![The Asus ProArt P17 on a brick surface.](https://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/asus-proart-16-01.jpg?resize=625%2C417&p=1)
- Outstanding productivity performance
- Very fast for creators
- Spectacular OLED display
- Useful DialPad and utilities
- Good keyboard and touchpad
- Strong value
- Lid flexes under pressure
- Battery life is average
I reviewed one of the first laptops running AMD’s latest Ryzen AI 9 chipset, the Asus ProArt PX13, and found it to be very fast for a 13-inch machine. While the Ryzen AI 9 has “AI” right there in its name, it’s hard to measure the chipset’s most hyped-up feature: its Neural Processing Unit (NPU) that’s the fastest among current chipsets.
Therefore, in reviewing the larger ProArt P16 with the same chipset and with a faster GPU, I’m focusing on what non-gaming 16-inch
Specs and configurations
Asus ProArt P16 | |
Dimensions | 13.97 inches x 9.72 inches x 0.59-0.68 inches |
Weight | 4.08 pounds |
Processor | AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 |
Graphics | AMD Radeon 890M Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 |
RAM | 32GB 64GB |
Display | 16.0-inch 16:10 4K+ (3840 x 2400) OLED, 60Hz |
Storage | 1TB SSD 2TB SSD |
Touch | Yes |
Ports | 1 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 1 x USB-C USB4 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 1 x HDMI 2.1 1 x 3.5mm audio jack 1 x SD card reader |
Wireless | Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 |
Webcam | 1080p with infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition |
Operating system | Windows 11 |
Battery | 90 watt-hour |
Price |
$1,900+ |
The ProArt P16 is built around the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset and a
That’s more expensive than the Dell XPS 16‘s $1,500 base model with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, 16GB of
Finally, the MacBook Pro 16 is considerably more expensive, starting at $2,499 for an M3 Pro chipset, 18GB of
The point is that the ProArt P16 is a lot of computer for less money than its principal competition, at least when similarly configured. It and the Yoga Pro 9i 16 are reasonably affordable
Design
From the all-black chassis and lid to the keyboard nestled between two large speaker grilles to the large touchpad taking up all available space on the palm rest, the ProArt P16 resembles the MacBook Pro 16 more than any other laptop. It’s not a perfect match — the MacBook is blockier and doesn’t have the same angles and lines as the ProArt P16.
But it’s obvious which laptop the ProArt P16 is trying to emulate, and that even includes a coating on the black colorway to give it a sheen similar to the MacBook’s Space Black version. The Dell XPS 16 looks a lot more modern, especially when you open the lid, but there are similarities there, too.
They’re very close to the same size in width, height, and thickness, with similar display bezels, but the MacBook Pro 16 is considerably heavier and so feels a lot denser. The XPS 16 is slightly thicker and as heavy as the MacBook. It, too, feels more dense. The ProArt P16 therefore seems a little easier to lug around, but none of these machines is highly portable. The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 is worth mentioning here as well, and it’s slightly larger and thicker than the ProArt P16 while being slightly lighter than the MacBook Pro 16 and XPS 16.
Another thing that each machine shares is a quality build. You’re spending some serious money for each one, and so that’s exactly what you should expect. Out of this group, though, the ProArt P16 comes in last place. While its bottom lid and keyboard deck are rigid enough, the lid is a bit flexible. Usually, Asus
Keyboard, touchpad, and DialPad
The ProArt P16’s keyboard is a lot like that of the MacBook Pro 16 and XPS 16, a standard layout without a numeric keypad (found on some larger machines) nestled in between large speaker grilles. It’s a good enough keyboard with large keycaps and sufficient spacing, as well as switches that are snappy and precise. I do like the MacBook’s Magic Keyboard a bit better, but most users will find the Asus keyboard to be more than good enough. The XPS 16’s zero-lattice keyboard takes more getting used to. I’d rate the Yoga Pro 9i 16’s keyboard as roughly equivalent to the ProArt P16’s.
The large mechanic touchpad is just OK. Its button clicks are confident and quiet, and it’s responsive enough. But the MacBook’s Force Touch haptic touchpad is a lot better, with more configurability and the ability to “click” anywhere on its very large surface. The XPS 16 has a good haptic touchpad that suffers a bit from being hidden, and the Yoga Pro 9i 16 again matches the ProArt 16 with its own mechanical touchpad. Note to Asus here: premium
Where the Asus differs most is in the DialPad that’s basically a circular indentation in the touchpad with an embedded button. It works with a variety of apps to add another way to interact. I’d say it’s just a gimmick, except Asus includes the ProArt Creator Hub utility that enables a bunch of useful functionality. Users can control the laptop’s colors to an unusual degree, including adjusting Pantone values to highly customizable color performance. Other tools enable efficient creative work, like the Work Smart function, various performance optimization tools, and several Asus creative apps. It’s obvious that Asus has gone to great lengths to make the ProArt P16 more than just a generic creator’s laptop.
