Asus is announcing a slew of new laptops today, including the first we know of with 16-inch OLED displays and a laptop with a built-in dial for use with creative applications. The company is hoping these additions will make its latest machines the best ultrabooks for creatives.
That 16-inch OLED screen comes in the new Vivobook Pro 16X OLED, ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED and ProArt Studio 16 OLED. Additionally, the company has new Zenbooks in both clamshell and convertible form factors.
Vivobook Pro 14X and 16X OLED
The Vivobook Pro, a new model that will also come in a 14-inch size, will use up to 11th Gen Intel Core i7-H series processors or AMD Ryzen 5000 H-series CPUs and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, as well as up to 32GB of RAM and a 96 WHr battery on the 16-inch model.
The OLED screen is a 16-inch, 4K display with HDR support, a 16:10 form-factor. There’s also a 14-inch version with a 2880 x 1800 resolution. Both are Pantone validated and Asus claims they offer low blue-light emissions. Besides the Vivobook 14X and 16X, there will be non-X versions in 14 and 15-inch options with a weaker RTX 3050 GPU.
The Vivobook 14X and 16X stand out in some unique ways. For instance, Asus has made the escape key orange so it’s easier to find, while putting what it calls a "twill pattern" on the enter key. There's also a finish that Asus says avoids fingerprints, but we'll need to get our hands on them, literally, to see how that claim holds up.
On the 14X and 16X, Asus is also putting a virtual dial on the touchpad, much like some Zenbooks have used it for the number pad. This dial can be used to change settings in creative applications.
The Vivobook Pro 16X OLED will launch in Q4 starting at $1,399.99 in North America, while the 14X will be available only in Canada, and no price has been provided. The Vivobook Pro 14 OLED will start at $749.99 "soon," while the Vivobook Pro 15 OLED will start at $919.99.
ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED
If you prefer more power and a physical dial, you may be looking at Asus' other big announcement, the ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED, or the seemingly less-pro ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED. Both have a 16-inch 4K OLED screen with HDR support, as well as the new Asus Dial.
This Dial isn't like Microsoft's Surface Dial, which is an external accessory. This is a rotary dial built into the notebook, to the left of the touchpad, to interact with software like Adobe's creative suite. (In that way, it does work like the Surface Dial, as it's built to support Microsoft's protocols.) A new piece of software, ProArt Creator Hub, will let you customize the Dial's functionality on an app-by-app basis.
The ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED uses either an AMD Ryzen 5000 series processor or a 3rd Generation Intel Xeon workstation chip, while the non-pro version uses Ryzen 5000 or Intel Core i7 H-series processors. The former uses an Nvidia RTX A5000 GPU, while the latter can be configured with an RTX 3060 or RTX 3070.
The Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro 16 OLED will start at $2,49.99 when it launches in North America in Q4, while the regular Studiobook 15 will begin at $1,999.99.
ZenBook
Asus' Zenbooks have had OLED before, but now there are two new options: the clamshell Zenbook 14X OLED and a convertible Zenbook 14 Flip. Like the other laptops, Intel and AMD are both going to be available in these machines. These 14-inch laptops also use 16:10 screens, either in a 4K OLED HDR version or a 2880 x 1800 OLED 90 Hz option. Both offer DisplayHDR 500 True Black support.
Pricing and release dates were not made available for these laptops.
