Asus ProArt P16 (4K Lumina Pro OLED)

Introduction

Asus has refreshed its ProArt P16 model already, which came as a bit of a surprise when I first received the sample.

The changes to the award-winning ProArt P16 (2025) are internal, with this refreshed model making use of their latest 16-inch 4K 120Hz Lumina Pro OLED panel, plus it sports Nvidia’s top-of-the-range RTX 5090 laptop GPU for ample power for high-res video editing for creatives and gaming oomph.

Otherwise, it’s much the same as the old P16 that we know and love – the same beefy AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, plus its capacious 90Wh battery, stylish looks and formidable port selection.

The old P16 was expensive at £2799.99, but Asus has upped the ante even further with those internal upgrades to provide this model with a starting price of £2999.99, with the spec of my sample costing even more than that

That puts it much closer to powerful gaming laptops such as the Medion Erazer Beast 16 X1 Ultimate (RTX 5090) and Asus’ own ROG Zephyrus G16 (2025) rather than its traditional competitor, the Apple MacBook Pro M4.

Design and Keyboard

• Sleek, all-black chassis
• Excellent port selection
• Comfortable keyboard and huge trackpad.

One area that Asus didn’t necessarily need to mess with for the ProArt P16 is its sleek and mean, MacBook Pro-inspired chassis.

Owing to the beefier components and a new Vapor Chamber-style cooling system inside, this new model is 1.95kg – some 100g heavier than the older model – which gives it some heft. Nonetheless, the heft isn’t too much considering the size and power, and it is significantly lighter than gaming laptops with similar specs. It seems Asus’ ProArt laptop division has taken notes from the Zephyrus line of gaming laptops.

In spite of the heavier weight, this ProArt P16 hasn’t got any fatter – it’s still just 14.9mm thick, which is ridiculous considering the power on offer; it borders on ultrabook levels of slimness and is portable as long as you don’t mind the weight.

The port selection also hasn’t changed, which is another good thing, as it was capable enough as it is. This means the left side is home to a DC input for charging, as well as a proper HDMI 2.1 FRL port, a high-speed 40Gbps USB-C, USB-A and headphone jack.

On the right side, you get another, albeit lower-speed, USB-C, a second USB-A, and an SD card reader. That’s even stronger than modern MacBooks and should be enough to get on with.

Asus has stuck with the MacBook Pro-style keyboard tray, putting a smaller form factor layout on the ProArt P16 with speaker grilles on either side. We do have a function row and arrow keys, though, and the layout is sensible. It’s a comfortable and smooth keyboard to type on with some pleasant tactility that makes work easy and a bright white backlight for after-dark use.

The trackpad also retains its lovely qualities, being typically huge and providing responsive and accurate tracking. The clever DialPad remains in the corner as an integrated jog wheel that can be used for everything from adjusting volume or scrubbing through a YouTube video in Google Chrome. You can set it up to act as a useful shortcut for advanced functions in Adobe apps, too.

Display and Sound

• Gorgeous tandem OLED screen
• Detailed and vibrant output
• Lovely audio for a laptop

The big change for this new ProArt P16 model is the presence of Asus’ upgraded Lumina Pro OLED screen against the other model. We’ve seen a resolution bump up to 16:10 aspect ratio 4K, or 3840×2400, from 3K, plus this is a new tandem OLED-style screen that stacks layers of OLED panels atop one another to yield higher brightness and efficiency figures.

This has been fitted to everything from TVs to the latest iPad Pro models, although I don’t think it’s particularly common for laptops to have them.

It seems improbable that Asus could have necessarily improved the display from the previous model, although they have. I can certainly attest to the higher peak brightness figure, which my colorimeter measured at 637.6 nits of SDR brightness, and Asus says this screen goes as bright as 1600 nits in HDR content. That’s a lot of pop.

It also comes with even better dynamic range as a result, with a contrast ratio of 46550:1 – that’s one of, if not, the best I’ve tested. This is combined with the typically inky and deep blacks with a recorded level of 0.01 to result in some absolutely gorgeous images, especially when paired with a properly 4K screen. 

Having a 120Hz refresh rate allows for some lovely responsiveness in both games and creative work, especially if scrubbing through a timeline in video editing software, and making use of its excellent touchscreen powers.

The colour accuracy is a highlight too, as you’d perhaps expect with an OLED panel. It hasn’t actually improved at all from the older panel, though, not that it needed to. We’ve got perfect 100% coverage of both the sRGB and DCI-P3 gamuts, as well as 94% Adobe RGB coverage. With it, it proves this laptop’s impeccable credentials for work with both colour-sensitive and productivity workloads.

Its speakers also remain some of the best in the business for a set of laptop units, with excellent depth, body and clarity. They rival those on my 16-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro, which is an achievement in itself, considering how meagre some laptop speakers can be.

