Updated

Updated · Notebookcheck.net · Jul 25

Asus Expands £1,299 Zenbook A16 to UK, Australia as Cheaper Snapdragon X Variant Spreads

Updated

Updated · Notebookcheck.net · Jul 25

Asus Expands £1,299 Zenbook A16 to UK, Australia as Cheaper Snapdragon X Variant Spreads

Q: Does sacrificing half the processing power and screen quality justify a 38% discount on Asus's premium Zenbook?

For many buyers, no—the 38% discount looks smaller than the sacrifice in performance and display quality. The cheaper Zenbook A16 keeps the premium chassis, low 1.2 kg-class weight, 70Wh battery, USB4, OLED branding, IR camera, and Copilot+ features. That matters because the original model’s appeal was not just speed but also portability, quiet operation, and battery life. If someone mainly wants a large, very light 16-inch Windows laptop for web work, office tasks, and media, the lower-priced version may still be attractive. But the cuts are substantial. The Snapdragon X X1-26-100 is reported to be roughly half as fast as the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme in benchmarks, and it is closer to mainstream Intel Core 5-class performance than to the flagship-tier results that made the original Zenbook A16 stand out. The screen downgrade is also severe: from a 2.8K, 120Hz, 500-nit OLED to a 1920x1200, 60Hz, 300-nit panel. On a premium 16-inch laptop, that affects everyday experience as much as raw speed. Buyers also lose memory headroom, dropping to 16GB RAM, plus Wi‑Fi 6E instead of Wi‑Fi 7. At £1,299, the cheaper model is not cheap in absolute terms. It still sits in premium territory, where a dimmer 60Hz display and much weaker processor are harder to justify. The discount makes sense only if a buyer values the A16’s design and portability far more than top-tier performance and screen quality.

3 articles · Updated · Notebookcheck.net · Jul 25

Australia and the UK now carry Asus’ cheaper Zenbook A16 UX3607QA, priced at AU$2,074 and £1,299, after the model previously appeared only in Italy.
The new variant swaps in Qualcomm’s 8-core Snapdragon X1-26-100, which benchmarked nearly twice as slow as the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme used in the original April Zenbook A16.
That lower price also brings cutbacks: 16GB of RAM instead of 48GB, a dimmer lower-resolution slower OLED panel, and Wi-Fi 6E rather than Wi-Fi 7.
In the UK, the cheaper model undercuts the £2,099 higher-end Zenbook A16 by 38%, while North American listings for the UX3607QA still have not surfaced.