ROG Zephyrus M16 review: Comfortable wins and familiar sins

In Australia, the price of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 starts at $2,799. As far as gaming laptops go, that price point is a step above entry-level and more budget-friendly laptops like the Acer Nitro 5 and Dell G15 (2022). 

It's nowhere near the most you could end up paying for a good gaming laptop, but even once you factor in the larger display and the discrete graphics involved here it's hard to shake the idea that you're paying a smidge more than you should for the hardware here. For that reason, it can pay to look around. Check out the pricing matrix below for a quick round-up of local Australian pricing for the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2022).

Before you make a decision, be sure to read our recommendation for the specs.

To say that ASUS' new ROG Zephyrus M16 arrives without expectations is to ignore the reputation of its namesake. The original Zephyrus reset expectations for what thin and light gaming laptops could look like.

It's a credit to this latest addition to the line that it manages to live up to that legacy while offering the amount of screen estate that it does. The ROG Zephyrus M16 is built around a 16-inch IPS display clocked 165Hz and geared towards high fidelity gaming in up to 1440p.

If you want to go 4K, it'll cost you but it is an option. Either way, you're looking at rapid 3ms of response time, an ErgoLift hinge-assisted viewing angle and bezels that are among the thinnest you can find in a laptop of this weight class.

Regardless of where the resolution rests, the screen on the ROG Zephyrus M16 ticks all the usual boxes you'd expect given the price and target audience. It's Pantone Validated when it comes to colour, coated to resist glare and compliant with Dolby Vision HDR. Whether these bells and whistles tickle your fancy is going to vary based on whether you're as keen to use the hardware here for content creation as you are for consumption. In any case, it's nice to have.

The same might be said for the sheer breadth of the display on offer here. Letting the numbers do the talking for a moment, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 brings a whopping 94% screen-to-body ratio to the table. A 5% improvement on the previous generation in terms of thinness, the M16 is a 16-inch laptop that's been squeezed into something closer to a 15-inch equivalent chassis.

Even as someone who doesn't usually get caught up on these sorts of metrics, the tangible upsides to this form factor make for a gaming experience that feels that little bit more immersive, engaging and portable when you need it to be.

Beyond that 16:10 display that's the most eye-catching part of the package, what's here is not a huge departure from the status quo. Thankfully, this is one of those situations where familiarity is more of a comfort than a con.

ASUS has done the smart thing and erred away from trying to fix something that isn't broken. On the outside, the ROG Zephyrus M16 is a laced with nifty treatment that gives it a sort of shimmering effect in the right lighting.

The exterior of the machines incorporates a dot-matrix design that's similar to the one found on other recent Zephyrus laptops, though it's missing the customisation seen with earlier incarnations. Then, on the inside, the surface of the ROG Zephyrus M16 comes coated in a material that's soft to the touch, resilient to fingerprints and a perfect match for the satisfying 1.7mm switches offered by the keyboard on the laptop.

Meanwhile, the trackpad on the M16 is about 20% larger than the average. I usually find more generously-sized inputs to be a delight to work with and the one here is no exception to this. It's not a substitute for a real mouse when it comes to first and third-person shooters, but more than capable enough for things like strategy games or sims.

In terms of the ports you get to play with, the ROG Zephyrus M16 comes kitted out with the usual two USB Type-A (3.2 Gen 2) and USB Type-C (3.2 Gen 2 + Thunderbolt 4) slots plus a headphone jack, ab RJ45 ethernet port and a dedicated HDMI 2.0b output.

This isn't the kind of gaming laptop that has it all, but what is here feels confident and considered. You don't get everything you possibly could here but you do get most of what you'd want from this kind of lean gaming laptop.

Compared to the rest of the recipe, the webcam and speakers found on the Zephyrus M16 often feel more like an obligation than anything else. 

The former is 720p and it comes with support for Windows Hello facial recognition. It's nothing particularly special and it'll get the job done, but if you're after better video calls you're better off investing in a dedicated webcam.

