Asus ProArt P16 2025: A Powerful Windows Alternative to MacBook Pro for Creatives

11 Sources

[1]

Why I recommend this Asus laptop for creatives over my MacBook Pro M4 (and it's not just price)

It also means it has the same problems as before, such as running hot. If you're familiar with Asus' creator-focused laptops, you'll feel right at home using the 2025 ProArt P16. It is nearly identical to its predecessor in terms of design and purpose, as the laptop is meant for creative professionals looking for a high-performance machine. It sticks with what worked last time, making a few key adjustments. Also: The best laptops for graphic designers: Expert tested First off, the ProArt P16 has a lightweight physical design, making it easy to carry around. I found the keyboard to be too mushy for my liking. It doesn't have a great typing feel, but the keycaps are quiet, so that's a plus. The touchpad takes up a large portion of the wrist rest, enabling better comfort and ease of use. On either side of the keyboard is a pair of Harman/Kardon speakers delivering strong audio output. So far, things are looking good for the ProArt P16, and things get even better once you look inside. My review unit came loaded with some solid hardware, indeed. It houses an AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card, and 32GB of RAM. Yes, you can game this; no, I don't recommend doing so. It overheats fast, and the display only has a refresh rate of 60Hz. Large heat vents are located at the bottom, expelling hot air. I do not recommend placing the computer on your lap unless you want your legs to be cooked. Also: Finally, an ultraportable Windows laptop I'd use at the office (even though it's for gamers) Asus' ProCreator Hub greatly contributed to my enjoyment, and it reminded me of MSI's Center app, which has a similar function. The app has various laptop features in one central location, one being the ability to instantly change how the device performs without having to go into BIOS. By making the right adjustments to the hardware, the ProArt P16 can exceed expectations for performance and battery life. Below is a benchmark test results table comparing the 2025 ProArt P16 to its predecessor, as well as the M4 MacBook Pro and the MSI Stealth 16 AI, another laptop with a similar purpose. You'll notice that Asus' new machine outperforms most of its rivals across the various benchmark rendering tests. There are instances where it falls behind, but it isn't a large gap. If you're looking for a powerful alternative to your old MacBook, this ProArt laptop is your best bet in 2025. The Creator Hub offers utility beyond tweaking performance. The WorkSmart tool lets you group multiple apps together. So when you click one of these groups, all those apps open simultaneously, saving you time. Color Control allows users to actively adjust the screen output on the fly. For example, you could tweak the blue light output so it's easier on your eyes or change which color gamut is being shown. You might change the gamut to DCI-P3 to show off "movie-grade colors". Display P3 is best "suited for displaying vivid colors on mobile devices and laptops." You don't have to mess with the output, since the screen is impressive on its own. Asus' ProArt P16 has a high-quality 16-inch 4K OLED display. Images are stunning as colors practically leap out. The screen had two downsides: the 60Hz refresh rate, as mentioned earlier, and the display's glossiness. So much light is reflected that it can be hard to see the screen under bright conditions. Up in the upper left-hand corner of the touchpad is the DialPad, which allows you to customize your own controls in each app. The physical design offers more precise control than the touchpad, which makes cycling through different tools easier than you'd assume. I tried incorporating the DialPad into my workflow to edit a video on CapCut, a photograph on Pixlr, and render 3D models in Blender using the DialPad, and found out that it's best used in conjunction with the touchpad. It works best as an supplemental tool for quick access to change brush sizes or cycling through video clips, but it isn't designed to replace the touchpad or mouse altogether. Alone, it's great at executing delicate procedures, like cleaning up specific areas in a photo. The problem is that it lacks haptic feedback: pressing down doesn't result in the "click" you'd expect. So to click and drag an effect on a video's timeline or grab the corner of a model in Blender, you'll have to use the touchpad. Fortunately, using both simultaneously isn't difficult. Your left hand can be the DialPad while your right is on the touchpad, and it all feels natural. Using just the touchpad is an option, but it's difficult to maintain the same level of accuracy. Also: This ultraportable Asus laptop is my favorite MacBook Air alternative (and it's better in some ways) I also have to give credit to the hardware. Rendering 3D environments in Blender took very little time to complete. I was able to hop between my 4K editing and 20 different Chrome tabs without any hiccups. The only time I experienced any slowdown was when I was playing 10 different livestreams in 4K on YouTube -- but apart from niche cases, it's solid. Over at Best Buy, the Asus ProArt P16 is on sale for $2,500, which is more than what I was expecting. Last year's ProArt is retailing for just $2,000. I recommend grabbing the 2025 laptop if you want the best of the best and don't mind paying a bit more. As shown in the performance tests, there is a sizable gap between the two devices. That said, the 2024 version is definitely still competitive, so if you're looking for a powerful graphics-minded laptop and want to save some money, I'd highly recommend it, especially if it sees some additional price drops.

