Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED review: A creator laptop with gaming power

Price When Reviewed

1749.99

Best Prices Today: Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED

$1,699.99

$1699.99

$1799.99

While the 2022 Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED confirmed off a stunning OLED show, however simply dipped a toe within the water for efficiency, the 2023 Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED, by comparability, takes the total plunge, acing each the show and efficiency in equal measure.

Of course, whereas that makes it eminently extra highly effective – the truth is, it’s so highly effective it’s similar to a few of the best gaming laptops of 2023 – there’s one tradeoff: a middling battery life. That’s to not say it isn’t a wonderful laptop computer for creators. In reality, its beneficiant connectivity, and programmable DialPad trackpad, are simply two options that make it among the best choices for artistic professionals in 2023. Read on to seek out out extra…

Looking for extra choices? Check out PCWorld’s roundup of the best laptops accessible proper now.

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED: Specifications

The most just lately launched Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED fashions include an Intel 13th gen i9-13980HX CPU or i9-13900H CPU. Configurations sport varied cellular GeForce RTX GPUs as much as an RTX 4070. A 3.2K decision NanoEdge OLED show with a 120Hz refresh fee offers the visuals.

Looking at costs, and a starter mannequin with an Intel Core i9-13900H and RTX 4050 GPU ships for $1499.99 on Amazon. From there costs rise to $1942.99 for a mannequin with a Core i9-13980HX CPU and GeForce RTX 4070 GPU.

My evaluation unit boasts an RTX 4060 GPU and Core i9-13980HX CPU. This rig prices $1748.99 at Amazon with a regular 16GB RAM put in, nonetheless my unit had an additional 16GB RAM added after it left the store. Its actual specs are as follows:

• CPU: Intel i9-13980HX
• RAM: 32GB DDR5 / 4800MHz
• GPU: Intel UHD + Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060
• Display: 16-inch 3.2K (3200 x 2000) OLED, 120Hz refresh fee, 0.2 millisecond response, non-touch, 16:10 inch side ratio
• Storage: 1TB
• Ports: 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 2 x Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, SD card reader, RJ-45 Ethernet port, 3.5 mm audio combo jack
• Networking: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3,
• Weight: 4.19lbs (2.02kg)
• Dimensions: 13.98 x 9.80 x 0.90 inches
• Battery: 90Whr
• Price: $1,748.99 with 16GB RAM

Looking at how rivals form up for worth, and laptops just like the Lenovo Slim Pro 9i, Dell XPS 15, Acer Swift 16X and Apple MacBook Pro 16, are just some options with quick graphics efficiency and shows correct sufficient for the demanding colour work many creators do.

The Swift 16X and Lenovo Slim Pro 9i are essentially the most inexpensive of those choices, with starter fashions transport for beneath $2000 – the Dell XPS 15 and MacBook Pro 16, by comparability, value upwards of $2,000. From these choices solely the MacBook Pro 16 and the Acer Swift 16X have 16-inch shows massive sufficient to compete with the 16X OLED’s show – the Swift 16X additionally has an OLED show, just like the Asus.

If you wish to exhaust the entire choices accessible before you purchase, related {hardware} may be present in some premium gaming laptops as nicely. For instance, the 2023 Razer Blade 16 may be configured with an RTX 4060 and i9-13950HX CPU on Razer’s web site, however it’ll set you again a cool $2,699.99.

If you go down this path, you’ll be paying for a few of the finest gaming options on provide like a sooner 240Hz refresh fee and better 175W Total Graphics Power… then once more, should you’re an animator or videographer, these extras could be simply what you want.

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED: Design and construct

The 2023 Vivobook Pro 16X OLED’s design is a revamp of the 2022 mannequin’s design which oozed practicality quite than magnificence or model. That meant my black evaluation unit sported a well-known industrial-looking chassis and gray coloured keys. But if that’s not your model, there’s a silver mannequin accessible.

Just like its predecessor, although, I used to be instantly drawn to the laptop computer’s piece de resistance – the attractive 16-inch OLED show. This yr, the show is once more delivered in a delightfully tall 16:10 side ratio. A barely bigger 88 p.c screen-to-body ratio nudges out the 86 p.c ratio we noticed final yr – so that you get marginally larger visuals.

Not that the 2022 mannequin was heavy at 4.30 kilos, however Asus has managed to drop the burden down even additional to 4.19 kilos. This makes the 2023 Vivobook barely simpler to hold in a satchel or bag. This was achieved by including extra recycled plastic to the chassis; it now makes up 30 p.c of the plastic used, which is a pleasant nod to sustainability.

Dominic Bayley / IDG

The 16X OLED’s dimensions have additionally been diminished. From 14.8 x 10.20 inches (W x D) in 2022 they’ve shrunk right down to 13.98 x 9.80 (W x D), which is a good drop in my ebook. However, the laptop computer is barely thicker yr on yr – it’s now 0.71 of an inch thick in comparison with 0.78 of an inch thick, however that change is so minimal you’ll barely discover.

