ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED (W7600H3A) laptop review

ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED is one of the top models in the line of laptops for content creators. In the past, we already reviewed the previous version, ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED (H5600Q). Let’s see what has changed in the updated line this year from the Taiwanese manufacturer.

Features of ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED

Design and Layout

The appearance of the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED has practically not changed. The body is made in a deliberately “simple” style, without additional design elements or areas with bright lighting: this is a “machine for work”, not entertainment.

The body is made of anodized aluminum, the special matte coating resists fingerprints quite well. With a 16-inch screen, this laptop isn’t very “compact” or “light” — it’s roughly 36x26cm and about 2cm thick (the latter varies slightly between model configurations), weight — 2.4 kg. Such specifications make it a stationary “desktop replacement” rather than a mobile laptop for regular trips.

Interestingly, there is no brand logo on the case — only the series, ProArt. It is located on the lid in the center and is made using glossy letters on a matte surface. ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED is available in only one color option – black (Star Black).

The frames around the screen are quite wide – 7.5 mm on the sides and ~10 mm on top, in general, the screen occupies 85% of the cover area. The webcam lens can be closed with a physical “curtain” with a bright orange dot. Thanks to this, the user immediately pays attention to whether it is open or closed.

The case feels very strong and even “monolithic”, it does not creak or bend – even if you press hard on the center of the keyboard block. It is possible to open the lid with one hand, but it is not very easy: the “base” is heavy enough not to come off the surface of the table, but the springs are so tight that you can move the laptop from its place. The maximum opening angle is approximately 150°.

Interface connectors are located on both sides: on the right you can find gigabit Ethernet, SD card reader, 3.5 mm audio combo jack and one USB 3.2 Gen 2, on the left: another USB 3.2 Gen 2, power connector, port HDMI 2.1, as well as USB-C and Thunderbolt 4 with Power Delivery support, to each of which you can connect additional monitors. Ventilation holes are located “everywhere”: from the bottom, on the sides and behind.

Keyboard, touchpad

ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED is equipped with an island-type keyboard, the key stroke is quite typical for laptops – 1.4 mm. The keyboard is full-fledged, with an additional number pad. It does not have the standard right-hand row of keys (plus-minus and Enter), except that its dimensions are the same as those of traditional desktop keyboards (~53×90 mm). The main block of keys is also almost the same in size: a little less than 27 cm wide, so you don’t need to get used to a different location of keys and their size for blind typing.

The layout is almost standard ANSI, with long left Shift and single-line Enter. The arrow control block “enters” the main block with only one key, so it was almost not necessary to reduce the size of the keys in the main block, as is usually done. The caps of the arrow keys differ from others – they are not smooth, but with a relief surface that feels good to the touch.

The power button is located in the upper right corner, quite far from the keyboard unit and, moreover, it is recessed into the case, so it is unlikely that you will accidentally press it. As in a number of other laptop models of this manufacturer, the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED has a fingerprint scanner built into the power button.

The keys have a white backlight, with three levels of intensity and the possibility of complete shutdown. Illumination of medium intensity, at the maximum value of the mark on the keys, is clearly visible in a lit room, but, typical of almost all laptop keyboards, the “flowing” of the light from under the caps when viewed from the side is noticeably stronger than the actual letters. However, when working on a laptop, this effect is almost absent.

The touchpad is quite large – 130×66 mm, and easy to use, with a pleasant to the touch coating. This touchpad differs from other models in that it has as many as three hardware mouse buttons — not only left and right, but also middle.

As with the previous “studio book”, ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED has an additional control – the ASUS Dial hardware wheel to the left of the touchpad (in more affordable models, for example, Vivobook Pro 16X OLED its functionality is performed by a “virtual” wheel — DialPad, located on the touchpad).

Clicking on the wheel opens a special menu in which you can choose the necessary function. By default it only controls the volume of the speakers and the brightness of the screen, but in the proprietary ProArt Creator Hub utility you can further customize its behavior and add new functions, for example, switching between open tabs or virtual desktops.

ASUS Dial also supports Adobe editors: Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Photoshop Lightroom Classic and After Effects, where it can be used to facilitate work with tools.

Screen

ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED uses a 16-inch Samsung OLED panel (ATNA60YV02-0). The resolution is 3840×2400 pixels, the aspect ratio is 16:10, the pixel density is 284 PPI, and the standard refresh rate is 60 Hz.

