ASUS unveiled their new fleet of high-end devices based on the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processors back In July, with the ProArt PX13 promising a compact form factor packed with hardware and of course AI.
We’ve finally gotten our hands on a review unit of the ASUS ProART PX13 which starts at $3,599.00 through ASUS for with an NVIDIA RTX4060 laptop GPU, or at $3,999 with an RTX 4070 which is the unit ASUS have sent over for review.
The laptop comes with a 13.3” 3K resolution OLED display connected by a 360° hinge, a surprisingly spacious keyboard and trackpad which includes ASUS’ DialPad inclusion for creators.
The machine is powered by the AMD Ryzen 9 HX 370 processor with AMD Radeon 890M integrated graphics, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB M.2 Gen 4 SSD.
It’s a surprisingly powerful (and compact) device, and I’ve been giving it a run for a couple of weeks now, and here’s my thoughts.
| Pros | Cons |
| – ASUS Lumina OLED is stunning. – NVIDIA and AMD offers power for any task you can throw at it. – Spacious keyboard.Excellent build quality. | – 60Hz display isn’t the greatest – Battery life is less than others in Copilot+ PC category. – AI features are still ‘coming soon’. |
The ASUS ProArt PX13 is a compact device with an all-aluminum chassis, top of the line internals and a 360° hinge allowing you to use the laptop as a tablet, or in stand or tent modes and of course as a traditional clamshell laptop.
The unit has the new ASUS ProArt branding on the front which includes a circular logo with a mirror finish that subtly stands out on the Nano Black coloured surface.
I love a black laptop and the ProArt PX13 stands out in the new ultra-black “Nano Black” coating which is applied through an anodising process ASUS has used. The process incorporates a resin into the mix to protect the surface which also resists smudges and repels fingerprints.
Opening up the clamshell, the OLED display fills most of the upper deck, with a decent bezel along the top to make room for the IR capable Windows Hello compatible FHD web camera.
The lower deck has the usual air intakes and fans underneath, with rubber feet to stop movement on the feet. Inside though you get a backlit chiclet keyboard which is spacious and comfortable to type on. The keys have 1.7mm of travel which can make it a little mushy to type on, but it’s easy to jump on and start typing.
There’s a spacious touchpad below the keyboard which supports multi-touch gestures, as well as the ASUS DialPad which can be configured to help with tasks in most apps – even just in Windows.
The Dialpad can be a handy tool for your work flow, however you need to actively use it and it admittedly took me a while to work out how to even activate it – press and hold in the top right of the touchpad for a second, then swipe left – but once you do, and you remember to use it, it can be handy – mostly for me with timeline scrolling in Premiere.
There’s a beautiful 13.3” 3K resolution ASUS Lumina OLED touch display in the ProArt PX13, with Harman Kardon stereo speakers that include Dolby Atmos support.
The touch display looks fantastic in all lighting conditions, with a peak brightness of 500 nits that means you can even work in bright light without straining your eyes.
It’s colour accurate with the OLED panel delivering those deep blacks, and bright colours we love. It’s Pantone Validated and covers 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, with customisation available for sRGB, DCI-P3, Display-P3, and Native.
While the display looks fantastic, it is only running at 60Hz with 0.2ms response, so it’s not ideal for gaming, but does look great when doing creative work in apps like Photoshop.
The OLED panel has a gloss finish which is great for editing as it looks better than a matte finish, however it does mean reflections from any light sources behind you and of course fingerprints – and you will get fingerprints on your touch display.
You can choose to use the included ASUS Pen 2.0 which is included in the box. I’m hugely hit and miss on stylus, in that I forget to use them, but find them immensely useful when I do.
The ASUS Pen 2.0 has always been a great stylus, with four interchangeable tip types – 2H, H, HB, B – included, and when combined with the 4096-level pressure sensitivity you can get your lines as accurate on-screen as on paper.
The pen is charged via USB-C and it works for hours – up to 140 hours ASUS say and connects easily with one-click Bluetooth pairing, which means you can have it in your bag ready to go when you need (or remember) it.
On the audio front, the internal Harman Kardon speakers are good quality, however don’t have a huge amount of power in terms of volume. There’s spatial audio thanks to the Dolby Atmos support, and the sound quality is good just not very powerful. Of course you can throw on some headphones for a better experience.
The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor with 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 1TB Gen 4 M.2 SSD with an 8GB NVIDIA RTX 4070 GPU on-board giving a boost to the integrated Radeon 890M Graphics.
These new AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processors incorporate their latest Zen5 cores paired with an on-board AI-capable Neural Processing Unit (NPU) which is capable of up to 50 Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS).
That AI capability is bolstered by the NVIDIA RTX 4070 laptop GPU which adds capability for up to 321 TOPS AI performance on top of the increased graphics performance for video processing and gaming.
