Whether it is a smartphone or a laptop, the ROG series from ASUS is devoted to gaming. One attractive aspect of the ROG gaming laptop series is that it gives much attention to weight. To make a light gaming laptop is like “eating your cake and having it.” However, ROG makes its laptop light which makes it special in the market. As a result, ROG laptops can handle both gaming as well as other creative works. In addition to a series of notebooks which it has released this year, the company also unveiled the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603. This laptop focuses on a large screen, long battery life, and versatile performance. The major specifications of this laptop are shown below.
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 Specifications
| Screen | 16-inch WQXGA (2560 x 1600) 16:10 anti-glare display; DCI-P3:100%; Refresh Rate:165Hz; Response Time:3ms, BOE NE160QDM-NY3 |
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i7-11800H Processor 2.3 GHz (24M Cache, up to 4.6 GHz, 8 Cores) |
| Wireless Connection | Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) + Bluetooth 5.2 (Dual-band) |
| Graphics card | NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 (6GB GDDR6), with ROG Boost up to 1525MHz at 80W (95W with Dynamic Boost) |
| Memory | 16GB DDR4-3200 MHz |
| Storage | 512GB M.2 NVMe™ PCIe® 4.0 SSD |
| Camera | 720P HD camera |
| Ports | 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C support DisplayPort / power delivery 1x RJ45 LAN port 1x card reader (microSD) 1x Thunderbolt™ 4 support DisplayPort™ / power delivery |
| Battery | 90W/Hrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion |
| OS | Windows 10 Home |
| Weight | 1.90 kg |
Before we go into the detailed review of this laptop, it is important to note that the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 currently sells for about $1,550
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 Appearance – light and domineering
Usually, gaming laptops have a tough and rugged appearance. However, because the ROG Zephyrus series is also designed for office work, it is not as wild as ROG’s other products. The overall design style is low-key and premium, and it won’t appear like a tough dog if an office user chooses to use this laptop.
The dimension of this device is about 355 x 244 x 19.9mm, and the weight is only 1.9kg. Considering that this is a huge 16-inch gaming laptop, this is quite light.
The LCD cover of this laptop is very unique in all ramifications. The design is low-key and the ROG usually prominent LOGO now occupies a small nameplate and is placed in the lower-left corner. However, a huge (over half) of the LCD cover uses CNC unique color coating, which produces a phantom prism light effect under the reflection of light. This makes the laptop look like a luxury device while still having a gaming look.
The display can be opened with one hand without any obstruction. Furthermore, the maximum opening and closing angle can reach 180°.
The palm rest, which you may know as the keyboard area, uses a skin-like coating, and the overall feel is very comfortable. The power button supports fingerprint recognition. The keyboard feels quite satisfactory, supports custom adjustment of the white backlight, and can set the light effect in the software.
It is a pity that this device does not have a numeric keypad, and the size of the arrow keys is relatively small. However, because of this, a pair of stereo speakers are plugged on both sides of the palm rest, and the sound cavity of the other parts of the fuselage forms a 2 treble + 4 bass combination. The hardware specifications of the sound cavity, coupled with the built-in Dolby Atmos sound effects give this device one of the best sound outputs in the market.
Below is a very large touchpad made of glass, and it feels sleek and comfortable. However, if you are used to the gritty touchpad, it may need some getting used to.
On the bottom case, the footpads are very high, providing a certain amount of air intake when opening and closing at a small angle. There are also two speaker openings below.
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 Display
The display is one of the major highlights of the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603. This device comes with a large 16-inch 16:10 screen. However, it will interest you to know that it still retains the regular 15.6-inch body. For the display to hit 16-inch, the screen-to-body ratio was increased up to 94%. Such a high display ratio requires ultra-thin bezels on all sides which gives electronic devices a premium appearance.
In addition to reducing the bezels, this laptop also uses a unique hinge design to hide the chin. The chin is almost invisible when used at a normal angle.
In addition, this hinge can also play a role in cushioning the body when opening and closing at a large angle, greatly improving the heat dissipation efficiency.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 positioning is a design all-rounder, so the hardware parameters of this screen have also been taken into consideration. The screen comes from BOE, and its model is NE160QDM-NY3. It supports 2560 x 1600 resolution, 165Hz refresh rate, and 3ms fast response. The color gamut coverage reaches 100% DCI-P3, and it has also obtained PANTONE certification and Dolby Vision certification.
Whether you are a gamer, creative worker, or audiovisual enthusiast, this device got you covered. The display also supports a variety of color presets which can be switched according to the scene.
Using a color calibration instrument, we found out that the screen covers 99.9% of the sRGB color gamut, 84.7% of the ARGB color gamut, and 99.2% of the DCI P3 color gamut. The maximum brightness is 535nit, and the DeltaE is 0.87. The overall display performance is very good, and it is suitable for editing pictures.
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 Ports
In order to meet the needs of creative workers, the ports on the side are also very rich. However, for many users, it may be a little crowded. On the left are the DC power port (240W), HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet port, USB-A port (10Gbps), Thunderbolt 4 port, full-featured Type-C port (support 100W PD charging), and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the right side, we have the TF card reader and a USB-A interface. Given the thin and light body, this interface is quite rich.
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 Hardware – Processor & Cooling System
ROG has always had a pretty good level of internal design. The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 in our hands is equipped with a brand new i7-11800H processor and an RTX 3060 graphics card (95W). How about its heat dissipation performance? Let’s take a look at it now.
The bottom plate is tightly fixed with six screws. While three of these screws are exposed, another three screws are hidden. Unscrew all the screws to pry off the bottom plate. At first glance, I was shocked by its cooling system.
