Yes – this ASUS ProArt StudioBook One is priced at RM50k – or at USD $10k. That’s a hefty price for a laptop but this laptop is not meant for plebians like you and me. This laptop is meant for those who are working for places like Pixar, Illumination, and Blue Sky Animation studios.
For them, this insanely high price is actually a good deal considering that we are working from home now, and having a laptop that can help them work at home is a boon. And this is also the world’s first laptop to be using the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 graphics.
Here’s a quick rundown of the specs of the ASUS ProArt StudioBook One:
- Intel Core i9-9980HK
- NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 with 24GB of VRAM
- 64GB of LPDDR4-2400MHz RAM
- 1TB Samsung NVMe SSD
Its design is… reminiscent of a turtle’s shell. Maybe a mecha turtle because of the angles. The screen and cover separate from each other when the lid is opened, by the way. It uses a rail system to hold the screen so that a gap is created on both the intake (bottom) and exhaust (top) for ventilation.
And yes – all of the high-powered components found in this ASUS ProArt StudioBook One is packed behind the screen. And honestly speaking, the cooling solution here works very well.
NVIDIA claims that they’re using an ultra-thin titanium vapor chamber that can wick 300W of heat at a third of the weight of similar-sized cooling technologies and is optimized for system airflow to perform whisper-quiet operation during normal workloads.
Now, I have mentioned NVIDIA here and not ASUS, and that’s because this laptop is made in partnership between NVIDIA and ASUS. It’s a concept by NVIDIA which they’re calling it the “concept car” design with the codename ACE.
What it means to be “ProArt”
In front of all the powerful hardware, we have a 15.6-inch screen. This is a 4K IPS LCD screen that can go up to 120Hz and it also supports G-SYNC. For an IPS LCD screen, it can also go really bright and can also be used under bright daylight outdoors since it’s covered by a slightly matte finish.
Being a creator workstation laptop, this laptop puts a heavy emphasis on colors. While we don’t have a color calibration tool, my experienced eyes have tested many displays over the years, and for all I can say, the StudioBook One’s screen is the best I’ve seen.
ASUS also put a lot of emphasis on colors, so they built-in a color calibration tool in the ProArt Creator Hub software. The calibrator is not included, by the way. It is of best practice to recalibrate the screen’s color every month or so to ensure that the colors are accurate. That’s because the screen color shifts over time.
Also, within the ProArt Creator Hub – we also have other options like a quick dashboard to see what’s going on with the system, or to create a group of apps that you can click on right away and launch all of those applications at once.
This is something that I didn’t know I needed until I saw this because whenever I edit a video, I use 5 of Adobe’s software at once – After Effects, Audition, Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, and also Photoshop.
And the speaking of Adobe and its suite of software, this is where the ASUS ProArt StudioBook One stands out with its RTX6000 graphics card. It can play your games – sure, but content creation is where it’s at. It’s overkill for my relatively lightweight use case too.
When I’m juggling both video and photo editing at the same time, I have Lightroom running at the same time. Honestly, with Lightroom and Premiere opened – my power desktop’s GTX 1080’s 8GB VRAM is used up completely. With the ProArt StudioBook One, that 24GB VRAM is just impossible for me to use up.
One-of-a-kind laptop, but with flaws
Now, I’m grateful to actually have the opportunity to try this laptop that has a completely out of the ordinary design. It’s cool (literally) and all, it definitely has a few compromises. My biggest gripe here is the keyboard. Why did they think using Apple’s butterfly switches is a good idea? I’m sorry, but the keyboard just sucks.
And then, the ports. With all of the guts and the motherboard stuck behind the screen, all of the ports are beside the screen. We have 3x Thunderbolt 3 ports and a single charging port that looks like a USB-C port but it’s actually a proprietary port. There’s no audio jack here.
ASUS also included a dongle dock with the laptop, so you get a few more display outputs and USB-A ports – but there’s no audio jack too. That means we’ll need to buy our own or just use audio over HDMI instead.
And lastly, back to the screen. This ProArt StudioBook One also uses Advanced Optimus which means we can change between G-SYNC and Optimus mode without having to reboot, which is a huge improvement over what we’ve seen on the ROG Zephyrus Duo which requires a reboot.
But there are some quirks. The 120Hz refresh rate can only be used in G-SYNC mode, which is fine. But it seems to have amnesia as it goes back to 60Hz when the display goes to sleep, or reboots – even when it’s plugged in. It’s just really annoying.
Tiny 300W power brick
Both ASUS and NVIDIA really pushed the envelope of the future of laptop charging bricks as this tiny little thing here is a 300W power supply. They’re using GaN substrate instead of silicon, which means the components can shrink and be more efficient at the same time. I am honestly very surprised by the size of that power brick, actually.
I’m looking forward to the day where gaming laptop’s power brick(s) shrink in size as well. Currently, those powerful laptops have humongous power bricks and I just can’t wait for the day for them to output like 180W in a super tiny form factor.
If you need this amount of power, then the ASUS ProArt StudioBook One is the only choice – or is it?
Okay, so I think that’s all I want to talk about the ASUS ProArt StudioBook One. I like the cooling system, the power brick, the performance – but I’m not a fan of the keyboard at all. There are some weird quirks here and there, but this is the only laptop that has the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 graphics inside.
I mean, obviously this laptop is not meant for everyone but ASUS also have more conventionally-designed ProArt laptops like the StudioBook Pro 17 W700 – which we will review some time later.
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