ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604 review: GeForce RTX 4090 in a slim body

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus line of laptops has always had its own distinctive features: powerful components in a rather restrained, stylish and compact body. ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604 fully meets these criteria. The laptop has a powerful Intel Core i9 processor, a 2TB high-speed drive, a large amount of RAM, and a top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop graphics card, albeit not the most powerful version. So performance is at a very high level. The laptop has a 16-inch bright Mini LED display of excellent quality with a resolution of 2560x1600 and a refresh rate of 240 Hz, a very comfortable keyboard and touchpad, a good set of connectors, and a powerful six-speaker audio system. There are only two complaints to mention, and they are related to the limitations of the compact body. The cooling system is quite noisy and cannot always cope with the processor's heat. It's also a little difficult to disassemble for upgrades. 

6 reasons to buy ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604:

• High performance
• Excellent 16-inch Mini LED screen with a refresh rate of 240 Hz
• Stylish appearance and compact body (considering the 16-inch screen and components)
• Good set of connectors
• Comfortable keyboard and touchpad
• Loud audio system

2 reasons not to buy ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604:

• Noisy cooling system, overheating at peak loads
• Difficult disassembly for upgrades

Quick Start:

1. What's in the box?
2. What about the appearance and construction of ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604?
3. How comfortable is the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604?
4. How good is the screen?
5. What about performance and battery life?
6. In dry balance

What's in the box?

All top-end ASUS Republic of Gamers laptops come with interesting and generous packaging. Like other current models in the line, the ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604 arrived in a large black box. Inside is everything you need to make the most of your laptop: a branded backpack, ASUS ROG Impact mouse, 280W power supply for full power, Type-C power supply for office use, and documentation.

What about the appearance and design of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023)?

The entire line of ASUS ROG Zephyrus laptops, including the M16, has a rather calm and stylish design. The body is thin, compact and light for a 16-inch model. It's completely black, with only the keyboard being RGB-backlit. The body is made of magnesium alloy and the lid is aluminium. The entire working surface has a Soft-Touch-like coating. It is pleasant to the touch, but collects fingerprints a little. Two of the six speakers are located on the sides of the keyboard. And at the top of the working surface there are three LED indicators.

The top metal lid has a nice matte finish and is conventionally divided diagonally. The entire upper part is covered with 18,710 CNC perforated holes, under which there are 1711 AniMe Matrix display LEDs. In the lower left corner is a small plate with the ROG logo. When the AniMe Matrix is switched off, the lid looks very stylish and restrained.

We have previously seen AniMe Matrix in more compact models. For example, ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14. Now this feature has appeared in the company's larger laptops. The Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604 is the first 16-inch model with an additional AniMe Matrix display. It can display various useful information: battery power, time, date, number of new emails in the mail. You can also display pictures or animations, including your own variants. It looks really interesting and original.

Almost the entire width of the laptop is taken up by a large cooling radiator at the back, so all the connectors are located on the sides. On the left there is a power supply connector, ventilation holes, Thunderbolt 4 Type-C (with support for 100W Power Delivery and DisplayPort 1.4 when using integrated graphics), HDMI 2.1, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A, and a combined audio jack.

On the right is USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C (with 100W Power Delivery) and DisplayPort 1.4 (discrete graphics, G-Sync), USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A and microSD card reader (UHS-II, 312MB/s) and ventilation holes.

Almost the entire width of the back is occupied by ventilation holes, behind which the cooling radiator is hidden. There is a decorative Zephyrus inscription in the middle.

All four sides of the top cover have a polished, shiny surface. There is no usual cutout in front, but the slightly tilted shape of the lid makes it easy to open the laptop.

ASUS claims that the screen occupies 92% of the lid area. The bezels are really thin, especially the side ones. Above the display is a set of FullHD webcams, an infrared camera for face recognition, an indicator light, and two microphones.

