New 16-inch laptop receives wider international release with cheaper starting price and OLED display
The cheaper version of Asus’ Zenbook A16 has received a wider international release. To recap, the Zenbook A16 originally arrived in April featuring Qualcomm’s second-fastest Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chipset. As we discovered in our subsequent review, the X2E-94-100 helps the Zenbook A16 outperform its x86 counterparts while matching Apple M4-powered MacBooks.
A few months later, Asus quietly updated the Zenbook A16 with a less performant option. Initially, we could only find this variant in Italy. However, it has now reached other markets like Australia and the UK. For the time being, we cannot find any reference to this UX3607QA variant in North America, though.
Setting that aside, the UX3607QA comes with the lesser Snapdragon X X1-26-100. Incidentally, this is the same processor that powers the entry-level Zenbook A14 (curr. $899 on Amazon). According to our benchmarks, this 8-core processor is almost twice as slow as the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100.
While the cheaper Zenbook A16 is around 100 g lighter than its pricier sibling, the former contains other trade-offs too. For instance, Asus includes 16 GB of RAM, a third as much as it includes in the more expensive Zenbook A16. Also, the laptop ships with a dimmer, lower-resolution, and slower OLED display than the 500-nit, 2.8K and 120 Hz panel inside the more expensive model. On top of that, the UX3607QA trades Wi-Fi 7 connectivity for Wi-Fi 6E.
The cheaper Zenbook A16 runs to AU 2,074 in Australia and £1,299 (~$1,730) in the UK, including taxes. Currently, the X2E-94-100 powered model costs £2,099 in the UK. In other words, all these trade-offs amount to a 38% saving over the more premium Zenbook A16 we reviewed earlier this year.
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