The Asus Vivobook 16 X1607QA is one of the first batches of notebooks to run on the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip. Compared to the more premium Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus chip devices we have seen in the past, the Vivobook 16 X1607QA is a more affordable mid-range notebook befitting the entry-level Snapdragon chip.
Starting at $749, the Vivobook 16 X1607QA — henceforth referred to as just X1607QA — targets students, home, and office users with somewhat basic computing needs. It has a 16-inch FullHD 60Hz IPS display, a full-sized keyboard with numeric keys, and a 50Wh battery with 65W fast charging. It’s not the type of machine one would opt for if more specific requirements such as gaming or media creation are a priority. And we are talking about real media creation here, not asking an AI chatbot to make Studio Ghibli edits of your photos.
So with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get on with the review.
Design
The X1607QA design is typical of an Asus Vivobook model with very little design flair. The Cool Silver model we have here looks especially boring but there’s also a Quiet Blue model that does look better in photos.
The back of the lid is quite featureless with just a subtle Asus Vivobook logo on the side. On the inside, there is a rather substantial frame around the display, not in terms of width but more in terms of height. When closed, this thick frame makes it look like there’s a sizable gap between the lid and the base even though there isn’t.
The base is also finished in silver on our unit but is thankfully broken by the black keys. This makes the X1607QA look a lot better on the inside than the S5507QA Snapdragon X Elite model we reviewed last year that had silver keys over a silver base. That was far too monotonous and the black keys on the X1607QA provide a much-needed relief from the sea of gray, even though they show smudges more readily than silver.
Along the sides, the X1607QA has a range of ports on the left but just one on the right along with a couple of status LEDs, one of which is annoyingly bright. The front edge has a cutout providing enough space to pry the lid open. Unlike with the S5507QA, I did not feel like I was covering the camera with smudges or sliding the camera cover every time I opened the lid, which is a definite improvement even though this machine is cheaper.
Moving on to the bottom of the machine, there is a gray cover with a concrete-like texture to it. It is held in place by ten screws, one of which is captive, but comes off relatively easily once all of them are undone. The cover has a relatively small opening on the back for a single fan intake as well as a small row of vents for the exhaust. The two are placed next to each other but the raised edge that acts as the feet prevents the exhaust air from being sucked back into the intake when the machine is on a desk.
Going back to the lid for a moment, the X1607QA has one of those 180° hinges that Asus likes to equip some of its models. I’m still not sure what the point of it is as at no point did I feel like I benefited from the lid opening that wide. The base of the lid also tends to cover the exhaust port completely when the lid is fully opened so you really don’t want to do that if the fan is running.
The overall build quality of the X1607QA is decent. Every surface you touch is made out of plastic but none of it feels flimsy or cheaply made. It does, however, get covered in smudges quite readily and the back of the lid on our unit also picked up a mystery scratch early on in the test period.
My biggest issue with the X1607QA is the weight. At 1.88kg (4.14lb), the laptop feels onerous, especially with the charger in tow. Opening up the back panel reveals a compact motherboard, a simple cooling system, and a 50Wh battery along with a bunch of empty space. The entire construction is made out of plastic. As such, there really doesn’t seem to be any justification for the weight.
Display
The X1607QA has a 16-inch, 1920×1200 resolution IPS LCD. The display has a refresh rate range of 40-60Hz with VRR support. The panel has a matte anti-glare coating and a peak brightness of 300 nits. There is no touch or HDR support.
In terms of color gamut coverage, Asus makes no claims for the X1607QA., which usually doesn’t bode well. By our estimates, the panel seems to just about cover the sRGB color space but could potentially fall short as some colors do appear a bit dull. We couldn’t perform a full display calibration test as our calibrator was not recognized on the machine even after installing the drivers.
Asus lets you adjust the color temperature and blue light filter for the display, but neither helped fix the somewhat cool blue tone of the display without making the image excessively red or green. There is also a Vivid mode but it only pretends to boost color volume when in reality just boosts the gamma a bit, which further proves that this panel simply isn’t capable of a wide color gamut.
The 300 nits peak brightness claim also could not be verified. Indoors, the brightness seemed adequate for the most part. Even when used outdoors, the display was usable at maximum brightness. It’s only when there is direct sunlight on the screen does it gets hard to see. The anti-glare coating works well, which means the display backlight doesn’t have to fight stray reflections as much.
The display has good contrast performance, certainly not on par with OLED or even VA panels but quite decent for IPS. Viewing angles are similarly good both top to bottom and side to side.
Motion performance was not ideal but also not poor. There is some ghosting in motion, which can be noticeable in some content, especially 60fps video or any games you may bother to run but it’s not too distracting.
Overall, the display on the X1607QA is reasonably good for web and office work that it is primarily optimized for along with some media playback. However, with OLEDs becoming increasingly common, it would have been a worthy inclusion, especially for media consumption.
