In Good Will Hunting, Sean said to Will, "You're not perfect, sport. And let me save you the suspense: this girl you've met, she's not perfect either. But the question is whether you are perfect for each other." Similarly, there is a lot to find about this machine that is not perfect. The fans are loud under dGPU load. The battery life over an afternoon is meh. The 60 Hz screen is certainly not a gamers first choice. NO laptop is perfect, sport. But the question is - is this one perfect for you? For me and the PX13/Nvidia RTX-4050, the answer is yes. It ticks all the boxes that I need ticked, even if it leaves some "nice to have" boxes unchecked. It is a portable powerhouse for media developers. I'm not much of a gamer, but it can definitely handle them fine. But for serious photo and video editing, the 100% sRGB color gamut on a 3K OLED display is hard to beat. At the guts of the beast is an Nvidia RTX-4050 which eats through CUDA and OpenCL-supporting apps without a burp. The AI 9 HX370 AMD processor is fast and cool - a perfect match for the dGPU. The form factor is a svelte, compact, rounded-edged form factor with a deep black (not dark gray - black!) smudge-resistant finish. It yogas its way into a tablet or a tent, adding versatility. Build quality and keyboard are excellent. And I rarely find myself on the road without a wall outlet somewhere. That said, if you aren't grinding through images and video with the RTX gpu, you'll have at least 8+ hours of batter life anyways. If you are a photographer or videographer, this compact workhorse is certainly something to consider. If you like to travel, this is about as portable as a laptop gets. And if you are a gamer... well, there are more perfect matches for you in the laptop universe. This is a mission-oriented machine, which is probably why some gamers are complaining about the 60 Hz screen. If you DO get this, a couple of things to consider: Get a 100+ Watt portable power supply (I'm looking at the Anker Prime 160 Watt GaN). The 200 watt power brick uses a proprietary connection but is a bit extra mass for travel; fortunately the laptop takes up to 100 Watts through either of two USB ports. Install G-Helper which extends hardware configurability on ASUS laptops. Disable power off/sleep/hibernate functionality of the side-mounted power button (it is side mounted to allow access despite yoga positions). It is easy to accidently shut down your computer while grabbing the sides. Picture attached of my set-up: MX Keys Mini keyboard and MX Master 3 mouse, Davinci Resolve Speed Editor, PX13 in tented mode on a J5Create laptop stand (a lot of reflection on the screen), Edifier R1280T speakers, and an ASUS ProArt PA32UCRK monitor.

The Specs - CPU - AMD Ryzen Ai 9 Hx 370 Processor (50 TOPs of NPU), A Graphics - AMD Radeon 890M & NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 RAM - 32GB LPDDR5X running at 7500 MHz Display - 13” 3K (2880x1800) Oled Touch display with a 16:10, 500 nits peak brightness, 60hz panel Storage - 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD (Single slot) Network Communications - WiFi 7(802.11be) (Triple band) 2*2 + Bluetooth 5.4 Battery - 73WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion Ports - Right Side - Power button, microsd card reader, USB-A (10gbs), and a USB-C (40gbs) port. Left Side - 3.5mm headphone jack, USB-C (40gbs), hdmi 2.1, and the specialized port for power. Overall port selection for this computer is great. You have options. The only thing I don’t love is the fact that you have to utilize the power cord on the left side of the laptop. A very cool option is that in a pinch, you can use USB-C to charge the unit while you use it if you don't do gaming or heavy workloads. Weight and Power brick - The unit comes in at approximately 3.1lbs (3.094lbs) and once you add the power brick, total weight is approximately 4.3lbs (4.322lbs). The power brick itself looks and feels like quality materials were used and gives you approximately 9ft. The cords are a little stiff but feel very durable. Unboxing Experience - From the unboxing, in which packing material was rocking the black theme, to the presentation of the laptop inside its box and ultimately the unwrapping, the initial unveiling retained the natural excitement of receiving a new laptop and wanting to use it. The unit itself was surprisingly light and felt well built. Opening the laptop was surprisingly easy and definitely fulfills the windows user dream for one handed opening. First impressions - The unit itself feels great. Picking it up feels good in the hand and has hardly any flex on the unit (screen, body, keyboard) and its lightness is appreciated especially with one handed adventures. The screen looks awesome. Colors and images are sharp and vivid. The screen sports a glossy finish which inherently does produce glares from other light sources, but glossy is the norm now. The panel is 60hz which may bum some people out but honestly, unless you love scrolling up and down websites like a