Are you ready to go all-in, head-first, on a laptop? ASUS's Zenbook Pro 16X asks for that commitment ASUS's Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602) is a sleek beast of a laptop that invites you to take it head-on and go all-in – an offer that should give you pause before accepting. There's nothing significantly wrong with the machine. I found it speedy, pretty, slick, and pleasing to use. But in attempting to suit a niche audience – …
Err, no, to everyone's reply here.
From the location to the implied functionality, it is supposed to mimic the one of the controls on the most popular creator's device drawing input, a Wacom Intuos 5
You can use a capacitive touch pen to turn just about any touchpad into a mini-tablet, if you really want to push it.
Still, for quickie & light mods people do indeed use their mouse or touchpad and giving easy control over brush size in a manner that you are used to on your Wacom (that's how I use my Intuos 5's Touch Ring) is always a welcome thing. For me brush size changes are pretty frequent and once I started using the Touch Ring on the left hand with the pen in the right, or my mouse on the left hand and the pen on the right (yes, I dual-hand-it), I got a huge productivity boost.
I also noted the GPU was only mentioned in passing, fortunately I see it is supported by Da Vinci, which is probably more important to users than CineBench.
So the screen might be high res. And vivid but what is its colour space annd are the colours accurate, can the user recalibrate it?
As for audio processing…
It is a shame this review reads like an abridged review from one of the other hardware review sites; as the recent review of putting Linux on a laptop showed; there is an ElReg angle which can provide useful information.
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I note the single HDMI port is HDMI 2.1 FRL, so should be good for 4K, but is it an HDMI input or output only port?
For digital media I would have thought a couple of discrete HDMI ports would be useful.
Over the past 6 months, I've had the pleasure of several different consumer models, all still DC-inputs, but also had separate Thunderbolt4 and USB C ports, they charged great via the USB-C.. but Thunderbolt? huh nope, forget that.
Does make me wonder who approves or tests the final spec of these devices - Its a huge oversight, as one of the biggest uses for Thunderbolt is Docks to consolidate all the cabling.
And every time a machine is reviewed, you post the same thing and praise Apple's processors as the only alternatives you accept, for some reason I don't really understand or care about. I might be able to save you some time in the future: if it's a review and Apple didn't make it, it doesn't have an Apple processor in it, so you don't have to read the article until you find that out.
I'm not very much into ergonomics, though very much into typing, my long-term impression has been that the keyboard with its back side lifted up is much more strain on wrists, because it forces them into an angle, rather than letting them stay parallel to your forearm, which _seems_ like a more natural position. Obviously, 'content creation' these days has very little to do with typing... which also makes me wonder why they would have bothered to invest into this 'feature' (or gimmick).
Hmm; on the other side of the table, I always pop down the feet at the back of the keyboard to raise it up, as that feels much more comfortable to me.
Maybe it is a difference between using flat, unsculpted, low-travel laptop keyboards[1] versus big chunky "mechanical" keyboards with sculpted keys?
Either way, different keystrokes for different folks.
[1] sometimes I get jealous of those who are comfortable using those keyboards, as they appear to actually enjoy using laptops and can happily take their stuff anywhere: I've tried coding in grassy fields or the hotel lounge and can only do it in extremis.
Some years ago I bought a gaming laptop from them. It was a 17" beast of a model and incredibly high spec but for what I should have twigged was just too-low a price.
When it performed it was, in fairness, blisteringly fast and would play AAA titles of the day without breaking a sweat.
But... it spent more time back with Asus than with me. From memory it had 3 motherboards due to two GPU failures and one other (CPU, I think). The keyboard missed letters if you were even a moderately quick typer,
The touch pad had a bizarre fault whereby it was more of a proximity device and would pick up fingers or palms from 10mm away and randomly move the mouse/left click/right click. And turning it off made no difference. Nor did the palm detection, unsurprisingly.
I think there were other issues but I can't recall now.
Asus refused to refund me and when I threatened court, said "see you there." I think in the end I just sold it "as seen" on with all the problems listed and cut my losses.
I wouldn't be in a rush to buy anything else from them, though, for sure.
Ive had the opposite experience. Im typing on an asus laptop now, granted I changed the RAM and M2 as it was cheaper for me to do so than order with. Its an AMD hex core with 1660ti and it has been flawless so far. I even took it apart after a year to see what state the fans and grills were in (it said on the sticker something about dust free design) and whilst skeptical, its fairly clean.
It does feel a bit flimsy and doesnt have usb-c charging (not surprising with a 150W battery charger of course).
the only thing that bothers me is the flashing keyboard lights until the driver kicks in.
What’s wrong with that? Easy to find a spare if you forget it/lose it/gets chewed by an animal etc. actually prefer this to a figure of 8 or the dreaded clover leaf cable. Doesn’t need to mean a big chunky brick charger either. I do get that they’re not necessarily very physically flexible though.
The trouble with having the plug cast into the body, is when you go abroad regularly. With an IEC lead I can take my charger and the right IEC lead and I'm good. With a moulded-in plug, I need an adaptor (which in Switzerland for example will obstruct both the other sockets in the outlet).
Absolutely. Some deviant nicked the cloverleaf power cable from my Yamaha THR amp at a gig last year. If it had been an IEC lead I am certain there would have been one in the venue somewhere I could have borrowed, but as it was - game over.
Maybe they just didn't like my playing.
"The power brick is also a disappointment. It's too big and the accompanying IEC cable is an ugly, bulky, relic. "
So you prefer a less reliable charger? And why is a charger sitting on the actual outlet an advantage, generally? It limits the distance from outlet to laptop to the low voltage cable's length.
Also it's unclear how it connects if not with USB-C? (I assume it does. and the article was just muddled.)
Nice laptop, I can see that Keyboard breaking, and as the writer said, all kinds of gunk getting under there. If you've seen the condition of some of our corporate laptops, you'd agree. (we are construction, and it's not just the job site laptops the end up looking disgusting!)
As far as all the other nonsense, does anyone even use a laptop as a laptop anymore? We give everyone a laptop, no matter their position, as far as I know only the people who need to use them while traveling use the as a "laptop" and business travel has been cut by almost 90%! Everyone had monitors, keyboard & mouse both in the office and at home! We could probably replace these with a cheap desktop both in office and at home and save money but they'd all cry and it's not worth hearing all the bitching!
I bought a cheap used laptop the last time I was taking a long trip so I could get my email, check the markets and look things up on the web. The last thing I do with my laptop is serious work. I have a really nice (and expensive) keyboard that's a joy to type on when I'm doing lots of writing, a Wacom tablet when I'm editing photos and a Spaceball to compliment my mouse when I'm doing CAD. All of those input devices are connected to silicon beasts that can be and have been upgraded with lots of cores and RAM. I don't see any point to a 'high spec' laptop that's still nowhere near the HP of my desktops and it compromised in far too many directions. There is certainly utility in having a laptop, but I cringe when I see articles on "The best laptop for photo editing" or editing video, 3D CAD, etc. I find it rather zippy to have 12 cpu cores, an 8tb video card driving two calibrated monitors, SSD's and 128gb of memory when editing photos. It didn't come cheap, but the time saved every year absolutely paid for it. I'd still be working on last year's photo jobs if I was using my laptop or on my third laptop after melting a couple down.
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