The Asus ProArt lineup is targeted at creative professionals who need top-of-the-line hardware for unhindered productivity. The ProArt StudioBook aims to be MacBook Pro replacement for creatives on the Windows side and comes with unique features tailored towards creators on the move. We previously reviewed the ProArt StudioBook 16 Pro W7600 workstation laptop featuring the Intel Xeon W-11955M and an Nvidia RTX A5000 Laptop GPU . Now, we have with us the ProArt StudioBook 16 H7600ZW featuring an Intel Core i9-12900H and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU . Our test sample is also equipped with 32 GB DDR5-4800 RAM, a 16-inch Samsung 4K OLED panel, and 1 TB PCIe storage. Asus has currently priced this configuration starting from ₹1,99,990 MRP or from US$2,699. 99 in the US. Unfortunately, Asus has skipped Ryzen 6000 or Ryzen 7000 options altogether for the ProArt series. The only Ryzen-based SKU currently available is the ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED H5600 with a Ryzen 9 5900HX and RTX 3070 Laptop GPU . A review of this variant will follow shortly. However, Asus unveiled the ProArt StudioBook 16 3D OLED at CES 2023 with Intel 13th gen and 3D OLED panel upgrades, which we hope to review in the coming weeks. In this review, we put the Asus ProArt StudioBook 16 H7600ZW to the test and see if this laptop indeed has the potential to let your creativity flow unhindered. The chassis and haptics are exactly identical to that of the ProArt StudioBook 16 Pro W7600. The laptop is quite hefty at 2. 4 kg, but the equal weight distribution across the 0. 78-inch slim 16-inch chassis does inspire confidence in daily handling. In particular, we like the raised design that allows for a more comfortable typing experience and for unhindered airflow. There are no sharp edges, and we didn't experience any wanton display wobbles. The lid is fairly resistant to twisting as well. The lid can be opened with one finger up to 150° without any stability issues. The top of the keyboard deck has air intake vents. The deck itself is well-built and has no perceivable flex. There are three status indicators on the bottom for power, battery, and SSD activity. Asus claims that the matte lid with a Mineral Black color scheme features a "high-tech anti-fingerprint nano-coating". Though fingerprints may not be visible, the lid is not immune to grime and is not oleophobic. The ProArt StudioBook 16 also meets MIL-STD-810H criteria for durability and can easily withstand the vagaries of working in the great outdoors. Overall, the Asus ProArt StudioBook 16 may not exactly give off MacBook Pro vibes, but the aluminum alloy construction is definitely premium, minimalist, and tallies well with the asking price. Port selection on the Asus ProArt StudioBook 16 decent but not very extensive. Asus completely foregoes USB 2. 0 ports. Instead, you get two USB 3. 2 Gen2 Type-A ports, one on either side. By virtue of being an Intel platform, a couple of Thunderbolt 4 ports are also available towards the left. There's also a HDMI 2. 1-out and a 2. 5 Gb LAN port available. The rear offers no connectivity. Since this is a creator-focused laptop, it would have probably made better sense to place the Thunderbolt 4 ports at the back instead of cramming both of them on the left side of the chassis. This would have helped in avoiding clutter in the main working area due to docks and other such accessories. Nevertheless, we did not find any particular hindrance while connecting multiple peripherals. Asus equips the ProArt StudoBook 16 with an SD Express 7. 0 card reader. The card reader offers decent transfer speeds that is close to the class average and is similar to the ones in the Lenovo ThinkBook 16p Gen 3 and the Asus ZenBook Pro 16X OLED . However, this is not the fastest SD card performance we've seen — that credit goes to the ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 and the 2021 Apple MacBook Pro 16 . The ProArt StudioBook 16 features an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 WLAN card, which is unfortunately soldered onto the motherboard. We tested Wi-Fi performance in both the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands with our reference Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 router at a distance of 1 m from the laptop with no other connected device or external interference. The laptop showed decent transfer rates in the 5 GHz spectrum that is generally on par with the competition. The 6 GHz band, however, performs rather poorly, particularly in the transmit test, with a lot of instability. We found this to be the case even after multiple repeats. The ProArt StudioBook 16 lacks a quality webcam. The included 720p camera's image quality is nothing to write home about. The pictures show large color deviations and lack sharpness and detail, though they can be just about serviceable for the odd video call or two as long there's adequate ambient light. It possible to turn off the webcam via a shortcut on the F11 key. Asus could have easily supplied a 1080p module instead for the asking price. The ProArt StudioBook 16 comes with a physical shutter for the webcam and offers an IR camera for Windows Hello-based logins. There's no fingerprint reader, but a TPM 2. 