Despite their ability to do daily chores with great ease and delicacy, gaming laptops are regarded as a niche product. Since the past few years, the gaming industry as a whole has boomed. As more and more people take up gaming, whether it be for leisure or as a career, gaming firms have taken note, and there are now many gaming devices and accessories on the market.
Taiwanese PC manufacturer Asus is one business that has done a great job of satisfying the needs of gamers. Asus has always provided gamers with some of the greatest gaming PCs and laptops available with its Republic of Gamers (ROG) Line of gaming goods and peripherals. The business updated its Asus ROG Zephyrus line of gaming laptops earlier this year.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 maintains a straightforward appearance. The laptop has squared-off edges and is available in black. The laptop’s rear panel is made of hard plastic with a dotted design that reveals these highlights in rainbow colours, but only from specific angles. On the back panel’s corner, there is an Asus ROG emblem. The laptop’s front bezels around its lovely display are extremely thin (more on this in a bit). The gadget has a rubber-like surface on the bottom panel, which houses the keyboard, and an RGB illuminated keyboard. Although it is easy to hold and use, this material is a stain magnet, making it impossible to avoid getting stains from perspiration and oils.
The 2021 Zephyrus M16, which it replaces, served the inspiration for the Asus ROG Zephyrus. Asus has made it smaller and lighter than the ROG Zephyrus M16 from the previous year. Now, with the decreased size and weight and the ample number of ports on the laptop, this is a secure and well-known design approach from Asus (placed on the right and left sides of the laptop). Since the majority of die-hard gamers don’t typically care how their gadget appears, the design is not the main focus here. However, the laptop’s rubber-like texture rapidly makes the Zephyrus M16 appear incredibly worn out. Although it helps hold your hands in position, it is highly prone to pick up stains from perspiration and oil that are hard to remove.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16’s 16-inch “ROG Nebula” display boasts a QHD+ resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, a 165Hz refresh rate, with a 3ms latency. The panel supports Dolby Vision HDR and has AdaptiveSync for variable refresh rate.
With a QHD+ resolution, the display on this laptop has excellent image clarity and superb detail. Although I couldn’t find out how to keep it locked on a high refresh rate when using battery power, the display is also quite responsive. The refresh rate will gradually decrease to 60Hz each time the battery-operated display is closed. But when it comes to power, the response is excellent. The ROG Zephyrus consistently provided me with a frame rate of roughly 100Hz during my sessions with games like Forza Horizon 5, which is excellent.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus’ display is excellent in terms of brightness, and you can use it in bright outdoor settings, but it is not the brightest gaming laptop display we have seen.
Cutting edge specs come with the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16. The laptop is powered by an Intel Core i9-12900H processor from the 12th generation, running at 2.5 GHz and supporting up to 32GB of RAM. Up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU with 16GB of VRAM is combined with the CPU. The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 is a beast of a laptop when it comes to performance and gaming experience thanks to these features plus a fantastic display. There are, however, a few oddities here and there.
When it comes to core performance, the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 excels in the capacity to execute several applications quickly. The laptop opens programmes quickly and does several tasks, including gaming, without difficulty.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2022) seemed like a pretty decent laptop for both work and gaming. One can run various programmes, such as video and picture editors, along with a couple of Google Chrome windows with a total of roughly 50–60 tabs without experiencing any problems.
This laptop provides an amazing high frame rate experience on a QHD resolution with maxed out graphics, ranking right up there with some of the finest PC configurations for high frame rate gaming on a 4K or QHD resolution. However, the maximum frame rate on the laptop is slightly around 140Hz, which produces a really smooth and immersive experience.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16’s QHD+ display does wonders in terms of visuals. On this display, even the smallest details are visible, and the responsiveness is excellent. But you can only play games with a high frame rate while your laptop is plugged into a charger. It has been observed that even after trying increasing every setting in the Armory Crate app on the ROG Zephyrus M16, the laptop’s responsiveness for gaming was still inferior than while it was charging. This is disappointing because there are other gaming laptops that can output a greater frame rate while using less power, such as the Alienware X17 R1 that I was evaluating alongside this one.
The fans of the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 are rather noisy in both manual and turbo mode, and it also warms up quite a bit. However, this is hardly the worst heating and fan noise we have heard from gaming laptops in this price range. In terms of heat dissipation, the ROG Zephyrus M16 is among the finest gaming laptops. Don’t imagine that you’ll be able to game with the laptop on your lap, though. The rubberized material also helps to keep the region where your palm rests cool while gaming.
With the 12th Gen Intel Core CPUs, the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16’s battery life once more sees a pleasant boost. During my work sessions with the M16, the laptop easily lasted more than five hours. With the 240W fast charger, charging is also extremely quick. Again, this is a significant advancement over the laptop’s previous version, which used 11th Gen Intel CPUs.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16, which has some significant upgrades over its predecessor, is still a beast of a computer from the PC manufacturer. The laptop has an enhanced newer generation CPU, a smaller size, is lighter, and has a lot better battery. The design is still there, but the rubberized material that surrounds the keyboard is quite porous and is easily stained by perspiration and grease. In Turbo or Manual mode, it becomes pretty warm, and the fans often get noisy. Additionally, the laptop does not provide a smooth gaming experience while running on batteries. Although it is still one of the most competent and powerful laptops available, the version we received for testing will mostly appeal to professional gamers due to its price of Rs 2,41,999.
Additionally check out: New Surface Laptop Go 2 Series In The Indian Market