[2]

ZDNet

Why I pick this Windows laptop for creatives over my MacBook Pro (and it's not just price)

[3]

ZDNet

Finally, a Windows laptop that I wouldn't mind putting away my MacBook Pro for

[4]

ZDNet

I was skeptical about big-screen laptops, but this Acer model is my new go-to for work

Its speakers, however, leave much to be desired, and it has its fair share of bloatware. Acer's Swift 16 AI is a thin and light laptop with a gorgeous OLED display, nice full-sized keyboard, and Intel Core Ultra 7 or 9 "Lunar Lake" processor starting at $1,200: a competitive price for a device that feels more premium than you'd expect. I've been commuting with the Swift 16 AI for the past two weeks, and it's become a surprise favorite of the year. It stands out as a great-value ultraportable that's as versatile as it is capable and has fantastic battery life. Also: I tested Acer's Swift X Laptop and its performance surprised me in 3 ways The Acer Swift 16 AI features a minimalist physical build, with an all-over, metallic matte black coating that looks a lot like the LG Gram Pro 16. Its full-sized keyboard and generous selection of I/O make it practical for a variety of uses, and the physical form is sleek and well-designed. The configuration I tested had an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and a 1TB SSD -- a flexible loadout that can do a little bit of everything. It's particularly well-suited as a work device with Wi-Fi 7 and a responsive, very comfortable keyboard with a slight upward tilt thanks to Acer's hinge design. I was happy to see that both USB-C ports support Thunderbolt 4, which is great for folks who want their external monitors. Otherwise, you also get an HDMI port that supports up to 8K resolution. The webcam is also surprisingly good, with 1440p resolution for a crisp image during video calls. The glossy, 3K OLED display at 120Hz is one of the laptop's strongest features. It's a crisp and vibrant image that looks fantastic whether you're gaming, editing video, or just working in productivity software. Despite its very thin clamshell design, I experienced very little screen wobble -- one of the first things I look for when I see a display this thin. You can also get some surprisingly good gaming performance out of this laptop with the Intel Arc GPU, as long as you're not pushing the limits on top-tier titles. I ran a handful of my usual Steam titles, and although it's not a gaming laptop, it feels competitive and responsive, only stuttering with texture shaders turned up to max. Also: I replaced my work PC with this Dell laptop, and it was one of my best decisions The only thing is that the display is incredibly glossy -- we're talking near-mirror status. You will need to adjust it if you're in an office or somewhere with overhead lighting, something I found myself doing rather frequently. If you're sitting with your back to a bright window, it becomes borderline unusable. That said, the display looks fantastic otherwise, so I'd still recommend this laptop to most users unless you're specifically looking for a device to use outdoors or are not a fan of a glossy display. Another critique I have of this laptop (which is an inevitable result of its price point) is its speaker system, which is not great. While it's true that laptop speakers are infamously lacking in bass and depth, this one takes