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

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

Pros

• Stunning 16-inch 4K OLED show
• Excellent efficiency
• Useful ASUS dial
• Cool and quiet operation

Cons

• SD Express card reader
• Needs an additional USB-A port

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

A key function of all of the Studiobook gadgets is the businesslike appears which can be far-off from ASUS’s gaming designs. To that finish, it has a primary black, square-edged physique with the one noticeable design contact being the delicate ProArtwork brand on high. It has bezels which can be moderately small however not what I’d name skinny, and isn’t the lightest or smallest 16-inch laptop computer on the market. Still, with a .77-inch thickness and 5.28 pound heft, it’s comparatively compact — particularly contemplating that it presents “military-grade durability” (MIL-STD 810H), in response to ASUS.

ASUS has developed an “IceCool Pro” thermal answer that’s supposed to spice up airflow by as much as 16 %, whereas protecting noise ranges under 40 dbA in commonplace cooling mode. It does that by using twin 102-blade followers, six warmth pipes and a number of ducts.

If you want extra punch, you possibly can swap to efficiency mode which boosts energy to 95 watts, or as much as 135 watts in “full-speed” mode. Fan noise continues to be cheap in efficiency mode until you’re doing GPU/CPU intensive chores, however the full-speed setting can get very loud certainly. Still, it could possibly be a useful mode in case you’re planning to go away the room whereas doing a render. Overall, warmth and noise are very nicely 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 count on, it’s sharp, vibrant and exquisite in particular person — 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 colour accuracy, with a delta E of lower than two, a undeniable fact that I confirmed with my X-Rite i1 Display Pro calibrator. I used it with a $4,000 ASUS mini-LED ProArtwork monitor and regardless of the show expertise variations, they matched very intently to my eyes, colour clever.

The true 10-bit panel presents 100% DCI-P3 colour protection, in workstation laptop computer territory and nicely past rivals just like the MacBook Pro (78 %) and Dell’s XPS 15 (85 %). Along with the colour accuracy, that enables for exact colour correction controls in apps like DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Lightroom Classic. The 1,000,000:1 distinction ratio with inky OLED blacks additionally makes it preferrred for content material creation, with a aspect profit that it’s the perfect leisure laptop computer I’ve ever used.

Given that the show is appropriate for colour correction, ASUS ought to have maybe included a solution to simply change the colour profile for video enhancing ( Rec.709, DCI-P3 and so forth) or photographs (AdobeRGB, sRGB). That could possibly be a useful setting within the Creator Hub, for instance, or no less than as an .icm profile for Windows Color Management.

You can crank the brightness as much as 550 nits in HDR mode, so it conforms to VESA’s DisplayHDR True Black 500 commonplace for OLED shows — very vivid certainly for a laptop computer show. However, it’s nicely in need of the 1,600 nits peak brightness obtainable on the newest MacBook Pros, 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 different attention-grabbing function is the ProArtwork Dial. I wouldn’t blame you for pondering it’s a gimmick, because it takes up house and provides complexity. Also, comparable management surfaces can look cool however typically find yourself in drawers, by no means for use.

This one has a number of issues in its favor, although. It feels good because of the textured grip, easy rotation and clicky detents. Mainly, although, it’s simply handy because it’s situated immediately under the keyboard. In that approach, it makes extra sense than one thing like Microsoft’s Surface Dial or an exterior management floor, as these are often positioned exterior simple grabbing distance.

With no apps loaded, you should use the dial to show up the sound or enhance monitor brightness extra simply than utilizing the operate keys. To profit from it, although, you really want Adobe’s Creative 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. Pressing it once more on the comb menu, as an illustration, opens sub-options for hardness, move, opacity and extra. Premiere and After Effects have comparable customized menus.

If the inventory menus gained’t do, you possibly can go into the ASUS ProArtwork Creator Hub software program. There, you possibly can reprogram the features the way in which you’d favor through drop-down menus. As it stands now, the dial solely helps 4 Adobe apps: Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects and Lightroom Classic. As somebody who makes use of different apps, notably DaVinci Resolve, I’m hoping ASUS will add extra down the highway.

I’ve used management surfaces prior to now as a part of my former video editor profession, however I haven’t been an enormous fan of them on PCs. However, after making an attempt the ASUS dial with Photoshop and Premiere Pro, I received 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. Before lengthy, it was second nature and sped up my workflow.

Moving to the entrance of the laptop computer, the trackpad is easy, 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 commonplace, which incorporates its personal. That permits 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), nevertheless it’s good to have it there.

The keyboard has first rate journey and a pleasant quantity of spring again, and presents a separate quantity pad that’s good to have. However, the complete keyboard is shifted upwards greater than regular and the keys are maybe a contact small, as a result of the ASUS dial successfully will increase the house between the touchpad and keyboard. I received 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 sweet, because it means that you can 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 a variety of screens solely work with that commonplace. However, on condition that creators typically join tons of devices, I might have favored to see an additional USB-A port or two, although.

