Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) review: Neither Intel Gen 13 nor RTX 40 - OLED and Mini-LED displays are the new laptop's highlights
We have just recently completed our extensive review of the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023). The sheer power of the Intel Core i9-13900H paired with an Nvidia Geforce RTX 4090 is impressive with efficiency also seeing a slight improvement.
On second glance, though, the new CPU-GPU generation reveals itself not to be the new M16's highlight but rather the display. An increased number of laptops arriving in our test laboratory come equipped with OLED screens or Mini-LED backlighting. These are visible improvements the customer can really appreciate. OLED and Mini-LED mean better black levels and colors which, in turn, means better contrast, higher brightness and just an overall better viewing experience.
Smartphones and TVs have been leading the way and are now, unlike a few years ago, an important source of inspiration for laptops. In particular, inexpensive, mass-market laptops have had a very long development path when it comes to their displays, certainly compared to TVs and smartphones. Staring with lousy TN panels which are only now starting to slowly disappear, through to 250 to 350 nit IPS displays. Finally, laptops are beginning to offer really bright displays from 500 to 1000 nits and thereby greatly enhancing the daily viewing experience.
With regard to the new Intel/ Nvidia generations, the drivers are experiencing a few teething difficulties. Sometimes switching from iGPU to dGPU doesn't work. Then, we editors receive pages and pages of the manufacturer's test instructions explaining what should be activated or deactivated in Windows or hardware drivers in order to get the best possible performance or we discover that the M16's idle consumption is still too high etc, etc. Until Nvidia, Intel, Microsoft and co release mature drivers that allow the average user optimum laptop performance without having an initial marathon-like list of settings, we'll simply enjoy the new, nicer display options.
More details regarding the new HDR Nebula display with Mini-LEDs as well as all the $4000 Zephyrus M16's pros and cons can be found in our extensive Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) review.