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Asus Zenbook A16
Blistering debut for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite range, with superb battery life and far better 3D acceleration
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The Zenbook A16 is a fine showcase for Qualcomm’s latest Elite processors
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This is a huge year for Qualcomm. The US company believes its second-generation Elite laptop chips not only match or beat AMD and Intel in most areas, but also allow laptop makers to create designs that rival Apple for power efficiency – they share the same Arm architecture, after all. The Zenbook A16 is our first chance to put Qualcomm’s claims to the test, and I admit to a shiver of excitement. AMD, Intel and Apple now have a genuine rival, even if none of them is quite willing to believe this yet.
Qualcomm could have launched with a more conservative X2 Elite chip, but the Zenbook A16 is powered by its top-of-the-range option: the X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100 packs a staggering 18 cores, the most powerful Adreno graphics chip and includes 48GB of super-fast LPDDR5X memory. If this laptop doesn’t perform, Qualcomm has nothing else up its sleeve.
The compatibility question
Some dismiss Windows on Arm out of hand for its lack of compatibility, but that’s lazy thinking. Qualcomm, Microsoft and software developers have worked hard to iron out the compatibility issues that stem from running Windows 11 on Arm rather than x86 architecture. One of the biggest recent landmarks came in late 2025 when a Windows 11 update brought AVX/AVX2 support to the Prism emulator. Until this point, a subset of creative apps such as
Ableton Live wouldn’t work on Windows on Arm; now they do. A lack of AVX support also previously stopped many games in their tracks. More developers are creating native apps too. For example, an Arm version of Ableton Live is due later this year. All the major Microsoft apps have been native for years, and even if Adobe is taking it slow– Audition, Photoshop and Premiere are native, but Acrobat is still emulated while Illustrator and InDesign emulations remain in beta – there is momentum here.