Asus tells reviewers one Zenbook A16 price, then immediately hikes it

On paper, the Asus Zenbook A16 laptop is stunning. Inside is a new Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite chip and an incredible 48GB of RAM, all for hundreds less than competing laptops. Tech reviewers responded with rave reviews, with some giving up to five stars based on the laptop’s performance and price.

A day later, Asus increased the price by $100, from $1,599 to $1,699 at Best Buy. What?! Call it “bait and ship.”

I haven’t reviewed the Asus Zenbook A16 yet (still waiting for mine to arrive!), but whenever I review a laptop, I do so with the assumption that price and productivity go hand in hand. We all want the best value for money, and Asus seems to have undermined one of the fundamental principles of tech reviews: the price a tech journalist refers to in a review is the price consumers will expect to find when purchasing.

So what happened? We’ve asked Asus for an explanation, and it appears to be Best Buy’s fault.

“Best Buy informed us after the review embargo was lifted, and our assets have already been distributed, that an error was made on their end regarding pricing for the new Zenbook A series and other Zenbook launches,” an Asus representative said in a statement.

“To clarify how the retail relationship works: Best Buy determines the prices of its exclusive configurations,” the Asus representative added. “Pricing in our press materials was based on information shared with us prior to launch. Once we were informed of the change, we worked to update reviewers with the devices at hand and support as quickly as possible. We know that pricing is an essential part of your review and we are truly sorry for the poor timing of this update.”

This is not, however, an isolated case. Hardware Canucks noted that Asus also increased prices on a number of related laptops, with the price of the Zenbook S16 unexpectedly increasing from $300 to $1,900, and the Zenbook 14 increasing from $1,000 to $1,350.

Best buy

“This is BAD for our Snapdragon X2E conclusion. Best Buy and Asus published incorrect prices,” the site concluded, implying that the price hikes were a mistake.

Asus has confirmed the changes. The correct prices are as follows, according to Asus:

Five stars on paper

You probably don’t have to wonder why the Zenbook’s price has raised eyebrows. The memory! There were fears that PC makers would reduce the amount of memory and storage they attached to laptops due to ongoing shortages, but Asus went in the other direction, providing a whopping 48GB of storage soldered as part of the Zenbook A16. Consider the specs: a new X2 Elite Extreme processor with 48GB of storage, a 3K display, and a terabyte of storage, all for $1,599. Lenovo is shipping the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 laptop with a similar processor, but with a 1200p display, 1TB of storage, and 32GB of RAM for hundreds more, at $1,839.99.

That’s an incredible difference, and it’s raised eyebrows internally at PCWorld. I personally checked the Best Buy Zenbook A16 list on Tuesday because I was worried that Asus would send a high-powered laptop at the behest of Qualcomm to suggest higher performance. This would not be surprising, however. Intel’s laptop customers included gaming-grade 99Wh batteries alongside its Core Ultra 300H (Panther Lake) components, increasing battery life to well over a day, while most of Qualcomm’s customers were designing thinner, lighter laptops that still offered exceptional battery life. These are the kinds of games chipmakers sometimes play.

But not laptop manufacturers. For decades, there has been an implicit assumption that the price you’ll pay for a laptop is the price you’ll pay. This should seem obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: price goes hand in hand with productivity. The time and effort you need to spend on buying a $75,000 car is far more than you would need to spend on a $2,000 laptop. One of the main parameters we use to evaluate all kinds of technological equipment is price. I will rule out one dock as a candidate for our best Thunderbolt docks because it is priced way too high.

PC makers have the right to raise their prices as their costs rise. Framework, for example, has kept consumers informed about how SSD, memory, and CPU prices are forcing them to adjust their own prices. Its April update claims that CPU prices have actually decreased while SSD prices have increased. Prices of the Lenovo Legion Go have also increased. Yet quoting one price to reviewers and another to consumers just smells bad.

Luckily, I’m still waiting on a Zenbook A16 for review by Asus – which we can test using the new adjusted price.

This story was updated at 1:32 p.m. PT with additional details from Asus.