that reputation and runs with it. Usually, I would say this is a trade-off I don't mind, but it's a bit of a bummer that the sound is so shallow when the gaming performance is so good. If you're someone who always has a pair of headphones on, however, this won't be an issue. Ultimately, the Acer Swift 16 AI's strengths outweigh its drawbacks. When it comes to everyday use, the performance is there, and as a portable 16-inch laptop, it's well-designed and easy to commute with. The battery is also a banger. The laptop has a very thin form factor, but still manages to fit in a large 20Wh battery with a 65-watt charge. Depending on how you use it, you can get multiple days of use on one charge, and it ranks up there with other efficient devices I've tested this year such as the Asus Zenbook A14, Microsoft's Surface Laptop, and the Dell XPS 13 with the Snapdragon X Elite chip. During our standard video playback test, I got nearly 18 hours of video playback on one charge. When it comes to using this laptop for work, you'll easily last through the work day and into the next, unless you're pushing it with more demanding workloads. Like all of the other Lunar Lake-powered devices I've tested this year, power drain drops to a trickle when it's not in use. Also: I switched to a $280 Chromebook from my Windows laptop for a week - and didn't regret it The Intel Core Ultra 7 chip generates little to no heat during everyday use, but pushing it with heavier task loads and plugging in the charger will result in temperature increases. Notably, the charging process seems to be hotter during the first 30 minutes, or below 30%, then tapers down to a much cooler temperature at higher battery percentages. Also, when you start or stop charging, the laptop emits a chirp. All that said, it charges very fast and can approach 100% in about an hour in Balanced Mode. Beyond gaming, this laptop makes for a competent laptop for creatives with its fast refresh rate and lovely display. The 16GB of RAM might limit high-end workloads with large video files or 4K rendering, but it's otherwise a joy to work on. Comparing this laptop to some peers, we see very close (with one identical) benchmarking scores to Dell's XPS 13 with the same Intel Core Ultra 7 "Lunar Lake" chip. The Acer Swift 16 AI is a fantastic value and a sleeper hit from Acer's lineup. The bottom line here is that for around $1,250, you're getting a 16-inch OLED display at 120Hz and 3K resolution, a sleek, minimalist build, full suite of I/O, and a marathon battery. Those elements alone work together to make a practical, capable main driver that can do a bit of everything. As a work laptop, it feels premium and powerful, despite the subpar speakers, which is a tradeoff I'm willing to take. Also: I pack this portable workstation whenever I travel - here's why it's worth the bag space We've awarded the Acer Swift 16 AI our Editors' Choice award primarily for its features, hardware, and build quality relative to price. The "Lunar Lake" Intel Core Ultra 7 processor future-proofs this laptop with commendable performance, and its physical build feels more premium than its price point would suggest. Ultimately, it's an excellent choice for anyone wanting a gorgeous display paired with fantastic battery life. Starting at $1,250, it's already a value, and if you can catch it on sale, it's even better.