madman or are a competitive first-person shooter gamer, this really isn’t a huge deal. Another plus to the screen is that it’s a touch panel and can actually fold back on itself, making it a tablet-like device. A thoughtful addition from Asus is that the screen sports raised edges around the screen that works in tandem with little bumpers on the keyboard base to keep the screen from touching the keyboard when you close it. The keyboard and trackpad are good and unless you are directly comparing it to another manufacturer, you probably wouldn’t complain. The keys, to me, are a little mushy. They offer no real resistance, and you can mush your way into a blissful, quiet typing experience. The trackpad is responsive but at times, depending on how you are using the laptop, can interfere with typing as your palms can come to rest on the trackpad. The clicking aspect is okay and overall, I’d label it as just average. System responsiveness is excellent. There are no complaints as the laptop is smooth as butter on a hot piece of toast. During everyday tasks such as opening and using office documents, surfing zillow for a home, checking in on facebook, and opening a ton of tabs in a web browser for comparison shopping, the laptop is a pleasure to use. Fans rarely kick in but the system does get slightly warm. It's not too bothersome but you probably might notice the warmth. Fans and heat can be a problem if you do use the laptop for anything such as gaming or more intensive productivity tasks. The fans definitely become much more noticeable. Like it's embarrassing in more quiet environments or around macbook users but passable in noisy environments or if you're alone. Heat wise, you are looking at mid 80F around the keyboard while doing most tasks with approximately 33 decibels. In games or more taxing productivity tasks, those temps will hit around 105F or more with fans hitting around up to 53 decibels. The highest heat comes from the center of the unit (like the t,y,g,h keys) While oddly the keys seem usable, you definitely will notice the heat coming from the keyboard. I tried disabling the NVIDIA 4050 and just using the AMD 890M but there was no real advantage in regards to quieting the laptop under more strenuous tasks or games. I did find that the noise can be easily solved by just setting the laptop to use the whisper mode. You still can play games like Diablo IV, Horizons - Zero Dawn with near native resolutions and high quality, especially if you toggle the DLSS options. This is a fantastic option as you can game without being embarrassed by the noise. The web camera quality is sufficient I’d say. You’ll have to work with light, angle, and settings to produce a quality image. The audio quality is surprisingly good for such a small unit. There was battery drain during sleep mode. I’d close the computer lid in the evening and come back in the morning and noticed about a 6%-8% loss. I ran basemark web 3.0 (full screen brightness for an hour then dropped it to 70% brightness, using the balanced plan and not altering any other system settings) to get a feel about how long this machine could last in more demanding situations. From 92%, I got approximately 2hrs 36mins. This is obviously a much more draining task than doing light web browsing, listening to music and some productivity tasks. The Asus software I think is very good. The creator hub has a lot of useful options and information that you can see and change. I think Asus gives you a refined experience and things such as screen dimming when you're not looking at the screen works very well. Asus does not seem to pack in a lot of excessive useless software, which I like. In conclusion - This laptop is great. It has a lot of things going for it and if you are looking for a small, powerful workhorse that can do anything you throw at it, this is, as long as you’re not ashamed when it gets a little noisy to cool itself. If you don't need all that power, toggle the whisper mode and you won't have any noise problems. Price wise if you get this for around $1400-1500 or cheaper, there is little that rivals it in terms of power, quality, and versatility. You just have to ask yourself if you want a quieter unit with less heat at the sacrifice of power or are you okay with the little noise and heat to do more intensive tasks?

This ProArt PX13 has quickly become the most-used and best electronic I own. The OLED display is stunning and since I use this for work and studies the 60 Hz refresh rate never bothered me, performance is snappy, and the build feels premium. I originally had my eye on the 4070 version, but even the 4060 model was priced higher than I could justify. That said, the 4050 variant still delivers more than enough power for my workflow—whether it's creative tasks, multitasking, or light gaming. Battery life is solid, and the compact form factor makes it perfect for travel or working on the go. If you're looking for a high-end ultraportable with serious capabilities, this one punches above its weight.

