Announced at CES earlier this year, the ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED (K6604) was launched for creators offering a 16” 3.2K 120 Hz OLED display and the latest Intel Core processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40xx series GPUs.
Priced from just under $3,399, the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED includes NVIDIA Studio Driver support for creators and comes with up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM and up to 2TB PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD.
The laptop includes the latest in ASUS cooling technology and all the connectivity options you’d want such as a good array of ports including Thunderbolt 4, Ethernet, HDMI dual-band and top notch wireless with dual-band Wifi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
It’s a lot of hardware for a great price. I’ve spent a couple of weeks with the ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED and here’s how it went.
Hardware and Design
With a 16” OLED display on board, the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED is fairly large, though it weighs in at only 1.9kg, and a profile of just 21.9mm and it fits comfortably in a backpack for transport. The top of the lid is made from an aluminium alloy and comes in ‘0 Degrees Black’ colourway, with a raised ASUS Vivobook logo with a striped accent. There’s a small colourful flair on the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED, with some bright organge rubber feet on the base raising it slightly off the desk for better airflow.
The accents continue on the inside where the keyboard is bookended with grey accented keys and a bright orange ESC key which is hard to miss.
The ASUS ErgoSense keyboard is generously sized, though the numeric keypad on the end feels a little cramped. The keyboard features full sized keys with 1.4mm of travel making them comfortable to type on, while the keycaps themselves have a slight indent for resting your fingertips.
The trackpad is massive on the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED and features an antimicrobial coating. It’s nice to use and for creators it features the ASUS DialPad which has been integrated into a number of apps including the Adobe Creative Suite where it can enhance your workflows. There’s also a bonus Adobe Creative Cloud trial for you to try out the DialPad for yourself.
You can activate the ASUS DialPad by swiping inward from the top-right corner of the touchpad. The DialPad is contextual, so you’ll see different options pop up depending on which app you have open.
There’s a full array of ports on here, with dual Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports on the right with HDMI out, a full-sized USB-A port and headphone jack, while on the left you get another USB Type-A port, RJ45 Ethernet jack and SD card reader, handy for accessing digital camera cards or just expanding storage.
Display
Of course the big news is the 16” 3.2K 120 Hz OLED display. It’s a large display though with the NanoEdge bezel on three sides giving it an 88.6% screen-to-body ratio it feels more compact, though they’ve still managed to squeeze a decent FHD resolution webcam and privacy shutter above the screen.
As with all the ASUS OLED displays this one looks gorgeous. It’s Pantone validated and covers 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut and comes with a 0.2ms response time.
It’s reasonably bright with a peak brightness of 550 nits, though with a gloss finish you do tend to get some reflections while working with any light behind you, and if you accidentally touch the display – no, it’s not a touch display – then it will leave fingerprints.
Performance
Running a 13th Gen Intel Core i9 processor with an NVIDIA RTX4060 GPU there’s little to want with the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED when it comes to power.
While the laptop can be configured with up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM and up to 2TB of M.2 storage, the standard config in Australia appears to be 32GB RAM and a 1TB Gen 4 M.2 SSD which is what is in the review unit sent over.
In terms of performance, the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED eats up almost anything you can throw at it.
The laptop performs well in standard web browsing and watching videos and music, as well as loading up applications such as Premiere Pro and editing and rendering videos. There weren’t any places I felt the laptop lagged.
The presence of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX4060 offers some options for anyone wanting some downtime with some gaming. The RTX4060 offers some good frame rates in gaming with the Vivobook capable of up to 150W TDP thanks to the ASUS IceCool cooling system which includes five heat pipes and dual 83-blade fans to really pump the power when the system is under load.
How does it stack up against the rest? Well, I ran it through 3DMark and here’s how it went.
Battery and Charging
The Vivobook includes a 90Whr battery and comes with a 240W barrel style charger in the box allowing for fast top ups.
The battery life averages around 8-9 hours of use across a variety of different applications, though mostly web based. If however you want to get some gaming on, then you can send the battery flat in around an hour.
Charging with 240W is fast, with the ability to top up 50% charge in just half an hour, though it will take almost two full hours to charge it to 100%. You can of course swap in a smaller USB Type C charger to take on the road with you and I found similar charging speeds using my 100W GaN charger.
Software
The ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED includes Windows 11 Pro with updates and security patches provided by Microsoft.
There’s a fairly minimal load of third-party software included on the laptop. You will of course find the usual McAfee software which will bombard you with pop-ups if you don’t subscribe to the service, or uninstall it. There’s also a plethora of Microsoft applications ranging from MS Office trial with Office 365, through to the Xbox app to give you access to PC or cloud gaming titles – and which comes with a nice 3-month free trial of Xbox GamePass Ultimate for PC (Excellent!).
Of course you do find utilities from ASUS pre-installed including the Dolby Access software for Dolby Vision/Atmos tuning, as well as NVIDIA Control Panel and GeForce Experience apps for your RTX 4060 GPU.
There is of course the pre-installed ASUS software, though there aren’t huge amounts. The main app is the MyASUS app which is where you can do a lot of your configuration. You can also access special deals including the Adobe Creative Cloud and Dropbox trials.
As it’s aimed at the creator market, the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED includes the ProArt Creator Hub . The ProArt Creator Hub software, includes a Control Setting page for setting the
ASUS Dial menu as well as a place to optimise system settings, calibrate colour settings, connected monitors, and quickly access vital apps. You can also check in on the hardware status of the laptop.
Should You Buy it?
The ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED is a lot of laptop for a reasonable price. For creators it offers a large, colour accurate display powered by NVIDIA Studio drivers on their GeForce RTX 4060 platform and an Intel Core i9 processor, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.
On the design front, the laptop won’t look out of place in an office setting, and the 16” 16:10 aspect ratio OLED display is both gorgeous and generously sized without making the laptop bulky.
The only concern was the battery life which I felt could be a little better, though with the 16” OLED and Core i9 processor ready to deliver such stunning results it’s easy to overlook this and keep a charger handy.
There’s a lot to love about the ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED and a home run for anyone trying to produce content, or just work with a little more power in a fairly compact form factor. If you’re after something which looks great, and with the performance to back it up then this is definitely a laptop to keep in mind.
You can check the ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED out online at the ASUS website.