[5]

TechRadar

The Asus Zenbook S 16 is built from a mysterious new material - but does this space-age laptop live up to the hype?

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you're buying the best. Find out more about how we test. The Asus Zenbook laptop line has long been one of my favorites, sitting among the best ultrabooks alongside rivals like Dell's XPS series and the LG Gram collection. Now, Asus has given its premium laptop lineup a fresh lease on life, thanks to AMD's mighty new Ryzen AI chips and the magic of something called 'ceraluminum'. I'll get further into that mysterious new material further down in this review, but here's the short version: the lid of the new Asus Zenbook S 16 is made from a futuristic composite of aluminum and ceramic, giving it a soft matte feel while also being more durable, lighter, and fingerprint-resistant than the traditional aluminum and plastic used in the construction of most modern laptops. Of course, a fancy outer casing doesn't guarantee you're getting a high-quality product. But the Zenbook S 16 delivers a premium experience in other areas too, with great performance across a variety of workloads and a generally very comfortable user experience. Although I always spend at least a full workweek using any laptop I review in lieu of my regular daily driver (the ever-faithful HP Spectre x360), I was actually forced to use this laptop for a few days. See, my boiler needed replacing, and unfortunately, it's situated in my home office - meaning that for two days, I was jettisoned from my desktop setup to the breakfast bar downstairs while the installation engineer resolved my lack of hot water. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a creature of habit, and was initially unhappy to be displaced from my usual workstation. But honestly, I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't drop Asus a line politely asking (read: begging) to keep this Zenbook. The 16-inch OLED touchscreen is gorgeous, and the large touchpad and keyboard make for a very comfortable user experience. It's perhaps the closest I've felt to using a MacBook Pro while actually on a Windows laptop - and while I'm a known macOS hater, I've always maintained that Apple's Mac products are very well-designed devices. Starting at $1,599 / £1,499 / AU$2,999, the Zenbook S 16 isn't exactly cheap, but for that price tag, you're getting some pretty impressive performance and a really, really nice piece of physical hardware. I'll dig into the details more in the Price and Availability section, but the key takeaway here is that the value proposition is solid. There's only one real drawback here, in my opinion: the battery life. It's perfectly serviceable, don't get me wrong, but it's nothing spectacular within the current market space. Still, it'll last you through a full day's work and then some - so as long as you don't mind putting it on charge overnight. With a price tag starting at $1,599 / £1,499 / AU$2,999, the Asus Zenbook S 16 certainly leans towards the premium end of the market, but you're getting plenty of bang for your buck here. There are a few different configurations, with the main difference being the Ryzen processor model and the amount of RAM. Every model comes with the same 3K OLED display and 1TB of storage - a 2TB model would've been nice, but at least the SSD is user-upgradable. The base configuration, priced as above, comes with a Ryzen AI 7 350 chip and 24GB of RAM (an unusual amount, but still better than the more commonplace 16GB industry standard). My review unit is a higher-end model, featuring a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor and 32GB of RAM, and it will cost you $1,799 / £1,599 - and at the time of writing, this model unfortunately isn't available in Australia. I say 'unfortunately' here because for my money, that extra $200 / £100 is well worth it for the internal hardware upgrade. For comparison, a 16-inch MacBook Pro will cost you $2,499 / £2,499 / AU$3,999 - and that's just for the base M4 Pro model. Granted, there's no denying that Apple's pro-grade laptop can offer better performance in many areas than this Zenbook, but the point stands that the Zenbook S 16 is very good value for money. Aesthetically speaking, this is undeniably one gorgeous laptop. With the 'Scandinavian White' colorway, it feels as clean and striking as any of the best laptops. The back of the screen is not only made from Asus's fancy ceraluminum material, but it also has a kintsugi-inspired pattern of sharp lines inlaid in silver, which strikes the perfect balance between eye-catching and minimalist. A little more about that revolutionary new material, though: you can read about my first time encountering ceraluminum right here, but I'll give you a quick breakdown in case you don't feel like reading a whole different article. It's created by electrochemically bonding aluminum with a ceramic component, producing a strong plated material with a matte surface that feels like unglazed pottery to the touch. The best thing about this is that it brings the lightweight, durable nature of aluminum - a popular choice among manufacturers when it comes to laptop construction - while also providing a grippier surface that is more resilient against both damage and smudging from fingerprints. I've criticized more than a few laptops over the years for being 'fingerprint magnets', and happily that doesn't apply here. The whole thing feels impressively sturdy despite being very thin and light for a 16-inch laptop. Opening up the lid, you're met with a more conventionally constructed aluminum keyboard housing, with a large glass touchpad and nicely spaced keys that make it very comfortable to type on. I also found the touchpad to be sensitive and responsive, with a firm click, although I typically prefer