But it surely does include a hefty price ticket. So why am I, somebody who began as a offers author as a result of I really like saving cash, singing the praises of the expensive X16? Let me clarify.
Asus ROG Circulation X16 worth and configurations Let’s get in all probability probably the most sizable sore spot out the best way. The Asus ROG Circulation X16 begins at $2,000 for the RTX 3060-packed system, and whereas the RTX 3070 Ti mannequin that we additionally examined doesn’t have an official USD worth simply but, the £2,799 asking worth means you’re going to be spending the most effective a part of three grand on it.
The mid-range possibility is $500 greater than the Asus TUF Gaming F15 Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 MSI Vector GP76
It’s costly, plain and easy, however I’ll clarify why, in some ways, it’s price it. If you might want to lower prices, take a look at my checklist of the finest RTX 30 collection laptop computer offers
Asus ROG Circulation X16 design
(Picture credit score: Future)
Rattling, this factor is glossy. Like, actually glossy. It’s fairly the oxymoron when you concentrate on it, as that is fairly the outlier in Asus’ ROG Circulation lineup — given the truth that it’s packing an enormous 16-inch show.
The scale are most spectacular at 14 x 9.6 x 0.8 inches, with a weight of 4.6 kilos. It is a svelte system that, fairly frankly, embarrasses the Vector GP76 (15.6 x 11.2 x 1 inches, 6.4 kilos) and the m17 R5 (14.1 x 10.2 x 1.1 inches, 5.6 kilos). Merely put, what you’re getting is among the most transportable big-screen gaming laptops you may get.
With the refined stylings of its exterior shell, from the tender contact plastic coating and ribbed lid to the restrained use of branding (actually extra engaging than Alienware and MSI’s gamer aesthetic), it is a stunner that you just’ll really feel proud to whip out of your bag in public locations.
(Picture credit score: Future)
However that’s half the story. As a part of the Circulation lineage, the X16 is genetically blessed with a 360-degree hinge, making it probably the most versatile 16-inch gaming laptop computer I’ve ever used. Very like our time utilizing the ROG Circulation X13 Z13
For instance, whereas ready for a much-delayed flight to Berlin, I flipped this into tent mode and performed hours of Wreckfest within the airport bar. The big show means you possibly can simply rework any desk right into a console gaming expertise — as in the event you’re sitting at dwelling in your lounge.
By growing the size, Asus has stumbled onto one thing particular right here.
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Asus ROG Circulation X16 ports The X16 packs a comparatively restrained array of ports, however simply sufficient for the equipment you want for gaming.
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On the left, you’ll discover the facility jack, HDMI 2.0, a Thunderbolt 4 port, a proprietary jack for the XG Cell GPU, and a 3.5mm headphone jack
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On the suitable, there are two USB-A ports, a microSD card slot and the facility button. Like I mentioned, it’s simply sufficient, however I’d like to see an Ethernet jack and a USB-A port on the other facet.
If you happen to do want extra although, take a look at our finest laptop computer docking stations and finest USB Sort-C hubs pages.
Asus ROG Circulation X16 show Right here it’s. The brilliant, shining and colourful jewel within the Circulation X16’s crown. You’re getting a 16-inch, mini-LED touchscreen show with a QHD decision and 165Hz refresh price, and put merely, it’s fairly the looker.
In our testing, the Circulation X16 blows previous the premium gaming laptop computer common brightness with a formidable 447 nits, destroying the ROG Zephyrus G15 (325 nits), the TUF Gaming F15 (330 nits), the MSI Vector GP76 (316 nits) and even pips the Alienware m17 R5 to the publish (436 nits).
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When put via the paces of our colorimeter, the X16 reproduced 82% of the DCI-P3 coloration gamut
The vivid nature of the panel makes Forza Horizon 5’s newest Sizzling Wheels growth explode in a flash flood of coloration, which flies by with buttery clean movement at 200 mph. And on prime of that, the mini-LED facilitates each terrifying darkish scene of Alien Isolation with an immersive HDR high quality that makes hiding from the xenomorph all of the extra spine-tingling.
And the accuracy of the show makes this an amazing workhorse, too, throughout any and all inventive professional duties, with the responsive contact interactions providing you with direct interplay along with your work. It’s a magnificence, it doesn’t matter what you throw at it, which you merely can’t take your eyes off of for one second.
Asus ROG Circulation X16 keyboard and touchpad
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The keyboard on the ROG Circulation X16 is mainly equivalent to what you’d discover within the Zephyrus G15 — it’s a strong set of keys with a tactile really feel, which welcomes your fingers with each faucet, together with a tender contact plastic base that makes your wrists really feel proper at dwelling.
I typed 83 phrases per minute on the 10FastFingers.com typing check, which trumps 80-wpm common. The quiet switches have that good snap that you just prefer to really feel on a Chiclet-style keyboard and the RGB backlighting illuminates every key clearly for nighttime gameplay.