Suffice to say there’s very little waiting time when doing day to day work with the ProArt PX13, There’s the usual rendering halts when processing video, however it’s overall smooth and powers through even 4K rendering fairly well.
The only notes I have is that there does tend to be a bit of fan noise when you push performance – and with the power available, you will want to push it. The ‘Whisper mode’ in the myASUS settings does make it fairly quiet, however if you want that real power, a little fan noise never hurt anyone.
Of course we put the ProArt PX13 through its paces on the benchmarks and here’s how it went.
Connectivity wise, the laptop has just about all you could want. ASUS have addressed a bug-bear of mine and included a USB Type-C (4.0 Gen 3) on both sides of the laptop – letting you charge easily, albeit at a ‘slower’ charging speed than the supplied proprietary charger, no matter which side the power point is on. The USB- C ports also include Display Port out and data transfer speeds up to 40Gbps.
That’s not your only hard connections though, with a USB Type-A port on the left alongside a microSD card reader, while you get a HDMI 2.1 FRL port and Audio Jack on the right along with the proprietary DC power jack.
Wireless options include both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, so you get your Bluetooth devices connected easily and they’re quite stable, and the Wi-Fi 7 is great….if you have a router that supports it, if not the Wi-Fi 5/6/6E speeds are good too :).
A bonus of sorts is the inclusion of a USB-A to RJ45 adapter for when you just need a hardwired connection. It’s handy, and while most people won’t need to hardwire to a network, it can often be handy for faster speeds.
A 73Whr battery is included with the ProArt PX13, with a 200W charger included in the box.
As far as battery life goes, the ProArt PX13 is decent, offering a full day of business use – around 8 hours.
The battery life is good, however we are seeing some incredible battery life out of the new Copilot+ PCs and the ProArt PX13 doesn’t quite get there. The battery life is powering a lot more raw grunt than those Copilot+ PCs, so 8 hours of solid battery life with that sort of capability is still impressive.
The decision comes down to what is more important for you, and for creators the power to produce content when it’s needed is often the choice – so finding a power point to charge is the best idea here if you need it.
The supplied 200W charger is, well, it’s big. It also uses a proprietary rectangular connector – which is only on the left side of the laptop, however you can charge at a slower speed with the USB-C ports on either side of the laptop.
The charging speed is excellent (Chef’s kiss emoji) getting you to over 50% charge in 30 minutes, and a full charge in under 90 minutes.
ASUS includes Windows 11 Pro for the ProArt PX13, it includes some bonus features – notably Bitlocker drive encryption – and if you need them, you’ll know, but for all intents and purposes it’s Windows 11.
There is of course some pre-installed Microsoft apps including an Office 365 trial – and if you want, a 3-month trial of Xbox Games Pass Ultimate.
There’s a range of ASUS utilities including the MyASUS app, their core app offering support, optimisation and more for your new laptop. ASUS also includes ScreenXpert and GlideX apps for optimising and using screen sharing or managing your app windows.
There are also a number of utilities preinstalled for accessing and configuring hardware in your new laptop. These apps include the Dolby Atmos app, a smattering of Intel apps, a Realtek app for audio – a refreshing lack of McAfee Live is great to see, with Windows Defender doing a great job at keeping nasties from your system.
You can keep any of these apps or utilities installed or just uninstall them and replace it with your choice of software.
As with almost all the laptops released under the CoPilot+ PC category, there’s been a very choppy rollout of AI features for Windows – and despite it being December, the spec pages for the majority are still listing the devices waiting for an update:
You can still access Copilot through the Copilot key on the keyboard, but we’re missing the features that Copilot+ PCs are supposed to have. Unfortunately we are at the mercy of Microsoft waiting for the update .
ASUS have included some AI assisted features on-board like StoryCube, their digital asset management app.
To get the most from Story Cube you really need to import your entire photo library from the likes of Dropbox, Google Photos, iCloud, OneDrive etc. however, if, like me, you have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of images in your online library this can be a daunting task.
If you do want to run a sample through StoryCube, it can sort or group by faces, making it easier to find photos of them when you need them.
The ASUS ProArt PX13 is a phenomenally good machine for creators on the go. The compact footprint of the laptop which still includes the powerful AMD Ryzen 9 HX processor and NVIDIA RTX graphics – removing barriers from being creative on the go.
The design is compact, yet has a high end look and feel, with a spacious keyboard and touchpad that makes working on software like Photoshop and Premiere a breeze.
While it’s a mobile creator’s dream machine, this is possibly one of my favourite compact non-gaming focused laptops as well, with it eating up all my games from Commander Keen through to BlackOps 6, giving you options for your downtime.
The battery life isn’t the best, but the power it provides is the flip-side, and if battery life is your only concern, there are many other options now available.
The price is premium, but you get a premium device and for anyone serious about their work, this is one of the best compact machines to achieve it.
You can find the ASUS ProArt PX13 on the ASUS website, and for sale through the ASUS e-Shop starting from ,599.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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