Turn your creative vision into reality with the ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED studio laptop: it pushes every boundary to give you the effortless creative experience you’ve always wanted, but never thought possible. With a certified color-accurate 16-inch 4K OLED HDR 16:10 display, up to a breathtakingly powerful Intel core i7 processor, pro-grade NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics, huge amounts of memory, advanced ultrafast storage, superb I/O connectivity, and ultra-precise fingertip control over your creative apps with the groundbreaking new ASUS Dial, ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED is simply the best creator laptop we’ve ever made.

RTINGS

Our pick for the best Windows mobile workstation is the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED (2021). This feature-rich laptop has a well-calibrated 4k OLED display with full sRGB and DCI P3 coverage, making it suitable for color-critical work. It gets bright enough for use in most indoor settings and has decent viewing angles, so you can easily share your work with colleagues. You get a keyboard that feels amazing to type on, a large and responsive touchpad, and a customizable dial that you can customize to perform various functions, like navigating a video's timeline or changing a brush or color while photo editing. Its outstanding port selection includes two USB-As, two USB-Cs/Thunderbolt 4, an HDMI 2.1, an SD card reader, and an Ethernet port.

Configuration-wise, you can spec this laptop with an Intel 11th Gen Core or Xeon CPU and an NVIDIA RTX A3000 or A5000 discrete GPU. These CPUs and GPUs are powerful enough to handle demanding workloads like video editing and 3D graphics. However, they're power-hungry, so you can expect the battery to last only an hour or so when performing intensive tasks. Another downside is that this laptop is rather bulky, making it hard to carry around. The memory and storage drive are user-replaceable, meaning you can upgrade it yourself later on.

amazon.com

rtings.com

pcmag.com

Engadget

TechteamGB

MOBHouse

RICH Photography

S-LAB SSCHNITTLABOR

LaptopMedia

Ben G Kaiser

 Now with the Asus ProArt range it's nothing like any other laptop that you've used before. The Asus ProArt design is really exclusive and unique to what they create and this can be seen across with their ProArt display. The surface has a great feel, it doesn't show fingerprints too much. Even the arrow keys and the keyboard have a little different design just to make feeling them a little easier and the keyboard even has a number pad on the side

 But first let me tell you something, the Asus ProArt unboxing experience is truly one of a kind. It really gives you this premium classic feel, you know something that hasn't just been kind of done over the top. It's very thought out and they've thought about the creator in mind and what creatives appreciate. So first let's start with build quality and design

 It's very thought out and they've thought about the creator in mind and what creatives appreciate. So first let's start with build quality and design. Now with the Asus ProArt range it's nothing like any other laptop that you've used before. The Asus ProArt design is really exclusive and unique to what they create and this can be seen across with their ProArt display

 Now the specs of the Asus ProArt are quite honestly insane. However the display is where I'm going to start because when you open this laptop and you see that display you would literally want to buy it from that point. It's the world's first 16 inch 4k OLED 16 by 10 HDR display. Honestly this is where ProArt changes compared to the competition it's a very very niche laptop directed for creatives and it's something that needs to be appreciated in the industry because a lot of us are always out there trying to get extra third-party products to help us along our journey and Asus is right there knocking on the door saying hey we've got a whole product that works and if that wasn't enough that little trackpad yeah they just made it work with the stylus too

ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 | How fast is it really?

 Alright, so whatever you know about Asus up until now, forget it, this is on a whole new level.

