In the high-stakes world of tech journalism, we’ve apparently reached the “circus act” phase of product testing. The latest headline regarding the Asus Zenbook A16 boasts that it’s so light it can be lifted with three fingers. Finally, the industry has addressed the primary concern of the modern professional: the inability to bench press 3.5 pounds of aluminum while simultaneously drinking an oat milk latte. If your current fitness routine doesn’t allow you to lift a standard laptop without involving your entire palm, perhaps the Zenbook isn’t the solution—a gym membership is.

The Zenbook A16 is doubling down on the Snapdragon X2 Elite, the latest silicon from Qualcomm that promises to finally, definitely, totally make Windows on ARM a thing this time. We’ve been hearing that ARM is “the future” since the original Surface RT, yet here we are, still treating app compatibility like a game of Minesweeper. Sure, the efficiency is great, but let’s be honest: most people buying a 16-inch laptop are doing so because they want a desktop replacement, not a glorified tablet that gets nervous when you try to run a legacy .exe file or a specialized plugin.

Then there’s the “Ceraluminum” finish. Asus is very proud of this marketing portmanteau, which sounds less like a premium material and more like a prescription medication for chronic heartburn. They describe the colors as “earthy beige and gray.” In the real world, “earthy beige” is what we used to call “computer gray” back in 1994 when every PC looked like it belonged in a DMV basement. Calling it “Ceraluminum” doesn’t change the fact that you’re buying a laptop the color of a lukewarm mushroom soup. It’s durable, they say. It’s high-tech, they claim. It’s a beige box, we observe.

The display is another area where “more” is supposedly “better.” The A16 sports an OLED panel that hits 1,100 nits of peak brightness. This is a fantastic feature for anyone who plans to work directly on the surface of the sun or perhaps wants to use their laptop as a lighthouse to guide ships through a fog. In a standard office environment, 1,100 nits on an OLED screen is essentially a recipe for immediate retinal scarring and a battery life that drains faster than your will to live during a Zoom call. And while 120Hz is lovely for scrolling through spreadsheets with buttery smoothness, let’s not pretend the target audience for an “earthy beige” Snapdragon laptop is competitive eSports players.

The big “separation” factor for the 16-inch model, aside from the sheer surface area, is the inclusion of an SD card slot. In 2026, this is being touted as a revolutionary expansion of utility. We’ve officially entered an era where returning a basic port that was standard in 2012 is considered a premium upgrade.

Ultimately, the Zenbook A16 is a 16-inch “ultra-portable” that ignores the fundamental law of physics: a 16-inch laptop is objectively massive. It doesn’t matter if it weighs as much as a feather or if you can lift it with your pinky toe; it still won’t fit on an airplane tray table, and it will still require a backpack the size of a small parachute. But hey, at least when you’re struggling to cram it into your bag, you’ll know you could have lifted it with three fingers. Priorities.