to connect a wireless mouse when using laptops. Above the keyboard, a wide cooling grille sits with a subtle Asus logo in the corner. The keys are backlit with white LEDs, which can be set to three different brightness levels; it's not often I take much time to comment on keyboard backlighting, but the Zenbook S 16's is particularly vibrant. Speaking of vibrancy, the display on this laptop is fantastic, offering rich color and sharp contrast thanks to its 3K OLED panel. While the maximum brightness isn't quite as high as I've seen on some other OLED laptops, it's certainly bright enough to use in well-lit environments, and it's also a touchscreen. Somewhat surprisingly, this display has a 120Hz refresh rate, a pleasing upgrade from the 60Hz panels you see on most non-gaming laptops. In terms of physical connectivity, we've got a good selection of ports here, including USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, and even an SD card reader - the latter of which may be a boon for photographers when combined with the excellent display. Lastly, the speakers are quite good, providing detailed audio for both music and dialogue - it's perhaps lacking a tiny bit of kick in the bass department compared to some laptops I've seen, but overall I really can't complain about the speaker quality. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is a powerful chip backed with 32GB of RAM in my review unit, and I'm pleased to say it performs admirably. General responsiveness is great and everyday tasks run smoothly, to the point where anyone who just wants a laptop for office work could probably consider downgrading to a Ryzen AI 7 model. When it comes to more demanding workloads, the Zenbook S 16 offers good performance across a variety of areas, including 3D rendering, AI functionality, and gaming. Sure, it's not going to beat out an actual gaming laptop with a dedicated GPU, but the AMD Radeon 890M integrated graphics are surprisingly competent even in more demanding games, provided you're willing to dial back the graphical settings a bit and turn on AMD's FSR 3.0 resolution upscaling mode. In real-world testing, I had no issues whatsoever with the performance of the Zenbook S 16. Running Spotify in the background while working across 20+ open Chrome tabs didn't cause the slightest bit of slowdown, and image editing in GIMP 3.0 was smooth and effective - a far cry from the rather sluggish experience I get when trying to edit images on my usual laptop. AI performance is also reasonably good; again, you're ideally going to want to spring for a laptop with a dedicated Nvidia GPU if you want to be running serious AI workloads locally, like producing your own language models, but for running the local aspects of something like Microsoft's Copilot+ AI assistant, the average user will have no problems. To dig into that gaming performance a little more (there's overlap here with other 3D rendering and modeling software), I needed to drop the resolution to FHD+ rather than the native 3K and enable AMD's FSR 3 upscaling to make most games playable - this machine isn't coming close to any of the best gaming laptops - but for anyone who just wants to play casual titles or indie games on their off-time, the Zenbook S 16 is more capable than I had expected. I used it for a spot of Stardew Valley after work on multiple occasions, which unsurprisingly ran great. In Civilization VII, I was easily able to get a decent framerate at 1200p, while the infamously hardware-demanding Cyberpunk 2077 was completely unplayable at native 1800p but produced an fps of 35 at 1200p with Low settings and FSR 3's Performance mode enabled (and frankly, even with those settings, this game still looks bloody fantastic). It's a true testament to the power of AMD's resolution upscaling tech for integrated GPUs; I'm quietly awed by the fact that a game like Cyberpunk is playable at all on an ultrabook like this. I will note that the fans on the Zenbook S 16 get a tad noisy when you're running more intensive software - it's nothing too onerous, and I found it ran quietly during regular tasks like web browsing, but be aware that you might want headphones to play games on it. It's worth adding that the laptop didn't get uncomfortably hot at any point (aside from directly on the vent above the keyboard), even during stress testing. The battery life on the Zenbook S 16 is pretty good. That's almost all I can really say about it; it's not mind-blowing, beaten out by several competitors, but it's still sufficient for a full day's work (or two) without needing to plug in provided you turn off the keyboard backlight and don't work at maximum brightness. In our battery life test, which involves running a looped video file at 50% brightness, the Zenbook S 16 ran out of juice just shy of the 15-hour mark, which for a 16-inch OLED laptop is respectable, if unspectacular. In real-world use situations, I was getting between 10 and 12 hours out of it at a time on average, and it holds its charge remarkably well when not in use. Since it charges via USB-C, you can easily make use of other charging cables, though the supplied 65W adapter provides fast-charging capabilities that provide 50% battery charge in a little over half an hour. As is typical for my laptop review process, I swapped out my daily driver for the Asus Zenbook S 16 - and actually ended up liking it so much that I kept using it after my usual week or two of real-world testing. Asus, if I could keep this one, that would be great... This involved all my day-to-day work, which is mostly emailing, word processing, web research, and image editing, plus some work on personal projects and a bit of gaming in my off hours. I also ran our suite of benchmarking and battery tests to provide a clearer image of the Zenbook S 16's overall performance.

