Why the ASUS ProArt P16 should be your next laptop for creative work

We ask for a lot from a laptop for creative work. It needs to be powerful enough to do some heavy lifting, running software that requires sufficient CPU and GPU power. And it needs to have an accurate display for colour-crucial work plus a bunch of ports for peripherals. And it needs to do all that while still being a laptop; not a hulking tank that’s impossible to lift from your desk let alone throw in a bag to take on a train or plane.

Almost always a compromise has to be made somewhere, but the latest addition to the ASUS ProArt range delivers on creatives’ needs and even surpasses them. The ASUS ProArt P16 provides the necessary specs for intensive creative workflows and goes the extra mile with additional quality of life improvements that were clearly designed with creatives in mind. It even looks good while it does it.

Portable power for demanding creative apps

If you’re using a laptop for graphic design, video editing or digital art, you need the power to run creative software without melting your desk or wanting to headbutt a wall as you wait for the machine to catch up with your imagination. In its sleek chassis, the P16 packs in a powerful AMD Ryzen AI 9 processor, the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 and up to 64GM of RAM for computation, graphics and memory performance that can make you forget you’re working on a laptop.

Scrubbing through 4K footage with layers of effects in DaVinci Resolve, making real-time adjustments to lighting in Blender or juggling dozens of layers in Photoshop suddenly became a breeze. Meanwhile, the powerful neural processor future-proofs the setup for AI-powered efficiencies.

A display that hits the sweet spot

Our second most important demand of a laptop for creative work is a display with a high-enough resolution for crisp detail but also broad colour coverage and accuracy and a fast enough refresh rate to avoid lag. Here, we also often have to make concessions, but the ProArt P16 hits a sweet spot with its 16in 3K OLED touch display.

The 16:10 aspect ratio provides plenty of space to work with in programs with multiple panels, while the OLED panel for a high contrast ratio and blacks that actually look black. Our colour needs are met with coverage of 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut.

To top it off, a fast 120hz refresh rate makes this a brilliant laptop for drawing and digital illustration because there’s no lag when you use a stylus on the touch display. Marks appear immediately, for a smooth, seamless digital drawing experience, which can also benefit photo editors and designers.

Quality of life enhancements

Beyond the headline specs, the P16 has some delightful extra details that we didn’t ask for but make a real difference to accessibility and functionality. The handy ASUS Dial is perfectly located on the touchpad for ease of access and can be programmed to provide the shortcuts that most help your workflow in the apps where you need them.

Use it to change brushes and brush size in Photoshop or to scrub through footage or adjust the timeline zoom level in Premiere Pro. You can use it in any app you wish, providing a time-saving and ergonomic solution for frequently repeated tasks.

Then there’s the CreatorHub: a control panel specifically designed for creatives. This allows easy personalisation of settings, most crucially for the calibration of colour profiles and monitor performance if you work with an external display. The intuitive dashboard takes the hassle out of having to remember to adjust profiles.

AI that supports creatives

We hear a lot about AI PCs, but they don’t tend to provide AI smarts in a way that specifically helps with creative work. ASUS is doing things differently with two integrated apps of its own that put AI at the service of creatives.

MuseTree is an AI image generation app with a difference. It provides unlimited, free generation using all-local processing. It also supports sketching and merging images, ideal for ideating and generating images for moodboards and storyboards, whether you’re planning a shoot or iterating on ideas for a branding project.

Finally, StoryCube aims to solve another common problem that wastes creatives’ time: organising files. ASUS’s own intelligent digital-asset management app allows one-click sorting, automatic categorisation, custom smart tagging and batch editing. With timeline, map and grid views, it offers multiple ways to browse your content, making it easier to find that material you’re looking for. You can import assets from your camera, drone or cloud storage and easily export straight to creative software or social platforms all from the same place.

It’s another example of how ASUS is finding solutions to real pain points that can get in the way of creatives’ work, helping to unlock faster and smoother workflows. And it packs all of this into a slim frame that weights under 2kg, making the ProArt P16 a powerful portable studio for digital art, design and editing on the go.

The ProArt P16 is available now from £2,799.99 at the ASUS eShop as well as from Very and John Lewis.