This is a great machine if you need high performance in a small, highly portable package. Coming from a 4+ year old laptop, the speed boost is really impressive. I have yet to really push it hard using memory-hungry applications, but have run benchmarks and achieved comparable performance to YouTube reviewers out there. There are a few things to be aware of though. Display - it looks great, but ASUS warns of potential burn-in issues. For example, they recommend auto-hiding the Windows Taskbar, which takes a bit of getting used to. By default, they turn off the display if you look away for a few moments, which gets old fast. Fortunately, that can be disabled. Keyboard - it has a great feel and is a pleasure to type on. But WHY did ASUS steal the right Ctrl (Control) key for the almost-useless M$ CoPilot key? It's maddening - I frequently use Ctrl-Enter (Send; newline), Ctrl-O (Open), Ctrl-P (Print), Ctrl-; (insert date) & others. the (expletive deleted) CoPilot app keeps popping up. Microsoft already has it on the Taskbar and Start menu, and is sprinkling CoPilot buttons all over their apps, so there's no justification for stealing a prime key placement. Fortunately, PowerToys has a workaround to re-map the CoPilot key sequence back to Ctrl, otherwise this laptop would have been returned. I'm right-handed; it must be even more annoying for lefties that use a left-hand mouse. Another keyboard annoyance is that the 'Shift' character symbols are quite small, and aren't illuminated properly by the backlight. Storage: There's only a single M.2 slot, so no chance of internal expansion. And, given that it's a good platform for storage-hungry video and photo editing, the included 1TB SSD is barely enough. It REALLY needs a second M.2 slot. Battery, Standby and Hibernate: Standby flat-out did not work out of the box, even with all ASUS & Microsoft updates applied. It crashes the OS in random ways - at one time, it even took out our wired LAN by saturating it with broadcast traffic! It took a visit to the Geek Squad to get it working reliably. Until they fixed it, I had to disable standby. But, Standby consumes significant power still - the keyboard is noticeably warm even after extended periods. And if you pop it in a backpack (no ventilation), the machine will get hot. Of course, that means the standby battery drain is high, lasting maybe 5-6 hours before it's exhausted. When that happens, it doesn't hibernate - instead, it's a full shutdown, so any work you forgot to save is lost. Actually, Hibernate doesn't even work. The Geek Squad tech said ASUS has issues with it, and had to disable Hibernate altogether. So, you can't even use it instead of Standby when you're away from AC power for a significant time. Not acceptable for frequent travelers. Power sources: High performance means high power, so I get that the included 200W power brick is needed when maxing it out. Although it can use USB-C Power Delivery as an alternative, it can only support half-power (100W, i.e., 20V at 5A). USB-C Power Delivery has 180W and 240W options - such a potent machine really should be able to fully use those higher-power modes. For example, I tried a neat, compact Insignia 180W adapter (NS-PW3X4C1W25), but the laptop would only take 100W from it. All in all, it's a very good machine let down by some unfortunate design issues. It's possible ASUS will fix the standby power drain and hibernate issues with an update, which would bump it up to 4 stars.

As a college student who’s into graphic design and video editing, I decided to give the ASUS ProArt PX13 13 a shot. After using it for a few weeks, I can confidently say it’s a solid option for anyone in the creative field who needs a portable but powerful device. What Stands Out: Perfect for Creators: This laptop is designed with creatives in mind. The OLED display is a total win – colors are insanely accurate, and it’s super sharp. Editing photos and videos feels precise, and it’s great for streaming shows when I need a break. Compact & Portable: It’s a 13-inch laptop, so it’s easy to carry around campus. Despite being lightweight, it doesn’t feel cheap or flimsy. It’s perfect for sliding into my backpack and heading to class or the library. Performance: The ProArt PX13 packs a punch. I’ve run Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and After Effects on this thing without any major hiccups. It handles multitasking like a pro, so juggling between editing projects, assignments, and web browsing is a breeze. Customizable Dial: One of my favorite features is the ASUS Dial. It’s super handy for adjusting settings quickly in Adobe apps like Lightroom and Photoshop. It took a little getting used to, but now I can’t imagine not having it. What Could Be Better: Battery Life: For a high-powered device, the battery is just okay. I usually get around 5-6 hours with moderate use, which is decent but not as good as some competitors. If you’re editing or using intensive programs, expect to plug in sooner. Pricey for the Size: It’s a premium laptop, so the price reflects that. While it’s not outrageous for what you’re getting, it’s definitely an investment. That said, the quality and performance mostly justify the cost. Limited Ports: The PX13 has modern ports, but as someone who still uses USB-A devices, I find myself needing an adapter pretty often. Final Verdict: The ASUS ProArt PX13 13 is a fantastic choice if you’re serious about creative work but want something portable. The display and performance are top-notch, and the little extras like the ASUS Dial make it a standout for anyone working in Adobe apps. It’s not perfect (especially in terms of battery life), but it’s a solid companion for students or creators on the go. If you’re all about that creative life and can budget for it, I’d totally recommend it!