ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED review: The best Windows creator laptop

The ProArt line of creator-oriented gadgets was a stroke of promoting genius by ASUS, serving to separate them from rivals with a line of premium gadgets. A major instance is the Studiobook 16 OLED H5600 laptop, tempting artists with excessive efficiency, a lovely 16-inch 4K OLED show, and an “ASUS dial” for video or picture enhancing.

ASUS’s earlier ProArt laptops just like the StudioBook One had been workstation-like creator gadgets with costly components like NVIDIA Quadro 6000 GPUs. With this mannequin, ASUS is focusing extra on bang-for-the buck with elements like an RTX 3070 GPU and AMD Ryzen 9 eight-core CPU. (The costlier StudioBook 16 Pro fashions supply Xeon processors and Quadro GPUs.)

The query is, can a fairly priced laptop computer like this sustain with costlier fashions and even high-end gaming laptops on the subject of efficiency? To search out out, I obtained a maintain of a well-specced however modestly priced Studiobook 16 OLED mannequin and put it to work on some picture and video enhancing jobs.

A key function of all of the Studiobook gadgets is the businesslike seems to be which are distant from ASUS’s gaming designs. To that finish, it has a fundamental black, square-edged physique with the one noticeable design contact being the refined ProArt emblem on high. It has bezels which are moderately small however not what I’d name skinny, and isn’t the lightest or smallest 16-inch laptop computer on the market. Nonetheless, with a .77-inch thickness and 5.28 pound heft, it’s comparatively compact — particularly contemplating that it gives “military-grade sturdiness” (MIL-STD 810H), based on ASUS.

ASUS has developed an “IceCool Professional” thermal resolution that’s supposed to spice up airflow by as much as 16 %, whereas conserving noise ranges beneath 40 dbA in normal cooling mode. It does that by the usage of twin 102-blade followers, six warmth pipes and a number of ducts.

When you want extra punch, you may change to efficiency mode which boosts energy to 95 watts, or as much as 135 watts in “full-speed” mode. Fan noise remains to be cheap in efficiency mode until you’re doing GPU/CPU intensive chores, however the full-speed setting can get very loud certainly. Nonetheless, it could possibly be a helpful mode in case you’re planning to depart the room whereas doing a render. Total, warmth and noise are very properly managed.

The headline function on this laptop computer is the three,480 x 2,400 16:10 OLED show, the primary on a 16-inch laptop computer, ASUS claims. As you’d anticipate, it’s sharp, vibrant and exquisite in individual — by far the perfect laptop computer show I’ve ever seen when it comes to constancy and “wow” issue.

The panel is factory-calibrated to Pantone and Calman shade accuracy, with a delta E of lower than two, a proven fact that I confirmed with my X-Ceremony i1 Show Professional calibrator. I used it with a $4,000 ASUS mini-LED ProArt monitor and regardless of the show know-how variations, they matched very intently to my eyes, shade smart.

The true 10-bit panel gives one hundred pc DCI-P3 shade protection, in workstation laptop computer territory and properly past rivals just like the MacBook Professional (78 %) and Dell’s XPS 15 (85 %). Together with the colour accuracy, that permits for exact shade correction controls in apps like DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Lightroom Basic. The 1,000,000:1 distinction ratio with inky OLED blacks additionally makes it splendid for content material creation, with a aspect profit that it’s the perfect leisure laptop computer I’ve ever used.

Provided that the show is appropriate for shade correction, ASUS ought to have maybe included a approach to simply change the colour profile for video enhancing ( Rec.709, DCI-P3 and so forth) or images (AdobeRGB, sRGB). That could possibly be a helpful setting within the Creator Hub, for instance, or at the very least as an .icm profile for Home windows Shade Administration.

You’ll be able to crank the brightness as much as 550 nits in HDR mode, so it conforms to VESA’s DisplayHDR True Black 500 normal for OLED shows — very shiny certainly for a laptop computer show. Nonetheless, it’s properly in need of the 1,600 nits peak brightness obtainable on the newest MacBook Professionals, which use mini-LED shows. That raises the query of whether or not OLED or mini-LED is extra fascinating on a creator laptop computer, however personally, I’d take the superior OLED blacks over eye-scorching brightness and haloing.

The opposite attention-grabbing function is the ProArt Dial. I wouldn’t blame you for pondering it’s a gimmick, because it takes up area and provides complexity. Additionally, related management surfaces can look cool however usually find yourself in drawers, by no means for use.

This one has just a few issues in its favor, although. It feels good because of the textured grip, clean rotation and clicky detents. Primarily, although, it’s simply handy because it’s situated straight beneath the keyboard. In that means, it makes extra sense than one thing like Microsoft’s Floor Dial or an exterior control surface, as these are often positioned exterior simple grabbing distance.