Despite sporting extra recycled plastic, Asus claims the 16X OLED has as soon as once more handed the US Military-grade STD-810H customary for toughness. The variety of exams has been expanded to incorporate 26 exams all up. To ensure, the laptop computer feels very powerful nearly in every single place – from its immovable base to its sturdy hinges.

For cooling, the 16X OLED makes use of Asus’s IceCool Pro thermal know-how. The system encompasses twin followers that feed 4 huge air vents – two on the flanks and two on the again. The followers have been rigged to be thinner than within the 2022 mannequin they usually now sport shark-inspired fins which Asus says permits the laptop computer to achieve a better 150-watt Total Graphics Power (TGP).

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED: Keyboard and trackpad

Grey tones and orange highlights dominate the look of the 16X OLED’s ErgoSense keyboard, with some keys clearly painted for simpler orientation. While I didn’t essentially want color-coding for my work, I did respect the look.

For ease of use, Asus has made the keyboard much more like a full-sized desktop keyboard than you’ll discover in different laptops; It features a full-sized numpad on the far proper, Fn keys with shortcuts, in addition to left and proper Shift keys. Overall, it’s an honest choice that ensured I had loads of fodder for instructions in applications like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro.

The laptop computer’s major letter keys are very massive. There’s additionally a beneficiant 0.75 of an inch pitch between them. The keys additionally sport a 0.2 mm dip of their middle. The lengthy pitch meant I not often ever miss-hit, and the dips allowed me to kind for lengthy stints with out getting sore, tingling fingertips.

Dominic Bayley / IDG

The energy button and the trackpad are two different options worthy of reward. The former doubles as a fingerprint reader, however it’s a single signal on one, so that you solely have to the touch it as soon as to login. It allowed me to get my concepts down rapidly after breaks quite than having to flap round making an attempt to re-login every time I needed to get again into Windows.

The 16X OLED’s trackpad incorporates a digital dial. In Windows it’s a helpful function for controlling settings like the amount or the brightness stage of the show with out having to maneuver your fingers. It’s additionally appropriate with Adobe apps, and third-party apps like Davinci Resolve. I used it primarily for browser instructions; it’s additionally programmable in Asus’s proprietary ProArtwork Creator Hub app.

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED: Connectivity and audio

The 16X OLED was nicely ready to be my go-to workstation, with a minimum of two Thunderbolt 4 ports in addition to two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports and an HDMI 2.1 port accommodating my major peripherals. This setup allowed me to plug in a wi-fi mouse, two exterior shows, and my headset’s USB dongle and nonetheless have one Thunderbolt 4 port freed up for fast file transfers at a knowledge switch velocity of as much as 40GB/s.

The microSD card reader in final yr’s mannequin has been thoughtfully changed by a full-sized SD card UHS-II reader with as much as 312MB/s supply velocity. This makes much more sense to me, since a lot of the units I wish to switch knowledge from – like my DLSR digital camera and video digital camera – use this format reminiscence card. Suffice to say, this one function saved me numerous time.

The 16X OLED’s Harman Kardon audio system produce a pleasant balanced audio that has a particular cinematic high quality, more than likely due to help for Dolby Atmos. I have, nonetheless, heard clearer, deeper bass on laptops of this measurement, however they’ve primarily had larger and chunkier chassis, so for its thickness, the 16X OLED does an admirable job for sound.

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED: Display and webcam

My first inspection of the 16X OLED’s show was whereas the laptop computer was switched off – it had that shiny sheen that many OLED panels are likely to have. Switched on, nonetheless, the visuals had been nothing in need of spectacular; the photographs and movies confirmed up crisp and detailed, with richly saturated colour and really deep blacks.

How does it obtain this? The 3.2K OLED show covers 100 p.c of the DCI-P3 colour gamut and it has a excessive distinction ratio of 1,0000,000:1, so there’s a depth to darks that you simply simply don’t see in IPS-level shows.

The panel can be moderately vivid: It has a peak most brightness of 600 nits, which isn’t anyplace close to as vivid because the Acer Predator Triton 17X’s mini-LED show, however it was nonetheless vivid sufficient to see element after I used the laptop computer within the vivid and sunny elements of my dwelling.

Color accuracy is one thing that the majority creators want in spades, so the show’s certification for Pantone colour accuracy means it must be nicely fitted to any work involving colour replica. I used to be additionally nicely happy to listen to the show reduces the emission of dangerous blue gentle by an estimated 70 p.c, which if nothing else, means you possibly can relaxation straightforward understanding there’s some safety on your eyes throughout lengthy work stints.

For webcam, the 16X OLED has a 1080p digital camera with a handy privateness shutter. The digital camera depends closely on AI algorithms for decreasing picture noise and ambient sound. In my testing I discovered these labored nicely to make sure pictures had been comparatively clear and that there wasn’t any noticeable sound distortion of voices in conferences.

