The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16: A Slim and Powerful Gaming Laptop, But With Trade-offs
Gaming laptops have become increasingly popular in India, especially now that high-end desktop PC components are difficult to find. Many gamers prefer the versatility and portability of a laptop over a bulky desktop, but sacrifices in hardware power and immersion have often been necessary. However, a new generation of gaming laptops is emerging, powered by cutting-edge CPUs and GPUs that allow for impressive performance in sleek and compact form factors. The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 is one such example, boasting a 16-inch 1440p display driven by Intel’s 11th Gen mobile H-series CPUs and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30-series mobile GPUs. Starting at Rs. 1,44,990 in India, the Zephyrus M16 is a premium gaming laptop that raises the bar in terms of portability, but does it come at the cost of user experience? We delve into its design, specs, performance, and overall value to see if it truly lives up to the hype.
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (GU603HR) Design
The Zephyrus M16 is a sleek evolution of its predecessor, the Zephyrus M15 (GU502), with a slightly smaller footprint, measuring just 19.9mm in thickness and weighing 1.9kg. This makes it noticeably thinner and lighter than many gaming laptops, making it more suitable for everyday use and easier to carry around.
The laptop’s design is inspired by the Zephyrus G-series, featuring a pattern of thousands of tiny perforated holes across the matte black lid. These holes, combined with a "prismatic" layer beneath them, produce a mesmerizing rainbow effect when viewed at certain angles. While visually stunning, this design choice also attracts dust and fingerprints quite easily.
The lid flips open to reveal a 16-inch 16:10 display, which is larger than its predecessor and offers more screen real estate for both work and entertainment. The bezels are incredibly thin, with a screen-to-body ratio of an impressive 94 percent. The hinge allows the display to recline up to 180 degrees, and as with many Asus laptops, the lower half of the laptop subtly lifts when the lid is opened, enhancing airflow and keyboard comfort. However, the lid does flex noticeably when pressure is applied, and screen warping is visible.
The lower half of the laptop features an island-style keyboard with RGB backlighting, speaker grilles, and ample space on either side. The keyboard and trackpad are now centered due to the removal of the dedicated paging keys found on the previous model. Unfortunately, the keyboard lacks Insert and PrintScrn keys, posing a significant inconvenience for taking screenshots.
The power button integrates a fingerprint sensor, which can be set up through Windows Settings. However, its placement and subtlety might lead some users to miss this feature altogether. Dedicated volume and mic mute buttons are included, proving to be convenient shortcuts. The power, charging, and SSD activity LEDs are placed on the upper edge, visible even when the lid is closed. Unfortunately, these LEDs are quite bright and tend to reflect off the screen.
The trackpad is remarkably large and features a satisfying click mechanism. However, its position on the edge of the lower deck leaves no wrist rest when in use. The deck surrounding the trackpad boasts a soft-touch finish for added comfort.
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (GU603HR) Specifications
The Zephyrus M16 is powered by Intel’s 11th Gen mobile H-series CPUs, featuring the Tiger Lake architecture. These processors are designed for gaming and enthusiast-class devices, offering more cores, higher TDP ratings, and increased clock speeds. The integrated GPUs in these CPUs are relatively weak, but that’s not a concern as the laptop features dedicated graphics processors.
The Zephyrus M16 is available in India with either a Core i9-11900H or Core i7-11800H, both offering eight cores and Hyper-Threading. The Core i9-11900H boasts higher clock speeds and supports Turbo Boost Max 3.0. The latest generation of Intel CPUs also introduce PCIe 4.0 for faster connections to SSDs and the GPU.
On the graphics front, Asus offers the Zephyrus M16 with the following Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series mobile GPUs: RTX 3050 Ti, RTX 3060, and RTX 3070. Performance varies between laptops with the same GPU depending on the thermal design, so Asus requires manufacturers to disclose detailed specifications such as clock speeds and power consumption targets.
The review unit features the Core i9-11900H clocked at 2.5GHz with a maximum boost speed of 4.9GHz and the GeForce RTX 3070 with a 1390MHz boost speed, 80-100W thermal envelope, and 8GB of dedicated GDDR6 memory. The laptop also boasts a 2TB Samsung NVMe SSD and 32GB of DDR4-RAM, 16GB soldered and the rest a removable module. This configuration is priced at Rs. 2,29,990 in India. The RAM can be upgraded to 48GB by replacing the SO-DIMM module, and there’s an empty M.2 slot for an additional NVMe SSD.
The 16-inch display boasts an uncommon 16:10 aspect ratio, which is ideal for productivity and allows for a larger screen without increasing the width of the laptop. The 2560×1600 resolution (WQXGA) "IPS-level" panel features a 165Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time. Asus claims 100 percent DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage and Pantone validation, but peak brightness is unspecified. The matte finish reduces reflectivity, making it suitable for working under various lighting conditions. The Zephyrus M16 does not offer a 4K display option.
Despite its slender design, the laptop features a 90WH battery and comes with a 240W charger. It also includes a 720p webcam, microphone array, and a speaker setup consisting of two 2W tweeters and two 2W woofers. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.2.
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (GU603HR) Performance
The Zephyrus M16 is incredibly capable in everyday use, especially in productivity scenarios. The high-resolution 16:10 display makes multitasking easy, and the default 150 percent Windows scaling can be adjusted to 125 percent for even more screen real estate.
The single-touch fingerprint sensor on the power button attempts to streamline the login process but proved unreliable in testing, often requiring multiple touches.
The keyboard is firm and springy, with good key travel. The lack of a PrintScrn key, however, is a frustrating omission. The entire keyboard features a single RGB backlight zone with several lighting patterns, colors, and intensity options, allowing for synchronization with other compatible devices.
