Asus has announced a pair of new laptops designed for visual artists, including photographers. The new ProArt Studiobook and Vivobook Pro models join the existing Zenbook Pro series to offer customers more options at different performance, feature and price levels.
The newly-formed trio of notebooks includes 4K OLED HDR displays. The displays are VESA DisplayHDR 600 True Black certified. To meet Pantone Validated standards, the displays are calibrated at the factory before being shipped to consumers. The new ProArt Studiobook adds Calman Verified status, promising 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut. The ProArt Studiobook Pro, ProArt Studiobook and Vivobook Pro laptops all tout the world’s first 16″ 4K OLED HDR displays on notebook computers.
Asus ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED
The ProArt Studiobook and Studiobook Pro models include Asus’s new Control Dial. It’s a rotary dial above the top left corner of the laptop’s trackpad. You can use the dial for rotational input across numerous applications, including Adobe creative apps.
As for CPU and GPU options, there are many. For the ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED (from $2,000), purchasers can select between AMD Ryzen 500 H-series mobile processors and a third-generation Intel Xeon processor. On the graphics side, the options include NVIDIA RTX A2000 or A5000 laptop GPUs. The ProArt Studiobook 16 Pro OLED model, which starts at $2,500, can be built with an AMD Ryzen 5000 H-series processor or an Intel Core i7 processor. Graphics are upgraded, too, with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 3070 options.
Asus ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED features and specs. Click to enlarge.
In terms of physical design, the Studiobook and Studiobook Pro are identical. They both include the same 16″ 4K OLED HDR display with 550-nit brightness at a 60 Hz refresh rate. The display offers 100% DCI-P3 coverage, as mentioned, and promises Delta-E < 2 color accuracy. The Pantone Validated, and Calman Verified display is designed for color-critical applications rather than gaming, focusing on color accuracy and performance rather than a high refresh rate.
Each model includes dual PCIe SSDs and 3200 MHz DDR4 RAM (up to 64GB). I/O includes Thunderbolt 4, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, HDMI 2.1 and an SD card reader. The Asus ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED models will be available in Q4 2021.
A step below the ProArt Studiobook series is the Asus Vivobook line. Asus has announced three Vivobook Pro configurations, including 14″, 15.6″ and 16″ options. All display sizes include OLED displays. Asus is committing to OLED display technology for its creative-centric laptops.
The Vivobook Pro line sits above the standard Vivobook and below the Zenbook line, and the Vivobook Pro’s performance features show this. The OLED-equipped notebooks come with either Intel Core i7 or Ryzen 5000 H-series CPUs and GPU options up to an NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti.
Instead of the Control Dial found on the Asus on the ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED models, the Vivibook Pro models instead include what Asus calls the DialPad. It’s a virtual version of the physical rotary dial and can be used for Adobe creative apps like Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Lightroom. You can see it in action in the video below.
The smaller Vivobook Pro (14″ and 15.6″) models have 2.8K resolution OLED HDR 600-nit displays that include the same 100% DCI-P3 coverage and certifications as the new OLED-equipped ProArt Studiobook models.
Vivobook Pro configurations include up to 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage using a PCIe SSD. The computers include a dual-fan design.
Asus Vivobook Pro OLED
The Vivobook Pro 16X OLED starts at $1,400. The Vivobook Pro 15 OLED includes two standard configurations at $920 and $1,470. The smallest option, the Vivobook Pro 14 OLED, has a pair of configurations starting at $750 and $1,200. The new Vivobook Pro models will be available in the fourth quarter of this year.