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Someday, I plan to write a separate piece on why ARM processors – originally known as Acorn RISC Machines – may have become more influential than any other processor architecture. Among other things, they ultimately led to devices such as the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607: full-sized, fully featured laptops that offer a particularly compelling balance of capabilities for a specific group of users. Yes, this is a Windows laptop powered by Qualcomm’s new processor platform. And the central question here is fairly straightforward: does it deliver enough progress compared to its predecessor?
Read also: All ASUS laptop reviews
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 Specifications
- Weight: 1.2 kg
- Dimensions: 35.35 × 24.24 × 1.65 cm
- Housing protection: MIL-STD-810H + ASUS Perfect Warranty
- Display: 16 inches, 3K, ASUS Lumina OLED, 120 Hz
- Brightness: up to 1100 nits in HDR
- Processor: Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E94100
- RAM: 48 GB 9523 MB/s
- SSD: 1 TB NVMe PCIe 4×4 2280
- Ports: 2× USB 4.0, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 3.5 mm combo jack, HDMI 2.1 TMDS, SD 4.0
- Keyboard: island-style, 1.3 mm, backlit
- Webcam: Full HD + Windows Hello
- Audio: stereo + Smart Amp
- Network card: Qualcomm FastConnect C7700 (Wi-Fi 7 + Bluetooth 5.4)
- Battery: 70 Wh
ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 video review
Price and positioning
The ASUS Zenbook A16 costs around 120,000 UAH, which is approximately $2,700 for the UX3607OA-SQ013W model with part number 90NB17W1-M000M0. In other words, to put it plainly, this is not even close to being a competitor to the MacBook Air, but rather a direct rival to the MacBook Pro.
Package Contents
Depending on the region, the contents of the laptop package may vary. In my case, the box included a 130 W power adapter and a white carrying sleeve.
Interestingly, this is the first time I’ve encountered a 130 W USB Type-C charger. That is somewhat unusual, considering that the laptop itself (spoiler alert) operates at around the 100 W range under load. The remaining 30 W appear to be reserved primarily for faster battery charging rather than additional system performance.
ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 Design
The ASUS Zenbook A16 features a fairly distinctive design. First, there is the Zabriskie Beige color option – essentially a muted beige finish. Second, the chassis material itself stands out. ASUS once again uses its familiar Ceraluminum material, a ceramic-aluminum composite that feels rigid, slightly textured, resistant to fingerprints, and notably lightweight. Despite its large form factor, measuring 35.35 × 24.24 × 1.65 cm, the laptop weighs only 1.2 kg. For comparison, the 13-inch ASUS ProArt PX13 GoPro Edition is roughly 200 g heavier.
The low weight of the chassis does not come at the expense of rigidity, either. The ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 passes the so-called “MacBook test” without issue – the lid can be opened easily with one hand. ASUS also added a fairly deep notch along the front edge near the touchpad area, making the laptop easier to grip when opening it.
Durability is also reinforced by the laptop’s compliance with the MIL-STD-810H testing standard, as well as ASUS Perfect Warranty coverage. The latter includes free repairs for accidental damage during the first year of ownership.
Other notable design details include the silver model branding on the lid, the ASUS logo positioned above the keyboard in the upper-right corner, and the various branding labels located on the underside of the chassis.
Display
The ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 is equipped with a 16-inch 3K (2880 × 1800) ASUS Lumina OLED display featuring a 16:10 aspect ratio, a 120 Hz refresh rate, and peak brightness of up to 500 nits.
My measurements showed brightness levels ranging from 1 to 270 nits in SDR mode, while in HDR the panel can reach up to 1100 nits. The display also covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color space and delivers a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1.
The display is excellent overall. It is glossy, so it handles reflections quite aggressively, and it is not a touchscreen – which means it avoids accumulating fingerprints as heavily.
One aspect worth noting is the hinge behavior on the Zenbook A16 UX3607. The hinges are quite loose, not in terms of durability, but in terms of stability. Where an ASUS G16 might only show minor wobble on an unstable desk, the Zenbook 16 tends to move noticeably even under slight disturbances. This can become distracting during use.
Performance
Ideally, the review of the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 should start with the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100 installed inside it. Because, unfortunately for me, for you, and for everyone else involved – no matter how capable the chassis, display, keyboard, or touchpad may be, without a stable processor and a fast integrated GPU, the experience inevitably leads to “Yikes”.