 So this is the Asus ProArt StudioBook 16. It's a 16 inch OLED laptop and I'm going to run you

 through some of the specs, a real world test and just kind of give you the rundown on this machine

 because honestly that's exactly what this is. This is a machine. So if it's your first time here and

 you're wondering what is Asus ProArt and what is this whole ProArt thing, basically Asus has the

 technology to create gaming laptops as you know, put in immense amount of computer power into a

 small compact device but at the same time creators and creatives and 3D designers and video editors

 and photographers, we need that power too. And that's when ProArt was born. When I get into the

 real world test I am going to give it a proper real world test. In other words, 5.7k 60 frames

 per second 10 bit footage. Just to see if we can light it up. But first let me tell you something,

 the Asus ProArt unboxing experience is truly one of a kind. It really gives you this premium classic

 feel, you know something that hasn't just been kind of done over the top. It's very thought out

 and they've thought about the creator in mind and what creatives appreciate. So first let's start

 with build quality and design. Now with the Asus ProArt range it's nothing like any other laptop

 that you've used before. The Asus ProArt design is really exclusive and unique to what they create

 and this can be seen across with their ProArt display. The surface has a great feel, it doesn't

 show fingerprints too much. Even the arrow keys and the keyboard have a little different design

 just to make feeling them a little easier and the keyboard even has a number pad on the side.

 And then we have the ports. Now I think quite a few manufacturers that are dedicated to creators

 could start taking quite a few notes from Asus ProArt. On the one side you have an SD Express

 7.0 card reader, an audio jack, USB 3.2 Gen 2 and an RJ45 LAN port. The other side has a standard

 security lock, another USB 3.2 Gen 2, DCM, HDMI 2.1, Thunderbolt 4 USB-C and another USB-C 3.2.

 Now just before I get into the specs on the inside and you might have seen that little Asus style,

 I haven't forgotten about it and I'm going to get to that shortly. Now the specs of the Asus

 ProArt are quite honestly insane. However the display is where I'm going to start because when

 you open this laptop and you see that display you would literally want to buy it from that point.

 It's the world's first 16 inch 4k OLED 16 by 10 HDR display. It has a peak brightness of 550 nits

 3840 by 2400 pixels, tiny bezels, 100% DCI-P3, Pantone certified, Kalman verified. I'll even

 give it the rich verified. You see that there? That is the Asus ProArt display. When I first

 got that display was leaps and bounds ahead of everything else that I had looked at. This display

 on the ProArt studio book is even better than that and that is saying a lot. Also side by side

 pairing an Asus ProArt studio book with a ProArt display like that it's truly a professional look

 and feel. And yes you can do the one USB-C cable charge and dual display that everybody wants so

 you don't have to worry about too many wires. And then right up there there's a webcam and yes it

 has a webcam shield. Then you have the specs. Now the model I sent over for review has the Intel Xeon

 2.6GHz processor, 64GB DDR4, 3200MHz of RAM, the RTX A3000 graphics card from Nvidia and you can

 go up to 4TB SSD storage which is 2TB PCI-EX4 and 2TB PCI-3X4. You know what? Besides for confusing

 you with all the specs on the SSD let me tell you this. It has up to 7000MB per second

 transfer speed so basically it's taking SATA 3 and making it look like a floppy disk. Now remember

 I told you about that HDMI 2.1 port on the one side? Well that port allows you to do 10k, 60Hz

 and 120Hz. So yeah you can put in a 120Hz 10k display connected to your studio book. You also

 have sound by Harman Kardon and DTS and no I'm not joking this list just keeps going on and on and I

 could probably never tell you everything that is in this laptop. Now as far as I know Asus is launching

 kind of three segments with this pro art studio book range which is namely premium mainstream and

 value. Now the model that I have falls in the mainstream segment so by no means is this model

 the fastest model that you can buy. Now just before I get into the real world test I do want

 to give you a little bit more of an off the cuff things that I don't find just fell into categories

 of specs. Hear me out. The new Asus dial. Now not too long ago when I reviewed the pro art and I've

 had quite a few Asus laptops they had that little screen pad 2.0 and I still kind of left my opinion

 on it that I thought it was great but something wasn't really right yet especially when it came

 to creators and Asus now just dropped this Asus dial and honestly if you've worked in Lightroom

 or Premiere Pro or you've ever worked with a dial this thing is mind-blowing. The fact that you can

 just toggle settings in Lightroom and just kind of switch to what you want if you want to adjust

 your highlights and just scroll the wheel and tap it and go back and go to your contrast whatever

 it may be it's perfect and something that only after a while of actually using it that you'd

