Asus ProArt P16 review: the MacBook Pro rival I’ve wanted

I reviewed one of many first laptops working AMD’s newest Ryzen AI 9 chipset, the Asus ProArt PX13, and located it to be very quick for a 13-inch machine. Whereas the Ryzen AI 9 has “AI” proper there in its identify, it’s onerous to measure the chipset’s most hyped-up characteristic: its Neural Processing Unit (NPU) that’s the quickest amongst present chipsets.

Due to this fact, in reviewing the bigger ProArt P16 with the identical chipset and with a quicker GPU, I’m specializing in what non-gaming 16-inch laptops are most frequently made for: artistic functions with just a little gaming on the facet. By these requirements, the ProArt P16 is a really compelling possibility within the giant laptop computer area immediately — though, not the best possible.

Specs and configurations

The ProArt P16 is constructed across the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset and a 4K+ OLED show. With 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, it prices $1,900. Upgrading to the RTX 4070 prices $400, whereas upgrading RAM to 64GB and storage to 2TB boosts the value to $2,700.

That’s costlier than the Dell XPS 16‘s $1,500 base mannequin with an Intel Core Extremely 7 155H CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, a Full HD+ IPS show, and Intel Arc graphics. However, while you come near matching the ProArt P16’s base mannequin, the XPS 16 prices much more at $2,700. And the high-end XPS 16 is $3,300 for a similar configuration because the ProArt 16’s high-end mannequin at $2,700. A extra aggressive laptop computer is the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 that begins at $1,480 for a Core Extremely 7, 16GB of RAM, an RTX 4050, and a 3.2K IPS show. Its $2,100 high-end configuration intently matches the Asus’s base mannequin, solely with a lower-resolution 3.2K OLED show.

Lastly, the MacBook Pro 16 is significantly costlier, beginning at $2,499 for an M3 Professional chipset, 18GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and the usual 16-inch mini-LED show. With near the identical RAM and storage, the MacBook is $2,899, so greater than the ProArt P16 at $2,300. On the excessive finish with an M3 Max chipset, 128GB of RAM, and 8TB of storage, the MacBook prices a whopping $7,199.

The purpose is that the ProArt P16 is loads of laptop for much less cash than its principal competitors, no less than when equally configured. It and the Yoga Professional 9i 16 are fairly inexpensive laptops for creators.

Design

From the all-black chassis and lid to the keyboard nestled between two giant speaker grilles to the big touchpad taking on all out there area on the palm relaxation, the ProArt P16 resembles the MacBook Professional 16 greater than another laptop computer. It’s not an ideal match — the MacBook is blockier and doesn’t have the identical angles and features because the ProArt P16.

Nevertheless it’s apparent which laptop computer the ProArt P16 is attempting to emulate, and that even features a coating on the black colorway to offer it a sheen just like the MacBook’s House Black model. The Dell XPS 16 appears much more trendy, particularly while you open the lid, however there are similarities there, too.

They’re very near the identical dimension in width, top, and thickness, with related show bezels, however the MacBook Professional 16 is significantly heavier and so feels so much denser. The XPS 16 is barely thicker and as heavy because the MacBook. It, too, feels extra dense. The ProArt P16 subsequently appears just a little simpler to lug round, however none of those machines is extremely transportable. The Lenovo Yoga Professional 9i 16 is price mentioning right here as properly, and it’s barely bigger and thicker than the ProArt P16 whereas being barely lighter than the MacBook Professional 16 and XPS 16.

One other factor that every machine shares is a top quality construct. You’re spending some severe cash for every one, and in order that’s precisely what you must count on. Out of this group, although, the ProArt P16 is available in final place. Whereas its backside lid and keyboard deck are inflexible sufficient, the lid is a bit versatile. Often, Asus laptops are among the many most strong, so I discovered that just a little disappointing. It’s not egregiously dangerous or something. It’s simply that after you deal with the MacBook Professional 16 and XPS 16 specifically, the Asus feels just a little flimsier.