What exactly “Yikes” are – we will get to that later. For now, let’s focus on the positives. For example, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100. The naming quality of Qualcomm’s second-generation desktop Snapdragon chips has not improved – it is still quite poor. However, the rest of the specifications have improved almost across the board.
One might argue that the comparison is unfair, since I am using the non-Extreme X Elite as a reference. However, that was last year’s flagship – the best Windows-oriented processor Qualcomm had at the time. And it… looks like a toy compared to the new generation.
The core count has increased by 6 cores / 6 threads, bringing the total to 18. However, the architecture is somewhat unusual: the CPU is split into 6 performance (P) cores and 12 high-performance Oryon “Prime” cores. All cores share a 44 MB L2 cache and a 9 MB L3 cache. Clock speeds have also increased: the base frequency is up by 400 MHz, reaching up to 3.4 GHz. Boost frequencies have also been raised – up to 3.6 GHz for the performance cores, 4.4 GHz for the high-performance cores, and up to 5 GHz for the two best cores.
It is somewhat ironic to see Qualcomm – the company that effectively popularized heterogeneous mobile CPU designs through big.LITTLE – now introducing a further split into “performance” and “high-performance” cores. From a user perspective, the terminology is hardly intuitive.
What matters more, however, is something else. As will become clear later – and as has already been noted by reviewers outside our region for some time – the performance gains in the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100 do not primarily come from IPC improvements (instructions per cycle), i.e. per-clock efficiency.
Instead, the uplift is mainly driven by a higher core count and increased clock speeds. Roughly speaking, this translates to about +40% from additional cores and around +35% from frequency increases.
From the tests I have personally seen (and I went through a large number of reviews of the X2 Elite Extreme), the single-thread performance of the new Qualcomm chip is on par with the M5 Pro and M5 Max. In other words, it is capable of competing with the strongest processors available today, while significantly outpacing Intel and AMD competitors – especially AMD, even the latest HX 470. With all due respect to AMD, that is simply not a good outcome for them.
What is even more notable is that this level of performance is available without being tied to mains power. The ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 loses only around 3–4% of performance when running on battery, both in PCMark tests and in games. It is also worth noting that the laptop supports charging from power banks rated at 100 W / 65 W.
So there’s just one question left – what about the Adreno X2-90 graphics processor?
Graphics subsystem
The good news is that we see almost a 50% performance increase compared to the previous generation. This is supported by a 200 MHz increase in base frequency, a 600 MHz increase in boost frequency, and roughly 25% more graphics modules. Additionally, the number of execution units has increased by about 100%.
All of this allows the Adreno X2-90 to reach the performance level of Apple’s M5-class SoC and come uncomfortably close to Intel’s Arc B390. And the B390, to put things in perspective, is Intel’s top-tier integrated GPU, with performance roughly comparable to an RTX 4060/5050-class solution.
This is not intended to downplay the achievements of integrated graphics solutions from AMD or Intel.
I’ve mentioned quite often that Qualcomm’s new flagship smartphone SoC can run Cyberpunk 2077 through emulation at 720p and around 30 FPS. In other words, even on unoptimized software – and with x86 code running through translation layers – the GPU still delivers impressive results in games that are not optimized for this architecture.
If you are surprised that a mobile processor is reaching the performance level of entry-level discrete GPUs from the market leader, there is no need to be – this is exactly how the trend is expected to evolve. The more important point is that we are gradually approaching the “Yikes” I mentioned at the beginning.
What are these “Yikes”, exactly? It’s the same error message that Cyberpunk 2077 shows when it crashes due to an internal fault. I have never seen this error in six years of using Cyberpunk 2077, across all my tests – including testing on the first-generation Qualcomm Windows platform. I ran the game in its native resolution on the Ray Tracing Low preset; the benchmark completed without glitches. The result was poor, but it was at least consistent.
The Medium preset test, with RT disabled, ended with the same “Yikes”. The same happened in the Monster Hunter Wilds benchmark. Other tests also ran in a clearly unstable manner. At the same time, the Homeworld 3 benchmark produced strong results – up to 60 FPS, with drops below 20 FPS (at full 3K resolution).
Rise of the Tomb Raider showed significant FPS drops, despite maintaining a fairly high average frame rate. In contrast, Strange Brigade delivered over 100 FPS – a solid result on medium settings. Other reviewers have also tested titles such as Fortnite with anti-cheat enabled, Counter-Strike 2, and several others.