The bottom of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 has speakers, vents for cold air intake, and two rubber strips almost the full width of the case to prevent the laptop from slipping. There is a possibility of upgrading, but in this case the procedure is a little more complicated than usual. The bottom lid is fixed with as many as 15 screws. At the same time, 7 of them are covered with rubber caps. It's also worth bearing in mind that the screws used are of different lengths, so you should remember where they are supposed to be. By removing the lid, the user will have access to two SO-DIMM slots for RAM, two M.2 slots for SSDs, a Wi-Fi adapter, and a cooling system.

The laptop is compact: 355x246x23 mm, of course, in the category of 16-inch models. It weighs 2.3 kg. The version without AniMe Matrix is slightly lighter and thinner. The quality of materials and build quality is very good. The only minor complaints are the rather dull working surface and the slightly complicated upgrade process.

How comfortable is the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604?

ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604 has the familiar ErgoLift hinge design, thanks to which the working surface is slightly raised above the table in the area of the display unit. This allows more space under the laptop for the cooling system to draw in cool air. The maximum opening angle of the laptop is 180°. The lid is securely fixed and hardly shakes.

The keyboard layout is quite familiar to ASUS gaming models. This is a typical full-size keyboard without an additional number pad and with minimal features that do not affect the overall usability. The power button is separated from the main unit and is located a little higher on the right side. It does not have a built-in fingerprint scanner, but this is quite normal, given the presence of an infrared camera. On the right side, above the keyboard, there are four additional buttons that are responsible for volume, mute, and launching the Armoury Crate app by default. It is possible to set up macros on them. Everything else is quite familiar: the top row of function keys is reduced in height, long Shift, and single-storey Enter. The arrow block also has smaller buttons and is slightly separated from the main block.

The keyboard has a single-zone RGB backlight with AURA Sync support. Stealth Type keys are used, which are very quiet. It is claimed that the noise level is below 30 dB. The full key travel is 1.7 mm. The keyboard works really quietly, but the keystrokes are quite clear and informative.

The glass touchpad has large dimensions of 129x84 mm and a very pleasant surface. It is quite comfortable to use for the vast majority of tasks, except for gaming.

How good is the screen?

Most of ASUS' top gaming laptops have ROG Nebula HDR Display Mini LED screens. ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604 is no exception. It is equipped with a 16-inch matrix. The peculiarity of Mini LED is that 1024 small LEDs are responsible for backlighting, thanks to which local dimming is implemented. Mini LEDs have very high brightness, contrast and uniformity of backlighting. The screen has an aspect ratio of 16:10 and a WQXGA resolution (2560 x 1600). Colour coverage is 100% DCI-P3, refresh rate: 240 Hz, response time: 3 ms, the display is Pantone certified, has Dolby Vision support and VESA Display HDR 1000 certification. It promises a maximum brightness of 600 cd/m2 in manual mode and 1100 cd/m2 peak value. There is support for G-Sync frame rate synchronisation. The ROG Armoury Crate app has useful display settings: overdrive, power saving (lower refresh rate), and multi-zone backlighting. HDR is forced on in HDR mode, and when turned off, the screen works like a regular IPS. The Game Visual section has several picture modes. It is also possible to calibrate the screen using the X-Rite i1 Display Pro calibrator.

The screen is really of excellent quality: very bright, with rich colours and maximum viewing angles. Visually, it is very similar to OLED in terms of contrast and colour reproduction. Measurements showed that the maximum brightness is 625.45 cd/m2. The colour gamut is indeed noticeably wider than the standard sRGB, and the colour reproduction is close to the reference values. The colour temperature is about 7000K with a reference of 6500, and the colour error ΔE is within 1-3, which is a very good indicator.

What about performance and battery life?