0 chip and a Kensington lock slot are present. The ProArt StudioBook 16 offers good serviceability. Accessing the innards requires removing the 13 odd Torx T5 screws on the back panel. The roomy chassis affords good separation between various components. The RAM and NVMe SSD can be swapped out or upgraded while the Wi-Fi card comes soldered. The battery can be unscrewed if necessary. We also see a separate PCB for the Asus Dial. The box contains the 240 W power adapter along with the usual paperwork. Additionally, Asus provides a utilitarian backpack designed for creatives on the move. The full-size backlit chiclet keyboard feels roomy with appropriately sized arrow keys. The 1. 4 mm travel distance makes typing quite comfortable with decent tactile feedback and low clatter. The topmost row offers shortcuts to common functions including adjusting the three-stage backlight. The Asus Dial is the standout feature of the ProArt StudioBook series. The Dial gives creators an analog feel of working with their apps. Currently, Asus offers compatibility with Adobe programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom Classic, Premiere Pro, and After Effects with support for more apps in the offing. The Dial also works with common Windows functions such as brightness and volume adjustment. Other functions of the Dial can be added from within the ProArt Creator Hub. In practice, the Asus Dial is quite intuitive but might require some time to get used to accessing functions with muscle memory. The dial does not come in the way of typing or using the touchpad. The ProArt StudioBook 16 features a premium glass touchpad that is fully compatible with Windows Precision gestures. Asus offers three physical buttons at the base of the touchpad, which is a rarity these days but can be useful in creative applications to pan or rotate objects in the scene. The touchpad itself does not click although left clicks are still registered with a tap. However, our review unit's touchpad seemed overly sensitive. This often results in the touchpad misrecognizing a tap as a drag and hold gesture. Changing mouse sensitivity in the Control Panel didn't help much either. It is but natural that more than one finger often hits the touchpad in normal use. This immediately triggers a drag and hold gesture making UI navigation somewhat unintuitive. The physical buttons offer a somewhat mushy yet satisfying click. The ProArt StudioBook 16 comes equipped with a 16-inch 16:10 4K (3840 x 2400) OLED panel from Samsung. Asus makes do with just a 60 Hz panel but makes up for it in other areas as we will see below. The sub-pixel arrangement suggests an S-Stripe RGB matrix with an overall density of 283 PPI. Since this is an OLED panel, there's no backlight bleed observed. By virtue of being an OLED panel, the Samsung ATNA60YV02 offers a uniform 98% brightness distribution and basically an infinite contrast ratio. We measured a 378 nits average SDR brightness level. According to Asus, the ProArt StudioBook 16's OLED panel is VESA DisplayHDR True Black 600-certified. Dolby Vision HDR is supported. In our testing, we recorded a peak brightness of 586 nits in HDR mode with a 100% white image. The MyAsus app offers options to set pixel refresh and pixel shift settings to protect the OLED from burn-in. Users can also adjust the extent of DC Dimming to be used. You also get to choose between various color profiles via Splendid. We performed display calibration with the Normal setting. Asus advertises a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage for the Samsung OLED panel, and our measurements show that the panel is indeed able to fully cover the sRGB and Display P3 color spaces. Adobe RGB coverage is also very good at 96. 5%, which makes the ProArt StudioBook 16 excellent for both content creation and multimedia consumption. The PANTONE-validated display is supposed to offer an average Delta E of 1. 6 out-of-the-box. However, we measured Delta Es of 2. 9 and 2. 97 in Grayscale and ColorChecker in the Normal color profile. Asus also offers a way to perform display calibration from within the ProArt Creator Hub app with a compatible spectrophotometer. Further calibrating the display in DCI-P3 using the X-rite i1Basic Pro 3 spectrophotometer and Calman Ultimate color calibration software from Portrait Displays results in a significantly improved Grayscale Delta E of just 0. 7. ColorChecker Delta E improves slightly after calibration to 2. 15. Visually, most colors except 100% red and shades of blue show accuracy improvements after calibration. The calibrated ICC file can be downloaded from the link above. The OLED panel offers an excellent 50% grey to 80% grey response time of 1. 