Asus Vivobook Pro 16X

A creative laptop with a playful side

- IAN EVENDEN

THIS VIVOBOOK from Asus is not a gaming laptop. It may look like one, with its GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, 13thgen Core i9 processor and 3.2K, 120Hz, OLED screen, but there’s a subtle difference. The Vivobook is aimed at creative professionals, the sort of people currently glued to Photoshop rather than Baldur’s Gate 3, and as such comes with Nvidia’s Studio drivers installed, rather than the Game Ready ones.

This matters because DirectX 12 needs detailed instructions for the games you want to play. Every time a big title is released, the GPU manufacturers release a new driver to fit it. The same isn’t true of the Studio drivers, which are designed to be stable rather than to squeeze every possible frame out of Armored Core 6, so while games will run using them, they won’t be working at their best.