The large trackpad’s convenient placement and size make multi-finger gestures comfortable. The panel itself, however, feels a bit dull and requires increased brightness for optimal visibility in sunlight. While colors might not pop as much as on some high-end consumer laptops, this is a positive aspect for users involved in color-sensitive work. The display nonetheless delivers a fantastic video watching experience, especially with 4K content.
The speakers provide surprisingly crisp and open sound, though the volume could be higher and the bass lacks depth.
In general-purpose benchmarks, the Zephyrus M16 performed exceptionally well. PCMark 10 scores reached 6,950 and 8,792 in the standard and extended tests respectively. Cinebench R20 scores were 606 and 5,407 in the single and multi-core tests respectively. POVRay render test completed in 1 minute, 1 second, while the V-Ray benchmark produced scores of 15,592 and 429 for CPU and GPU rendering respectively.
CrystalDiskMark showed impressive SSD speeds: 7100.1MBps and 5262.1MBPs for sequential reads and writes, and 2365.8MBps and 2148.8MBps for random reads and writes. The Zephyrus M16 took 1 minute, 43 seconds to compress a 3.24GB folder of files and just 35 seconds to transcode a 1.3GB AVI file to H.265, showcasing its impressive real-world performance.
In 3DMark benchmarks, the Zephyrus M16 achieved 9,096 and 4,527 scores in Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme respectively. The DX12 Port Royal test score was 5,509. In feature tests, DirectX Ray Tracing showed a score of 23.74fps, while the DLSS test scene ran at 25.12fps with DLSS off and 58.93fps with it on.
The independent Superposition graphics benchmark by Unigine managed 5,906 points using the 1080p Extreme preset.
Many games run at the Zephyrus M16’s native 2560×1600 resolution.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which supports RTX ray tracing and DLSS, the built-in benchmark averaged 71fps at the Highest quality preset at 2560×1600 with ray tracing disabled. Enabling ray-traced shadows to ‘High’ quality reduced the average frame rate to 45fps. With DLSS enabled, the average score improved to 54fps.
Metro Exodus, also featuring an RTX preset, produced an average frame rate of 53.44 percent at 1920×1080 with ray tracing and DLSS enabled. Disabling these features resulted in an average of 62.3fps, indicating that the performance penalty for using ray tracing is not excessive, though some users may prefer to disable it.
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey delivered an average of 52fps at 2560×1600 with Ultra High graphics. Far Cry 5 averaged 96fps at 1920×1200 and 82fps at 2560×1600, both using the Ultra quality preset. Middle Earth: Shadow of War also managed 97fps at 1920×1200 and 72fps at 2560×1600, both at Ultra quality. These results highlight that the Zephyrus M16 is well-equipped for slightly older titles that don’t require ray tracing or DLSS.
Gaming performance in more demanding titles such as Control and Doom Eternal varied depending on settings. Control achieved an average of 45-55fps at 2560×1600 with High ray tracing and Ultra quality preset, and DLSS on. Disabling ray tracing brought the average frame rate to 70-80fps.
Doom Eternal supports ray tracing and DLSS. At Ultra Nightmare quality and 2560×1600 resolution, the game ran at 80-100fps without ray tracing, but with ray tracing enabled, the performance dropped to 30-50fps. Surprisingly, enabling DLSS with ray tracing significantly lowered the frame rate below 30fps, causing stuttering. This might be an isolated issue or a bug related to the recently implemented RTX functionality.
The Zephyrus M16 does run hot, especially under demanding workloads, with parts of the laptop becoming noticeably warm even during idle periods. The upper row, fingerprint sensor, middle-right of the keyboard, and wrist rest area can get quite toasty, and the top edge of the lower half, where hot air is ejected through the hinge, can get too hot to touch for extended periods. Despite using a liquid metal thermal interface between the cooler and the CPU and GPU chips and redesigned fans for improved efficiency, the fans are still quite loud when processing demanding workloads. The Zephyrus M16’s heat and noise issues might be less prominent in air-conditioned environments.
Battery life, as expected from a gaming laptop, is limited. The Zephyrus M16 lasted around 5-6 hours on a full charge with everyday use, including some video streaming and multiple tabs open in a web browser. The Battery Eater Pro test ran for only 1 hour, 42 minutes.
Verdict
The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 represents a significant step forward in the pursuit of high-end gaming performance within a slim and light package. It’s a testament to how far the industry has come, considering that only a few years ago, such a level of performance required a bulky, cumbersome laptop. The Zephyrus M16 weighs just 2kg, making it incredibly portable for gamers on the go. It can handle demanding modern games at reasonable settings, even at resolutions greater than 1080p. The laptop’s impressive specs and high price are consistent with its premium positioning.
The abundance and variety of physical ports, user-replaceable SSD and RAM modules, and the rare and appreciated 16:10 display are major advantages. Despite its strengths, the Zephyrus M16 isn’t without its flaws. The most significant drawback is the uncomfortable heat and distracting noise it generates. The requirement for a 16A power outlet might pose a challenge for many users, and some minor annoyances like the poorly placed LEDs and popups from the preinstalled software hinder the overall user experience.
While using an external keyboard and mouse can mitigate the physical discomfort and address the keyboard limitations, the Zephyrus M16 remains a highly portable gaming or multi-purpose machine. Users who can live with the compromises and appreciate the appeal of a slim and light gaming laptop might find the Zephyrus M16 a valuable option. However, those who value performance and ease of use above all else might prefer a slightly larger laptop with a more robust cooling solution. It’s a hopeful sign for the future of gaming laptops, showcasing their potential for offering both incredible power and compact size, but further improvements in design and thermal management are still required.
Price as reviewed: Rs. 2,29,990
