ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED (H5600) review - A creators laptop designed for creators

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Content Creators often bemoan the fact that their creator machines just aren’t fast enough or made exactly for their needs. The ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED (H5600) looks to shatter these conceptions by not only including a built in ASUS Dial specifically made for image and video editors but also packing in a 16-inch 4K OLED display. Does it deliver? Find out in our full review of the ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED (H5600).

Despite being relatively thin (for a Concept Creator laptop) at 1.99 ~ 2.14cm the ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED (H5600) is quite big and heavy at 2.4kg. In addition, the charger is huge, so it’s not really what we would call portable, unless you  don’t mind lugging around both of them. Nonetheless, build quality is top notch complete with MIL-STD-810H certification for drop and shock resistance, so it’s quite rugged.

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The top looks tough

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There's plenty of ports on this side

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There's plenty of ports on this side too

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The HD webcam has a built-in privacy slider

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The bezels are slim

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The laptop is relatively thin

On the outside, the design seems fairly standard with a ProArt logo on the back of the metal chassis. On the inside, the 16-inch 4K OLED display has very slim side and top bezels which contrasts rather sharply with the huge chin on the bottom. The HD camera is located on the top and there’s also a privacy cover built-in.

The fully backlit keyboard is where the content creator design becomes more apparent with the fairly large ASUS Dial located in between the keyboard and the touchpad on the left which can be pressed or rotated. The large keycaps are chiclet shaped while the arrow keycaps have been ridged so they feel different than the other keys from just the touch. Actually, the larger touchpad can be used like a drawing tablet as well since it supports a stylus with up to 1024 pressure levels (too bad it doesn’t come with a stylus).

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The keyboard has big chiclet shaped keys

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The ASUS Dial

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The large trackpad has 3 buttons and you can also use it as a drawing tablet with a stylus

Powered by an AMD Ryzen R9-5900HX CPU, discrete Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, 32GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage the 4K 16-inch OLED display remains the centerpiece of the laptop and it certainly delivers. It’s very smooth thanks to the high refresh rate while the sound quality for the Harman Kardon speakers is amazingly clear.

For connections, the laptop offers a HDMI Port, 2 USB A ports, 2 USB C ports, an RH-45 Lan port, a 3.5mm audio in/out jack and an SD card reader that supports SD Express 7.0. Setting up the ASUS Dial via the ProArt Creator Hub lets you customize the functions more like increasing or decreasing the increments of the settings and so forth. Supported apps are mostly Adobe and if there are no such apps, the Dial can be used to control speaker volume or display brightness.

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PCMark 10 scores

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3DMark scores

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Geekbench 5 scores

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Rendering a 9 minute video only took...

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... 1 minute!

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You can control everything here

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Watching 4K movies is a blast

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You can still play games very smoothly on this laptop

Performance-wise we’ll let our benchmark screenshots speak for themselves (yes, they’re very high) but from a content creator’s perspective we found the laptop to be very responsive and not laggy at all. Heavy Premiere Pro rendering was super fast, where a 9 minute video only took 1 minute to export (to put this into context, previous generation creator laptops would take 6 minutes or longer). The ASUS Dial does help to increase editing speed or simplify the fine tuning a bit, but it does take some time to get used to.

Watching 4K movies on the 16-inch 4K (3840 x 2400 pixels) OLED display was super smooth due to the high screen refresh rate while playing games like League of Legends with all settings maxed is still very smooth. Even pushed under heavy loads, the laptop’s fan remained quite quiet, but battery life unplugged is about 3 to 5 hours depending on your usage, so you should probably keep it plugged in to the charger if you intend to use it for long periods of time. Recharging back to full doesn’t take too long though as you can 100% from zero in about an hour or so.

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Overall, the ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED (H5600) is an excellent content creators laptop with great performance and features like the ASUS Dial and OLED display designed exactly for content creators. That being said, it’s not something we’d recommend for anything else despite solid performance in gaming as the aforementioned features may actually get in the way for gaming.

Priced from RM9999 it may seem rather pricey to most other people, but for a content creator laptop with these features, the ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED (H5600) does have fairly good value. Other laptops with similar features are more likely to extend into the RM13K range or higher.

So what do you think, would you be interested in the ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED (H5600)? Does it deliver the performance and features most content creators would want or need? We certainly think so and if you do too, let us know in our Facebook page and stay tuned to TechNave.com

 

Tech Specs and Features

Here are the tech specs and features for the ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED (H5600):

  • AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX 
  • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
  • 16-inch OLED display (4K ~ 3840 x 2400 pixels, 16:10 aspect ratio, 0.2ms response time, 550nits peak brightness, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, 1000000:1, VESA Certified Display, HDR True Black 500, PANTONE Validated)
  • 16GB DDR4 RAM (upgradeable to 64GB)
  • 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 Performance SSD
  • measures 36.2 x 26.4 x 1.99 ~ 2.14cm | 2.4kg
  • features US MIL-STD 810H military grade standard, ASUS Dial, AI Noise Canceling, IR webcam with Windows Hello, Fingerprint sensor integrated with Power key, Backpack
  • Connections: 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C (display/power/VR), 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C (display/power), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack, 1x RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet, SD Express 7.0 card reader

 

Pros and Cons

Pros: Ideal for most content creators. ASUS Dial and the drawing tablet-like touchpad are great for this. Relatively good pricing.

Cons: Not very portable. Really large power adapter. Not ideal for anyone else but a content creator.

Summary: The laptop made specifically for content creators who don’t move about that much.