Keyboard, touchpad, and DialPad

The ProArt P16’s keyboard is so much like that of the MacBook Professional 16 and XPS 16, a regular format with no numeric keypad (discovered on some bigger machines) nestled in between giant speaker grilles. It’s a ok keyboard with giant keycaps and adequate spacing, in addition to switches which might be snappy and exact. I do just like the MacBook’s Magic Keyboard a bit higher, however most customers will discover the Asus keyboard to be greater than ok. The XPS 16’s zero-lattice keyboard takes extra getting used to. I’d price the Yoga Professional 9i 16’s keyboard as roughly equal to the ProArt P16’s.

The massive mechanic touchpad is simply OK. Its button clicks are assured and quiet, and it’s responsive sufficient. However the MacBook’s Power Contact haptic touchpad is so much higher, with extra configurability and the power to “click on” anyplace on its very giant floor. The XPS 16 has a superb haptic touchpad that suffers a bit from being hidden, and the Yoga Professional 9i 16 once more matches the ProArt 16 with its personal mechanical touchpad. Notice to Asus right here: premium laptops deserve good haptic touchpads.

The place the Asus differs most is within the DialPad that’s mainly a round indentation within the touchpad with an embedded button. It really works with a wide range of apps so as to add one other solution to work together. I’d say it’s only a gimmick, besides Asus contains the ProArt Creator Hub utility that permits a bunch of helpful performance. Customers can management the laptop computer’s colours to an uncommon diploma, together with adjusting Pantone values to extremely customizable shade efficiency. Different instruments allow environment friendly artistic work, just like the Work Good perform, numerous efficiency optimization instruments, and several other Asus artistic apps. It’s apparent that Asus has gone to nice lengths to make the ProArt P16 greater than only a generic creator’s laptop computer.

Connectivity and webcam

The ProArt P16 has a barely odd mixture of ports. To start with, it makes use of USB4 as its quickest connection versus Thunderbolt 4 (given the AMD chipset), which might be superb besides solely one of many two USB-C ports assist the quicker and extra succesful customary. That’s disappointing and just a little shocking — even the smaller ProArt PX13 has two USB4 ports. In any other case, there are some legacy ports and a full-size SD card reader. The MacBook Professional 16 has three Thunderbolt 4 ports and a full-size SD card reader, whereas the XPS 16 with the RTX 4070 has two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a microSD card reader. The Yoga Professional 9i has related connectivity to the ProArt P16. Asus inbuilt totally up-to-date wi-fi connectivity.

The webcam is a 1080p model with an infrared digicam for Home windows 11 Whats up facial recognition. The NPU helps the fundamental model of Microsoft Studio Results for AI-assisted background blurring and different results.

Efficiency

I reviewed the identical AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset within the Asus ProArt PX13, a 13-inch laptop computer that goals to supply wonderful efficiency in a extremely transportable package deal. The ProArt PX13 succeeds in that effort, whereas elevating the query of what Asus might do with the identical chipset in a a lot bigger chassis with much more room for higher thermals. The ProArt P16’s design definitely qualifies, with three followers, Liquid Metallic, a mud filter, and some different parts that promise quicker efficiency. In fact, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 does its half as properly, with 12 cores and 24 threads working at as much as 5.1GHz with a default thermal design energy (TDP) of 28 watts and a TDP vary of 15 watts to 54 watts.

In our suite of benchmarks, the ProArt P16 does very properly. It’s aggressive with laptops working Intel’s 45W Core Extremely 9 185H with 16 cores and 22 threads working at as much as the identical 5.1GHz. And it’s quicker than laptops working the 28-watt Core Extremely 7 155H with the identical variety of cores and working at as much as 4.8GHz. These are the most well-liked Intel chipsets in immediately’s 16-inch laptops, and searching completely at CPU-intensive benchmarks like Geekbench 6, Handbrake, and the CPU portion of Cinebench R24, the brand new AMD chipset is barely quicker.