Compatibility and Stability
The full list of compatible games and applications is still available on worksonwoa.com. At present, there are around 1,400 compatible games and more than 5,000 applications. Some of them run natively, as they are compiled for Windows on ARM. Others are executed through the Prism translation layer (similar in concept to Apple’s Rosetta). In these cases, a portion of performance is lost, and additional stability issues may be introduced.
Fortunately, there is already a wide range of native ARM applications available. This includes a large number of browsers, VLC media player, Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Spotify, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, X, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Microsoft 365, LibreOffice, SumatraPDF, Drawboard Projects, Todoist, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut, GIMP, ImageGlass, Luminar Neo, Concepts, and many others.
Qualcomm has even set up a dedicated page – Windows Apps.
It is worth noting, however, that if you see two versions of the same application – one for x86 and one for ARM – you should not expect them to be identical. For example, HWMonitor has a native ARM version, but with significantly reduced functionality. In particular, it does not allow resetting the recorded values. Unfortunately, issues like this can appear across a wide range of software.
The best way I can describe the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100 is that it is now 99% indistinguishable from a modern x86 processor in everyday use. However, the “Yikes” described above still occasionally occur – and they can even appear in cases where the compatibility database explicitly guarantees support. In other words, while overall compatibility and behavior are very close to traditional x86 systems, edge cases and stability problems are still possible.
The key point is this: compatibility is not the same as stability.
Qualcomm is, of course, continuously releasing patches and updates – for example, one of the recent updates reportedly improved multi-threaded performance by around 10%, according to some reviewers.
Another nuance is that there is software compatibility… and there is hardware compatibility. For instance, I connected a Xiaomi Curved Gaming Monitor G34WQi to the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 via a USB-C to DisplayPort cable, and then connected the same monitor using the same cable to an ASUS ROG Strix G16. On the A16, the maximum refresh rate reached 165 Hz, while on the G16 it reached 180 Hz.
Another drawback is the complete lack of external GPU support. This is particularly disappointing, because the level of CPU performance would pair very well with something like the ASUS XG Mobile GC34 2025 in gaming workloads. Especially considering that this external GPU connects via Thunderbolt 5/4/3 or USB4.
The storage setup of the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 is only part of the broader picture.
The more interesting aspect is the platform design. The system relies on the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, delivering around 80 TOPS of AI compute performance. Combined with 48 GB of very fast LPDDR memory rated at 9523 MT/s, this creates a configuration that is clearly optimized for sustained CPU and AI workloads rather than traditional discrete GPU-heavy scenarios.
It is also worth noting that the memory is non-binary (non-standard capacity configuration) and soldered directly onto the same package substrate as the processor. This integration is one of the reasons such high memory bandwidth figures are achievable.
The SSD in the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 is at least removable. It uses an NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 2280 drive. However, there is only a single slot, which is somewhat surprising for a 16-inch chassis. One possible explanation is that this is a limitation of the processor platform itself, which may not provide enough PCIe lanes for additional storage devices. The unit shipped with a Samsung MZVL81T0HELB-00BTW 1 TB SSD, which delivers sequential speeds of up to around 5 GB/s.
Peripherals and data connectivity
In terms of ports, the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 presents a somewhat unusual configuration. On one hand, it includes a full-size HDMI 2.1 port with TMDS support, two USB4 ports (both supporting 100 W charging), and a combined 3.5 mm audio jack.
On the other side of the chassis – literally the opposite edge of the laptop – there is a USB Type-A port rated at 10 Gbps, as well as a full-size UHS-II card reader with transfer speeds of up to 300 MB/s. For wireless connectivity, the system relies on the Qualcomm FastConnect C7700 module, which supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.
On wireless capabilities, there are no real complaints – Qualcomm is effectively near the top of the market in wireless chipset design, arguably second only to Intel in some segments.
However, peripheral limitations are more closely tied to the CPU platform itself. In practice, you may not always get the maximum display refresh rate or resolution when using USB4, and external GPUs are not supported. Other expected Windows laptop features may also be unavailable or inconsistently implemented.
The key reason is driver maturity and platform integration. Not all components are equally supported at a fully polished level, and in some cases functionality depends on software support that is still incomplete or uneven across the ecosystem.
Media capabilities and input devices
The laptop is equipped with a solid scissor-switch keyboard featuring three levels of white backlighting and 1.3 mm key travel. The typing sound will be covered in the video review above. Overall, the keyboard is quite good, although it has two drawbacks.
