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Asus ProArt PZ13

Asus delivers a striking laptop that truly has an IP certification against water.

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One of the main problems for creators seems to be a real alternative that doesn't cost £2,000-£3,000, but still does everything you expect from a modern laptop, has a long battery life, and a solid display with high colour accuracy.

The solution for Asus is their ProArt PZ13. It is "military tested" and has an IP52 rating. A bit funny wording, because in the footnotes they directly admit that meeting the MIL-STD-810H standard is by no means the same as suitability for military use, which is perhaps surprisingly known to place slightly higher demands on robustness and ability to be operated with fingers that are wet, covered in mud or sludge. "I swear it's military, Terkel." It can, however, operate down to 30 degrees below zero, but due to the extremely irregular winter weather, I have not been able to test this claim.

It has an OLED touchscreen and is powered by the Snapdragon X Plus platform, which is best known for utilising an NPU, and there's also 45 TOPS for those who use a lot of AI in their work. Now, we're no experts here at the editorial office - but it seems to be a general standard that a 40 TOPS NPU is an absolute minimum to use even the most basic AI for professional use, and that graphics cards that support this are often more than 25-times this figure. In comparison, Apple's M4 chip is a paltry 38 TOPS - so it's by no means a weak platform. Microsoft CoPilot is also included, and no, we'll never use the strange and long full name for it here. On the other hand, it does make a lot of noise when pressed; we measured 44 dB.

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Asus ProArt PZ13

It's great that brightness and colours can be auto-adjusted according to the surroundings. But such a smart feature is a bit pointless when only 60Hz is supported.

On the other hand, there's an Asus Pen, the latest 2.0 version at that, and both SD and micro-SD ports. There is 16GB LPDDR5X memory and 1TB storage included.

The whole thing is made as a 13" tablet with kickstand. We're talking 16:10 aspect ratio and 3K, but although there's a 0.2 ms response time, the refresh rate is only 60Hz. It's a bit strange when almost all of Asus' other OLED displays are 120Hz, but you still get 100% DCI-P3.

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For once, the price is easy; there is only one model and it costs £1,199. It's a little on the expensive side, and there's no doubt that it's for business use. The sound is fine for calls, but everything beyond that is pretty poor.

One nice touch is the webcam - it's only 1080p, but it's actually good even though it's only 5 MP, and there's another one on the front with 13 MP. I never quite got to grips with the keyboard though, with short travel and arrow keys that are made for mice.

Asus ProArt PZ13

The battery of only 70 Whr scared me a bit, but it easily lasted 18+ hours - although under heavy load you will probably find it difficult to get over three hours. At least we did. The exterior is solid, and this is clearly made for editing and working on-the-go. So, I find it hard to believe they didn't throw in a more powerful battery and a 5G modem. However, an almost colour-correct display and plenty of connectivity make up for this. And there is a more powerful version of the CPU, which would have made more sense.

08 Gamereactor UK
8 / 10
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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Asus ProArt PZ13

Asus ProArt PZ13

HARDWARE. Written by Kim Olsen

Asus delivers a striking laptop that truly has an IP certification against water.



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