Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) Review

Creatives deserve eye-catching laptops that pack a powerful punch, and Asus is only too happy to oblige with the Zenbook Pro 16X OLED. Once you catch a glipse of its 16-inch 4k (3840 x 2400) display with an immersive 16:10 aspect ratio it’s hard to take your eyes off it and it makes you want to create and devour days of content. 

What’s a gorgeous display without the power to push all those pixels around on it? This ZenBook comes with a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, meaning you should be able to create some eye-popping images and videos. 

And let’s not forget the elegant and sleek aesthetic, which hides a few tricks that will make David Blaine jealous.

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) pricing and configurations

The Pro 16X I tested costs $2,469.99, and comes with a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, an Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060 GPU with 6GB of VRAM, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and a 16-inch OLED, 4K 3840 x 2400 touch display. 

The next level of the Pro 16X adds an Intel Core i9 CPU, doubles the RAM to 32GB and the SSD storage to 2TB, and it will cost you $2,803.95 at Amazon. Everything else about the laptop remains the same, but depending on your workload, you may want or need to double the RAM and storage.

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) design

If I had to choose one word to describe the design of the Asus Pro 16X, it would be luxurious. The dark blue all-metal chassis exudes a premium aesthetic that carries throughout the design. From the pop-up keyboard to the keyboard dial, purposeful ergonomic elegance is felt and seen in every way. 

Opening the Zenbook Pro 16X is an experience as you watch the mechanical hinges prop up the keyboard to a comfortable typing position while facilitating improved cooling. The engineering behind it is beautiful, but at 5.3 pounds, that craftsmanship is a little heavier than it looks. However, even with all its moving parts, this perfectly machined unibody is sturdy, with no flex or bend.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the new Asus logo on the rear of the lid reminds me of the Federation logo from Star Trek. Beyond the nerdom, the raised backlit chiclet-style keyboard is centered above the trackpad, which transforms into a  number pad when you lay your finger on the upper right-hand corner of the pad. It’s a neat feature and comes in handy for data entry without the added bulk of a full number pad on the keyboard.

To the left, you find another unique feature of the Pro 16X, a well-placed dial that can be used to control brightness, volume, and other functions while editing. At the top center of the nearly invisible bezel, you will find the FHD (1920 x 1080) webcam. 

Although the keyboard seems like it could get wonky due to the complex mechanism, it never does. Overall the whole experience of opening and closing the laptop is very pleasing. 

Going into dimensions, the Pro 16X measures 14  x 9.9 x 0.7 inches and weighs 5.3 pounds. The weight is evenly distributed to combat this heft,, but if you throw it in a backpack and travel around all day, you will notice it.

Its comparison group consists of the MacBook Pro 16-inch (M2 Max, 2023), the lightest member of our trio, coming in at 4.8 pounds and measuring 14 x 9.8 x 0.66 inches. While the Dell XPS 17 (2022) measures 14.7 x 9.8 x 0.8 inches and weighs in at 5.3 pounds, matching our Pro 16X.

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) security

Our unit did not come with a fingerprint scanner, but for security measures, the ZenBook uses Windows Hello facial recognition to keep your files safe and offers the ability to power down the camera using the F10 key. 

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) ports

The Zenbook Pro 16X has a solid collection of ports, giving users ample connectivity options.

On the right, we find an SD card reader port, a combo audio jack, and an HDMI port.

While on the left, we find two Thunderbolt four ports, one USB Type-A port, and the power port.

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) display

I was excited when my eyes met the 16-inch near bezel-free touch NanoEdge display with a 4K resolution and 16:10 aspect ratio. The Zenbook Pro 16X’s panel is Pantone validated for accurate colors, and it really shows. Although the colors are rich and warmly saturated, there is never that oversaturation that could throw off your color grading game.

The 16X display is also VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certified, which produces deeper blacks to give you ultra-realistic detail in even the darkest scenes. It did a solid job when I was rifling through cinema-level 6K footage.

While watching the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania trailer, the orange of the sunrise meeting the blue of the water in the opening moments were vividly shining off the screen. It felt like I was in San Francisco, overlooking the bay area. The deep red on the Ant-Man suit shone with a rich scarlet that looked so beautiful, and Kang’s green and purple-hued armor had a fine hint of metallic sheen that lets you know he is here to bring the pain. 