6 ms. The 100% black to 100% white transition, however, takes 18. 32 ms. This should still be okay for gaming and is definitely not a problem for the laptop's intended use case. Asus uses DC Dimming to adjust the backlight intensity. DC Dimming at 60 Hz is seen at brightness levels above 51% to 100%. Below 50%, panel uses PWM and flickers at a frequency of 240 Hz. This reduces to 160 Hz when the Windows brightness slider is set to 0%. The bright screen ensures good visibility in sunlight. Viewing angles are relatively stable except for minimal loss of brightness at the extremes. Our Asus ProArt StudioBook 16 is powered by the Intel Core i9-12900H processor and a 115 W Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU . Buyers also have the option of choosing SKUs featuring the Core i7-12700H and either a GeForce RTX 3060 or RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU along with upgradeable DDR5-4800 memory options up to 64 GB. Device settings are distributed between the ProArt Creator Hub and the MyAsus app, which can get a bit confusing initially for those new to the ProArt lineup. The ProArt Creator Hub allows you to select between three available performance modes, which affect the Core i9-12900H's TDP as per the table below. We used the Full Speed performance mode for all our tests except for the battery run time tests, which were performed in the Standard mode. The Intel Alder Lake-H Core i9-12900H features 14 cores and 20 threads with boosts up to 5 GHz. Asus's cooling implementation seems to be quite robust as evidenced by our Cinebench R15 multi-core loop test that shows no perceivable signs of throttling. The ProArt StudioBook 16 leads the charts in overall CPU performance albeit with marginal leads compared to competitors featuring the same processor. That being said, the single-core performance takes a miniscule hit owing to the 115 W PL2 compared to the MSI Creator Z16P 's 160 W, Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 's 135 W, and the MSI Creator Z17 's 120 W. Compared to the Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max , the Core i9-12900H in the ProArt StudioBook 16 is up to 22% faster in single-core and 55% faster in multi-core in Cinebench R23. The graph below illustrates how various CPU parameters change during a Cinebench R15 multi-core loop test. We see that all three performance modes are able to attain the maximum clock, power, and temperature limits. However, the Standard mode settles at a lower average package power of 51 W compared to 90 W in the other two modes. This results in lower average core clocks of about 2. 7 GHz and lower core temperatures hovering around the 67 °C mark. The Performance and Full Speed modes are more or less the same in terms of power limits, but the latter spins the fans continuously at maximum speed even under idle. Thus, the average core temperatures in Full Speed mode are about 6 °C lower compared to the Performance mode. Performance takes a hit on battery power, however. Cinebench R20 scores drop by 52% in single-core and 40% in multi-core when run on battery. Unlike Apple silicon-powered MacBook Pros that perform fairly consistently whether plugged in or on battery power, the ProArt StudioBook 16, like all modern x86 devices, can only fully flex its muscles when connected to the mains. That being said, the reduced performance on battery should still be adequate to help you get creative work done on the move. Overall, the ProArt StudioBook 16 offers enough CPU horsepower to sail through most demanding workflows without breaking a sweat. Check out our dedicated Intel Core i9-12900H page for more information and performance comparisons. The ProArt StudioBook 16 poses no issues with everyday system performance and responsiveness. Overall PCMark 10 scores are on expected lines for this configuration. CrossMark sees a slight setback when compared to the likes of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 and the MSI Creator Z17, but the StudioBook 16 is about 17% faster than an M1 Max MacBook Pro 14 and 22% faster than an M1 Pro MacBook Pro 16 . Affinity Photo 2, however, sees Apple silicon being significantly ahead of the Core i9-12900H. The ProArt StudioBook 16 trails by 14% in the combined CPU test and by up to 55% in the combined GPU test against the M1 Max-based MacBook Pro 14. We measured the highest interrupt to process latency to be 1493. 8 µs, which is on the higher side for a content creator-focused laptop. The Nvidia kernel mode system driver seems to be the reason for the increased latency. Our DPC Latency Ranking page provides more latency comparisons across reviewed devices. The included Samsung PM9A1 1 TB NVMe SSD performs decently in overall disk benchmarks, but it trails behind its 2 TB cousins found in the ROG Strix Scar 15 and the Cr