The resolution of 4K on such a diagonal leads to a very high-quality and “dense” image, it is almost impossible to see individual pixels, even if you look at the screen closely. The 16:10 aspect ratio is optimal for most tasks — additional pixels “vertically” allow you to fit a little more useful information on the screen compared to the standard 16:9 multimedia ratio.

The MyASUS utility allows you to choose different Splendid video modes — Normal, Vivid, Manual and Eye Care. Their color coverage is the same and very wide – full coverage of DCI-P3, 97% Adobe RGB, there is no emulation of the sRGB color space in SDR mode.

In Normal mode, the gamma corresponds almost perfectly to the standard value of 2.2, the color temperature is constant over the entire brightness range and is 6800-6900K, which is also quite close to the standard (6500K). Brightness in SDR mode is adjustable in the range from 4 to 385 cd/m². This display also supports HDR mode (the laptop has DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification): it can reach a peak brightness of 630 cd/m². That’s a lot more than the official specs (up to 550 cd/m²) and very similar to other ASUS laptops we’ve reviewed (like the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED and Vivobook Pro 15 OLED, which also used Samsung-made OLED panels).

As in previous models, if HDR is enabled in the Windows settings, the color gamut for normal content is narrowed to the dimensions of the sRGB space. Due to the absence of additional illumination, the OLED panel shows extraordinary results in tests of uniformity of brightness and constancy of color temperature across the entire screen area: the maximum fluctuations of these parameters do not exceed a couple of percent (in the case of ordinary LCD screens, typical deviations are usually more than 10%, if not 20%).

The display has Pantone validation, and the accuracy of color reproduction in the Normal mode is very high and fully corresponds to the manufacturer’s declaration: the average value of ΔE is less than one, the maximum is two (we remind, it is believed that an ordinary user is not able to notice deviations in the display of colors if this parameter lower than 2 or even 3).

Traditionally for OLED technology, the brightness is controlled by pulse-width modulation, so at low levels (below 120 cd/m²) there is a barely noticeable flickering of the display. You can get rid of this effect using the Flicker-free OLED dimming option in the MyASUS utility – in fact, this is the same DC Dimming that can be found in some smartphones with OLED screens. The corresponding slider effectively reduces the brightness up to 4 cd/m² without noticeable flickering – although this function does not work with HDR mode and is not as convenient as traditional brightness adjustment using hot keys. However, if your eyes get tired of OLED flickering, this option will be indispensable when working in a dark room.

The main advantages of OLED over conventional LCD displays are, of course, a completely black color due to the absence of additional backlighting in the panel and very large viewing angles.

When looking at the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED screen from the side, even at a very wide angle, the image remains as saturated and only slightly dimmer than in the usual position behind the laptop. The color temperature almost does not change at different angles, only when looking almost “side-on” the screen acquires a noticeable bluish-green tint, which is typical for OLED panels.

The second mode, Vivid, offers a slightly richer and brighter image, but the difference is not significant, and the color accuracy is much worse, so we would recommend using the Normal mode on a regular basis. Manual mode is essentially the same as Normal, but with the ability to manually adjust the color temperature; the corresponding slider changes this parameter between 5700-8000K, so if at the standard value (around 6800K) the image seems “cool”, this can be easily corrected.

Hardware Platform

The ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED W7600 model range uses Intel 11th generation processors: Intel Core i7-11800H or Intel Xeon W-11955M; the first option is installed in the model that came to us for review. This line also has a model line with 12th generation processors: Intel Core i7-12700H or i9-12900H.

Intel Core i7-11800H is an 8-core 16-thread processor from the Tiger Lake H45 family that was announced in 2021. This is a high-performance CPU manufactured using the 10-nm Intel SuperFin process, the standard TDP is 45 W, and the standard frequency is 2.3 GHz. The maximum frequency of one core can reach 4.6 GHz, when all cores are loaded – 4.2 GHz. The processor has built-in UHD Graphics with 32 computing units, which can work at frequencies up to 1.45 GHz.

In addition, discrete video is installed in the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED – depending on the configuration, it can be an NVIDIA RTX A3000 Laptop GPU 6 GB with a frequency of up to 1560 MHz at a TDP of 90 W (up to 105 W with dynamic “boost)” or an A5000 with with a frequency of up to 1455 MHz at a TDP of 90 W (up to 110 W with “boost”). The model under review had the first option.

