ASUS ProArt PX13 Review: An Absolute Creator’s Dream Come True

My chase for a creator-centric laptop never ended—because it’s the only laptop lineup in the Windows space that gets me excited these days. Especially lately, when I have been spending my time in the field doing corporate photography and videography, it’s absolutely essential to have a capable laptop. After spending my time making this ASUS ProArt PX13 Review, man, this is the laptop I need over the P16.

ASUS ProArt PX13 Review

Design and Build

1/5

As a huge fan of the ROG Flow X13 and the Zephyrus (although I have never reviewed the Flow, but I have reviewed the latter) – the ASUS ProArt PX13 is the spiritual successor of the Flow, although now it has more Creator and less Gaming characteristics. Weighing at 1.3kg, and about 1.7cm thick, this laptop screams lightweight in form and a heavyweight in the hardware it houses under the hood – which we will get to later. As for the looks, this laptop is gorgeous with the ASUS ProArt logo on the back, and the nano-black texture which gives a smudge-resistant finish though if your hands are greasy or sweaty you will notice the stain but otherwise, it’s a well-designed and an absolute stunner in every way possible.

Just like almost any ASUS laptop. You do get the MIL-STD810H certification for the ProArt PX13 to withstand any tough situations. The best part is: that the entire laptop is built on metal, making it solid and whole – which seems to be the case with all the ProArt devices we have reviewed so far. Now since this is a 2-in-1 convertible, the hinge is an important factor because over time you don’t want it to snap. ASUS has definitely reinforced the hinges to withstand the flexibility of this laptop – making it more than capable of 2-in-1 tasks.

You can use this laptop in almost any form – and we don’t have to go into detail. But the fact that it weighs around 1.3kg does help a lot, especially in the tablet form factor, making it easier to carry and sketch things. Overall, in the looks and feel department – I am genuinely a huge fan of this laptop.

Display

ASUS has equipped this laptop with their best ASUS Lumina OLED Display, which is technically their 2^nd Generation of OLED display which claims to offer better accuracy and performance overall. Now, it is one strikingly beautiful display to look at because since it uses a gloss Corning Gorilla Glass, the colour just pops as compared to a matte finish display that dulls the colours. And in this case, the ASUS ProArt PX13, as the name suggests, houses a 13.3” 3K OLED Display in the 16:10 aspect ratio.

The only thing you will miss out unlike the OLEDs we have seen in the Zenbook is the higher 90 or 120Hz refresh rate. Kind of a missed opportunity to cap the display to 60Hz, but since it’s a creator laptop – I’ll let it slide. But this display is no slouch as it presents the best kinds of colours and you get all the OLED protection features you’d get with any ProArt honestly.

If you need values, the display hits 100% DCI-P3 with 400nits peak brightness and 500nits HDR peak brightness. Not to forget, since the laptop gives you a tablet experience, you do get all the touch controls and support for ASUS Pen 2.0 which is their improved pen with a built-in battery that can be recharged and comes with replaceable tips.

I am no illustrator but throughout my time using this laptop – I spent most of my time editing through Lightroom Classic, and Premiere Pro and learning Affinity because it was that great. Not to forget, watching shows when the laptop is in tent mode with the speakers facing upwards is a nice touch too. To be honest, you won’t be disappointed. But if you need a much bigger display, then your only other option happens to be the ProArt P16, which we have reviewed as well.

Creator Centric Features

ASUS DialPad

The ASUS DialPad is the crown jewel of any ProArt laptop you opt for (except for the PZ16 Tablet). That said, the Dialpad opens up the avenue for you to have shortcuts to your workflow in creative apps or even your daily applications. For me, I have always kept the Dialpad for creative apps, namely Adobe Suite and even Office-related tasks as well. The dialpad is extremely versatile and enabling or disabling it is pretty easy – so it doesn’t get in the way when you are using the trackpad.

ASUS Pen 2.0 Experience

I am a fan of the improved ASUS Pen 2.0 because the rechargeable battery is a nicer touch as compared to the earlier pens which required a specific type of battery which cost a pretty penny. That said the pen offers 4096 pressure levels and this is pretty good if you are using apps like Affinity and so on. The tips are interchangeable and you do get extra in the box, but this has never changed since the first ASUS Pen – so that’s good.