 find out is a little thing like this. If you tap it and you move into contrast and you turn the

 wheel let's say contrast is one of the things that you usually use as a setting and you carry

 on working with your mouse the little Asus dial icon disappears on the screen and as soon as you

 turn it again because you've never moved out of contrast it just automatically goes into contrast

 again and you continue turning it. So if you very into adjusting let's say for instance your timeline

 on Premiere Pro yes it pretty much works with like four or five different Adobe apps you could

 always leave it in that setting and just literally turn it and expand your timeline or scrub on your

 timeline so that you don't have to go in and out and switch between settings it's little things

 like that that make the Asus dial very perfect. Now you may have noticed there are three buttons

 on the trackpad and if you're wondering well you've got left click right click what is the

 middle one well if you're a 3D designer and you work in that 3D design kind of space if you want

 to pan rotate or orbit you can literally hold that button down and if you're working in 3D software

 you can utilize that just to kind of on the fly just go and do your thing. Honestly this is where

 ProArt changes compared to the competition it's a very very niche laptop directed for creatives

 and it's something that needs to be appreciated in the industry because a lot of us are always

 out there trying to get extra third-party products to help us along our journey and Asus is right

 there knocking on the door saying hey we've got a whole product that works and if that wasn't

 enough that little trackpad yeah they just made it work with the stylus too. So enough with all

 the talking let's get to the real world test because if the real world test can't impress

 me well then I wouldn't be recommending this to you would I? So check this out so first things

 first we're going to do a real world test on photos and then video. So for photos I took 100

 raw images 36 megapixels each photo and applied different settings exposure contrast etc. However

 all images had to have sharpness and noise reduction applied. As you know working in Lightroom

 once you apply sharpness and noise reduction it really accentuates the time and pretty much

 ignites your laptop into a burning fire just due to the processing power that it consumes to sharpen

 and noise reduce raw photos especially when they're 36 megapixels. Then we decided to export it and

 time it. We exported 100 images in 4 minutes and 28 seconds. Now that is blistering fast. Okay so

 I can do photos what about video? What about 4k video? I'm not even going to go into HD because

 I believe anything should be able to do HD footage. So we threw in 4k video and we basically created

 a 1 minute 21 minute 30 video full of color adjustments and a bit of sharpness applied

 to the video clips. Now firstly we scrubbed on the timeline at a one-to-one preview. Now it's

 been quite a while since I've played on good windows laptops that have been able to scrub

 one-to-one previews in Adobe Premiere Pro. So fast and so quick after just bringing the footage in

 even after color correcting and it's immediately there and ready to scrub. So what we did was export

 the 4k footage in just normal 4k export as most people would which is a fairly low bitrate. It

 exported it in 55 seconds which is crazy fast but fair enough as a creative we don't really use the

 low bitrate it's pretty much something that normal people do. So what we did was we took the same

 video and upped the bitrate to the max bitrate still export in 4k and we timed it again. The

 export took a total time of 3 minutes and 10 seconds and then we decided to bring in 5.7k

 60 frames per second 10 bit footage of the new Lumix GH6. Now this footage is pretty intensive

 to any system. Immediately we tried to scrub on the timeline and the next minute well what we

 thought was the limit of the pro art studio book was in fact just Adobe Premiere Pro being Adobe

 Premiere Pro. So we closed the application opened it again and immediately started scrubbing on the

 5.7k timeline. Color corrected everything the same length video at a minute 20 minute 30 and just

 decided to go full and export it at its max bitrate on 5.7k and it took 7 minutes and 11 seconds.

PC makers have been catering to creative professionals in recent years with a growing number of special designs, and the Asus ProArt Studiobook 16 is a great new example. (It starts at $1,599.99; our OLED H5600 model is $2,399.99 as tested

 The keys do seem a bit small for a laptop this size, which may take some adjustment, but at least there's a clear reason: The physical dial (which we'll discuss in detail below) takes up some of the vertical space.&nbsp;The keyboard is shifted slightly upward, too, so it may feel as if you're reaching for the keys at first. It's not a deal-breaker, but it's odd that a keyboard feels somewhat cramped on a 16-inch laptop.