Connectivity and webcam
The ProArt P16 has a slightly odd mix of ports. To begin with, it uses USB4 as its fastest connection as opposed to Thunderbolt 4 (given the AMD chipset), which would be fine except only one of the two USB-C ports support the faster and more capable standard. That’s disappointing and a little surprising — even the smaller ProArt PX13 has two USB4 ports. Otherwise, there are some legacy ports and a full-size SD card reader. The MacBook Pro 16 has three
The webcam is a 1080p version with an infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition. The NPU supports the basic version of Microsoft Studio Effects for AI-assisted background blurring and other effects.
Performance
I reviewed the same AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset in the Asus ProArt PX13, a 13-inch laptop that aims to provide excellent performance in a highly portable package. The ProArt PX13 succeeds in that effort, while raising the question of what Asus could do with the same chipset in a much larger chassis with a lot more room for better thermals. The ProArt P16’s design certainly qualifies, with three fans, Liquid Metal, a dust filter, and a few other elements that promise faster performance. Of course, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 does its part as well, with 12 cores and 24 threads running at up to 5.1GHz with a default thermal design power (TDP) of 28 watts and a TDP range of 15 watts to 54 watts.
In our suite of benchmarks, the ProArt P16 does very well. It’s competitive with
Notably, the ProArt P16 scored the fastest results we’ve seen in the PCMark 10 Complete benchmark that measures productivity and creativity performance, at 7,757. The next closest laptop was the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 with an older Ryzen 9 8945HS chip at 7,623, and close behind that was the ProArt PX13 at 7,540 with the same AMD chipset as the P16. Most
The ProArt P16 makes good use of its Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, more so than the Dell XPS 16 and the Alienware m16 R2. That shows up in the GPU portion of Cinebench R24 and the PugetBench for Premiere Pro benchmark that runs in a live version of Adobe Premiere Pro. That application uses the GPU in Windows
The Apple MacBook Pro 16 running the M3 Max chipset with 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores is much faster across the board. The M3 chipsets have CPU optimizations that are even faster at video encoding and decoding, which impacts the PugetBench benchmark. But the M3 Max GPU is still a lot faster than the RTX 4070s in the comparison group.
Ultimately, the ProArt P16 is a very fast 16-inch laptop that does well against its primary competition. The MacBook Pro 16 with the M3 Max chipset is considerably faster, but it’s also a lot more expensive; the M3 Pro version will be closer in both price and performance.
Geekbench 6 (single/multi) |
Handbrake (seconds) |
Cinebench R24 (single/multi/GPU) |
Pugetbench Premiere Pro |
|
Asus ProArt P16 (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 / RTX 4070) |
Bal: 2,688 / 14,497 Perf: 2,690 / 14,455 |
Bal: 50 Perf: 49 |
Bal: 114 / 1,165 / 11,184 Perf: 114 / 1,208 / 11,421 |
Bal: 5,444 Perf: 6,451 |
Asus ProArt PX13 (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 / RTX 4050) |
Bal: 2,710 / 14,696 Perf: 2,690 / 14,243 |
Bal: 54 Perf: 52 |
Bal: 116 / 897 / 7,447 Perf: 116 / 974 / 7,604 |
Bal: 4,850 Perf: 5,444 |
Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 (Core Ultra 9 185H / RTX 4060) |
Bal: 2,396 / 14,270 Perf: 2,426 / 14,406 |
Bal: 59 Perf: 54 |
Bal: 110 / 1,085 / 9,859 Perf: 112 / 1,115 / 10,415 |
Bal: 5,774 Perf: 6,112 |
Dell XPS 16 (Core Ultra 7 155H / RTX 4070) |
Bal: 2,196 / 12,973 Perf: 2,238 / 12,836 |
Bal: 72 Perf: 73 |
Bal: 100 / 838 / 9,721 Perf: 102 / 895 / 10,477 |
Bal: 5,401 Perf: 5,433 |
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra (Core Ultra 185H / RTX 4070) |
Bal: 2,373 / 13,082 Perf: 2,331 / 13,381 |
N/A | Bal: 107 / 817 / 8,994 Perf: 106 / 985 / 10,569 |
Bal: 3,906 Perf: 5,669 |
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (Core Ultra 9 185H / RTX 4070) |
N/A | N/A | Bal: 109 / 964 / 10,979 Perf: 110 / 1,069 / 11,475 |
Bal: 5,073 Perf: 5,115 |
Alienware m16 R2 (Core Ultra 7 155H / RTX 4070) |
Bal: 2,366 / 12,707 Perf: N/A |
N/A | Bal: 103 / 1,040 / 10,884 Perf: N/A |
Bal: 5,590 Perf: N/A |
Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3 Max 16/40) |
Bal: 3,083 / 20,653 Perf: 3,119 / 20,865 |
Bal: 55 Perf: N/A |
Bal: 140 / 1,667 / 13,146 Perf: N/A |
Bal: 8,046 Perf: N/A |
Gaming performance
If you buy a laptop with an RTX 4070, chances are you’ll want to run some games. The ProArt P16 uses Nvidia’s Studio Drivers, which are optimized for creative and other applications and not so much for gaming, but they can be swapped out for the Game Ready drivers if desired.
