Right about now, there are more hardware options for designers and creators in general than in any other industry. Because people in the reactive fields need to work on more powerful hardware than the general office worker, they can choose from a variety of gaming notebooks as well as those aimed at creators — like these machines revealed by Asus this week.
The company introduced its ProArt Studiobooks, as well as Zenbook Pro and Vivobook Pro laptops, bringing with them some impressive new hardware configurations. We also got a first look at the Asus Dial — a nifty addition that allows for more design program accessibility.
Enter the ProArt Studiobooks
Asus showed off two variations of Studiobook this week, one bearing the Pro moniker and the other not. The non-Pro variation is fitted with either the AMD Ryzen 5000 H-Series Mobile Processors or Intel Core i9 processors, with GeForce RTX 3070 or 3060 graphics.
The beefiest of the bunch, the ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 is powered by the latest AMD Ryzen 5000 H-Series Mobile Processors or a 3rd-gen Intel Xeon workstation processor, depending on your config preference.
Couple that with an Nvidia RTX A2000 or A5000 GPU and you’re set for some demanding design functions. You’ll also need a lekker screen to go with it, however, so this one can come with up to a 16in 4K OLED HDR 16:10 550-nit display with a whopping 60Hz frame rate and Pantone validation.
Some competing design systems also feature a tiny hardware wheel/dial developed with designers in mind — well, Asus has revealed its own iteration called Asus Dial and will be compatible with the ProArt Studiobook.
“This intuitive controller gives instant and precise fingertip control over parameters in compatible Adobe creative apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Photoshop Lightroom Classic, and After Effects,” Asus details in a press release.
Completing the internal setup on both of these are dual ultrafast PCIe SSDs, up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM and Thunderbolt 4 or USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports. Honestly, if you’re in the market for a massively powerful portable machine, these may be just what you’re after.
As an added bonus, this year’s Studiobooks, unlike previous models, look sleeker and sturdier in terms of build quality. These look like notebooks we’d happily show off on the Starbucks counter every morning.