While it trounced the Alienware gaming rig, you can see that the Studiobook's battery life is just okay, short of its rivals by a good few hours and less than what we'd call all-day stamina. Six hours is still better than two or three, but it won't get you through a full workday. With gaming and media creation, any real workload is better done on AC power, but you should be able to use this system on the road as needed, though both its weight and its battery life argue against it.

We test laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

Asus ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED (H5600) Review

 But because the GPU is still kind of running in the background for some tasks, displaying images on the screen, what we see is a diminished battery life. Still great for a 16 inch laptop with a big, bright color accurate screen. But I think we could get even more potential battery life out of this laptop with an IGPU mode. This is still my favorite laptop of 2021 heading into 2022

 But I think we could get even more potential battery life out of this laptop with an IGPU mode. This is still my favorite laptop of 2021 heading into 2022. It is such a fantastic bang for buck laptop with the dial, the performance, the color accurate screen, the styling and the battery life. It's a great price point for a creator focused laptop that actually has innovations that are built for creators

 So what you're seeing here is around $2,400 and you're seeing the entry level MacBook Pro 14 with the M1 Pro for around $2,400. And you can get about 17 hours of battery life with full performance versus the Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro 16 with around anywhere from nine to about down to five hours of battery life, depending on the tasks that you are executing with your laptop. And you're not going to have the full performance of the laptop on battery power. So that's a big issue

 The playback has zero drop frames in BRAW, extremely low drop frames in red footage, something that the MacBook Pro was unable to accomplish. So at the price point, this is a higher performing laptop, but you need to be plugged into power in order to get all that performance. Now, as far as battery life for this unit in general comes, I wish they gave us an IGPU mode like the Republic of Gamer laptops, where you can actually switch off the dedicated GPU, which gives you more battery life. So this laptop with an IGPU mode, I could easily see getting 12 plus hours of battery life on productivity tasks

3 Months Later 🛑 Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro 16

 In this video, I'm going to talk about my three months of experience with the Asus ProArt Studio

 Book Pro 16, both the Ryzen and the Intel Xeon version, and talk about six reasons of why you

 may not want to pick up this laptop, though it is still my favorite laptop of 2021 heading into 2022.

 The first reason is going to be the thermals on the Ryzen version. I did not see below

 90 degrees Celsius for a 4K export out of Premiere Pro on any of the performance settings inside the

 ProArt command center. Now, keep in mind, when I unplugged the laptop, I was able to have

 substantially cooler thermals and lower fan noise. But during plugged in going full speed, trying to

 get as much performance out of this laptop, the thermals and the fan noise were quite obvious.

 However, when I shifted gears towards the Xeon version of the laptop, I had really good thermal

 experiences, especially in performance mode. I saw much lower temperatures and a quieter fan noise.

 Now, for both of these laptops inside of Photoshop, they perform well on performance mode,

 getting 78 degrees Celsius, which for me is a very reasonable temperature for these high performing

 laptops. Thermals are an issue for you. I would lean you towards the Xeon version of this laptop

 and even the Intel i7 version, which I will anticipate having lower thermals than the

 Ryzen 9 5900HX. This has been historically a very hot CPU. And so by going with the Xeon or the core

 processor from Intel, the Xeon being a little bit more expensive, and we'll talk about the pricing

 in one of the reasons in this video, that would be my pick. The second reason you may not want

 to consider this laptop is the LED screen, the OLED screen that it comes with. Though this is a

 fantastic screen with great brightness, color gamut range, and color accuracy, people are concerned

 with the OLED screen having burn-in. And this personally is not an issue to me and a lot of

 other creators. I recently talked to Jared's tech and he said OLED really wasn't a concern to him

 because he's not using the laptop to display like a picture on the wall. He's constantly doing

 different things within the laptop. Now, another concern of the same picture being presented on

 the laptop could be the wallpaper screen saver. I've had the same screen saver on my laptop for