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604 laptop is equipped with up-to-date powerful components, but with minor limitations caused by the compact and thin body. Inside are 13th generation Intel Raptor Lake processors and GeForce RTX 4000-series graphics cards. We had a top-of-the-line configuration with an Intel Core i9-13900H processor. It is manufactured using the Intel 7 process and includes 14 cores. 6 productive cores with a clock frequency of 2.6 to 5.4 GHz and 8 energy-efficient cores with a clock frequency of 1.9 to 4.1 GHz. Up to 20 threads of computing are supported, and the cache is 24 MB. The standard TDP level declared by Intel is 45 W, and the maximum is up to 115 W. But in this laptop, in Turbo mode, TDP can reach 135 watts. There is integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics with a frequency of up to 1.5 GHz. There is 32 GB of DDR5-4800 RAM (2x16 GB), working in dual-channel mode. The laptop supports up to 64 GB of storage. Wireless interfaces Bluetooth 5.2 and fast Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) (Dual band) 2x2. The discrete video accelerator used is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop with a maximum frequency of 2040 MHz with ROG Boost at TGP up to 145 W (120+25 W). Although Armoury Crate claims that in Turbo mode, the TGP is 150W. More massive laptops use more efficient GeForce RTX 4090 variants with TDP up to 175W. There is 16 GB of GDDR6 video memory. The laptop is equipped with a MUX Switch multiplexer for direct connection of the video card to the display, bypassing the built-in graphics, which slightly increases performance and reduces latency.

Despite its relatively compact size and not the most productive version of the video card, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604 demonstrates impressive results in synthetic tests, both graphics and processor. So there is enough power for both modern games and heavy graphics.

Seven heatpipes, three Arc Flow cooling fans with 84 blades each, and large radiators consisting of copper fins with a thickness of only 0.1 mm are responsible for cooling the components. Thermal Grizzly liquid metal is used as a thermal interface. There is also a dust protection system.

During a long peak load using the AIDA64 stress test, the cooling system works quite loudly, and the case heats up the top of the working surface and the upper rows of the keyboard. At the same time, the temperature rises to 90-95° and there is trotting. On average, up to 8%, although occasionally more. But in real use, even during long gaming sessions, the temperature of the components stays within the range of 65-75° and the system works absolutely stably.

The drive is a M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD model Samsung PM9A1  with a capacity of 2 TB. There is an additional slot for a second drive, and RAID 0 is supported.

The maximum read speed was just over 7000 MB/s, and the write speed was about 5200 MB/s, which is fully consistent with the stated figures.

All modern games run perfectly at maximum graphics settings, with a frame rate of more than 60 FPS. Cyberpunk 2077 with Overdrive Mode enabled, maximum settings, and automatic DLSS runs at 60-70 FPS.

Gears 5. Ultra settings, 95-120 FPS:

Ghostrunner. Maximum settings, ray tracing, DLSS is not used. 70-85 FPS:

God of War. Maximum settings, no DLSS: 80-115 FPS

Callisto Protocol. Maximum settings, ray tracing at maximum: 65-85 FPS

The Ascent. Maximum settings, DLSS in quality mode. 70-85 FPS.

The Last of Us Part I, version 1.0.3.0. Maximum settings. 60-75 FPS:

The laptop's audio system consists of 6 speakers. It sounds quite loud, convincing and has a small amount of low frequencies. So for films, videos, and music (if you're not a very demanding listener), they're perfect. But you should use headphones when playing games, because the cooling system is also loud.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604 is powered by a 90 Wh battery. It takes about 2 hours to charge the laptop from the bundled 280W PSU. And for not very demanding tasks. For example, when working in the office, you can use the optional bundled 100W Power Delivery power supply with a Type-C connector. In office mode (Wi-Fi, browser, documents, low brightness and minimum performance), it lasts about 6 hours. 

To configure the laptop, we use the familiar Armoury Crate application, which we have already described many times. It allows you to select laptop operating modes, cooling system, MUX Switch, monitor system status, adjust keyboard backlighting, AniMe Matrix, install updates, change display colour modes, and adjust sound.

And MyASUS with basic settings:

Three things you need to know about ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604.

• ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604 is a slim and compact laptop with Intel Core i9 and GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop
• It features a gorgeous 16-inch Mini LED screen with a resolution of 2560x1600, a refresh rate of 240 Hz and a pixel response time of 3ms
• It has a rather restrained and stylish design that will be appropriate both at home and in the office

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