The latter is similarly forgettable, though it comes with a few more bells and whistles. Given that there are six speakers in the mix here, the ROG Zephyrus M16 tends to sound better than you might expect from a gaming laptop. Unfortunately, if you're relying on these speakers while gaming then you'll quickly find them in competition with the whirring of the fans. For that reason, I found myself preferring to game with a set of noise-cancelling headphones more often than not.

Overall, it feels like ASUS have been pretty precise when it comes to the parts of the M16 that have received the most attention. Not every aspect of the experience hits the same highs, but the things you're going to be dealing with every time you use this particular machine strike true.

Even if it is geared around thin and light gaming, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 makes the most of that larger form factor that typically comes with a 16-inch display.

At the very least, you're getting an Intel Core i7-12700H processor. With the most excessive spec configuration available, that particular processor gets traded out for Intel's fearsome i9-12800H instead. If you're eager for a Ryzen variant, I don't blame you. Nevertheless, the M16 delivers among the best performance you can expect from an Intel-based processor in a laptop and falls into what we'd call the extreme performance bracket.

That said, the 8GB of DDR5 RAM in the basic model is a little scant. You do have the option to upgrade it to something more meaningful from outset or later down the line though, which is more than can be said for the 512GB of SSD storage that's included with the baseline model.

If you know what you're doing, you can probably scrape by with both of the above. But if you're looking to spend this much on a gaming laptop, it's not hard to make the argument for spending that little bit more and breathing that much easier.

In terms of the gaming goodness that the sum of these parts provides, most consumers are likely to come away satisfied with what the Zephyrus M16 delivers. My testing found that ASUS' latest lean laptop handled everything from Overwatch 2 to Cyberpunk 2077 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider without a hitch.

Given the gear that this particular laptop is loaded up with that might not be a huge surprise and it does come with a few terms and conditions. The aforementioned fans are going to feel pretty loud and wherever you seat the M16 is going to feel the heat, but ASUS has achieved the journey set out here.

By the benchmarks, the ROG Zephyrus M16 managed to handily beat every other laptop we've reviewed this year on most fronts. That said, it did underperform when it came to both Geekbench and Cinebench's Single Core CPU tests.

Naturally, these sorts of inconsistencies are synonymous with a few other familiar bugbears. If you're looking to play something without being tethered by a power supply, you're going to be looking for a pretty short amount of playtime.

Most of the time, I could barely squeeze in an hour of gaming before the battery ran dry. This tight time limit applied even when it came to less-demanding games like Gloomhaven. If you're trying to do something more ambitious or graphically intensive, expect that figure to shrink smaller still.

Subjected to video streaming via YouTube, the 90Whr battery inside the Zephyrus M16 took 5 hours and 27 minutes to go from 100% to zero. In context, that result is pretty poor. It's technically better than what you used to expect from gaming laptops of this size and likely a function of the thinner form factor. As good as ASUS seem to be when it comes to sidestepping the usual gaming laptop pitfalls, the ROG Zephyrus M16 can't quite manage to avoid this particular one.

While the Zephyrus M15 and Zephyrus M16 are only separated on paper by a single digit, the difference between the two machines is significant. ASUS hasn't given the former a proper update since 2020, which means the latter comes out well ahead when it comes to specs, design and overall form factor.

Compared to the Zephyrus M15, the ROG Zephyrus M16 boasts a larger screen, a more recent processor, faster RAM and a better video card. The more modern ROG Zephyrus M16 also comes with a number of extra bells and whistles when it comes to features, such as a noise-cancelling microphone, fingerprint sensor and a built-in webcam.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 is hardly the most competitive or versatile option on the menu, but if you've taken a look at some of the other options and are itching for something that hits a lot of the same notes and warm on the idea of slightly more screen space or a beefier processor, then this is very much the obvious upsell.

The top-spec version of the ROG Zephyrus M16 is predictably superb, but the standard model also delivers most of the same thrills at a much more affordable price point. It might not reign as a be-all-end-all when it comes to gaming laptops but that doesn't stop the Zephyrus M16 from cutting it as a compelling option for those who want that winning combination of a big screen, snazzy looks, a slim profile and powerful specs.

While it is significantly more expensive than the base model, the more expensive spec options available for the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2022) offer up a feast of fairly significant improvements when it comes to the storage, RAM and screen involved.