[6]

TechRadar

I tested an outrageous Acer Predator laptop with Nvidia 5090 GPU, and I wish I could recommend it, but I just can't at this price

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you're buying the best. Find out more about how we test. The Acer Predator Helios 18 AI is a top-tier gaming laptop with a phenomenal spec that's sure to whet the appetites of even casual gamers. Despite what lurks inside, its exterior is remarkably restrained. At 18 inches, it's obviously very large, but the black finish and lack of branding keep its profile reasonably low. However, that large rear protrusion and ostentatious RGB lighting give away its intentions. I think Acer has done well to keep the Predator Helios 18 AI as slender as possible. Of course, this is all relative given the size of laptop we're dealing with here, but it's impressively thin for the most part, although it thickens at the rear. Build quality is also excellent, equaling the best gaming laptops in this regard. Premium materials are employed everywhere, and the hinge for the lid is smooth and easy to operate, while offering plenty of stability once set. The keyboard is tactile and snappy, and the generous spacing of the keys makes it easy to type and game on the Predator Helios 18 AI. The number pad somewhat compromises the layout, though, with the space bar paying the highest price; it's a little too short for my liking. On the other hand, the large trackpad does a fine job of not interfering while using the keyboard, with accidental contact failing to register in my experience. It's also very smooth and accurate, should you wish to use it over one of the best gaming mice. Considering its mighty spec, the Predator Helios 18 AI performs as well as you might expect. Cyberpunk 2077 and Doom: The Dark Ages ran with aplomb, each delivering fps figures in the hundreds with maximum graphics settings, including those for ray tracing. You will have to endure constant fan noise when gaming, but thankfully this isn't egregious when the default Balanced mode is selected in the Predator Sense app. The Predator Helios 18 AI also generates a fair amount of heat, which can spread to the sides and the keyboard after a while. Again, though, this isn't bad enough to cause an issue. The biggest price you'll have to pay for all this performance is... well, the price. Starting at $3,000, the Predator Helios 18 AI is incredibly expensive. I struggle to think who'll need such a large and powerful laptop, and be willing to pay this much for one. Of course, the entire gaming laptop market is a premium one, but there are better value alternatives out there if you don't need an 18-inch display and triple-digit frame rates, such as the excellent Razer Blade 16 (2025) or the MSI Katana 15 (2023), the latter of which we think is currently the best budget gaming laptop around. The Predator Helios 18 AI starts from $2,999.99 / £3,499.99 / AU$7,299 and is available now. It comes with spare WASD and arrow keys, as well as a thermal pad upgrade kit for the RAM. You don't need me to tell you what an eye-watering sum this is. It's understandable considering the spec, and my review unit was even more outlandish, equipped with a 3840 x 2400 display and 192GB of RAM(!). Prices are similar to the Razer Blade, which performs similarly too. If you want something that's even better value, the MSI Katana 15 (2023) is, in our view, one of the best budget gaming laptops around, if you're happy to game at 1080p. Given its large display size, the Predator Helios 18 AI is a reasonably understated gaming laptop. The rear bulge that extends beyond the lid hinge gives it some distinction, and the RGB lighting can light up the whole unit like a Christmas tree if you want it to (the bar that runs along the front edge and wraps around the side is especially striking). But switch this off and you'll struggle to tell it apart from the best business laptops. It's quite bulky, although I think the Predator Helios 18 AI does an admirable job of keeping its dimensions contained considering the beastly components that lay within. The front end is reasonably thin, but thickens as it moves towards the back. This increased size does allow for larger vent openings, though, so it's a worthy sacrifice to improve cooling performance. The overall build quality is hard to fault. All the materials that are used look and feel premium and durable. The lid is also impressively smooth to operate yet remains sufficiently stable when set in position. Underneath you'll find three feet that run across the width of the Predator Helios 18 AI, and they provide plenty of grip on desktop surfaces. They