Above are the densely packed and intertwined heat pipes, and they also use the liquid heat conduction sheet. This sheet covers the i7-11800H processor and the RTX 3060 graphics card. In addition, a large area of metal thermal foil is also made on the bottom plate, which really improves heat dissipation.
Below the fan is the onboard + slot memory. It comes with an 8G + 8G dual channel and the frequency is 3200Mhz. Unfortunately, you can not replace the onboard memory. Nevertheless, you can replace the memory in the slot.
On the left side of the memory is the MediaTek MT7921 wireless network card, which supports the Wi-Fi 6 protocol. With the gradual shortage of Intel network cards, MediaTek network cards are now occupying a considerable part of the market.
Below is the M.2 slot. The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 has two M.2 hard drive slots, which can be upgraded and expanded. The built-in hard drive is 1TB Samsung PM9A1.
At the bottom is a 90Wh battery. Because this computer can manually shield the independent display and switch performance modes, the battery life is excellent. According to Asus, this device has a battery life of about 16.6 hours at most. With a 100W PD charger, it can be shared with mobile phones when going out, which greatly reduces the weight of travel.
Hardware Performance
The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 seems to have a pretty cool system with excellent heat dissipation. However, can it consistently output high performance? Let’s find out.
We first use AIDA64. In the beginning, the power can reach a terrifying 105W. The instantaneous performance is very good. After 15 minutes, the CPU temperature stabilizes at 88°C. At this time, the power consumption reaches 80W, and the frequency stabilizes at 3.8. GHz. We can see that the power consumption of the 11th-generation Core Duo is still relatively high. However, the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 controls the temperature very well.
Then, we used FurMark for GPU testing. With the support of Dynamic Boost 2.0 technology, the RTX 3060 of this laptop is stabilized at a power of 95W. Furthermore, the temperature stabilizes at 71°C, and the frequency is stabilized at about 1230MHz. This is not the best performance for the RTX 3060, but it is still an excellent performance.
Next, we run the above two software at the same time to simulate the maximum pressure and run the double-core test for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, the CPU stabilized at 45W and 79°C while the GPU stabilized at 82W and 75°C. Both the CPU and GPU can run above the baseline power consumption, and the heat dissipation performance is very good.
The GPU running score in 3DMark Time Spy reached 8156 points, In addition, we also ran the 3DMark light-tracking test. The Port Royal score was 4708 points. It can run most light-tracking 3A masterpieces smoothly at 60 fps.
In Cinebench R15, it scored 239 points for single-thread and 2168 points for multi-thread. In Cinebench R20, it scored 579 points for single-thread and 5338 points for multi-thread.
Game testing
In terms of theoretical performance, the i7-11800H + RTX 3060 laptop is quite good. This generation of Core Duo has increased the three-level cache, which should also improve the game performance. Then let’s run some games to test it and see if it can run the top 2K 165Hz screen.
| Game | 2560 x 1600 |
| League of Legends | Most scenes run above 200 fps |
| Rainbow Six: Siege | 127 fps avg |
| APEX Legend | 120 fps avg |
| PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds | 110 fps avg |
| Death Stranding | 70 fps avg |
From the test above, we can see that most e-sports games and 3A masterpieces that do not support light-chasing can run at the highest quality of 2K at more than 60 frames, and the experience is very good.
So can it cope with the light-chasing masterpieces of the past two years? We used “Call of Duty: Black Ops CW” and “Cyberpunk 2077” to test this.
“Call of Duty: Black Ops CW” is a 3A masterpiece that supports both light pursuit and DLSS. In the highest quality of 2K, it can run to about 70 fps, and the experience is smooth.
For “Cyberpunk 2077”, the optimization of this game is not very good. At the highest image quality of 1920 x 1200 resolution, the frame rate can be basically stable without turning on the light. At 60 fps, the gaming experience is acceptable.
As ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 does not support the use of only discrete graphics at a relatively high frame rate, there will be a certain loss of quality. In general, the current notebooks equipped with RTX 3060 can run the light chase 3A masterpiece smoothly at 2K resolution, and can also run all e-sports games at high frame rates. For a long time to come, its performance will be above the mainstream level.
Perfect for creative work
If you want to see this laptop as strictly a gaming laptop, then you will probably underutilize this beauty. Because it is a positioning all-rounder, the ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 is also very good in creative fields. This device uses AI technology with a 3D microphone matrix to provide a two-way AI intelligent noise reduction technology. Whether you are in a business meeting or you are in a gaming voice environment, the surrounding noise will affect you.
Adobe Premiere and Photoshop, commonly used by creative workers, are also top-notch. In Premiere, thanks to the excellent single-core and multi-core performance of the i7-11800H processor, even real-time playback of 4K original movies does not require an agent, and the editing is very smooth. When exporting, thanks to the Cuda acceleration of the RTX 3060 graphics card, the export speed is faster.
In Photoshop, there is no lag when directly modifying 4K RAW files. With this well-colored screen, it is easy and comfortable to modify the picture. The premium display coupled with the excellent creative features of this laptop makes it a desire of sorts.
Summary
I can describe this laptop with three words and they will be sleek, fast, and ultra-thin. Simply put, I have a very good impression of this laptop. The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 is attractive because it is positioned in a transition between campus and workplace. An all-rounder that can work and play is obviously very suitable. The semi-sturdy appearance as well as its wild performance is nothing short of a beauty. Its role in offering professional-level content creation is a good addition from Asus.
If your work requires a good screen and high performance, and at the same time there is a certain demand for portability, then this Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 is simply made for you.