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Asus’ sales pitch for the ProArt PZ13 ($1,099.99) says it’s for “active creators” who want to take AI outdoors, which sounds about as good as taking a walk to induce an allergy attack. But seriously, if you look past the Copilot+ AI hype, the PZ13 is a winning spin on the detachable laptop-tablet-plus-keyboard formula, priced hundreds of dollars lower than the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 competition. As Arm devices (Qualcomm Snapdragon) rather than x86 devices (Intel or AMD), the two share a software compatibility caveat, but value-wise the ProArt surpasses the Surface Pro and claims our Editors’ Choice as the best Windows 2 detachable in-1 of the moment.
Design: everything except the pen
At $1,099.99 including keyboard cover and back stand cover, the ProArt PZ13 costs about the same as Microsoft’s entry-level Surface Pro 11 and Type Cover (sold separately). Microsoft’s detachable 2-in-1 has a 10-core versus eight-core Snapdragon X Plus processor, but the Asus offers more storage and a superior OLED panel compared to an IPS touchscreen.
The OLED version of the Surface Pro – with a faster Snapdragon best) keyboards available. However, it is available with 5G mobile broadband for use when there’s no Wi-Fi nearby, an option that PZ13 buyers won’t have.
Asus counters this by offering an SD card slot (and a microSD adapter) for the removable storage that the Surface Pro lacks. But the company missed a trick by not bundling a pen alongside the keyboard with the tablet, so sketchers and scribblers will either have to opt for the expensive Asus Pen 2.0 or look for a third-party stylus.
Measuring 0.35 by 11.7 by 8 inches and weighing 1.87 pounds, the aluminum-backed Gorilla Glass-fronted PZ13 is about the same size as the Surface Pro 11 (0.37 by 11.3 by 8 .2 inches and 1.97 pounds). The tablet portion of the expensive, enterprise-oriented Dell Latitude 7350 Detachable is 0.35 by 11.5 by 8.2 inches and weighs 1.76 pounds. Attaching the back and keyboard covers brings the weight of the ProArt to 3.2 pounds. Not only has the Asus passed MIL-STD 810H testing against shock, vibration and extreme heat, cold and humidity, but it also has an IP52 protection rating, meaning it is resistant to dust particles (though not dustproof) and dripping water ( although not heavy rain or immersion).
The moss green back kickstand and keyboard covers attach magnetically, with the latter also connected to a row of pins on the bottom of the tablet. The back cover has holes for the outward-facing camera and a ventilation opening, plus a fabric loop for a stylus. The power button is located on the top edge of the slate, with the volume up and down buttons on the right. The left edge houses a USB4 Type-C port and a thin cover strip that hides an SD card slot and a second USB4, and unfortunately that’s it for the ports: no USB Type-A, no HDMI monitor port, and (the biggest concern) no audio connection.
Features: Thumbs up for the keyboard
Like all tablets with stands and keyboard covers, the PZ13 is much more stable on a desk or table and is almost impossible to use on your lap. Move the stand so it doesn’t slip off your knees and the whole thing falls backwards. . I also couldn’t fold the keyboard flap so that the keyboard could be raised or tilted, and since it’s physically connected instead of via Bluetooth, you can’t use it when it’s disconnected like you can with the Surface Pros.
Otherwise, the keyboard works well, if you don’t mind the eternal pain of linking the Fn key and the cursor arrows, while there are no dedicated Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys. It’s nicely backlit and feels shallow but snappy, better than some real laptop keyboards I’ve used, and useful top-row controls including microphone mute and adjustment (single/multi-voice audio optimization) and brightness and volume and an emoji key. The large, buttonless touchpad glides and taps smoothly and has a firm, concave click.
You’ll probably want Bluetooth headphones (or a USB-C to 3.5mm audio adapter), but Asus’ built-in speakers provide acceptable sound – not very loud and a bit weak or hollow, but not thin or tinny . Background instruments are faint with minimal bass, but you can make out overlapping tracks. Dolby Access software offers presets for music, movies, games and voices and an equalizer.
