CES 2026: Asus' new 16-inch laptop is lighter than a 13-inch MacBook Air

Asus is launching a 16-inch version of its award-winning MacBook Air competitor, and I got to check it out in person at the company's private CES showroom.

Announced Tuesday, the new Asus Zenbook A16 is an ultralight Windows laptop with a fresh Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip and a 3K OLED touchscreen featuring a sleek 90 percent screen-to-body ratio. An Asus rep told me that it will be the first laptop to market with that high-octane processor, which has 18 cores and up to 80 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of AI processing power.

The Zenbook A16's tan chassis is made from Asus' patented "Ceraluminum" material, a durable and featherlight magnesium-aluminum alloy, and it weighs in at just 2.65 pounds — nearly an ounce lighter than Apple's 13-inch laptop. (For reference, the other 16-inch Windows laptops that Mashable has tested in recent months come in at 3.3 to 4.7 pounds.) It's super easy to pick up with one hand.

Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

The Zenbook A16 is a larger version of the Asus Zenbook A14, a 14-inch Copilot+ PC that debuted to acclaim at CES 2025 last January. It featured peppy last-gen Snapdragon X series chips, a 2K 60Hz OLED display, a good mix of ports, and a 22-hour battery life. As Asus' first all-Ceraluminum laptop, it weighed as little as 2.18 pounds depending on the configuration.

Asus originally priced the Zenbook A14 at $899.99, but President Trump's spring tariffs on Chinese imports led to a $100 price increase. Even still, it was a solid spec sheet at a decent value, paired with an astoundingly airy yet sturdy design.

After taking home the CNET Group's "Best Laptop of CES 2025" award, the Zenbook A14 was named Mashable's top ultraportable Windows laptop of the year following more in-depth testing. It also nabbed a spot on Oprah's Favorite Things list for 2025, marking the first time a laptop has appeared on the iconic gift guide since the Sony VAIO FJ in 2005.

For 2026, Asus is refreshing the Zenbook A14 with a Snapdragon X2 Elite chip, thinner bezels, WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and a matte keycap coating for extra durability. Its base configuration will start with 512GB of storage and 24GB of memory, up from 16GB RAM.

Asus is going full send on Ceraluminum for the rest of the laptops in its light, minimalist Zenbook series. The 2026 iterations of the Zenbook S14, S16, and the dual-screen Zenbook Duo will all be made with the plasma ceramic aluminum material, which is scratch-resistant, shock-resistant, fingerprint-resistant, and 100 percent recyclable.

Asus Zenbook A16 specs

Compared to its 14-inch counterpart, the new Zenbook A16 will have a bigger, brighter, crisper screen, an extra slot for an SD card reader, a faster processor, and more memory. (It comes with 48GB of RAM compared to the Zenbook A14's 24GB or 32GB.) Here's a full rundown of its spec sheet:

• Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme CPU

• Qualcomm Hexagon NPU (up to 80 TOPS)

• Qualcomm Adreno GPU

• 48GB RAM

• 1TB SSD storage

• 16-inch 3K (2,880 x 1800) OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate; 500 nits of typical brightness and up to 1,100 nits of peak brightness for HDR content

• FHD webcam

• Two USB-C ports, one USB-A port, one HDMI port, one SD card reader slot, and a headphone jack

• 70Wh battery

• WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4

• 13.92 x 9.54 x 0.54-0.65 inches

• 2.65 pounds

• Zabrinskie Beige finish

The Zenbook A16 isn't the lightest 16-inch laptop out there, but it's one of the lightest that will be available for purchase in the U.S. The Acer Swift Air 16 launched at IFA 2025 in September with AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series processors, an optional 120Hz AMOLED display, and a starting weight of only 2.18 pounds (matching the heft of the lightest Zenbook A14 configuration — or rather, lack thereof). It's only available in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, with a starting price of €999, or approximately $1,165.

Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

Asus has yet to confirm pricing and availability details for the Zenbook A16 and the updated Zenbook A14. It will be interesting to see if the company can maintain the competitive value of the 14-inch model amid the ongoing RAM shortage. This could also prompt some edits to both sizes' spec sheets by the time they hit store shelves. Committing to 24 to 48GB of memory for consumer laptops may be unrealistic.

Head to the Mashable CES 2026 hub for the latest news and live updates from the biggest show in tech, where Mashable journalists are reporting live.