Asus Zenbook Pro 16X vs Apple MacBook Pro 16: Which Wins?

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 is one of them The best laptops Buy today with a sleek design, beautiful display, great performance, and industry-leading battery life. If you are a creative person, this is a laptop worth considering since it will be launched in late 2021. It is important to note that Apple announced new versions of the MacBook Pro The M2 Pro and M2 Max will be upgraded to CPUs we haven’t benchmarked yet, but they will be faster than the previous M1 Pro and Max models.

the Asus ZenBook Pro 16X Although it is a strong competitor, it is almost as fast in creative tasks and offers many innovative features. The new ZenBook Pro 16X, launched at CES 2023, adds even more, making it even more competitive. Will the update help creators get first place?

The MacBook Pro 16 is simple in its design, with an all-aluminium, CNC-machined unibody chassis that’s slightly boxy. However, it exudes style and quality, with an incredibly solid chassis that makes it look like one of the best laptops ever made. The screen edges are thin, with only a notch in the middle to accommodate the 1080p webcam. You can get it in silver or space gray, either way, you’ll get an uncomplicated yet incredibly well-built laptop.

ZenBook Pro 16X is the polar opposite. When closed, its all-metal chassis embodies today’s minimalist aesthetic, with simple lines and the new Star Trek-like Asus logo just on the lid. But open the scene and things are completely different. First of all, the keyboard rises at an angle, with what Asus calls the Active Aerodynamic System’s Super Mode, which delivers more airflow to the inside of the chassis and pushes the keyboard up at an angle.

The touch-sensitive Asus Dial sits next to the touchpad, allowing for custom controls in applications such as Adobe’s Creative Suite. The keyboard supports per-key RGB white backlighting and side LED lighting that reacts to system events. It’s packed with features you won’t find on the standard MacBook Pro 16.

Speaking of the keyboard, we haven’t tried this version yet, but the previous generation had large keycaps with plenty of room and light and speed keys, but the angle took some getting used to. The MacBook Pro 16 uses Apple’s Magic Keyboard, which is shallow but has better key and spacing, and has some of the most accurate and consistent keys on a keyboard today.

MacBook Pro 16 also features a large Force Touch touchpad that sets the standard for precision and convenience. Asus has moved to a larger touchpad for the new ZenBook Pro 16X, and it’s a welcome change. Again, we haven’t tested it, but it’s big enough (though not quite as big as the MacBook Pro 16s) and houses Asus’ NumberPad 2.0 LED numeric keypad with haptic feedback.

Both laptops have excellent connectivity, with the MacBook offering an additional Thunderbolt 4-enabled port and a MagSafe power connector. The ZenBook Pro 16X has a faster wireless connection, and both laptops have 1080p webcams. Asus uses facial recognition to log in without a password, while MacBook Touch ID uses a fingerprint reader.

MacBook Pro 16 is equipped with up to M2 Max CPU, which is a 12-core ARM CPU with 38 GPU cores. It’s an incredibly powerful laptop, and in its M1 Max incarnation, it was the fastest laptop we tested in our real-world PugetBench Premiere Pro test running a live version of the Adobe Premiere Pro video-editing application. The laptop computer excels in creative applications and can easily handle even the most demanding productivity workflows. M2 version is faster.

It’s interesting to see how the ZenBook Pro 16X competes in performance. We tested the previous model with a 45-watt, 14-core (six performance and eight performance), 20-thread Core i7-12700H processor and Nvidia RTX 3060 CPU. It was 11% slower on PugetBench, but noticeably faster on Cinebench R23. With a faster Intel 13th-gen 45-watt Core i9-13905H processor designed with the same core and thread count, but with faster Turbo Boost speeds, plus an ultra-fast RTX 4080 GPU, we expect the ZenBook to deliver the MacBook Pro 16 in a stream. Applications such as PugetBench and Adobe’s Creative Suite can use the GPU to speed up certain operations. When fully configured, the ZenBook Pro 16X could be faster than the MacBook Pro 16. But it must be seen.

Notably, Asus and Intel collaborated on a unique system-on-unit design that combines the CPU and RAM into a single component. This reduces the distance between the CPU and RAM, increases the cooling capacity of the system and reduces the size of the motherboard. This leaves more room for GPU components, and Asus provides a TDP of up to 155 watts total for the CPU and GPU. This should boost performance even further, and we hope Asus will send us a high-end model to test it directly against the MacBook Pro 16.

Apple’s new M2 chips are faster, so benchmarks will be more important in determining which of these laptops is faster for creators.

You can’t complain about the MacBook Pro 16’s 16.2-inch 16:10 Mini-LED XTR display with a resolution of 3456 x 2234 and running at 120Hz. It offers a wide enough range of colors (though not as wide as some monitors) with good accuracy to go along with the impressive brightness and deep contrasts. It’s a nice screen suitable for creative work and has some great HDR support.

ZenBook Pro 16X will come in two display options, both of which are OLED. The first is a 16.0-inch 16:10 3.2K (3200 x 2000) panel running at 120Hz, while the second is a 4K+ (3840 x 2400) screen running at 60Hz. Both are almost guaranteed to deliver wide, accurate colors and deep contrast, but they’re not likely to be as bright as the MacBook display. However, with wide and accurate colors, it’s still great for creative types, but not so good for media consumers due to HDR, which is a bit disappointing.

Both laptops have excellent displays. Test the ZenBook display to see which one is better, then find out if better color or better HDR is more important to you.

The MacBook Pro 16 has four speakers that provide the best sound on a laptop today. The ZenBook Pro 16X comes with six speakers, and we can’t wait to hear about it.

Both laptops are roughly the same size, while the ZenBook Pro 16X is half a pound heavier. Both are portable, but you’ll feel the heft and weight in your bag.

One area where the MacBook Pro 16 might be in is battery life. It’s an incredibly long-lasting machine with plenty of power, and the ZenBook Pro 16X is unlikely to come close.

It’s hard to say what the best laptop is without reviewing the ZenBook Pro 16X. It’s likely to be faster than the MacBook Pro 16 and offer screens that are more suitable for creativity. But we won’t know until we get our hands on it. We still love testing Apple’s latest and greatest chips; M2 Pro and M2 Max.

Either way, they’re both very expensive laptops (although we don’t know the ZenBook’s final price yet), with the MacBook Pro 16 maxing out at $6,000 when fully configured, so it won’t be an easy decision. The ZenBook is a confusing laptop, with too many features to be confused with, and that can be a good or a bad thing. But for creators, the ZenBook Pro 16X has a good chance of emerging as a solid alternative to Windows.

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