Performance

• RTX 5090 provides a boost in performance
• Graphical horsepower is less in games than in comparable gaming laptops
• A faster SSD is most welcome

Besides the addition of the dazzling new tandem OLED screen, the most exciting innovation with this new ProArt P16 is the addition of the option to have Nvidia’s most powerful laptop GPU – the RTX 5090, complete with its 24GB of VRAM and oodles of power.

Previously, the old ProArt P16 went up to a mid-range RTX 5070, which provides ample mid-range power, although the 5090 is undoubtedly a beefier choice for those who both need and can pay for its power.

It comes alongside the same 12-core and 24-thread Zen 5-based Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor that continues to be one of the best laptop processors out there, with some potent performance in the Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23 tests that is only bettered by the M4 chip inside the namesake MacBook Pro.

The addition of the discrete RTX 5090 provides a discernible difference over the 5070 model in both the 3DMark Time Spy test, where it recorded a high-riding score, although both here and in games, it fell behind both the gaming-centred Medion Erazer Beast 16 X1 Ultimate (RTX 5090) and Alienware 18 Area-51.

With regards to gaming numbers, the 5090 inside this ProArt P16 provided numbers more in the RTX 5080-class of laptop, such as the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2025), although in some instances, the benchmarks work in the ProArt’s favour. This is undoubtedly a powerful machine, although it is designed more as a creative machine than a true gaming monster – these results are just a bonus.

At 1080p, I saw Cyberpunk 2077 and Returnal hit 104.13fps and 118fps respectively, showing off the raw power inside well, while Rainbow Six Extraction at 203fps proves high-refresh rate eSports gaming is more than possible.

Bumping up to QHD pushed Cyberpunk 2077 down to 71.69fps and Rainbow Six Extraction to 138fps, which still went beyond the confines of the 120Hz refresh rate on show.

Native 4K gaming, even with a laptop-grade RTX 5090 inside, is still quite crippling, though. We saw Cyberpunk 2077 drop to 32.57fps without any ray-tracing or upscaling, while Rainbow Six Extraction virtually halved to 73fps.

Using the new DLSS Transformer model helps matters, pushing the 4K result to 57.45fps. Weirdly, it caused the 1080p number to drop to 102.26fps. DLSS was also vital in helping the 4K RT: Ultra number rise from 14.66fps up to 39.27fps, providing a playable FPS number for a more cinematic experience. Putting the resolution down to 1080p pushed numbers up from 51.73fps at native res to 77.68fps with DLSS.

In addition, Nvidia has added a clever feature to 50-series GPUs, including the RTX 5090, known as Multi Frame Gen that adds in up to three ‘fake frames’ for every traditionally generated one, thanks to AI, for a perceivably smoother experience.

The addition of these frames is reliant upon there being a high enough base FPS figure to mean the displayed image with Multi Frame Gen isn’t choppy or laggy. It helped Cyberpunk 2077 go all the way to 113.47fps at its RT: Ultra preset in 4K and to 149.01fps without ray-tracing, although there is likely to be some choppiness given the lower base frame rate to begin with.

The presence of 64GB of RAM provides a shedload of headroom for intensive gaming and creative workloads, plus there is a capacious 2TB SSD inside for storing burgeoning media libraries and project files. Read and write speeds, while not advertised explicitly as having been boosted, went up to 7002.58MB/s and 6305.49MB/s, though.

Software

• Clean Windows 11 install
• Some Asus-specific apps are pre-installed
• Enough AI horsepower for Copilot+ PC functionality

The ProArt P16 comes running Windows 11, and features a couple of Asus-specific apps pre-installed. These include GlideX, which is where you can manage tasks such as casting or mirroring the screen to other devices wirelessly, or transfer files across the same network. You can also enable remote access to a mobile device, too.

The StoryCube app is designed as another means of organising photos and videos, using AI to recognise faces and file your photos for you, which is handy. MuseTree comes pre-installed, which is an AI image generator.

There is also enough AI horsepower from the Ryzen AI HX 370 chip inside to mark this laptop as a Copilot+ PC, providing access to Microsoft’s AI functionality for generative powers and filters in the Photos and Paint app, as well as the clever Windows Studio webcam effects for background blurring, auto framing and maintaining eye contact.

Battery Life

• Lasted for 8 hours 31 minutes in the battery test
• Capable of lasting for a working day

Given the potent specs on offer inside this revised ProArt P16, it makes sense for them to retain the capacious 90Whr cell found on the old model. I wasn’t expecting the earth when it came to the battery life of this machine, given that we’ve seen comparably specced machines last for only a handful of hours before conking out.

The 8 hours and 31 minutes it attained in the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery life test is a good result against gaming laptops, although it falls short against both the old model that kept going for another two hours, while a MacBook Pro M4 can give you up to 12 hours in a similar set of multi-tasking. You’ll still just get through a working day with this laptop.

The 240W DC charger and suitably large power brick it comes with at are at least fast in putting charge back into this ProArt P16. It took 26 minutes to get it back to 50% from zero, while a full charge took 80 minutes.

Should you buy it?

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