also raise the chassis from the surface by a significant degree, again allowing for improved ventilation. There are plenty of ports on the Predator Helios 18 AI. On the left, you'll find an ethernet and a USB-A port, as well as an SD card slot and a 3.5mm audio in/ out jack. On the right are two more USB-A ports, which is a sensible location considering this is where you'll likely be connecting external peripherals. On the rear are two USB-C ports, an HDMI port, and a large power cable port. As you would imagine, the power supply is large, but unfortunately the cable running from the brick to the jack end is quite short. Owing to my setup, this meant I had to keep the brick on my desk rather than placing it on the floor, which was quite the inconvenience. Gaming with the Predator Helios 18 AI didn't get off to a particularly auspicious start. When I ran Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time, the game's benchmark function recorded a disappointing 42fps, with the maximum 3840 x 2400 resolution and Ray Tracing: Ultra preset selected. Some tinkering with the graphics settings resulted in modest improvements to performance, but it wasn't until after restarting the game a couple of times that things suddenly improved: I started getting about 100fps, even in busy in-game environments, without lowering the resolution or any other graphical settings. Similar figures were achieved when I played Doom: The Dark Ages, although I did have to change the DLSS mode from Auto to Ultra Performance to get there. Thankfully, this made no discernible difference to the image quality. And on that front, both games looked fantastic on the WQUXGA display. Colors were accurate and vibrant, if very slightly washed-out. This is a common issue on many IPS displays, but here the effect did little to detract from the awesomeness of the visuals. The ultra-high 3840 x 2400 resolution in my review unit offered incredible levels of sharpness, while the high response times resulted in super-smooth gameplay. It's also capable of very high brightness levels, which helps to keep pesky reflections at bay. Fan noise is constant when gaming on the Predator Helios 18 AI, but I didn't find it distractingly loud. The volume increases considerably if you set the Predator Sense profile to Performance mode, though - then you'll really need one of the best PC gaming headsets to drown out the noise. The Predator Helios 18 AI does a good job of keeping temperatures down. Its underside doesn't get too hot, although over time heat leaks out of both sides, which can be a little distracting for your mouse hand. After a couple of hours of gaming, I noticed the bottom of the keyboard became quite hot, too, especially around the space bar. It wasn't hot enough to make using the keyboard a problem, though. And what's more, the keyboard on the Predator Helios 18 AI is great to game with. The keys are clicky but damped enough to make them tactile. They're a little on the small side (although they're generously spaced apart), owing to the inclusion of the aforementioned number pad. This compromises the layout somewhat - especially the space bar, which isn't as long as I would've liked, and therefore somewhat awkward to hit with my left thumb. The trackpad on the Predator Helios 18 AI is large and very smooth, making it easy to use. Mercifully, it also appears unaffected by contact with the sides of your palms, meaning it won't accidentally register movements while your hands lean over it to use the keyboard. The battery life of the Predator Helios 18 AI isn't particularly impressive. Despite its 99Wh capacity, it lasted just under 90 minutes PCMark10's battery test for gaming scenarios. This makes it considerably worse than the Razer Blade 16 (2025), which managed about an hour more, but much better than the MSI Katana 15 (2023), which didn't even last one hour. Charging the Predator Helios 18 AI back up to full is a surprisingly quick process, though - and given the size of the power brick, you would hope it would be. I tested the Predator Helios 18 AI for a few days, during which time I played games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Doom: The Dark Ages, both AAA titles that provide stern tests for rigs owing to their demanding, cutting-edge graphics. I also ran TechRadar's series of benchmarking tests, including a battery test where I played a movie on a continuous loop until the Predator Helios 18 AI shut down. I have been PC gaming for over a decade, and during that time I have experienced a number of systems and components. I have also reviewed laptops previously, as well as copious amounts of gaming hardware.