Keyboard and trackpad
The X1607QA has a backlit chiclet-style keyboard with 1.7mm travel keys. Along with the full set of letter and symbol keys, there is also a ten-key numeric keypad on the side. The top row is assigned to shortcuts by default but can be temporarily or permanently toggled to be used as function keys.
The keyboard on the X1607QA works well. The keys are spacious, have good feedback, and are reasonably quiet. The white backlighting is perfectly adequate in the dark and since the keys are black instead of silver as on the S5507QA, the key legends don’t blend with the background when the lighting is on during the day.
If I had to complain, it would be about the usual loss of the right-side control key in lieu of the useless Copilot key. Windows is also pretty obtuse when it comes to letting you customize the key. You can either switch it to Windows Search, disable it entirely, or set it to a different AI app such as ChatGPT. There is no option to set it to control or some other function. Of course, this is neither an X1607QA-specific nor an Asus-specific issue but endemic to all the Copilot branded notebooks.
Moving on, the trackpad below the keyboard is sizable, measuring 13cm x 8.5cm, and is perfectly flush with the base. It is a plastic surface but still quite smooth and although it is hinged at the top you can click on almost 80% of the surface and register a click. The sound it makes isn’t very satisfying and makes the entire bottom half of the laptop vibrate.
Speakers
The X1607QA has a pair of down-firing speakers on either side. The speakers are aided with Dolby Atmos processing through the Dolby Access app along with Asus’s Smart Amplifier and Audio Booster features.
By default, the speakers have decent audio quality with no audible distortion even at the relatively high max volume. However, being down-firing in nature, the speakers don’t have great clarity in the upper mid and high frequencies.
This is where the Dolby Access app comes in, which can process the audio enough to make up for this deficit and deliver much clearer audio. The sound still cannot compete with the likes of the MacBook Air speakers, which are louder and fuller sounding but they get the job done.
Webcam
The X1607QA has a mediocre-quality webcam. It’s only better than not having a webcam at all but if you have higher expectations from your webcam then you need to get one separately.
The camera comes with a privacy cover, which can be used if you don’t use the Windows Hello facial unlock feature. This feature works okay if you are directly in front of the notebook, within a close distance, not too angled, and not in bright lighting. If any of those conditions aren’t met then the feature just doesn’t work.
Software
The X1607QA comes with Windows 11 Home Edition pre-installed. As we have seen with past versions of Asus notebooks, the amount of bloatware is fairly limited to a handful of Asus apps, most of which are useful. There’s also a trial version of McAfee but you can just immediately uninstall it.
The X1607QA also comes with a one-year subscription to Office 365 along with three months of Xbox Game Pass. That second one didn’t really make sense even on the S5507QA, especially when you consider the Xbox app won’t even show you any games on an ARM-based Windows device.
The number of ARM64 apps has also grown considerably over the past year. A lot of popular apps now have an ARM64 version available either in stable or beta form alongside x86. However, the user does need to display some level of competence to download the correct version. Some apps will only install the correct version for your system through a combined installer, and some will automatically present the right version as default while downloading, but many will just make you choose manually. Expecting the average user to know the difference between x86, x64, and arm64 might be a bit much.
Unfortunately, while the app situation is improving, almost nothing has changed on the gaming front. There are still no ARM versions of AAA or popular titles, with the only native titles being mobile game ports. It’s especially embarrassing considering Microsoft owns half the major game studios at this point and still cannot be bothered to port a single game to ARM so users have at least one game to try. To add insult to injury, Apple keeps racking up major titles for the macOS platform, effectively making even the MacBook Air a better gaming machine than any Snapdragon-based Windows PC.
Hardware
The X1607QA runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip. Unlike the X Elite and X Plus models that feature multiple SKUs, the Snapdragon X just has a single SKU, the X1-26-100.
The X1-26-100 has 8 Oryon CPU cores clocked at 3.0GHz with Adreno X1-45 GPU. While the CPU is technically identical to the other Snapdragon desktop parts, it has the least amount of cores and also the lowest clock speeds with no additional boost. The GPU is also the slowest out of the Snapdragon X series. However, the X1-26-100 has the same 45 TOPS Hexagon NPU as the other models.
Paired with the chipset is 16GB LPDDR5X 8448MHz memory and 512GB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD with a 1TB option available in some regions. The memory is soldered but the storage can be replaced or upgraded easily.
In terms of connectivity, the X1607QA has 2x Type-C USB 4 40Gbps ports, 2x Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 20Gbps ports, HDMI 2.1, and a headphone jack. The notebook does not have a separate charging port so one of the USB-C ports will be taken up by the charger. Unfortunately, there is no SD card slot even though there is enough space on the right side to slide in a punch card.
For wireless users, there’s triple-band Wi-Fi 6E 802.11ax and Bluetooth 5.3.
