X2 Elite Extreme is INSANE - Look out, Apple..

This right here is the world's fastest

Windows laptop in terms of CPU

performance, the new Zenbook A16,

packing the brand new Snapdragon X2

Elite Extreme, which has been frankly

blowing my mind in terms of how fast and

snappy it's been over the past 2 weeks

of testing, thanks to Asus, who

sponsored this video and also sent over

their ZenBook A14 with the standard X2

Elite so I could put them to the test

and compare the differences. is for you

guys. And believe it or not, but the

model that they sent over comes with 48

gigs of memory with a beautiful 16-in 3K

OLED display in this super lightweight

chassis. All for only $19.99,

which is absolutely mind-blowing because

you're about to see this outperform

Apple's $2,200 M5 Pro MacBook Pro, which

I honestly didn't expect. But before we

get into the performance numbers,

including the main focus of this video,

which is to compare it to the original

XLite as well as the new Panther Lake

chips, I've got to quickly talk about

how nice of a laptop this new ZenBook

A16 is. Believe it or not, but this

thing weighs only 2.65 lb for a 16-in

laptop. That's insane because Apple's

16-inch MacBook Pro, which by the way

starts at $2700,

weighs a whopping 2 lb heavier than this

laptop. That's 77% heavier than the new

ZenBook A16. And this is also thinner

than the new 16-inch MacBook Pro. I love

Asus's Sarah aluminum finish in this

nice beige color, which is fingerprint

resistant. It's also got a really nice

large trackpad. Although it is a diving

board, so it's not the best out there,

but it's decent. It works. The keyboard

is also very nice. Very nice bright

backlighting. The display 16-in 3K

resolution, 120 Hz, OLED. It is

beautiful. No compromises whatsoever.

You also get a ton of different ports

all the way around. You got HDMI, SD

card slot, USBA, USBC's. You get

everything you'll need and it packs

pretty decent speakers. Although they're

not as good as the MacBook Pros, they're

still loud and decent enough. So, in

terms of the design and the look, this

is overall a great laptop. You also get

pretty dang portability with that

lightweight. And of course, you also

have the option of the Zenbook A14 with

that 14in display, which by the way is

still super fast with the regular X2

Elite as I'm about to show you in these

performance tests. So, let's jump right

in. Believe it or not, but this is the

world's first Windows laptop to get over

4,000

single core points in Geekbench 6. That

is absolutely

insane. I mean, it's 38% faster than the

original X Elite. I mean, that

generational jump just from the original

to the X2 Elite Extreme is mindblowing.

And just look at how it destroys one of

the top Panther Lake chips, the 386H.

Absolutely kills it in single core. And

then in terms of multicore, this thing

blew my mind. over 23,000

points. That's almost 50% faster than

the X Elite in one generation. I mean,

believe it or not, but this is now the

world's fastest Windows laptop in terms

of multi-core performance. It's even

faster than Intel's top 285HX,

which eats so much power. That just

blows my mind. And then look how it

compares to that Panther Lake. It's

almost just an insane difference. Now,

you all know that web browsing is one of

the most common things that people do.

And in terms of snappiness in web

browsing, testing speedometer 3.1, this

thing scored 48.5,

almost two times faster than the

original X Elite, much faster than the

Panther Lake. I mean, this is the

highest score ever seen on any Windows

laptop in this test. Literally the

snappiest Windows laptop ever for web

browsing. But what really blew my mind

was CPU rendering in Cinebench 2026. The

10-minute stress test multicore. You

guys won't believe this. Over 7,000

points. 7,42.

Absolutely insane difference compared to

the original X Elite. So much faster

than the Panther Lake 386H. And believe

it or not, but it was faster than the

base M5 Pro chip in the 14-in MacBook

Pro. just barely, but it was faster. Not

quite as fast as the full 18 core

version of the M5 Pro and the 16-inch

model, but still this is such an insane

improvement. And now, let's move over to

the area which was the weakest for the

original X Elite, and that was the

graphics performance. That was the one

thing that I really wanted them to

improve, and guess what? They did it.

2.3 times faster performance in 3D

Mark's Steel Nomad Light gaming

benchmark than the original X Elite.

Over 40 frames per second in this test.

Believe it or not, it's actually faster

than Apple's 10 core M5 MacBook Pro.

Just barely barely faster. and it's

right behind the Panther Lake B390 GPU,

which yes, got a huge improvement

compared to the previous Lunar Lake. So,

seeing this big of a graphics

improvement was completely unexpected,

and they just killed it generation to

generation. But then I also wanted to

test something that's getting a lot of

hype these days, and that is AI

performance. So, we tested Geekbench 6

AI for the GPU quantized score. And take

a look at that. Over 90,000

quantized score. That's 60% faster than

the latest Panther Lake best B390 GPU.

That is just nuts. And then I decided to

do some local LLM work with O Lama

testing Quen 3.5. I tested the 35

billion parameter model and this was

just crazy. Since this laptop for 1999

comes with 48 GB of RAM, you can run

larger models since this is technically

unified memory that can be accessed by

the GPU. So when I tested the 35 billion

parameter model, I got 49.95 tokens per

second for the prefill performance.

Basically over five times faster than

the 32 gig Panther Lake laptop that I

tested. That's the difference in that

RAM. And then for the output

performance, it was essentially 50%

faster than the Panther Lake. That's

just crazy. So to make it fair for the

Panther Lake since it had 32 gigs of

RAM, I compared the X2 Elite, this

laptop, the ZenBook A14, which comes

with 32 gigs, to a 32 gig Panther Lake

chip. And check out this prefill

performance in the smaller standard Quen

3.5 model. Literally two times faster

prefill performance with the same 32 gig

matching RAM. Holy smokes. Snapdragon

just came out and doubled the AI

performance at least for preill. And

then in terms of the output performance,

it was 23% faster than Panther Lake. So

that's the standard X2 Elite. Isn't that

just insane? So, with all of that

testing considered, Snapdragon just blew

me away with this big of a performance

jump in just a single generation update.

Imagine what's going to happen with the

Snapdragon X3 Elite Extreme. I am so

excited because they are on something

else with these performance jumps. I

mean, over 4,000 single core, that is

insane. And then considering that AI

performance as well, especially for the

value with that 48 gigs of memory, I

mean, this is the biggest performance

jump I have ever seen in any Windows

laptop ever made. Huge bravo to the

Snapdragon team and bravo to Asus as

well for getting that chip in such a

lightweight and thin chassis with

awesome specs like 48 gigs of memory and

a beautiful 16-in OLED display like this

for $19.99.

Let me know your thoughts on the ZenBook

A16 down in the comment section below,

as well as the X2 Elite and Elite

Extreme. Thanks for watching. Subscribe

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