Ninkear A16 Pro laptop review: Affordable, powerful and quiet during use

With the release of the A16 Pro, Ninkear has once again proven that it can offer an affordable and high-quality alternative to models from established brands. Although we can't say anything about its long-term function, the A16 Pro impressed us during our test with its metal case, nice display, good and above all constant performance (even when running on battery power), and quiet operation for relatively little money. It definitely places ahead of its sister model—the N16 Pro—in terms of performance.

Points are deducted for its weak 720p webcam, and its very loud and somewhat cheap-looking clickpad detracts from its input devices' otherwise good user experience. But these are forgivable weaknesses. Despite its large battery, we were surprised at the laptop's weak battery life—although the manufacturer has stated a runtime of at least 10 hours. Plus, there is certainly still some room for improvement with regard to software optimization. Its USB ports could also do with being a little more modern.

At the time of writing, the Ninkear A16 isn't available to purchase in the United States, but if you are in Europe, you can purchase it from our lender Geekmaxi. It currently costs 779€ (approx. $842).

In recent times, Ninkear laptops have surprised us. The A15 Plus and the N16 Pro from the Far East did quite well in our tests, so now it's time to test the A16 Pro. Highlights include its metal case and, above all, its 16-inch screen with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels. Unlike the N16 Pro with an Intel CPU, this model is powered by an AMD Hawk Point processor and an integrated Radeon GPU. It costs just over $800. We took a look at how good its multimedia display really is and how well-rounded its office package is.

Despite there being some similarities, our A16 Pro also looks quite different from the N16 Pro on the outside. Ninkear has gone for even more metal and less plastic for its A16 Pro. Because everything is metallic blue, the A16 Pro looks as if it has been cast from a single mold. Unfortunately, the display lid crackles and cracks considerably when twisted. The base, on the other hand, is very stable.

Overall, its design looks great, with "Ninkear" in black lettering in one of the upper corners of the lid. Otherwise, the laptop shines with blue elegance and simplicity. The display can be opened by 180 degrees, but the hinge unfortunately doesn't grip tightly enough. The air outlets are concealed behind the long hinge, and a fingerprint sensor is integrated into the power button.

The accessories are worthy of praise: In addition to the keyboard stickers in different language layouts, users also receive a USB mouse and mouse pad.

Unfortunately, its webcam only has a resolution of 720p and suffers from high color deviations and low sharpness. It only supports Wi-Fi 6 without the E suffix, so the fast 6 GHz network is missing, and its transfer rates in the 5 GHz network are rather average.

The laptop comes delivered in two cardboard boxes—one inside the other. On the inside, however, the packaging and protective materials consist of lots of plastic. The manufacturer hasn't provided any information about the CO₂ emissions during production.

The Ninkear A16 Pro is only available in one configuration, namely with an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS including its integrated Radeon 780M, a generous 32 GB of RAM and a 1-TB SSD. This makes the 16-inch laptop particularly suitable for office use and some multimedia tasks. Thanks to the integrated NPU, it can also handle AI applications, although the latest models are even more powerful in this respect.

The A16 Pro doesn't have its own preset performance profiles or a Control Center app. We therefore set the Windows energy profiles to "performance" for our performance benchmarks and to "energy saving" during the battery tests.

The AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS from the Hawk Point series is classed as one of the more high-end laptop processors, has 8 cores and can process 16 threads simultaneously, with clock speeds ranging from 3.8 to 5.1 GHz. The integrated NPU for local AI applications achieves up to 16 TOPS, and the entire CPU manages up to 38 TOPS.

Our Cinebench R15 endurance test confirmed that the CPU performs very consistently without any drop in performance. The Ryzen performed exactly at the level of an Intel Ultra 7 155H in the Medion S10—the same processor in the Xiaomi RedmiBook Pro 16 was only slightly faster at the beginning, but this was equalized when it came to continuous performance.

Across all CPU tests, the Ryzen 7 performed slightly below our expectations, but still took second place in our comparison behind the RedmiBook, and it even placed ahead of the Medion and all other competitors.

Much to our delight, the A16 Pro doesn't lose any of its performance in battery mode, as a further Cinebench R15 run showed.