a few heavier games like Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Elden Ring. Performance wasn’t always great in these heavier titles, particularly at higher graphics settings. But I was able to achieve 60 frames per second (fps) through a combination of graphics settings, as well as AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) and Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF).

You might forget the NPU

The Ryzen AI HX 370 is our first taste of AMD’s XDNA 2 neural processing unit (NPU), and it’s a bigger deal than you might suspect. For starters, it’s the fastest NPU we’ve seen yet, and it looks like AMD will retain that crown this generation. Qualcomm and Intel both claim 45 TOPS, while AMD pushes ahead to 50 TOPS. There isn’t a direct translation to performance, and there aren’t enough AI applications to really notice that small of a compute difference. But AMD has the most powerful hardware by the numbers.

Outside of just TOPS, the real development here is the Block FP16 instruction type. AMD didn’t create this instruction, but this is the first NPU we’ve seen with support for it. Without digging too deep into the technical details, Block FP16 offers the speed of 8-bit and the accuracy of 16-bit instructions. In order to get larger models to run on relatively low-power NPUs, the model needs to be quantized down to a smaller instruction size, losing accuracy in the process. Block FP16 gets around that issue, allowing you to run more accurate models at the same speeds.

That’s great, and it’s relevant if you’re digging through Hugging Face or Github for AI models and applications. There are plenty of them out there, but none that the vast majority of users are interacting with. For the moment, the XDNA 2 NPU here is a wasted piece of silicon that occasionally steps in for background blur and other Windows Studio Effects. Once Microsoft decides to unlock its Copilot+ software, you’ll be able to leverage it for more, including Live Captions and Windows Recall. AMD says that that should be enabled by the end of the year, but it’s not here yet.

Although there’s a valid reason to have an NPU, we’ve already seen that the main driving force behind the recent buying surge in laptops isn’t AI prowess — it’s better battery life. The NPU is here, and it’s impressive hardware. But it’s not a reason to pick up one of AMD’s new CPUs unless you have a very specific use case.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to directly test the NPU in the few benchmarks we have — namely Geekbench ML and Procyon. The GPU and CPU are capable of handling AI workloads, but we still don’t have a slate of apps heavily leveraging the NPU beyond Studio Effects.

The big question

This is some of the best battery life we’ve seen out of a Windows laptop. AMD is going toe-to-toe with Qualcomm here, and sometimes even coming out ahead. You’re not getting MacBook levels of battery life, but AMD is blowing away the competition from Intel and offering between 10 to 12 hours of battery life under constant use — and sometimes even more.

Our web browsing test, which loops through various websites until the battery dies, shows AMD’s improvements in action. From the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 16 to the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, AMD is matching Qualcomm. The only Snapdragon chip that shows a clear lead is the one in the Surface Pro 11. Intel is lagging far behind in the Dell XPS 16, and AMD’s last-gen CPUs are far back in the Framework Laptop 16, as well.

A new test we’ve been running is with Cinebench R24. This pushes the device to its limit and waits for the battery to quickly drain, and I expected AMD to get clobbered by the competition. Not the case. In fact, the Zenbook S 16 lasted longer than every Qualcomm laptop we’ve ran through this test, only falling short of the MacBook Air M3.

This feels like an entirely new class of laptop. Windows machines still can’t match Apple, but they’re much closer than before. More than anything, however, the battery life AMD and Asus have on display here provides a bit of evidence that an x86 CPU still has what it takes.

Should you buy the Asus Zenbook S 16?

I focused mainly on the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 here, but it’s an excellent companion to the Zenbook S 16. If you look at your other options around this price, Asus is coming in cheaper as well. The company asks $1,700 for the model I reviewed — a cheaper model is available for $1,400 — and that’s better than the Dell XPS 16 and Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 16, both of which cost over $1,700 and come with only 16GB of memory.

If anything, this laptop and the new AMD chip powering it shifts the focus away from peak performance. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 still puts up some impressive results, but the real gains here are offering great performance with solid battery life. That’s somewhere Asus and AMD have really excelled.