 probably over a year. And if you want to avoid the burn-in fear, I would have your wallpaper set on

 auto rotate. But OLED burn-in still seems to be one of the biggest concerns when I talk about

 these laptops. I'm not personally really concerned about it. I think it would be totally fine. So

 comment below if that's a concern to you. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that topic. Now,

 one of the biggest reasons that I would consider avoiding this laptop would be the track pad and

 manual click buttons. Because of the ProArt dial, which I think is a fantastic addition to this

 laptop and probably one of the most innovative things for creative professionals on a laptop

 that 2021 brought us, when you combine it with the manual click buttons, it just doesn't have

 a smooth workflow. A lot of times I felt like when I was using the dial, I had to have my hand in a

 specific position to then click the left click button rather than having my hand somewhere else

 on the track pad and just doing a depression of the track pad and making a nice solid click like

 on a standard track pad from the G15, the M16, et cetera. I personally think this is not a good

 track pad for somebody like a video editor or somebody using Photoshop. However, if you're

 somebody doing 3D modeling, this has a lot of custom functionality. The center button allows

 you to pan around objects over objects. It really gives you a lot of customization on working around

 the environment of the software, but I didn't find that advantage inside of Premiere Pro or Photoshop.

 So good on you Asus for 3D modelers and this Xeon version of the laptop. Personally, I would have

 stuck the three manual click buttons on the Xeon version and then gone with the singular track pad

 that depresses rather than the click buttons on the other variants of this laptop. The fourth

 reason I would consider not going with this laptop is if you're looking at the Xeon version

 of this laptop, it's around $5,000 give or take when you're watching this video. If you're curious

 about the exact pricing, you can head down in the description below and click those links.

 However, if you pivot towards the ProArt Ryzen version, getting it at 32 gigs of RAM with an

 RTX 3060, you can get this laptop for $2,000, which to me with the performance that it packs

 and the innovation that it has with the dial on the keyboard is a fantastic price point.

 Now, if you want to up this to an RTX 3070 and 64 gigs of RAM, it's around $2,400, which to me is an

 incredible price point. Now, one thing that you have to consider as far as the price point is

 concerned is you could get a Republic of Gamers Strix G15 for around $1,800. You're going to have

 an RTX 3070, you're going to have the Ryzen 9 5900HX, and you're going to have 16 gigs of RAM,

 still fantastic performance. However, you're going to miss out on the ProArt dial, you're going to

 miss out on the super color accurate bright screen that this laptop comes with, and you're going to

 miss out on the really sleek stylings of the ProArt itself, which to me stands out as a creative

 professional is something that is important to me. The design aesthetic is a very nice touch compared

 to the very colorful gaming laptop and all the RGB that it comes with. Now, you may be thinking,

 Ben, that's a substantial savings. $600 is a lot of money. And couldn't you just go ahead and pick

 up like a monogram creative council? And you could, but this is an extra gadget to carry along

 rather than having a complete creator package and efficiency of workflow built into one device,

 which I find very advantageous for the on the go creator. Issue number five, which to me,

 I was surprised by because on the website, they advertise that this is a fingerprint free device.

 You know, you can have your fingers all over it and you won't see a lot of fingerprints.

 I, however, have pretty oily hands. And as you can see, this one was clean. I rubbed my hands on it

 for just a minute here or a couple of seconds and I've already have fingerprints. However,

 if you have a microfiber cloth on you, it cleans up very nice and you're on your way with a good

 clean laptop once again. But I find that this darker color, it gets fingerprints quicker.

 If this was a silver laptop, you probably wouldn't see them at all. And honestly, that's why I think

 a lot of the Mac products have these lighter colors. So they probably are getting fingerprints.

 You just can't see them. And the dark color did show off the fingerprints quite a bit,

 and that could be annoying for some people. Now, the sixth reason that I think this laptop would

 be a concern for some people is at the price point of $2,400, you're right in line with the

Asus ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED vs Apple MacBook Air (2020)

Reviews by Topic

Battery Life

Processor Speed

QUICK QUESTION!

You might also like