DCI-P3 color gamut

We measured the Pro 16X’s display with a colorimeter, which covered an impressive 90.2% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, surpassing the premium laptop average of 88.1%. It also led our group in this category, which saw the XPS 17, at 85.1%, and, shockingly, the MBP 16 M2 Max at just 83.7% of the spectrum.

Display brightness

But it’s not all good news for Asus, as on our brightness test, the Pro 16X scored an average brightness of 345 nits. This falls behind the premium laptop average of 391 nits, the MacBook Pro 16 (447 nits), and the Dell XPS 17 (465.6 nits).

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) audio

Packed with a Harmon Kardon six-speaker system, the Zenbook Pro 16X is an absolute joy for listening to music and watching content. Under the grills mounted on each side of the keyboard, two high-frequency tweeters and four low-frequency woofers deliver powerful, immersive, crystal-clear sound that fills my tiny studio apartment. 

The six-speaker system delivers sufficient depth, tonal separation, and clarity at every volume. I threw on Lizzo’s “About Damn Time”, and when she ran out of the group therapy session and that guitar baseline hit, the Pro 16X produced this fun song with the joy it deserved.

The Pro 16X also delivered the goods when I played the latest long-time coming release from Depeche Mode: “Ghosts Again.” The speaker system ensured I knew the band still got it, as the electronica baseline kicked in. David Gahan's hauntingly beautiful voice smoothly sang over the synthesized electronic music track, bringing me back to another time. 

Going back to the Ant Man trailer, Kang the Conqueror’s voice was so crisp, and you could hear the subtle emotional build-up in actor Jonathan Majors’ voice. This six-speaker system is a win for Asus and makes for better content creation, audio editing, and content watching. 

However, if you’re editing video at home, I would still consider buying computer speakers or a pair of wireless headphones for the best sound quality.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that during Google Meets and Zoom meetings, the Asus ZenBook Pro 16X’s mics were outstanding, and the ANC worked to perfection. The Clear Voice mic array performed well from close or as far away as three feet, always focusing on my voice and reproducing it clearly on the other end of my video calls.

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) keyboard, dial, and touchpad

The Zenbook Pro 16X RGB backlit chiclet-style keyboard is large and comfortable, with the optimal bounce and travel that must have been calculated with fine-tuned precision. I reached 91 words per minute with 94% accuracy and found the angled keyboard suited for my coconut-mashing hands. My scores were above my usual 80-85 wpm and 85-90% accuracy range. 

The Pro 16X’s touchpad measures 5.9 x 3.6 inches, which gives users a vast space to work with. The centered ErgoSense touchpad is super smooth, clicky, and responsive while using Windows 11 gestures, including two-finger scrolling and pinch-to-zoom. It also doubles as a number pad if you gently leave your finger on the upper right-hand corner for one second, and it comes in handy when billing clients. 

The Asus Dial takes a little getting used to, but once you’ve cracked it, you’ll love its intuitive nature. The physical rotary controller gives you instant and precise fingertip control over parameters in your creative apps like Adobe Premiere and Photoshop. You can adjust screen brightness and volume or vertical scroll to make your creative workflow smoother, especially if using the Adobe Creative suite.

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) performance

Our Pro 16X model features an  Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, which are exactly the kind of specs you want when editing photos, video, or multitasking. Sure, you may prefer as much RAM as possible, but adding more can get costly. 

I tried to bog it down by opening 40 tabs in Google Chrome with five YouTube videos playing simultaneously. Then I launched a couple of Google Docs, one tab holding a presentation and the other an article I needed to finish. Throughout all of this, the Pro 16X didn’t stutter, and there was no noticeable lag.

Geekbench 5.4 results

During our Geekbench 5.4 overall performance test, the 16X scored 11,974, above the premium laptop average of 6,977. Then the MacBook Pro 16 with its M2 Max chipset showed up and dropped a GeekBench 5.4 benchmark score of 15,173, like Lebron playing against high school kids. The Dell XPS 17 (Intel Core i7-12700H, 32GB of RAM, 1TB  SSD) scored 13,714.