Specification and Performance

Despite the rather compact profile, the ASUS ProArt PX13 has enough firepower for you to get through most day-to-day tasks and more without breaking a sweat. Here’s the configuration:

• AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (12 cores, 24 threads) with 81 TOPs
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060
• 32GB LPDDR5X RAM with 1TB PCIe NVMe 4.0 SSD
• Bluetooth 5.4 with Wi-Fi 7 Triple Band 2×2

Seeing a Ryzen AI 9 in a smaller laptop is a little concerning personally, especially from a thermal standpoint – but the triple-fan setup ASUS has opted in for, kept the laptop cool most of the time, and you do see some temperature spikes when it works – but nothing out of the ordinary. Finding an RTX 4060 in this laptop is nice, however, in select countries, you can get the 4070 instead but do take note: with greater power comes greater responsibility.

The overall specification here is balanced, and the results are as expected from the benchmark scores we have obtained from our testing. Compared with the bigger brethren, ProArt P16 – despite the slightly less powerful GPU on the PX13, there are marginal differences which are expected in 3DMARK. Our PCMARK scores did look great as it scored 8691 points with really good scores in the breakdown. Finally, we have the Cinebench 2024 scores: 8245 points for GPU, 769 points for CPU Multi-core and 114 points for CPU Single Core with an MP Ratio of 6.74x.

Honestly, this is a performance I can live with – and exactly what I hoped for. Benchmark scores aside, in my day-to-day use, I had a great time bringing this laptop with me everywhere for few reasons: the balance when it comes to endurance and performance was something I enjoyed, I didn’t have to carry the clunky 200W adapter with me and charging over the 65W adapter (which means I don’t get the full hardware performance over DC, which is okay) is a lot more convenient and fast enough and most importantly, all this in a small laptop is the big winner.

Now, the battery life with this laptop is okay –, for my Gamescom Asia 2024 day trip, this is the laptop I brought with me. The entire day I worked on this laptop in the Media room – from editing images, doing socials, writing content, checking emails and squeezing a bit of entertainment wherever I could. I was happy. I charged the laptop with a 65W adapter, from 42% to 100% which took about 50 minutes roughly. Charging with the 200W adapter from 4% to 97% takes about 58 minutes.

Using the 200W adapter gives you a much better advantage as you feed more power to the CPU and GPU, therefore, unlocking the full potential – but the ability to scale up and down the performance is what I wanted in a Windows laptop, similarly how Macbooks work and I am happy to report, it’s here. The MUX Switch and Advanced Optimus are the real MVP here.

By the way, if your display flickers and have issues – it’s the AMD drivers specifically causing the trouble – so, make sure to download the Adrenaline from the official website, install and troubleshoot it.

Anything Else to Talk about?

Well, there is. For starters, if you are worried about the I/O selection, well don’t be because it has some fine choices going on: HDMI 2.1 FRL, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 2x USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C which can be used to output to display and for PD and a 3.5mm Combo Jack. My biggest gripe with the PX13 is the lack of a full-size SD card reader.

Instead, it gets a MicroSD 4.0 card slot. What’s ironic is that the PZ13 tablet has a full-size SD Card reader which frustrated me a lot. And I hope this changes with the future PX13.

The speakers on this ASUS ProArt PX13 are solid – and as we mentioned earlier, you can put it in Tent mode or Stand mode to have an uninterrupted direction for the audio while you consume content.

Conclusion

I will be honest, the price you pay for this cutting-edge creator laptop and a properly refined one at that is pretty steep but every penny that goes into purchasing this laptop is worth it. Priced at RM 9,999 – again yes, it is an expensive price tag but man what a laptop.

Just as I was about to bite the bullet into the Macbook ecosystem because the M4 is so compelling, the ASUS ProArt PX13 did make me want to get this instead because not only it’s a capable creator laptop but most importantly, the new generation hardware finally puts the biggest woe on Windows to an end – and that’s the on-the-move experience by offering a well-balanced endurance and performance depending on your needs. Will I get this? I want to but only if my wallet permits.

The ASUS ProArt PX13 gets our Vesper Choice Awards this year for being a great creator laptop for 2024. Oh and ASUS if you are reading this, if you can put a Full Size SD Card reader on the PZ13, I’m sure you can do that to the PX13 – seriously, think about it.

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