With no apps loaded, you need to use the dial to show up the sound or improve monitor brightness extra simply than utilizing the perform keys. To benefit from it, although, you actually need Adobe’s Artistic Cloud suite. With Photoshop open, urgent the dial launches a devoted pie chart-like menu with “slices” for brush choices, layer zoom, and so forth. Urgent it once more on the comb menu, for example, opens sub-options for hardness, circulate, opacity and extra. Premiere and After Results have related customized menus.

If the inventory menus gained’t do, you may go into the ASUS ProArt Creator Hub software program. There, you may reprogram the features the way in which you’d choose through drop-down menus. Because it stands now, the dial solely helps 4 Adobe apps: Photoshop, Premiere Professional, After Results and Lightroom Basic. As somebody who makes use of different apps, significantly DaVinci Resolve, I’m hoping ASUS will add extra down the highway.

I’ve used management surfaces previously as a part of my former video editor profession, however I haven’t been a giant fan of them on PCs. Nonetheless, after making an attempt the ASUS dial with Photoshop and Premiere Professional, I obtained used to it fairly quick. It was pure to maintain one hand on the keyboard and the opposite on the dial to jog video, swap instruments and so forth. Earlier than lengthy, it was second nature and sped up my workflow.

Shifting to the entrance of the laptop computer, the trackpad is clean, responsive and sports activities not simply two, however three buttons — taking me again to the 2000s when all PC mice had this. The third one provides an additional management that could possibly be helpful for 3D or CAD apps, video enhancing to mark “in” factors and so forth. It’s additionally the primary laptop computer touchpad from ASUS that helps styluses utilizing the MPP 1.51 normal, which incorporates its personal. That enables artists to make use of the touchpad as a exact drawing pill. I wasn’t capable of make use of this performance myself (I can’t actually draw), however it’s good to have it there.

The keyboard has respectable journey and a pleasant quantity of spring again, and gives a separate quantity pad that’s good to have. Nonetheless, the whole keyboard is shifted upwards greater than normal and the keys are maybe a contact small, as a result of the ASUS dial successfully will increase the area between the touchpad and keyboard. I obtained used to it fairly rapidly, although, and it was by no means bothersome.

Port-wise, it’s well-equipped with two quick USB-C 3.2 gen2 10Gbps connections, two USB-A 3.2 gen 2, HDMI 2.1, an audio jack and RJ45 ethernet. The HDMI 2.1 jack is good, because it permits you to join, say, a supported TV and get 4K at as much as 120 fps. It’s good that one of many USB-C ports helps DisplayPort, as a result of lots of screens solely work with that normal. Nonetheless, on condition that creators usually join tons of devices, I’d have preferred to see an additional USB-A port or two, although.

It’s good that ASUS included a bleeding edge SD Specific card slot that may learn knowledge from supported playing cards at an superior 985 MB/s. There’s a relatively big drawback, although. When you insert an SD UHS II card utilized by tons of cameras, the StudioBook will solely learn it at UHS-I speeds — 100 MB/s as an alternative of 300 MB/s. Since no cameras help SD Specific but, I’d relatively have seen a typical UHS-II slot. (Hopefully that may change, as Sony, Nikon and Canon are a part of the SD Specific consortium.)

For sound, ASUS included an audiophile-grade ESS Sabre DAC, promising decrease distortion and expanded dynamic vary. There are solely a pair of audio system relatively than 4 or extra like on some current laptops. Nonetheless, they’re properly above common for a laptop computer like this, with respectable mid-range sound and acceptable backside finish. Different options embrace a fingerprint reader on the ability button together with a top-mounted IR HD webcam with Home windows Howdy help and a privateness shutter.

Now, let’s speak about efficiency. The highest-end ProArt StudioBook OLED 16 I’m testing makes use of the RTX 3070 cellular GPU, relatively than the top-end RTX 3080. I don’t have an issue with that, as an RTX 3080 wouldn’t pace up inventive apps a lot and provides value and warmth. All the things else is high-end, although. It’s obtained AMD’s high cellular 8-core Ryzen 5900HX chip, 32GB of RAM, and two terabytes of NVME storage in Raid 0. It at present comes with Home windows 10 Professional, however ASUS will supply Home windows 11 upgrades early subsequent yr.

I ran the ProArt StudioBook by our normal battery of efficiency checks, together with PCMark 10 for productiveness, 3DMark’s Time Spy for 3D efficiency, Atto’s diskbench and others.

