The Asus Zenbook S16 gets a Zen 5 upgrade. Here are our first impressions

You'd struggle to spot the new Zenbook S16 next to last year's model. Same Ceraluminum body. Same 1.1 cm thin profile. Same two colours. And honestly, that's not a complaint. When you've got a design that already stands out in a sea of identical aluminium ultrabooks, leaving it alone is a perfectly valid move. What Asus has changed is under the hood—newer AMD Zen 5 silicon, faster memory, refined thermals. It’ll cost you Rs 1,69,990. For that money, the changes better show up in daily use—and from what I’ve seen so far, they just might.

I've had it for a few days now, and a few things have already made an impression.

The Ceraluminum effect hasn't worn off

I first used a Ceraluminum Asus laptop three years ago, and the novelty should've faded by now. It hasn't. There's something about that dry, textured, almost ceramic feel under your fingers that no aluminium chassis replicates. It doesn't attract fingerprints. It doesn't show scuffs easily. And at 1.5 kg for a 16-inch machine, it still feels like you're getting away with something when you slip it into a backpack.

The build is rigid, the hinge is confident, and the Scandinavian White still looks clean. My only gripe—and this is more of a wish than a complaint—is that Asus is still offering just two colour options for what's supposed to be their design-forward flagship. A darker, moodier option would go a long way.

That OLED screen still sets the bar

No changes to the display, and none were needed. The 16-inch 3K Lumina OLED panel was already one of the best in this segment last year. Calibrated to Delta E under 1, True Black HDR, touch support—the works. Pull up the same image on this and on a good IPS laptop side by side, and the gap is almost embarrassing.

What I appreciate more with time is Asus's burn-in warranty—free screen replacement if it happens during the warranty period. Most OLED laptop makers quietly dodge the longevity conversation. Asus putting that guarantee in writing adds a layer of trust that matters when you're spending this much.

Zen 5 is the real reason this refresh exists

The headline upgrade is the AMD Ryzen AI 9 465—a 10-core processor on the new Zen 5 architecture. It's paired with 32 gigs of LPDDR5X memory (faster, though soldered in, so what you get is what you're stuck with) and a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD (PCIe 5.0 would've been nice at this price).

On paper, the hardware is solid on paper. In practice, juggling a dozen Chrome tabs, Slack, a couple of docs, and some light photo work—the kind of stuff most people actually do on a laptop—nothing has slowed it down.

But what's more interesting than the chip itself is how Asus is cooling it.

This laptop runs at 28W sustained. For context, most ultraportables at this thickness top out at 15W and call it a day. Asus manages the extra headroom through a dual-fan setup, a barely-there 0.7 mm vapour chamber, and those 3,522 geometric vents on the keyboard deck that are equal parts design statement and functional engineering. During regular use—browsing, writing, light multitasking—the fans are practically silent. Whether that composure holds during heavier workloads is something I’ll have to test properly.

The 83 Wh battery has been holding up reasonably well too—though, again, I'll need more time to see if it can genuinely last a full workday with that OLED panel always on.

There's also an NPU onboard for AI tasks and Copilot+ PC readiness. I'll be upfront: even after two-long years Windows AI features still feel more like demos than daily tools. But the hardware being there means this machine has a longer shelf life than one without it.

Small things that left a mark

A few quick-hit observations from daily use. The keyboard is surprisingly good for something this thin—there's enough travel and feedback that I didn't miss my external keyboard while writing. The six-speaker Dolby Atmos setup punches harder than you'd expect from a laptop this slim. Not a speaker replacement, but genuinely solid for calls and casual streaming.

Ports are practical—USB4, HDMI, USB-A, SD card slot, headphone jack. No dongle life. Wi-Fi 7 is there. The 83 Wh battery charges over USB-C, and you can top up from a power bank. All the boxes are ticked without any weird omissions.

Early read: The right priorities in the right places

A few days isn't long enough to pass judgment. But the early read is positive. Asus didn't chase a redesign nobody asked for. They took a chassis that already worked, dropped in better silicon, and tuned the cooling to match. It's the kind of laptop that doesn't need a second look to impress you. It needs a second week.

I’m going to spend that second week (and a few more) with this before I could answer the real questions—battery life with that OLED running all day, sustained thermals when Delhi summer hits, how Zen 5 actually benches against the competition. For now, this one's off to a quiet, confident start.