ASUS is coming for Apple with its new, game-changing ProArt laptop range

I’m here at Computex and Asus has just made an announcement that’s going to disrupt the current order of creative hardware: the massive expansion of the ASUS ProArt lineup.

In the run-up to Computex 2024, being held in Taiwan from 4 to 7 June, I’ve been inundated with product releases and announcements – and almost all of them have something to do with AI. AMD is releasing a new set of CPUs, GPUs and NPUs, NVIDIA is reaffirming its focus on AI computing with its tensor-core-equipped RTX graphics cards, and Microsoft and its many device partners are putting new, more powerful and efficient AI-centred Copilot+ laptops to market this summer.

The P16 is the biggest of the new bunch, a new, sleeker MacBook rival that aims at content creators on the go, balancing a lightweight build with ambitious specs. It’s only 14.9 mm thick and weighs less than 2kg (1,850 grams), but on the inside we’ll find a new chipset from AMD and NVIDIA-powered graphics. There’s the new AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU, with an integrated NPU that’s capable of 50 TOPS (trillion operations per second). For comparison, the NPU in the Intel Core Ultra processors released at the start of this year have a 16 TOPS capacity.

The ProArt PX13 is a convertible laptop that comes in at only 1.38kg, making it both a direct MacBook Air rival and a high-performance entry into the 2-in-1 space, dominated at the moment by the likes of Dell and HP, with a 360° hinge that allows seamless flipping between laptop, tent, stand or tablet modes. It’s got the same chipset and graphics card as the P16, so promises to be another powerful option for content creators on the go.

With a Qualcomm Snapdragon X series processor powering this Windows 11 Copilot+ tablet/laptop, it sports a bright, sharp 3K ASUS Lumina OLED screen and Copilot+ PC AI capabilities. The magnetically-attached full-size detachable keyboard and ASUS pen will ship with the device as standard, which is nice in today’s world of add-ons and not-so-micro-transactions. It’s also got a 70Wh battery, is IP52-rated durability for dust and water resistance, and has an SD slot with a microSD adapter, but only weighs 850 grams. It’s a little heavier than the new iPad Pro, but not by much, when you factor in the stand and keyboard. Priced almost identically to the iPad Pro M4, at about $1,199 in the States and £1,199 in the UK, it’s clear who ASUS is aiming at with its new ProArt range. Your move, Apple.

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Pictures from the ASUS Computex launch event — The ProArt PX13 looks neat(Image credit: Future / Erlingur Einarsson)

In it, you can create an Idea Map and Idea Canvas, import art or draw directly within MuseTree, which then uses generative AI powered by Stable Diffusion and integrates that into the brainstorming process, enables iterative AI-assisted creation, where you can create variants, input new ideas to improve or change your art, while retaining the full history of your process, so you can backtrack to a previous branch on the tree to go in a different direction. This will all be locally processed and stored with the help of the NPU and GPU on board instead of relying on any cloud computing.