It carried out close to the highest in all of them, as proven within the chart above, significantly the disk speeds. With the RAID 0 NVMe storage, disk speeds are stupendously quick, with reads at 5.6 GB/s and writes at 5.35 GB/s. It will probably’t be overstated how a lot that helps disk-intensive apps like Premiere Professional.

I additionally ran checks extra geared to content material creation, like Maxon’s Cinebench R23 and Puget Programs’ PugetBench for Photoshop, Premiere Professional and Davinci Resolve. The PugetBench checks supply respectable real-world outcomes, as they robotically loop a collection of features that check results, encoding, playback and so forth. Once more, I noticed top-notch outcomes in comparison with different current inventive and gaming laptops.

As an example, it hit 938 on the PugetBench DaVinci Resolve prolonged total check, a consequence that stacked up with many desktop machines. Different scores included a 981 on PugetBench Photoshop 22 CC, in comparison with 781 for the Dell XPS 15 OLED and 998 for Lenovo’s ThinkPad P15 Gen 2. Like most different laptops, although, it was handily bested by Apple’s M1 Max MacBook Professional, scoring 698 on the PugetBench Premiere Professional Commonplace check, in comparison with 821 for the MacBook.

Gaming just isn’t this laptop computer’s raison d’être, however I did some anyway, and it acquitted itself fantastically with Cyberpunk 2077, Future 2 and different titles. Body charges had been respectable for 4K laptop computer gaming, although I wanted to knock the element settings properly again. The 4K display screen is a limiting issue, in fact, due to the 60Hz refresh charge.

Artificial benchmarks and gaming are effective, however creativity laptops have to show themselves at work, too. To that finish, I edited a digicam overview video for the laptop computer utilizing DaVinci Resolve 17.2, and this video on the newest model of Premiere Professional. I additionally dipped into Photoshop, After Results and Lightroom.

Once more, the ProArt Studiobook acquitted itself with honors, providing fluid 4K enhancing, even with GPU-intensive digicam codecs. I used to be capable of export 4K movies at almost 300 % real-time pace in Resolve (NVIDIA encoder, MP4, 4K, 12,000 Kbps max knowledge charge), with shade correction, textual content and different gentle results on almost each shot.

For a desktop-replacement laptop computer that may usually run off wall energy, the StudioBook has surprisingly good battery life. It ran for six hours and 20 minutes in our 1080p video loop rundown check and even longer for regular searching and work chores — glorious contemplating the 4K show. The AMD Ryzen 9 chip’s effectivity possible helps so much right here.

That beats most 4K PC laptops, apart from Dell’s XPS 15 OLED mannequin that might go over 9 hours between costs. Nonetheless, it will get stomped by the $2,500 16-inch MacBook Professional M1 Max, which lasted a ridiculous 16 hours and 34 minutes in our checks. Sure, that mannequin has barely decrease display screen decision, however it lasted over 2.5 occasions longer.

The StudioBook 16 OLED was comparatively quiet throughout all these chores as properly, with the fan solely kicking in on advanced scenes or exports. Even then, it was significantly quieter than my Gigabyte Aero 15X laptop computer. When you want most rendering efficiency and don’t want to remain within the room, you may choose the “full-speed” setting that cranks the followers to the utmost pace.

Ultimately, is the ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED laptop computer value getting over rival inventive fashions or a comparably geared up gaming laptop computer? Definitely.

It’s not simply quick, however clean and dependable throughout inventive chores — and the “dependable” half is vital for production-oriented laptops. It handles 4K enhancing and huge images with out getting overly sizzling and noisy. It’s not even a foul gaming machine, although the 60Hz 4K display screen isn’t splendid for that.

For the price of the OLED mannequin, you actually get so much. The mannequin I’m working with will run round $3,000, although ASUS nonetheless hasn’t nailed down the ultimate pricing but. It additionally gives a greater spec listing than any rival inventive laptops until you’re keen to go means up in worth. And don’t neglect that the StudioBook has options not discovered on any laptop computer, inventive or in any other case, just like the 16-inch 4K OLED show and ProArt dial.

The MacBook Professional fashions with the M1 Professional and M1 Max CPUs are making issues extra attention-grabbing for potential inventive laptop computer consumers. They’re way more aggressive than the Intel MacBook Professionals, as they’re quicker, quieter and have longer battery life. Nonetheless, as Engadget has found in testing, the brand new MacBooks are higher than PC laptops just like the Studiobook 16 in some methods (battery and video playback) and worse in others (rendering, GPU efficiency typically). Extra on that quickly in an upcoming Upscaled.

Nonetheless, for the cash, the ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED is the perfect Home windows 10 content material creation laptop computer you may get proper now. I haven’t been enthusiastic about too many laptops these days, however I can’t advocate this mannequin sufficient.