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED: CPU efficiency

The Vivobook Pro 16X OLED’s i9-13980HX is a formidable chip, that includes a complete of 24 cores, consisting of 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores with a complete of 32 threads. Intel’s efficiency charts present a most turbo frequency of 5.60 GHz.

My colleagues Gordon Ung and Alaina Yee did thorough testing of this CPU again in February this yr they usually made a couple of pointers about it, like that its able to unimaginable efficiency however it’s additionally overkill should you simply wish to browse the net or run Microsoft Office duties. To see the way it carried out within the context of this laptop computer I made it leap by a bunch of benchmark hoops. Afterwards, I sized up the outcomes in opposition to PCWorld comparisons.

Workhorse and gaming laptops with discrete GPUs made up nearly all of my comparisons. These included strong performers just like the Razer Blade 16, MSI Prestige 16X and the Lenovo Slim Pro, all three of which additionally function 13th technology Intel CPUs. A 2022 Vivobook Pro 16X OLED that includes a Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU is extra of a mid-range predecessor to my laptop computer, however it supplied some context to see how efficiency has improved yr on yr.

The Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED impressed me instantly in my testing schedule. On PCMark 10, the laptop computer scored within the low 7000s, buying and selling shut blows with three different 16-inch laptops.

Dominic Bayley / IDG

The outcomes of the Cinebench Multi-Threaded benchmark are equally spectacular. The 16X OLED stood out from the pack with a rating of 10,524 on this take a look at that flexes all of the cores of a laptop computer’s CPU. Ergo, performing complicated duties like encoding, modifying video or working AAA video games might be a chunk of cake for this laptop computer. These outcomes affirm its CPU is sort of overkill for primary workplace apps or looking.

Dominic Bayley / IDG

Next up is the HandBrake take a look at the place I set the laptop computer to encode a 30GB MKV file to an MP4 utilizing the utility’s Android pill preset. What we’re on the lookout for on this take a look at is a fast ending time, which suggests the laptop computer can keep away from throttling and might energy on by crushing CPU duties. The X16 OLED did simply that, ending the encode rapidly in simply 735 seconds.

Dominic Bayley / IDG

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED: Graphics efficiency

Although my evaluation unit’s RTX 4060 GPU is simply a mid-range GPU in Nvidia’s RTX 40 Series lineup, you would say its gasoline pedal was pressed to the metallic, because it was tuned to a most 150-watt TGP. Let’s see how that spectacular energy performed out within the graphics benchmarks…

In UL’s 3DMark benchmark, which offers us a glimpse of a laptop computer’s general graphics efficiency functionality, the 16X OLED completed behind the Razer Blade 16 however forward of the opposite comparisons. Notice that it considerably outperformed the MSI Prestige 16 Studio which sports activities the identical RTX 4060 GPU.

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED

Moving to the real-world gaming exams, and the 16X OLED posted very spectacular body per second scores in each Shadow of the Tomb Raider and the Metro Exodus benchmarks. This was an enormous shock; final yr’s Vivobook produced playable body charges, however this yr’s mannequin can actually shred.

Dominic Bayley / IDG

Dominic Bayley / IDG

These outcomes present the X16 OLED is actually as much as the duty it’s designed for; it’s greater than able to tackling complicated graphics-based duties like 3D rendering, or modelling. In reality, it’s going to outperform most of its close to rivals in these duties. It’s additionally going to be numerous enjoyable when you kick off your sneakers and unwind for some gaming time, primarily based on its fps scores which sit on par with a few of the strongest gaming rigs of 2023.

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED: Battery life

To take a look at the battery, I set a 4K video to repeat within the Windows TV and Movie app. I additionally switched the Wi-Fi to Airplane Mode and plugged in an affordable pair of headphones to manage noise. Then I sat again and timed how lengthy it took for the battery to expire of juice. The 16X OLED lasted simply shy of six hours earlier than it switched to standby mode.

Dominic Bayley / IDG

What’s happening right here? A big 90WHr battery is seemingly simply what a creator laptop computer like this would want, and the 16X OLED has simply that! But there’s some critical energy draw from the {hardware} that’s clearly taking an enormous toll on the battery.

Six hours just isn’t an excellent consequence for a creator laptop computer, which you’d anticipate to a minimum of make it by an eight-hour working day. It suggests you’d be fortunate to get simply three hours from this laptop computer doing any sort of critical work if it’s unplugged from an outlet – which is considerably disappointing.

Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED: Should you purchase it?

The Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED is a superb possibility for creators wanting a strong laptop computer with a stunning, colour correct 16-inch OLED show that’s additionally framed up in a tall 16:10 side ratio. Its connectivity makes it a flexible rig for work or play. My efficiency outcomes reveals that it trumps its predecessor and close to rivals within the energy stakes, providing up dollops for working complicated applications, graphics-based duties and for gaming. The tradeoff is a brief battery life, which simply means it’s finest used plugged into an outlet.