There’s no where else to start this review — the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 is one of the best gaming laptops you can buy. However, its spec sheet doesn’t say why this laptop is so impressive, and my testing shows that the Nvidia RTX 4090 you can configure this machine with is effectively wasted money.

Smart design and thermal management helps the Zephyrus M16 stand out in this new class of 16-inch gaming laptops, along with a solid keyboard and great audio. Performance holds up too, assuming you settle for a lower class of Nvidia GPU. There’s no doubt the RTX 4090 is a powerful mobile graphics card, but it’s not given a chance to fully shine in Asus’ machine.

Asus offers several configurations of the Zephyrus M16, but they all fit in a narrow range. Regardless of the configuration you choose, you’re getting a 14-core Intel Core i9-13900H, 32GB of DDR5-4800 memory, and 2TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage. You can go up to 64GB of DDR5, but you need to upgrade the memory yourself.

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