I ran both the 3DMark Time Spy test and the in-game benchmarks of a few titles. Across the board, the ProArt P16 did well enough to play reasonably modern games at 1600p and high graphics. The most contemporary titles might slow down a bit unless you turn the graphics down or run at 1080p, but overall, the ProArt P16 is a reasonably strong gaming laptop.
Therefore, if you want a fast creative machine that can occasionally play the latest games, then the ProArt P16 is a very good option.
3DMark Time Spy |
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 1600p Ultra High |
Red Dead Redemption 1600p Ultra |
|
Asus ProArt P16 (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 / RTX 4070) |
Bal: 11,689 Perf: 11,708 |
Bal: 111 fps Perf: 122 fps |
Bal: 70 Perf: 76 |
Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 (Core Ultra 9 185H / RTX 4060) |
Bal: 10,733 Perf: 12,832 |
Bal: 102 fps Perf: 119 fps |
Bal: 59 Perf: 69 fps |
Dell XPS 16 (Core Ultra 7 155H / RTX 4070) |
Bal: 8,216 Perf: 9,352 |
Bal: 83 fps Perf: 104 fps |
Bal: 62 fps Perf: 66 fps |
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (Core Ultra 9 185H / RTX 4070) |
Bal: 10,828 Perf: 12,159 |
N/A | Bal: 58 fps Perf: 68 fps |
Alienware m16 R2 (Core Ultra 7 155H / RTX 4070) |
Bal: 12,025 Perf: N/A |
N/A | Bal: 69 fps Perf: N/A |
AI performance
As I’ve noted in all of my recent reviews of
But those numbers pale in comparison to a discrete GPU’s performance at running AI tasks, such as the RTX 4070 that Nvidia rates at 466 TOPS. The NPUs are meant for speeding up on-device AI while using less energy. They’re all about efficiency, not performance.
So, which
Battery life
The ProArt P16 has a 90 watt-hour battery, a fast chipset, and a power-hungry
As it turns out, the ProArt P16 did fairly well. It managed around 8.5 hours in our web-browsing test and 11 hours in our video-looping test. That’s roughly equivalent to average battery life across all the
That makes the ProArt P16 a reasonably long-lasting creators’ workstation. It won’t last very long when working hard, though. For example, it shut down in just 1.5 hours when running Cinebench 2024 (and it slows down considerably when on battery power). But that’s common across all
Display and audio
The ProArt P16 has one display option, a
According to my colorimeter, this is an excellent display for creators. It’s bright enough at 359 nits, which isn’t as bright as some other recent displays that are closer to 400 nits or more. But it’s still brighter than our aging baseline of 300 nits, and it will be great unless you’re working in bright sunlight. Its colors are incredibly wide at 100% of sRGB, 98% of AdobeRGB, and 100% of DCI-P3, which is one of the best combination of scores I’ve seen. Color accuracy is excellent at a DeltaE of 1.0 (that result and lower is indistinguishable to the human eye). And contrast is incredibly high at 25,110:1 with near-perfect blacks.
Simply put, you’ll love this display. It’s one of the best you’ll find today on a 16-inch creator’s laptop. Only gamers might be a bit disappointed with the refresh rate.
Like the MacBook Pro 16, the ProArt P16 has a six-speaker sound system, with two tweeters and four woofers. The audio is Harmon Kardon certified and offers Dolby Atmos support. Asus talks a lot about the “5.25X louder sound” and “zero distortion” afforded by the smart amplifier. The MacBook Pro 16 has arguably the best audio in a laptop today, so I was hoping that Asus managed to offer something similar in a Windows laptop.
I can confidently say that the ProArt P16’s audio gets as loud as the MacBook’s, and like the MacBook, it has a lot more bass than most
I could get rid of it by turning down the volume, but then it wasn’t quite as impressive. Overall, I’d say the ProArt P16 has some of the best audio in a Windows laptop, but the MacBook Pro 16 retains its top spot.
A MacBook Pro rival done right
I like the ProArt P16, a lot. It’s fast, reasonably well-built, and has a drop-dead gorgeous OLED display. Probably the only other Windows laptop I’ve reviewed that comes close is the Yoga Pro 9i 16, and I would be hard-pressed to choose between these two given their overall value and performance. At the very least, I will say that the ProArt P16’s OLED display is better than the Lenovo’s mini-LED panel.
The MacBook Pro 16 can be configured to be a lot faster, and it’s better built. But you’ll have to spend considerably more to get a better laptop than the ProArt 16. For Windows creators, the ProArt 16 is very easy to recommend. And the new AMD Ryzen AI 9 is a very fast chipset that competes well against the best that Intel has to offer.