Asus ProArt PX13 review: uniquely small and powerful | Digital Trends

Asus offers just two configurations of the ProArt PX13. My review unit is $1,700 with the Ryzen AI 9 chipset, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, an RTX 4050 GPU, and a 13.3-inch 3K OLED display. For $2,000, you get the same configuration with an RTX 4060 GPU. There is no RTX 4070 configuration, which is offered in the ROG Flow X13.

Hopefully there is some more customization available in the future. A cheaper, 16GB model model would be nice, for example, as would a 120Hz refresh rate option.

The keyboard has large keycaps and a spacious layout. The lettering is blocky and quite visible in any lighting, and for darker environments the backlighting is quite bright (maybe too bright at its highest setting). The switches are deep and springy, with a comfortable bottoming action. It might be just a little less snappy than I like and feels slightly less precise than the MacBook Air M3’s Magic Keyboard, but I like the Asus key feel better than the XPS 13’s. And the Dell’s zero-lattice layout is harder to get used to.

The biggest story here is the new AMD Ryzen AI 300 line of chipsets, which promises a significant uptick in performance. There are three versions, the Ryzen AI 9 365 with 10 CPU cores and 20 threads and 12 GPU cores in the Radeon 880M integrated graphics. The Ryzen AI 9 370 and 375 both have 12 CPU cores and 24 threads and 16 GPU cores. All use 28 watts of power by default and can be configured to run at between 15 and 54 watts. The new chipsets use a mix of Zen 5 and Zen 5c cores, with the latter being more compact but just as fast as the others.

The primary competition includes Intel Meteor Lake, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X, and the Apple Silicon M3. Meteor Lake has several versions, but the most common is the Core Ultra 7 155H with 16 cores (six Performance, eight Efficient, and two Low Power Efficient) and 22 threads, running at 28 watts with a minimum of 20 watts and up to 115 watts of Turbo power.

The Snapdragon X Elite has 12 cores (eight performance and four efficient) running at up to 3.8GHz. Both have moderately fast integrated graphics. Finally, the M3 chipset ranges in power from the base model with eight CPU cores and either eight or 10 GPU cores up to the M3 Max with 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores.

The ProArt PX13 uses the Ryzen AI 9 370 HX 370 chipset. My review unit used the RTX 4050, an entry-level GPU, with the faster RTX 4060 as an alternative. As we’ll see in our suite of benchmarks, it’s a very fast chipset for a 13-inch laptop, and when combined with the discrete graphics makes for a much faster machine. It does run a bit hot and loud under load, but not unusually so for (as we’ll see) a fast laptop.

When compared with the Dell XPS 13 9345 with the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 and running Windows on Arm, the ProArt PX13 is roughly as fast in CPU-intensive benchmarks like Cinebench 2024 and Geekbench 6. I can’t compare much more, because not many other benchmarks run natively the Dell. Looking at GPU performance, the ProArt PX13 is a lot faster. It would be even more faster with the RTX 4060. The Asus is also faster than the MacBook Air M3 in these benchmarks.

Overall, the ProArt PX13 is incredibly fast for productivity users, and will churn through the most demanding workflows. It will also serve as a good entry-level 1080p gaming laptop. Note that the Asus Zenbook S 16 uses the same AMD chipset but with the integrated Radeon 890M graphics. That GPU scored 3,207 in the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark compared to the ProArt PX13’s much faster 8,503.

But then we need to also need to consider how the ProArt PX13 performs for a creator, which as the name implies is the laptop’s primary target. And here, Asus did a great job of creating a powerful machine.

Looking at two creative benchmarks — Pugetbench Premiere Pro that runs in a live version of Adobe Premiere Pro and Pugetbench Photoshop, which also runs in the live Adobe app — the ProArt PX 13 does well.

In Premiere Pro, which can use a Windows laptop’s GPU to speed up certain creative processes, the ProArt PX13 is faster than several laptops with much faster GPUs. That includes the Acer Swift X 14 with the RTX 4070 and the Asus ROG Flow Z13 with the RTX 4060. It’s a lot faster than the Dell XPS 14 with the same RTX 4050, and the Zenbook S 16 with AMD’s Radeon 490M integrated graphics can’t keep up.

Apple’s M3 chipset has various CPU optimizations that speed up video encoding and decoding, and the MacBook Air M3 is reasonably fast here. I included the MacBook Pro 16 with the M3 Max chipset as a proxy for the MacBook Pro 14, which is about as fast. The M3 Max is a lot faster for video editing.

In Photoshop, the ProArt PX13 was again very fast, leading all but the MacBook Pro 16. This is down to the Ryzen AI 9’s performance and is less influenced by the GPU.

Overall, Asus has made a very fast and highly portable laptop for creators. As we’ll see, its performance is matched up well with its excellent OLED display.

I’d love to say how the AMD AI 9 chipset’s very fast NPU performs relative to the competition. It’s rated at 50 tera operations per second (TOPS), compared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon X chipsets at 45 TOPS and the Intel Meteor Lake at 10 TOPS. The Apple M3’s Neural Engine (NE) has 18 tops. MacBook users will need to wait for the M4’s 38 TOPS to join those ranks.

The next challenge for the ProArt PX13 and its AMD chipset is battery life. After all, while Intel hasn’t caught up in efficiency, both Qualcomm and Apple run Arm chipsets that tend to lead the way. It’s one thing to pack in a lot of performance today. A laptop also needs to have great battery life to compete.

Asus packed in 73 watt-hours of battery, capacity which is a lot for a 13-inch laptop. The XPS 13, for example, has just 55 watt-hours, while the Zenbook S 16 has even more at 78 watt-hours. Notably, the MacBook Air M3 has just 52.6 watt-hours.

Looking at these results, the ProArt PX13 can’t come close to matching the most efficient laptops today. The two Intel Meteor Lake laptops here are deceiving — most running the same Core Ultra 7 155H chipset are closer to the ProArt PX13. While the Qualcomm laptops have very strong video looping battery life (the least-demanding test), the MacBook Air M3 lasts the longest when doing real work.

The ProArt PX13 has decent battery life for such a portable laptop that can handle reasonably demanding creative work. But you’ll need to carry your power adapter along with you.

The 13.3-inch 16:10 3K (2880 by 1800) OLED display is outstanding. It looks great out of the box, with bright, dynamic colors and inky blacks. That’s nothing new for OLED displays, and Asus does it as well as anyone.

My colorimeter validates the panel’s suitability for creators. Its color gamut is wide at 100% of sRGB, 97% of AdobeRGB, and 99% of DCI-P3. They’re also accurate at a Delta-E of 0.64 (less than 1.0 is considered excellent). Brightness was very good at 380 nits, although not the brightest I’ve seen for OLED, and contrast is 26,510:1 with the usual perfect blacks.

The display completes the package for creative work. Media consumers will also love the display. Audio was just OK, though, with dual speakers that are good enough for system sounds and YouTube videos. But music, TV shows, and movies beg for a good pair of headphones.

If you’re looking for a laptop for video editing or high-end photography work, you’ll want fast performance and a display with excellent colors. The ProArt PX13 provides both. It’s not the fastest laptop we’ve reviewed for this work — not even close, really.

But few are so portable. No, battery life isn’t great, but that’s not to be expected. The ProArt PX13 will let you get your work done without lugging around a huge laptop. And that’s well worth the expensive price.