Asus ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED (H5600) review: A top-quality 16-inch mobile workstation for creative pros

Cellular workstations will need huge superior-high quality screens and a lot of computing ability. With its ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED, Asus life up to this billing, introducing professional characteristics for dedicated customers of creative apps. Notably, there is certainly a wheel on the keyboard region known as the Asus Dial and graphics pill ability constructed into the touchpad. 

This laptop computer is available with AMD and Intel processors, and I was sent a overview device with a top rated-end AMD Ryzen R9-5900HX processor, discrete Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 graphics, 32GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage. This configuration costs £2,499 (inc. VAT £2,082.fifty ex. VAT). In the US, the ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED (H5600, AMD Ryzen 5000 series) starts at $1,999.99 for a model with a Ryzen R9-5900HX CPU, GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. 

The ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED is massive and major, weighing two.4kg (five.29lbs) and measuring 36.2cm extensive by 26.4cm deep by 1.99-two.14cm thick (fourteen.25in. x ten.39in. x .seventy eight-.84in.). It’ll will need a generously sized bag and some strength to tote close to. The ability adapter is massive as well, so that’ll insert even extra fat to your journey bag. The chassis is thick ample to accommodate an RJ-forty five Ethernet port, along with a superior range of other connectivity selections.

The construct is quite good, with MIL-STD 810H compliance signifying this laptop’s ability to endure knocks and drops. Creative customers needing to journey and/or function in the area should be delighted with this degree of protection. 

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A top rated-notch display screen is essential in a laptop computer built for creative use cases this sort of as photo and movie editing or CAD function, and this Asus supplying is a stunner. The 4K (3,840 x two,four hundred, 283ppi) OLED panel is surprisingly sharp and very clear, and offers 550 nits of peak brightness. It supports a hundred% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and boasts VESA Qualified DisplayHDR Legitimate Black 500 for superior contrast and is Pantone Validated for color reproduction. The 16:ten factor ratio is practical, despite the fact that the huge base bezel feels strangely out of position on a laptop computer with in any other case quite superior-high quality display screen credentials. Asus statements an 85% display screen to system ratio, although we calculated it at 77.7%. 

Audio high quality from the Harman Kardon speakers is fantastic. There is a lot of bass and no distortion, even at top rated volume, which is fairly loud. 

There is an Hd digital camera previously mentioned the display screen with IR support for face authentication by way of Windows Hello. This is superior, but the sliding privacy protect for the digital camera is fairly fiddly. This is not a hard factor to get appropriate, so it truly is perplexing to see Asus fall short right here. 

The keyboard may well not be the key input system for creative customers, but it even now needs to be properly carried out. Keys are huge and their 1.4mm of journey combines with a truthful total of the two resistance and bounce-back again to provide a optimistic typing motion. There is place for a separate selection pad, with keys the exact same measurement as the principal QWERTY array. The arrow keys are also full-measurement and have a diagonal ridged patterning, building them swift and straightforward to find. 

The keyboard is augmented by several creator-particular characteristics. As properly as supporting the typical sweeps and gestures, the touchpad can be employed with a stylus with support for 1,024 force degrees — despite the fact that, sad to say, Asus doesn’t bundle a stylus. The touchpad bucks the trend for built-in buttons, furnishing 3 beneath it. The outer kinds are simple still left- and appropriate-click on buttons, although the central a single can be employed for capabilities in just particular apps — for example to pan, rotate or orbit. 

Then there is certainly the Asus Dial, a rotary regulate that sits in between the keypad and touchpad at the still left end of the room bar. This can be pressed and turned to drive a full range of characteristics that are customisable through an application known as the ProArt Creator Hub. Right here customers can established up in-application capabilities for presses and twists of the dial, enabling faster accessibility to a range of capabilities. Its utility is constrained to particular programs — Asus lists the Adobe’s Photoshop, Lightroom Vintage, Premiere Pro and After Effects as illustrations. 

In the absence of any supported apps, the Asus Dial can be employed to regulate process brightness and speaker volume. It is simple to use: you press to accessibility an on-display screen selections wheel, which scrolls through selections as the dial is rotated press all over again when the picked out alternative is highlighted, and then rotate to range the degree. When you shift your hand absent from the dial, the range is recognised and actioned, and the on-display screen wheel disappears.  

I saw the exact same conference on the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X, but there the Asus Dial is built-in into the touchpad fairly than becoming a standalone element. 

As befits a ability-consumer laptop computer, the ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED has a lot of ports and connectors. There is an SD card reader, and although these are usually fairly slower than external visitors, Asus will make a level of noting that it truly is specified as SD Express 7.. This signifies it is speedy, supporting information transfer speeds up to 985MB/s. This will be of unique desire to all those who will need to transfer huge amounts of information from electronic cameras. 

There is also a full-measurement HDMI port, two USB-A ports and two USB-C ports, additionally an RJ-forty five Gigabit Ethernet port and a 3.5mm combo audio in/out jack. Mains ability connects by way of a round-pin socket, leaving the USB-C ports available for other responsibilities. 

To exam the 90Wh battery, I ran my common mainstream workload — crafting into web apps, with multiple browser windows open up and a combine of audio and movie streaming — for 3 hours, throughout which time the demand degree fell from a hundred% to fifty four%. On a linear extrapolation, that indicates battery existence of close to 6.five hours.

This possibly precludes a full working working day absent from mains ability, in particular if you happen to be employing demanding creative apps fairly than mainstream workloads. Still, it truly is a respectable outcome for a powerful huge-display screen laptop computer like the ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED.

Luckily, charging speed is superior. Having allow the battery drop to 27% I billed for forty five minutes. After fifteen minutes it experienced risen to fifty%, in 50 % an hour it was at 71% and right after the full forty five minutes it experienced bought to 84%.

Conclusions 

For creators, the ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED’s Asus Dial and stylus-supporting touchpad are likely game-changing. The substantial 2TB SSD on my overview device and SD Express 7. accredited card reader also shows determination to customers working with huge portions of information, although superior-end AMD (and Intel) processing ability and Nvidia graphics is extra proof of that ambition. 

This is not a system for mainstream customers, and some may well bemoan the deficiency of a bundled stylus for use with the touchpad. Even so, the Asus ProArt Studiobook 16 sets a superior bar for Windows-based mostly creator laptops. 

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