Spectacular Display Workhorse

Embodying some of the lastest tech, the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED is laden with features for creators, as K Madhavan Pillai discovers.

- K Madhavan Pillai

Meant for photographers, graphic designers, video editors, and creators who generally prefer the additional workspace that a larger screen provides, the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED joins a few other 16-inch performance-oriented laptops. Winner of the Red Dot Product Design Award 2021, the Pro 16X is toned down and nondescript from the outside. Yet, there is more than that meets the eye, and a lot that meets the eye, when you begin to use it.

Features

Under the hood, the Pro 16X that is on review (M7600QE) runs on a speedy combination of AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics engine with 4GB of VRAM, and 16GB of 3200 MHz DDR4 RAM. The storage is a 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD, the fast read/write speeds of which promises not to bottleneck performance. There are no expansion slots, except for the one already in use by the SSD, and upgrading would essentially mean replacing modules entirely. Heat management is enabled by dual fans, and Asus’ proprietary IceCool Plus thermal cooling tech.

This brings us to the star feature of the Pro 16X, which is the rather brilliant (world’s first)16-inch 4K OLED display which ASUS has clearly pulled out all the stops for. Its user-friendly 16:10 ratio, resolution of 3840 x 2400, an extremely fast 0.2ms response time, 550nits peak brightness, is significantly higher than other productivity laptops currently in the market. It features a 3-sided NanoEdge design, covers a Pantone Validated 100% of DCI-P3 gamut, a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, DisplayHDR True Black 500, TÜV Rheinland certified 70% less harmful blue light with SGS Eye Care Display, and a screen-to-body ratio of 86%. Basically, as far as laptop screens go for editing, viewing video, or long working hours, this one stands apart.