On the Handbrake video transcoding test, our ZenBook took 5:51 seconds to convert 4K video to 1080p. The Dell XPS clocked in at 6 minutes and 40 seconds. But the MBP 16 M2 Max straight-up dunked on the others and transcoded the footage in 3 minutes and 59 seconds. 

The 16X’s 1TB SSD fell short during our file-transfer test by duplicating a 25GB multimedia file in 24 seconds at a rate of 1,129.9 MBps, which comes in just below the premium laptop average of 1,257.82 MBps. The Dell XPS 17 fared very well, surpassing the average at 15 seconds, averaging 1,765.5MBps. 

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z)  graphics

The ZenBook Pro 16X’s Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU with 6GB of VRAM is adroit, and I never experienced any stuttering performance while editing videos with DaVinci Resolve. 

The 3060 is a solid mid-tier GPU that will suffice for most content creators, depending on your workload and what you're rendering. 

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (1080p)

We tested the GPU using Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (1080p) benchmark, and the 16X annihilated the 49 frames per second premium laptop average with 103 FPS.  The XPS 17 owned this benchmark with 119 FPS, whereas the MacBook Pro lagged behind with 58 FPS.

During our synthetic 3DMark Fire Strike test, our Zenbook Pro 16X scored 15,722, which killed the 8,194 category average and the XPS 17’s 14,518. 

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) battery life

The Pro 16X, like other power-hungry laptops with powerful specs, will not afford you all-day battery life. It’s just the nature of things when you have a 4K touchscreen display, a powerful GPU, and all its other goodies that require power to perform at their best.  

On the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the Pro 16X lasted 5 hours and 15 minutes. That’s much shorter than the 10:02 premium laptop average, and far away from its competition. The MacBook Pro takes sole ownership of this category with an astounding 18 hours and 56 minutes of battery life, whereas the Dell XPS 17 came in at 8 hours and 5 minutes.

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) heat

The Zenbook Pro 16X uses the ASUS IceCool Pro cooling system, which uses two quiet IceBlades fans, each with 97 3D-curved blades. Alongside this, there’s a 3D vapor chamber and 5mm heat pipe that take the heat away from the CPU and GPU towards the venting placed efficiently underneath the raised keyboard.

During our heat test, which involves playing a 15-minute fullscreen, 1080p video, the underside reached 96.5 degrees Fahrenheit, a smidge over our 95-degree comfort threshold. The touchpad was an acceptably cool 83 degrees, and the temperature between the G and H keys reached 85.5 degrees during testing. Overall, the system remained reasonably chilled, and the fan was quiet. 

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) webcam

I expected more from the ZenBook Pro 16X’s 1080p webcam but found it underperformed. Although autofocus was quick, and the system overall adjusted well to lighting changes, images, and video were pixelated (even in good lighting).

Skin tone performance was within an acceptable range, as was the color reproduction of my clothing. Still, I would probably recommend picking up one of the best webcams, because I expect better performance at FHD resolution.

Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602Z) software and warranty

The ZenBook Pro 16X  comes with standard Windows 11, Microsoft 365, the Adobe creative suite, and the normal Windows bloatware, including Netflix and Microsoft Solitaire collection. The Asus Zenbook Pro 16X comes with a one-year limited warranty. See how Asus fared in our annual special reports, including Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands.

Bottom line

The Asus Zenbook Pro 16X is an excellent content creator's laptop — packing an elegant, sturdy, unique design that is eye-catching and hyper-functional. With the addition of the Asus dial helping users move through Adobe’s apps, it’s a win for those who work within the creative suite. I’m a massive fan of this Zenbook Pro 16X OLED with its gorgeous 16-inch display. 

However, at $2,469, the ZenBook Pro 16X is a bit hard to recommend over the MacBook Pro 16-inch M2 Pro. While you lose the 4K display and some of the unique features like the dial and the magically appearing number pad, the raw performance and endless battery life of the MacBook Pro 16 are certainly going to sway any creatives that need to work away from an outlet for more than a few hours at a time.

However, if you’re a Windows fan and that big beautiful 4k display and the feature-rich hardware are drawing you in, the Asus Zenbook Pro 16X OLED is an outstanding option; just maybe try to find it on sale.