Notably, the ProArt P16 scored the quickest outcomes we’ve seen within the PCMark 10 Full benchmark that measures productiveness and creativity efficiency, at 7,757. The following closest laptop computer was the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 with an older Ryzen 9 8945HS chip at 7,623, and shut behind that was the ProArt PX13 at 7,540 with the identical AMD chipset because the P16. Most laptops we’ve examined not too long ago rating between 5,500 and seven,000 on the check. That makes the ProArt P16 an extremely quick laptop computer for normal makes use of.

The ProArt P16 makes good use of its Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, extra so than the Dell XPS 16 and the Alienware m16 R2. That reveals up within the GPU portion of Cinebench R24 and the PugetBench for Premiere Professional benchmark that runs in a reside model of Adobe Premiere Professional. That software makes use of the GPU in Home windows laptops to hurry up numerous video-editing duties. Right here, the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9i 16 does properly with its RTX 4060 that needs to be just a little slower. Apparently, the smaller ProArt PX13 with an RTX 4050 does very properly towards the ProArt P16 — I don’t know if that’s severe kudos to the PX13 or a slight knock towards the P16.

The Apple MacBook Professional 16 working the M3 Max chipset with 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores is far quicker throughout the board. The M3 chipsets have CPU optimizations which might be even quicker at video encoding and decoding, which impacts the PugetBench benchmark. However the M3 Max GPU remains to be so much quicker than the RTX 4070s within the comparability group.

Finally, the ProArt P16 is a really quick 16-inch laptop computer that does properly towards its major competitors. The MacBook Professional 16 with the M3 Max chipset is significantly quicker, but it surely’s additionally much more costly; the M3 Professional model shall be nearer in each worth and efficiency.

Gaming efficiency

In case you purchase a laptop computer with an RTX 4070, likelihood is you’ll wish to run some video games. The ProArt P16 makes use of Nvidia’s Studio Drivers, that are optimized for artistic and different functions and never a lot for gaming, however they are often swapped out for the Sport Prepared drivers if desired.

I ran each the 3DMark Time Spy check and the in-game benchmarks of some titles. Throughout the board, the ProArt P16 did properly sufficient to play fairly trendy video games at 1600p and excessive graphics. Probably the most up to date titles would possibly decelerate a bit except you flip the graphics down or run at 1080p, however general, the ProArt P16 is a fairly robust gaming laptop computer.

Due to this fact, if you’d like a quick artistic machine that may sometimes play the most recent video games, then the ProArt P16 is an excellent possibility.

AI efficiency

As I’ve famous in all of my latest evaluations of laptops touting superior AI efficiency, it’s just about unimaginable to guage any of the varied claims. As famous above, the AMD chipset actually has “AI” within the identify, and certainly, its NPU runs at a number one 50 tera operations per second (TOPS). That compares to the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Arm chipset’s 45 TOPS, Intel’s Core Extremely at 10 TOPS, and the Apple M3 Neural Engine at 18 TOPS. The upcoming M4, at the moment solely out there within the newest iPad Professional, will carry Apple’s quantity to 38 TOPS.

However these numbers pale compared to a discrete GPU’s efficiency at working AI duties, such because the RTX 4070 that Nvidia charges at 466 TOPS. The NPUs are meant for dashing up on-device AI whereas utilizing much less power. They’re all about effectivity, not efficiency.

So, which laptops are quicker at AI? We simply don’t know. And we don’t know as a result of there aren’t any benchmarks that enable us to instantly — and objectively — examine them. The one factor we are able to say is that Intel Core Extremely laptops will doubtless be the slowest, AMD Ryzen AI laptops would be the quickest (however not by a lot), with Apple’s M4 and Qualcomm chipsets coming in between. And Qualcomm laptops are the one ones at the moment supporting Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC initiative that touts AI options, however really doesn’t provide a lot to put in writing house about. Actually, there are nearly no present AI options that we are able to level on to as being sped up by both an NPU, a GPU, or each.