Performance
The X1607QA offers four fan profile modes within the MyASUS apps. As with the S5507QA with the X1E-78-100, the fan profile modes also act as power modes with different power limits that change performance along with fan speeds.
On the X1607QA, both the Full-speed mode and Performance mode can hit 30W, the Standard mode maintains 23W, and the Whisper mode can only achieve 18W. Of course, each mode also has a different fan profile that dictates how loud it can get under full load.
Now let’s look at the benchmarks. In terms of multi-threaded performance, the 3.0GHz 8-core X1-26-100 inside the X1607QA has about 63% of the performance of the 3.4GHz 12-core X1E-78-100 in Cinebench 2024, which makes sense. The single-core performance is down 11%, which is also in line with the roughly 12% drop in clock speeds. There will also be tasks where the 12MB reduction in cache should make its absence felt but Cinebench doesn’t care about that.
| Benchmark | Category | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Cinebench 2024 | Multi core | 707 |
| Single core | 95 | |
| Blender | Classroom | 485s |
| Geekbench | Multi core | 10654 |
| Single core | 2130 | |
| GPU (Vulkan) | 13971 | |
| Geekbench AI (NPU) | Single precision | 1825 |
| Half precision | 16026 | |
| Quantized | 35278 | |
| 7-Zip | Compression | 62.591 |
| Decompression | 53.558 |
Comparing performance between the different power profiles makes it quickly apparent there isn’t any real difference in the top three modes in CPU tests, despite the Standard mode consuming less power. Even the Whisper mode isn’t miles off the other three modes. The full-speed mode feels especially pointless as it makes a whole lot of noise for no appreciable return.
| Benchmark | Fan profile | Time (seconds) |
|---|---|---|
| Blender (Classroom) | Full-speed (30W) | 485 |
| Performance (30W) | 485 | |
| Standard (23W) | 486 | |
| Whisper (18W) | 551 |
Performance overall is quite good. Despite the chip being the runt of the Snapdragon litter, it does not feel like you’re using a weak or low-power computer. The X1607QA always feels at ease with basic web or office tasks and the only time it felt like it was running out of breath was while playing 4K videos on YouTube. The good thing about the performance is that there is no noticeable drop in performance when moving from the charger to the battery.
The 16GB memory is also adequate for the intended usage. Even with a bunch of tabs open along with office apps, Spotify, and a few other apps open, you are unlikely to get anywhere close to using all the available memory. It’s only when you start doing image or video editing workloads will you feel you are running out of space but those are not really what the X1607QA is intended for.
Unfortunately, gaming performance remains just as abysmal as it was on the Snapdragon X Elite last year. Just to give it the benefit of the doubt, I fired up God of War on Steam, especially since Qualcomm specifically mentions the game in one of its driver updates as being improved. What I discovered was a game that was unplayable even when playing at 400p at the lowest settings. Perhaps it runs a bit better on the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips but the weaker X chip struggles to even play the intro video without stuttering.
Considering the breadth of titles available on Steam, it would be unfair to say that you cannot play games at all on the X1607QA. If all you do is play Balatro or Among Us, then you can get by just fine. I’m personally partial towards the Ace Attorney series and those run just fine as well. Basically, almost anything you could run on the old Intel UHD graphics can be run here, which is the highest praise you can give the Windows ARM gaming scene.
Finally, the cooling performance is pretty good overall since the chip does not consume much power. The fan barely spins up most of the time so you are usually running the system fanless. When it does spin, it isn’t audible. The only time the fan becomes loud is if you have set the fan profile to Performance or Full-speed and are running something very CPU-heavy.
Battery life
Just looking at the specs, the 50Wh battery on the X1607QA does not sound too promising. However, the power-efficient nature of the X1-26-100 means you can get away with a lot even with 50Wh.
Starting with the web browsing test, the X1607QA lasted for 8.5 hours of continuous use. In the streaming video test, the device lasted for a slightly longer 8.7 hours. These are pretty good numbers and when seen in the context of typical non-continuous usage would mean roughly 2-3 days of use out of a single charge.
As mentioned before, the chip does not lose much or any performance when switching to battery power. Moreover, the device also has a very low battery drain on standby, with an overnight sleep session losing only 1-2% of the battery.
The X1607QA supports up to 65W fast charging and comes with a 65W USB-C charger. The device can charge up to 50% in 30 minutes but then takes over two hours for a full charge.
Conclusion
The Asus Vivobook 16 X1607QA is a good computer as long as you stay within its pocket of expertise. The large 16:10 display, full-sized keyboard with numpad, spacious trackpad, and good battery life make it ideal for web, office, and school work. While that may not sound especially impressive, most of the x86-based notebooks available in this range don’t have great battery life or good usable performance on battery.
Having said that, the X1607QA still feels a bit expensive. At $750, one would expect at least an OLED display, which would have also made this good for media consumption. But since that is not the case, it’s recommended to wait for a discount before picking one up.