It’s good that ASUS integrated a bleeding edge SD Express card slot that may learn knowledge from supported playing cards at an superior 985 MB/s. There’s a reasonably big downside, although. If 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 a substitute of 300 MB/s. Since no cameras assist SD Express but, I’d reasonably have seen a regular UHS-II slot. (Hopefully that may change, as Sony, Nikon and Canon are a part of the SD Express consortium.)

For sound, ASUS integrated an audiophile-grade ESS Sabre DAC, promising decrease distortion and expanded dynamic vary. There are solely a pair of audio system reasonably than 4 or extra like on some current laptops. However, they’re nicely above common for a laptop computer like this, with first rate mid-range sound and acceptable backside finish. Other options embrace a fingerprint reader on the ability button together with a top-mounted IR HD webcam with Windows Hello assist and a privateness shutter.

Now, let’s discuss efficiency. The top-end ProArtwork StudioBook OLED 16 I’m testing makes use of the RTX 3070 cell GPU, reasonably than the top-end RTX 3080. I don’t have an issue with that, as an RTX 3080 wouldn’t pace up artistic apps a lot and provides value and warmth. Everything else is high-end, although. It’s received AMD’s high cell 8-core Ryzen 5900HX chip, 32GB of RAM, and two terabytes of NVME storage in Raid 0. It presently comes with Windows 10 Pro, however ASUS will supply Windows 11 upgrades early subsequent yr.

I ran the ProArtwork StudioBook by our regular 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, notably 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 can’t be overstated how a lot that helps disk-intensive apps like Premiere Pro.

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

For occasion, it hit 938 on the PugetBench DaVinci Resolve prolonged total check, a end result that stacked up with many desktop machines. Other 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 Pro, scoring 698 on the PugetBench Premiere Pro Standard check, in comparison with 821 for the MacBook.

Gaming shouldn’t be this laptop computer’s raison d’être, however I did some anyway, and it acquitted itself fantastically with Cyberpunk 2077, Destiny 2 and different titles. Frame charges had been first rate for 4K laptop computer gaming, although I wanted to knock the element settings nicely again. The 4K display is a limiting issue, in fact, due to the 60Hz refresh fee.

Synthetic benchmarks and gaming are fantastic, however creativity laptops must show themselves at work, too. To that finish, I edited a digital camera evaluation video for the laptop computer utilizing DaVinci Resolve 17.2, and this video on the newest model of Premiere Pro. I additionally dipped into Photoshop, After Effects and Lightroom.

Again, the ProArtwork Studiobook acquitted itself with honors, providing fluid 4K enhancing, even with GPU-intensive digital camera codecs. I used to be capable of export 4K movies at practically 300 % real-time pace in Resolve (NVIDIA encoder, MP4, 4K, 12,000 Kbps max knowledge fee), with colour correction, textual content and different mild results on practically each shot.

For a desktop-replacement laptop computer that may typically 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 shopping and work chores — wonderful contemplating the 4K show. The AMD Ryzen 9 chip’s effectivity probably helps so much right here.

That beats most 4K PC laptops, except for Dell’s XPS 15 OLED mannequin that would go over 9 hours between prices. However, it will get stomped by the $2,500 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max, which lasted a ridiculous 16 hours and 34 minutes in our checks. Yes, that mannequin has barely decrease display decision, nevertheless it lasted over 2.5 instances longer.

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

In the tip, is the ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED laptop computer price getting over rival artistic fashions or a comparably geared up gaming laptop computer? Without a doubt.

It’s not simply quick, however easy and dependable throughout artistic chores — and the “reliable” half is essential for production-oriented laptops. It handles 4K enhancing and huge photographs with out getting overly scorching and noisy. It’s not even a foul gaming machine, although the 60Hz 4K display isn’t preferrred 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 presents a greater spec checklist than any rival artistic laptops until you’re keen to go approach up in worth. And don’t neglect that the StudioBook has options not discovered on any laptop computer, artistic or in any other case, just like the 16-inch 4K OLED show and ProArtwork dial.

The MacBook Pro fashions with the M1 Pro and M1 Max CPUs are making issues extra fascinating for potential artistic laptop computer patrons. They’re rather more aggressive than the Intel MacBook Pros, as they’re sooner, quieter and have longer battery life. However, 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 basically). More on that quickly in an upcoming Upscaled.

Still, for the cash, the ASUS ProArtwork Studiobook 16 OLED is the perfect Windows 10 content material creation laptop computer you may get proper now. I haven’t been enthusiastic about too many laptops currently, however I can’t suggest this mannequin sufficient.