The Asus Zenbook S 16 is priced at $500 and has never been this cheap

After a long time While struggling with major price drops, the Asus Zenbook S 16 has finally dropped to $1,000, which is $500 off its retail price.

It’s normal for laptop prices to drop at the end of their lifespan, closer to when the update comes out. But the Asus Zenbook S 16 held up. To be fair, it’s a very high-end Windows laptop, and one of the nicest machines released last year. It’s stylish, portable and has a stunning design. It even has great battery life, on par with a MacBook. Speaking of MacBooks, this Zenbook is the laptop I’ve seen tech journalists travel with more than anything else. Considering how much technology they review, this is a huge endorsement.

But it was always difficult for me to recommend the S 16 when the cheapest model available was $1,500. I’ve always looked for a bigger price cut, but it has never dropped more than a few hundred dollars. Although it always came with 24GB of RAM and a terabyte of storage, the price was hard to stomach. Well, the day has finally come. It’s now down to $1,000 at Best Buy as part of the store’s Presidents Day sale. This is an incredible price for this laptop.

Photo: Christopher Noll

Asus

ZenBook S16 (UM5606)

The previously mentioned memory and storage are still in place here, along with a 2880 x 1800 OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. This laptop has basically every high-end feature you can imagine, but one of my favorite aspects are the ports. Despite the slim profile, the S 16 retains all the legacy ports you could want, including HDMI, USB-A, and even a full-size SD card slot.

There is also a smaller 14-inch model, but its opponent is not as strong as the 16-inch model. It’s priced at $1,300 right now, which is still a solid price for this configuration.

I have to say that Asus has an update in 2026 with the latest Intel chipset, but it will only come to the 14-inch model. I’m not going to lie: based on my tests, these CPUs will make a huge difference in performance, especially on the graphics front. But I have a feeling that Asus will sell this device at a higher price for a lot longer, especially with the recent development around the memory shortage.

While the Zenbook S 16 is definitely the best deal at Best Buy’s Presidents Day sale, I also recommend the Asus Zephyrus G14, which is also offering a $500 discount. This configuration comes with a powerful RTX 5070 Ti graphics card and is one of our favorite gaming laptops.