Battery life

The ProArt P16 has a 90 watt-hour battery, a quick chipset, and a power-hungry 4K+ OLED show. Few 16-inch laptops get first rate battery life, and I wasn’t actually anticipating a lot from the Asus.

Because it seems, the ProArt P16 did pretty properly. It managed round 8.5 hours in our web-browsing check and 11 hours in our video-looping check. That’s roughly equal to common battery life throughout all of the laptops we’ve examined, and it’s higher than many 16-inch machines. For instance, the XPS 16 did a lot worse at simply 5.5 hours in each assessments, and the Yoga Professional 9i 16 went for six hours and 9.5 hours, respectively. The MacBook Professional 16, then again, is likely one of the most effective laptops you should purchase immediately at a large 19.5 hours and 27 hours, respectively.

That makes the ProArt P16 a fairly long-lasting creators’ workstation. It gained’t final very lengthy when working onerous, although. For instance, it shut down in simply 1.5 hours when working Cinebench 2024 (and it slows down significantly when on battery energy). However that’s frequent throughout all laptops.

Show and audio

The ProArt P16 has one show possibility, a 4K+ (3840 x 2400) OLED show working at 60Hz. It’s extremely sharp and appears spectacular out of the field, with OLED’s common dynamic colours and inky blacks. The refresh price is a bit behind the curve, the place increasingly more mainstream shows are working at 120Hz.

In keeping with my colorimeter, this is a superb show for creators. It’s vivid sufficient at 359 nits, which isn’t as vivid as another latest shows which might be nearer to 400 nits or extra. Nevertheless it’s nonetheless brighter than our ageing baseline of 300 nits, and it is going to be nice except you’re working in vivid daylight. Its colours are extremely broad at 100% of sRGB, 98% of AdobeRGB, and 100% of DCI-P3, which is likely one of the finest mixture of scores I’ve seen. Coloration accuracy is superb at a DeltaE of 1.0 (that outcome and decrease is indistinguishable to the human eye). And distinction is extremely excessive at 25,110:1 with near-perfect blacks.

Merely put, you’ll love this show. It’s probably the greatest you’ll discover immediately on a 16-inch creator’s laptop computer. Solely avid gamers is likely to be a bit dissatisfied with the refresh price.

Just like the MacBook Professional 16, the ProArt P16 has a six-speaker sound system, with two tweeters and 4 woofers. The audio is Harmon Kardon licensed and presents Dolby Atmos assist. Asus talks so much concerning the “5.25X louder sound” and “zero distortion” afforded by the sensible amplifier. The MacBook Professional 16 has arguably the most effective audio in a laptop computer immediately, so I hoped that Asus managed to supply one thing related in a Home windows laptop computer.

I can confidently say that the ProArt P16’s audio will get as loud because the MacBook’s, and just like the MacBook, it has much more bass than most laptops. Mids and highs are good and clear as properly. Nevertheless, when pushed to the restrict, there was appreciable distortion — belying Asus’s claims on this regard.

I might do away with it by turning down the amount, however then it wasn’t fairly as spectacular. Total, I’d say the ProArt P16 has among the finest audio in a Home windows laptop computer, however the MacBook Professional 16 retains its high spot.

A MacBook Professional rival performed proper

I just like the ProArt P16, so much. It’s quick, fairly well-built, and has a drop-dead beautiful OLED show. In all probability the one different Home windows laptop computer I’ve reviewed that comes shut is the Yoga Professional 9i 16, and I’d be hard-pressed to decide on between these two given their general worth and efficiency. On the very least, I’ll say that the ProArt P16’s OLED show is healthier than the Lenovo’s mini-LED panel.

The MacBook Professional 16 will be configured to be so much quicker, and it’s higher constructed. However you’ll should spend significantly extra to get a greater laptop computer than the ProArt 16. For Home windows creators, the ProArt 16 could be very simple to suggest. And the brand new AMD Ryzen AI 9 is a really quick chipset that competes properly towards the most effective that Intel has to supply.