The first drawback is the lack of a numeric keypad, which is unusual for a 16-inch device. The second is the placement of the power button, which is not in the corner where it is typically expected. Instead, it is shifted one key to the left, occupying the position where the Delete key would normally be. I am strongly against any kind of experimental keyboard layouts, especially ones like this.
The touchpad is glass, very large, precise, and smooth. The webcam supports Windows Hello and delivers fairly good image quality. Qualcomm’s ISP pipeline remains among the best on the market. As for the speakers, the system uses stereo output with excellent clarity and strong volume. A sample is provided in the video review above.
Software
Out of the box, the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 comes with a set of preinstalled ASUS utilities. These include the familiar MyASUS application for fine-tuning laptop settings, StoryCube for AI-assisted media organization, and ScreenXpert for easily extending the display to other screens, including wireless ones.
There is also a suspicion that, specifically on the A16, the MyASUS application includes a significantly expanded set of options compared to previous versions. In addition to battery care, OLED display tuning, and fan control, it now includes an option to allocate system RAM as VRAM.
What makes it more concerning is that the allocation is dynamic. The option suggests that VRAM can be set up to 50% of system memory, but without a hard reservation – meaning the GPU can scale its usage anywhere from a minimum baseline up to the configured limit, but not beyond it. This is not fundamentally different from how Windows on x86 systems already behaves, except that here it is explicitly exposed as a user-facing setting with a defined ceiling.
The concern is that when the operating system dynamically assigns gigabytes from a shared memory pool, each megabyte effectively becomes a contested resource between system RAM and GPU memory. In certain workloads, this can lead to contention and potential instability. It is possible that this behavior contributed to the issues observed in Cyberpunk 2077 and Monster Hunter Wilds. At this stage, it is not confirmed, but it remains a plausible factor.
Battery life
The strongest aspect of Qualcomm laptop chips has always been power efficiency. Unfortunately, the results from both PCMark and Procyon benchmarks failed to save properly, but Windows power management data indicates that up to 20 hours of battery life in light productivity tasks is easily achievable.
It is also important to understand that, unlike energy-efficient processors from Intel and AMD, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100 behaves very well even at very low power levels. However, reaching those minimum power states is not straightforward – the well-known G-Helper tool does not work on ARM-based laptops, and fine-grained performance tuning is only available through MyASUS.
I didn’t have the opportunity to properly test it either – mainly because system instability kept getting in the way.
The upside, however, is that the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 should improve over time. In a sense, it behaves like a long-term software investment, somewhat similar to No Man’s Sky, or slightly below that level of post-launch improvement.
It is also worth remembering that the battery here is only 70 Wh, and the laptop can be easily charged using standard power banks. Combined with its low weight, this allows you to carry an extra power bank when traveling. An indirect benefit of this efficiency is very low noise levels – even under load, the laptop remains extremely quiet, on a level comparable to a MacBook Pro.
Thermals, however, are more mixed. Because the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 is a thin device, temperatures rise quickly, creating a noticeable hot spot in the center of the chassis, clearly visible on a thermal camera such as the Blackview Xplore 1 Pro.
During Cyberpunk 2077, I recorded temperatures of up to 56°C on the top surface, and up to 48°C on the sides. Overall, the cooling system is aligned with a ~100 W thermal design envelope. Since the laptop is not intended for heavy sustained workloads beyond that class, everyday tasks like typing and even gaming are handled without major issues.
Conclusions
The evolution of Snapdragon X Elite from an experimental platform into a full-fledged competitor to Apple Silicon is happening in real time, and it is roughly 99% complete. Yes, the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607 is expensive. Yes, it still lacks stability. Yes, its behavior sometimes requires “workarounds”, and compatibility often needs to be checked almost on a per-application basis.
At the same time, the laptop is extremely light, well-built, and offers phenomenal CPU performance even by competitive standards. Battery life is among the best of the best. If your workload is not GPU-centric and does not require universal software compatibility, I can confidently recommend the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607.
Read also:
- ASUS ExpertBook Ultra Laptop Review: Distinctive Blend of Hardware and Design
- ASUS ROG Raikiri II Xbox Wireless Gamepad Review: TMR Sensors, Microswitches, and 1000 Hz Polling on PC
- ASUS ProArt P16 H7606WX Review: Ultrabook with RTX 5090 and 24 GB of VRAM
Where to buy the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607