The webcam not only offers Windows Hello facial recognition, but can also take photos and videos at 1440p resolution. Images are well exposed and noticeably sharp and detailed, without noise or static, and it supports Windows Studio effects for automatic framing and background blur. The rear camera is even sharper and takes photos and videos with a resolution of up to 4K (3,840 by 2,160). It’s also possible to switch to an odd 66:49 aspect ratio for 4,224 by 3,136 pixels.
You may quibble that the ProArt PZ13’s 16:10 aspect ratio (2,880 by 1,800 pixel resolution) is a little less intuitive or clipboard-like than the Surface Pro’s 3:2 (2,880 by 1,920) ratio, but the Pantone ratio The ProArt’s validated OLED touchscreen is stunning, with rich, vibrant colors and super-fine detail. The contrast is exceptional and the viewing angles are wide. White backgrounds are pristine rather than grayish, and I didn’t notice any pixelation around the edges of letters. My only complaint is that the bezels or bezels are too small for my thumbs.
The F12 key launches ProArt Creator Hub, which combines a system dashboard with color management tools including normal, vivid, and manual temperature settings and native, sRGB, or DCI-P3 palettes. It also helps you save and launch sets of apps and prioritize the performance of your favorite programs. It is accompanied by a slew of other software including MyAsus (system updates, settings and troubleshooting diagnostics, including blue screen and slow performance or booting issues); Asus StoryCube, for tinkering and organizing your photos and videos; and Bytedance’s CapCut video editor, if you want something more robust than Microsoft’s Clipchamp.
The Asus ProArt PZ13: testing the smallest snapdragon
Performance comparisons for these types of systems are a bit limited because some of our benchmark tests don’t run on Arm systems, and we tested the Dell Latitude 7350 and Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Gen 2 detachables a while ago with older benchmarks. So we’re pitting the PZ13 against the OLED-screened Snapdragon
Productivity and AI testing
Since neither UL’s PCMark 10 overall productivity rating nor Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Creators Adobe Photoshop exercise would run on the ProArt tablet, we’ll focus on three CPU-focused or processor-intensive tests. Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Geekbench 6.3 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF viewing and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video editing tool HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution. A fourth app, Geekbench AI, is one of the first benchmarks for AI processing.
The PZ13’s eight-core Snapdragon So the ProArt trailed the Snapdragon Note: remember that this is a tablet first and foremost. While these graphs look bad for the Asus tablet, my subjective impressions were higher: the PZ13 felt snappy and responsive when launching and running apps and during moderate multitasking. I never felt short of breath or impatient.
Graphics tests
We challenge the graphics of laptops and tablets with a quartet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K) use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. Steel Nomad’s Regular and Light subtests focus on APIs more commonly used for game development, such as Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects.
Clearly you’re not going to play demanding games on this tablet, although the Asus also looks worse than it feels in bar charts. Working on the vibrant OLED screen was so much fun that the device never seemed sluggish.
Battery and display tests
We test the battery life of portable devices by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie). Tears of steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We ensure that the battery is fully charged before the test, with WiFi and keyboard backlight (the Asus keyboard was connected) turned off.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and Windows software to measure a screen’s color saturation (what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the screen can display) and the 50% and its peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
The ProArt fell short of its advertised 500 nits brightness, although the screen’s sky-high contrast made up for that, and its color coverage was unbeatable (especially since the Surface Pro’s OLED panel strangely only achieved IPS-level results). The tablet’s battery life was also impressive, surpassing its rival by more than three hours.
Verdict: Our favorite Arm PC yet
We denied the 2024 Surface Pro an Editors’ Choice nod because it’s pricey when equipped with extras, and the Snapdragon X’s Arm architecture precludes guaranteed rock-solid software compatibility. This latter issue persists with the Asus ProArt PZ13, but we believe Asus’s glorious standard OLED screen, snappy keyboard and cameras, and impressive value deserve our accolades. It replaces the Microsoft slate as the best Windows detachable you can buy.