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Going additional south, the 5.1 x 3.3-inch touchpad feels generously large in dimension, which makes for lengthy, wonderful gliding strikes and sleek Home windows 11 multi-touch gestures, adopted up with a satisfyingly snappy click on.
Asus ROG Circulation X16 audio The quad audio system on the ROG Circulation X16 with Dolby Atmos present spectacular readability with a good quantity of bass besides. Not solely that, however they will maintain their very own at excessive volumes too.
4 12 months Sturdy’s “Get Out of My Head” blasted the audio system at full quantity and not using a single trace of distortion, whereas preserving the main points of the crunchy guitars and hovering vocals.
(Picture credit score: Future)
This interprets effectively into gaming, too, with the Forza Horizon 5 vehicles, blended with the drum and bass of Hospital radio, being properly balanced in any respect volumes.
And whereas that is extra about that is extra about efficiency than audio, it’s price noting that the fan sound is nowhere close to as loud as I feared for a thinner system like this — by no means hitting volumes that you just’d take into account to be past disturbing.
In fact, for the most effective audio expertise, take a look at our checklist of finest gaming headsets
Asus ROG Circulation X16 gaming, graphics and VR We bought to check two totally different specs of the ROG Circulation X16. The one we’ll use for lab-tested comparisons comes with an RTX 3060 GPU, which is paired with spectacular internals (extra on that within the subsequent part), that is able to dealing with many graphically intense titles.
Out the field on default settings, the X16 doesn’t fairly match as much as the likes of the Alienware m17 R5, the MSI Vector GP76 and even the cheaper TUF Gaming F15 — dropping behind the premium gaming laptop computer common throughout all of our benchmarks.
However these numbers don’t inform the total story, which is an easy one: this technique retains up simply sufficient with larger settings and that convertible kind issue makes this a extremely enjoyable strategy to recreation on the go.
Benchmark
Asus ROG Circulation X16 (RTX 3060)
MSI Vector GP76 (RTX 3070 Ti))
Alienware m17 R5 (AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT)
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (RTX 3070 Ti)
3DMark Hearth Strike
17846
26787
28255
20867
3DMark Time Spy
7648
12054
12089
8966
3DMark Hearth Strike Extremely
4858
7679
8156
6064
3DMark Port Royal
4437
7212
5819
5623
Grand Theft Auto V 1080p
83.3
126.9
103.9
97.8
Far Cry 6 1080p
65
107
81
68
The highest-of-the-line mannequin we put via the wringer beefs up that GPU to an RTX 3070 Ti, which comes with a tasty improve in efficiency ranges.
Asus ROG Circulation X16 RTX 3060 vs RTX 3070 Ti
Benchmark
RTX 3060
RTX 3070 Ti
3DMark Hearth Strike
17846
19421
3DMark Time Spy
7648
8569
3DMark Hearth Strike Extremely
4858
5921
3DMark Port Royal
4437
5876
DiRT 5 1080p
63.63
86.4
DiRT 5 QHD
49.13
69.2
Shadow of The Tomb Raider 1080p
73
101
Shadow of The Tomb Raider QHD
43
82
And naturally, transcend the out-of-the-box outcomes and dip into the Armoury Crate app, and you’ll actually begin to maximize on thermal design energy and complete graphics energy with Turbo Mode. Alongside this, you would go one step additional and take away any CPU-based roadblocks with the MUX Swap.
These can contribute to a dramatic improve in body charges and ray-tracing efficiency — not fairly the 2x leap you’ll discover within the TUF Gaming F15 when using these settings, however actually noticeable.
Asus ROG Circulation X16 (RTX 3070 Ti) Balanced vs Turbo vs MUX Swap
Benchmark
Balanced
Turbo
MUX Swap
3DMark Hearth Strike Extremely
5921
6801
6830
3DMark Port Royal
5876
6422
6427
DiRT 5 1080p
86.4
104.1
105.6
DiRT 5 QHD
69.2
89.8
94.5
Forza Horizon 5 Extremely 1080p
82
89
92
Forza Horizon 5 Extremely QHD
71
75
81
Shadow of The Tomb Raider 1080p
101
130
144
Shadow of The Tomb Raider QHD
82
111
124
On paper, this isn’t the powerhouse critical players would count on to obtain for the funding. For that function, there are a slew of choices in our greatest gaming laptops checklist that can fulfill even probably the most stat-focused professional players.
Nonetheless, it performs each recreation you throw at it greater than effectively sufficient, and ultra-beasty efficiency will not be what the Circulation X16 is attempting to realize, as you possibly can clearly inform Asus has put its focus into the display and kind issue.
