Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro 17
Made for the masters.
Content creators are forever hungry for more powerful PCs and laptops (also known as workstations), and Asus has risen to the challenge of meeting that insatiable appetite. The company’s ProArt StudioBook Pro 17 mobile workstation is an absolute behemoth of a laptop, hiding some truly powerful specifications in a rather svelte aluminium body.
This isn’t a laptop for the faint-hearted. With support up to 64GB of RAM, a Quadro RTX 3000 GPU, an Intel Xeon processor, and up to 2TB of storage, there’s plenty here that can chew through any design challenge. Whether it’s scrubbing through 4k video, batch-editing large Photoshop files, or meticulously examining the structural integrity of a cathedral using AutoCAD, you’ll struggle to try and keep up with the StudioBook Pro 17.
That’s genuinely a good thing, as fast computing and a powerful
GPU are what make workstations so appealing in scenarios where complicated calculations are required for almost every task. The StudioBook Pro 17 doesn’t hold back with what you throw at it – from benchmarks to real-world usage, it barely broke a sweat.
Design
Despite its beefy internals, the StudioBook Pro 17 has a very alluring design. Launched in two colors - Star Grey or Turquoise Grey – the magnesium-alloy chassis is sturdy and offers little flex. Keeping things cool is a top priority here, so you’ll see vents on the back as well as the sides of this laptop.
Connectivity-wise, there are a few ups and downs. On the left side you have an SD card reader, 3.5mm audio jack, full-sized HDMI 2.0b port, Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1, and the power port. On the opposite side you’ll find two more USB 3.1
ports for plugging in additional things such as an external mouse.
What we didn’t like at all was the placement of the power port. It sits squarely in the middle of the left side of the laptop, and the cable mostly gets in the way of the ventilation grilles there. It’s also just plain awkward to have a chunky power cable sitting so close to the rest of your ports, so we really wish that Asus had placed the power port towards the rear of the laptop.
The single Thunderbolt 3 port is a bit of a disappointment too. Yes, you can daisy-chain compatible Thunderbolt devices together, but would it have been too difficult to have two Thunderbolt 3 ports on there? If you want to drive two external displays, you’ll have to be satisfied with using the HDMI port instead. If you’ve plugged in a device such as a NAS into the Thunderbolt 3 port, then you’ll have to make do with just one external display.
There’s also no built-in LAN port, but Asus have included a USB to LAN adaptor in the box. Still, that’s one extra thing dangling from your laptop when you’re moving it around – most designers tend to collaborate on large files through central file servers or a NAS, so you’ll almost always have to have this dongle connected to your laptop.
Display
Asus has managed to cram a 17-inch display into a 15-inch chassis, and while you only have a (1920x1200) resolution to contend with, it’s still a great viewing experience overall. The 60Hz refresh rate is more than enough for design applications, as well as casual gaming sessions. There are definitely going to be those that will hunger for a 4k panel, but it doesn’t seem that Asus is quite ready to make that jump just yet.
The 16:10 aspect ratio may throw some people off, but for design work it’s actually quite handy. Of course, you have the option of doing everything on a larger external display, should you prefer to do so. You can also fold the display down completely flat, which is an interesting design choice. Asus says its for moments when you want to show something to multiple people – such as a drawing – without having to put up with awkward viewing angles.
Performance
Of course where things will matter the most is how the StudioBook Pro 17 actually performs under pressure. Armed to the max, our review unit performed exceptionally well in our standard benchmark tests, cutting through render times at blazing speeds across multiple applications.
In our real-world tests, the StudioBook Pro 17 was able to transcode a five minute 4k file to 1080p in just under three minutes in Premiere Pro. Loading our test AutoCAD drawing of a cathedral was similarly quick, with the program loading up and showing the drawing in little under ten seconds. Gaming on the StudioBook Pro 17 is also possible, and depending on what your game settings are, you can comfortably get around 50-70fps on high / ultra settings.
Storage comes in the form of
NVMe M.2 SSDs, with our model packing two drives in a RAID 0 array. Transfer speeds were absolutely absurd, with 5GB of files being copied from one part of the drive to another in mere seconds.
The keyboard on the StudioBook Pro 17 is fairly decent, despite the slightly shallow key travel. The larger arrow keys make it easier to navigate around, and the dedicated options to mute your microphone or camera are a nice touch. It’s backlit, but there’s a fair amount of light spillage across some of the keys, so it isn’t as easy to type with in low-light conditions.
The trackpad is also fairly responsive, though we wish it was a fraction larger. Most users will anyway be using an external mouse for prolonged design work, but for basic navigation around Windows, you should be fine with the trackpad. While there are a few design choices we would like to change about the Asus ProArt
StudioBook Pro 17, it still remains a very competent device that can handle all manner of workflows. From CAD to 4k video rendering, there’s nothing that this laptop can’t digest.