The basic RAM capacity can be 16 or 32 GB of DDR4-3200 SDRAM (SO-DIMM *2), it can be increased to 64 GB (this is how much was installed in our sample). The specifications of the internal storage may vary depending on the configuration – the laptop has two M.2 2280 PCIe slots and its capacity can be from 1 to 2 TB, the bus can be PCIe 3.0 or 4.0, options are possible with two drives in RAID 0 (the same this configuration, with two Western Digital SN730 NVMe SSD 1 TB, was in the test system).

ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED performance

The laptop is positioned as a working tool for performing tasks that require high “power” of the system: 4K+ video processing, 3D rendering, work in CAD, etc. The Intel Core i7-11800H processor is well suited for such purposes: it demonstrates very high performance in synthetic benchmarks – both comprehensive like PCMark10 and exclusively CPU (the corresponding test in 3DMark and Cinebench R23). A 2 TB SSD running in Raid 0 has expected very high results in CrystalDiskMark: read speed of around 6700 MB/s, write speed of just over 6000 MB/s.

The ProArt Creator Hub utility allows you to choose different cooling modes that directly affect system performance. Unlike models for “regular users”, ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED does not have a silent option – only Standard mode, Productivity mode and Full speed. Standard offers the optimal ratio of fan speed and noise level, Performance Mode dynamically increases cooling for complex tasks, and the name of the last mode, Full Speed needs no further explanation.

We compared the performance of the system in them using the Cinebench utility R23 when loading all cores. In the Standard mode, the dedicated thermal package of the processor was 45 W, its temperature rose to 75 degrees, it worked at an average frequency of 3.1 GHz, the noise level was quite low (~42 dB at a distance of 1 m from the laptop) .

In Performance Mode, the thermal package increased to 71 W, the CPU temperature increased to 88 degrees, and the frequency – to 3.5 GHz. The noise of the cooling system under load also increased noticeably — to about 49 dB (in idle mode, it decreased to the Standard level, that is, the laptop became almost silent).

And finally, the last mode is Full speed. In it, the cooling system works at full capacity all the time, regardless of load — the noise level rises to ~58 dB. The temperature of the processor remained the same as in Performance mode – 88 degrees, the thermal package rose to 77 W, the CPU frequency – up to 3.7 GHz.

If you look at the results in Cinebench R23, you can note that the performance during single-threaded tasks remains unchanged, while in multi-threaded mode there is an increase, and it is quite significant.

A similar situation is with the results in single- and multi-core tests was also in the 3DMark CPU Test benchmark (from left to right – Standard, Performance mode, Full speed):

During the stress test of system stability in AIDA64 in the Standard mode, the utility initially recorded quite significant throttling when the processor was operating at a frequency of 3.8 GHz, which was increased for this mode, but soon the system reduced the processor frequency to ~2.8 GHz and throttling disappeared. In the performance mode, the utility recorded a constant, but very small throttling — at the level of 5%.

ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED is not positioned as a gaming model, and even its video card is not a “normal” GeForce. NVIDIA RTX A3000 Laptop GPU is a professional video for mobile workstations based on the GA104 chip (Ampere architecture). But it can of course also be used for games: the performance of the RTX A3000 in games is comparable to the GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU with a similar TDP. At the same time, the RTX A3000 has more CUDA cores (4,096 versus 3,840 in the RTX 3060).

The capacity of the video memory is 6 GB, which is not a lot for modern projects, if you run them at the full screen resolution (3840×2400 pixels), but for most test titles it was still enough for high graphics settings. The only exception was Far Cry 6, which needed literally 200 MB more than is available on the system.

Performance in games, 3840×2400 pixels, high quality graphics:

If you lower the resolution to Full HD, then at high settings of gaming performance, ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED is more than enough — in all games, the average FPS is noticeably higher than the mark of 60 frames/sec.

Performance in games, Full HD, high quality graphics:

Battery life

The laptop is equipped with a battery with a capacity of 90 W⋅h — this is quite a lot, but the powerful system willingly consumes electricity, so autonomy in the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED turns out to be mediocre. So, at a brightness level of 120 cd/m² in the battery test of the PCMark10 benchmark, the laptop “lasted” 8 hours in a state of inactivity, a little less than 6 hours in simulated office use, and one hour and 13 minutes in game mode.