Plus, in the event you actually wish to up the horsepower, that’s what the XG Cell GPU port is for, and you will discover out about what that’s able to in our Asus ROG Circulation X13 video overview.
Asus ROG Circulation X16 efficiency Outdoors of the GPU variations, each of the X16s we examined come armed with an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS CPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD.
On the Geekbench 5.4 total efficiency check, the X16 produces a formidable Geekbench 5.4 rating of 9,570, which doesn’t fairly match as much as the identical processor within the ROG Zephyrus G15 (10,017) nor the bonkers Intel Core i9-12900HK within the Vector GP76 (12,234), however it does come near the AMD Ryzen 9 6900XT within the Alienware m17 R5 (9,875).
This powerhouse transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in 5 minutes and 48 seconds on our HandBrake benchmark, which sped previous the class common (6:38), fell behind the GP76 (4:40) and the m17 R5 (5:30), however beat the G15 (6:07).
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On our file switch check, the SSD remains to be certainly one of Asus’ weaknesses, because the 1TB SSD hit a price of 683.6 megabytes per second, which falters in opposition to the 1,334MBps class common and all of its competitors. For context, the GP76’s 1TB SSD peaked at 719.9MBps, the m17 R5’s 2TB drive managed an astronomical 1,766.8MBps and the G15 defied the curse of the gradual Asus 1TB SSD with 1,170.1MBps.
And the tip end result? File transfers are a barely slower, however not annoyingly so, and whereas the numbers put this in the direction of the again of the pack, Geekbench numbers this excessive nonetheless translate right into a significantly speedy system.
Pair it with the DDR5 RAM and the X16 holds its personal in all multitasking situations. I did every part I may — opened Forza Horizon 5 within the background, launched 20 Chrome tabs, together with a number of movies, and did some Photoshop modifying, however it nonetheless operated easily and not using a hitch.
Asus ROG Circulation X16 battery life Not like many large display convertibles, the Circulation X16’s battery life is fairly good. In our testing, it managed to hit 7 hours and 5 minutes in our non-gaming Battery Informant testing — beating out the m17 R5 (6:07) and annihilating the Vector GP76 (2:45).
In fact, you possibly can run this factor down quick whereas gaming, as is confirmed by the 1:04 PCMark 10 end result, however the superpower of those AMD Ryzen 6000 CPUs is constant to be its longevity.
Asus ROG Circulation X16 webcam The 720p webcam with IR for Home windows Hiya help is strictly what you’d count on. It’s a potato, however a helpful potato nonetheless.
(Picture credit score: Future)
With a mushy high quality that makes me appear like much more of a melted ice cream than I do proper now (thanks, heatwave), and an awesome fuzziness when positioned below tough lighting circumstances, it’s not a fairly image — actually. The comfort is there, however I like to recommend testing our finest webcams web page for a digicam you gained’t be embarrassed to make use of for the likes of informal streaming.
Asus ROG Circulation X16 warmth Inside, you’ll discover a fairly complete cooling system that includes 5 heatpipes, a pulsar heatsink, Asus’ patented Frost Pressure tri-fan thermal module, and liquid steel on the CPU.
However all of this may’t absolutely face up to the warmth onslaught of packing a lot tech into a skinny base.
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After gaming for quarter-hour, the underside clocked in at 116 levels Fahrenheit, leaping over our 95-degree consolation threshold. The middle of the keyboard and touchpad are additionally slightly spicy, hitting 110 and 85 levels, respectively.
The most well liked spot could be discovered simply above the F6 key — peaking at a spicy 126.5 levels! Although, all this mentioned, it does appear to run a tad cooler than the Alienware m17 R5 (touchpad at 95 levels and the keyboard at 116 levels) and MSI Vector GP76 (105 and 117 levels).
Simply be sure to don’t cowl these vents!
Asus ROG Circulation X16 software program and guarantee
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It’s enterprise as common for the X16. Very like all latest Asus gaming laptops, Armoury Crate is your go-to app for managing the efficiency of the CPU, GPU and followers. Right here, you’ll additionally discover choices to customise key lighting and your show’s coloration/distinction profile, in addition to an aggregated recreation launcher that pulls in all titles from all of your on-line shops into one place.
To guard your buy, the X16 comes with a one-year restricted guarantee. See how Asus carried out on our Tech Assist Showdown and Finest and Worst Manufacturers rating.
Backside Line
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The Asus ROG Circulation X16 is a spectacular large display ultraportable — a convertible, adorned with a delicate aesthetic, paired with uncompromising energy that refines the way you play video games on-the-go..
A mesmerizing display, sturdy battery life and first rate port choice full the package deal, leading to a system that’s implausible for each work and play.
However issues do warmth up quick below strenuous circumstances, and all of this potential comes at a steep worth when in comparison with different equally specced laptops.
Belief me. If you happen to can afford the luxurious, you’ll not be disenchanted.
