Asus wowed us during last year’s CES with the featherweight, Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Zenbook A14 laptop—and it's trying to make lightning strike again in 2026. The new Zenbook A16 is a 16-inch variant of Asus' thin-and-light Arm laptop, now featuring a larger OLED screen and 18-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme processing, all with surprisingly little additional weight and thickness. Asus’ chassis-coating “Ceraluminum” material worked exceptionally well at 14 inches, but it practically works a miracle at 16 inches, creating a laptop that is even lighter than the LG gram 16 or Apple's 15-inch MacBook Air.
While Asus will return with an updated Zenbook A14 model featuring the Snapdragon X2 Elite chip, the 16-incher is the star of the company’s CES show. I went hands on with the laptop during Asus’ CES 2026 preview event in New York City, and I walked away deeply impressed with this fiery featherweight machine. At first glance, the Zenbook A16 looks destined to appear in at least one PCMag buying guide in the near future. I’m eager to see it in testing.
Design: A Much Bigger Screen, But Not Much More Weight
One of the most impressive features of the Zenbook A16 is also one of the most obvious: its heft, or lack of it. The laptop is barely thicker and heavier than the Zenbook A14, measuring 0.65 inch thick and weighing 2.65 pounds, even as it delivers two more inches of screen space on the diagonal. You would be hard-pressed to feel the weight difference between the new A16 and last year's A14, which tipped the scales at 2.4 pounds. (The new 2026 version of the A14 slims down to 2.18 pounds, but still, the A16 is a feat.)
Just how amazing is that for a 16-inch laptop? Consider that the smaller-screened 15-inch MacBook Air is thinner, at 0.44 inch thick, but noticeably heavier at 3.3 pounds.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The secret lies in Asus’ proprietary Ceraluminum material and its manufacturing process. Asus uses high voltage to apply extreme heat to magnesium-aluminum screen lids, keyboard decks, and underside panels. A portion of the aluminum is converted into a harder, stronger ceramic-like layer (hence the name), resulting in a lower overall density with excellent rigidity.
The result feels as excellent in my hands here as it did on the first Zenbook A14, almost like soft-touch plastic, and it’s anti-scratch, anti-wear, and anti-smudge to boot. It's also exciting to get a 16-inch screen in a laptop that’s lighter than Apple's famously fat-free 15-incher.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Asus managed to cram quite a few ports into this slight frame, with one USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) port, two USB4 40Gbps Type-C ports (with DisplayPort and power delivery), an HDMI 2.1 out, a 3.5mm audio jack, and an SD card reader. That's more options than Dell's XPS 16, newly resurrected for 2026, offers—and the Asus model weighs a pound less than the Dell.
The laptop’s keyboard doesn’t fully utilize the Zenbook A16's larger deck by adding a numeric keypad, but few do these days, especially in this mainstream consumer category. Regardless, I appreciate the spacing and punchiness of the keys, not to mention the distinct area set aside for the four-way arrow-key cluster. Asus also carried over its Smart Gesture touchpad for easier scrolling through documents, spreadsheets, and webpages. It feels super smooth at first touch, and it's huge.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Display: Taking Every Advantage of Those Extra Inches
The screen, meanwhile, gets a big glow-up with this edition. As with the Zenbook A14, the new A16's Lumina display remains a non-touch OLED, delivering enhanced contrast and color coverage. But now it’s a spacious 16 inches, at a razor-sharp 1800p resolution. The panel refreshes at 120Hz (twice as fast as a typical productivity laptop display) and achieves a brightness of up to 500 nits. The screen even managed to fend off harsh, ill-advised ambient light at the venue where Asus chose to showcase the machine, displaying its vibrant dominance.
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The panel also features a 0.2-millisecond response time, a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and support for HDR True Black 1000, enabling the accurate color representation of fast-moving scenes and the display of the deepest blacks possible. Pair that with a promised 21 hours of video-playback time, and the Zenbook A16 becomes a marathon movie machine for long flights and commutes.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)All in all, the Lumina OLED offers a highly competitive screen on features and capabilities. In last year’s Zenbook A14, the Lumina OLED nearly aced all three of our color-coverage tests, missing 100% coverage only on the sRGB gamut by three points.
Dell’s XPS 16 claims to cover 100% of the sRGB gamut with its new Tandem OLED display, a claim we will confirm through testing when we get a sample. So Dell’s laptop may end up edging out the Zenbook A16 on that score, but remember that the Dell XPS targets a slightly higher-end segment. Even so, the A16’s OLED is a stunner that seems specifically tailored for video.
What’s Inside? Qualcomm’s Most ‘Extreme’ Chip Yet
Asus teamed up with Qualcomm to ensure its Zenbook A16 would be the first laptop of 2026 with the chip maker's flagship 18-core Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme processor. This new chip, at the top of the upcoming Snapdragon X2 family, can operate at clock speeds of up to 5GHz and features an expanded 192-bit memory bus with a bandwidth of up to 228Gbps. The X2 Elite Extreme also features advanced AI processing power, capable of up to 80 trillion operations per second.
These specifications are expected to deliver a net performance increase over the previous generation of Snapdragon X chips, potentially further enhanced by an upgraded dual-fan cooling system. Regardless, we’ll have to wait until testing to see how they compare with new offerings from Intel and AMD.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Otherwise, Asus has plans for a rather specific configuration of the Zenbook A16, utilizing components and a performance level that further distinguish it from the 14-inch model. The Zenbook A16 will come with 48GB of DDR5X memory embedded on Qualcomm’s system-on-chip (SoC) processor die, paired with a 1TB M.2 PCI Express 4.0 solid-state drive. For wireless connectivity, the A16 features a triple-band Wi-Fi 7 radio with support for Bluetooth 5.4.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)On paper, this appears to be a remarkable laptop for its size and weight, a deeply capable college machine that won’t weigh students down and will last them a long time on a single charge. I’m excited to see the A16 thoroughly tested in PC Labs—and tell whether it is indeed the marquee big-screen mainstream laptop for 2026.
The 2026 Zenbook A14: Another Snapdragon X2 Update
As we noted above, Asus’ 14-inch Zenbook A14 is also getting an update. The revamp features Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite SoC and promises a performance mix that prioritizes efficiency and longevity slightly more than the X2 Elite Extreme series. This build also features a smaller peak RAM capacity (32GB), but retains the same 1TB SSD as its larger counterpart.
Nothing changes about the A14’s screen, with Asus sticking to the 1200p Lumina OLED panel refreshing at 60Hz. This time, however, it’s rated a bit brighter, at a maximum of 600 nits. All told, it’s quite similar to last year’s product, just updated internally to keep up with the laptop Joneses. That said, I anticipate the Zenbook A14 again being an ultraportable to beat for certain audiences this year, so come back soon for a fully tested review of this one, too.