[7]

Lifehacker

Alienware Aurora 16X Gaming Laptop Review: Finally, an Alienware Laptop that Looks Normal

Alienware, now a Dell subsidiary, has a long history of pumping out wild looking, enthusiastically lit laptops that pack stellar (pun intended) gaming performance. But its latest generation has toned down the otherworldly aesthetic a bit, preferring instead to honor the company's other legacy of putting performance on a pedestal. Part of Dell's larger initiative to simplify its laptop offerings, the Aurora lineup pulls back on the RGB and interstellar-inspired design, but continues to deliver solid gaming and content creation performance by way of a potent discrete GPU, top-of-the-line mobile processor and a healthy serving of RAM and storage. Despite all that, the Aurora 16X still manages to hover around a very reasonable price point for what you get. Compared to previous generations of Alienware hardware, the Aurora 16X gaming laptop looks almost modest. Outside of the prismatic alien head adorning the anodized aluminum lid, the Aurora's design is fairly understated, and dare I say, elegant. The dark navy of the chassis, which Alienware has dubbed Interstellar Indigo, shimmers alluringly in the light but fades to a matte black in dimmer settings, while the plastic keyboard deck is a matte version of the same color. Alienware calls this aesthetic framework AW30, and it extends across the rest of the refreshed Aurora line to also include the 16X's little sibling, the 16. While it's considerably more demure than the "otherwordly" machines that litter Alienware's colorful history, it still retains a few signature touches that make it stand apart from other gaming laptops (my favorite of which is the chamfered front edge, which slopes towards the rear in a smooth curve). There are also what feel like vestigial touches from Alienware's interstellar-themed origins, like its single-zone RGB backlit keyboard. Overall, there are a number of little touches and quality of life improvements over previous generations that make the 16X easy on the eyes, a pleasure to use, and a solid everyday carry. Aside from the streamlined look and slick, rounded edges, one of the first things that struck me as I lifted the 16X out of its packaging was its weight. It's pretty hefty, even for a gaming laptop, coming in at 5.86 pounds. You won't mistake the 16X for an ultraportable, and you'll definitely notice the extra weight tucked into your backpack, briefcase or courier bag. That said, it's not obnoxiously thick, especially since most of its weight is concentrated in a thermal package perched at the rear of the underside of the bottom deck. This is the key to the 16X's efficient cooling, as it draws cool air in from the underside of the machine to vent through both the back and sides, supplementing the primary fans inside the main chassis without adding undue volume. Because it sits where a footer would normally be included, it doesn't add a tremendous amount of bulk. A musclebook this is not, measuring 0.92 inches at its thickest, 10.45 inches long, and 14.05 inches wide. The Aurora 16X is clearly designed as a gaming laptop first and foremost, with its Nvidia Geforce RTX 5070 GPU (there's also a configuration that comes with the stepdown card, the RTX 5060) and high end Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor. That HX designation at the end of the chip's name stands, colorfully, for High-Performance Extreme, indicating that it's one of Intel's most capable mobile processors, which bore out in my benchmarks (more on that later). More than anything, however, the Aurora 16X is an exercise in harmony. Yes, it sports a capable GPU, but not a high end card like the 5090, which would significantly inflate the price. Its 2560 x 1600, 240Hz IPS display delivers the high refresh rates gamers crave, though not the eye-popping richness and depth of OLED (which would, again, add significant price bloat). Every part of the machine seems intentionally designed to work well with its counterparts while not adding undue cost. It's the definition of a mid-tier laptop, but manages to come in at a price slightly under what you'd expect to pay while examining the spec sheet. A few corners were cut to keep the price in line; while the lid and bottom deck of the chassis are high quality, anodized aluminum, the keyboard deck itself is plastic, including the touchpad. It's a small downgrade, but noticeable if you've been spoiled by haptic glass touchpads. On the upside, the keyboard itself is broad enough to include a (slightly narrow) number pad, and feels responsive and pleasantly clicky. The keys boast 1.4mm of travel and deliver a premium-feeling typing experience. As I mentioned above, the 16X's display doesn't deliver the wow factor of OLED, with its matchless blacks and vivid whites. But it is an excellent example of what's possible with an IPS LED. The adjective I kept returning to throughout testing was "workmanlike." It's crisp and clear enough, and the 240Hz refresh rate is very welcome, giving you plenty of overhead even in older or less demanding games that may deliver frame rates over 200 fps on this hardware. Perhaps its most impressive feature is its ability to diminish glare. Its 500 nits of brightness, paired with Alienware's anti-glare coating, not only made the 16X a joy to use in brightly lit or outdoor settings, but also delivered fantastic viewing angles. It also benefits from Dell's ComfortView Plus technology, which attempts to limit blue light emission without sacrificing color accuracy. One knock against the display is the thick bezels, particularly the distractingly large lower bezel. The 16:10 resolution is also an interesting choice for a laptop designed primarily for gaming. While the added height gives a little more headroom for browsing or content creation than a standard 16:9 display, I would've traded it for a slightly crisper 3K alternative. As a laptop with a discrete GPU designed for gamers, the 16X doesn't disappoint. Even at native resolution and high settings with raytracing cranked up to its highest setting, the 16X delivered an average of 49 FPS in Ubisoft's demanding Assassin's Creed Shadows. For gamers looking for an even more buttery experience, knocking the resolution and graphics presets down a step (to 1920 x 1200 and Medium) pumped the average FPS up to a silky 70+. Results were even more impressive in Black Myth: Wukong, the recent action RPG from Chinese studio Game Science. At native resolution on Very High settings and with full raytracing dialed up to Very High, the 16X managed a remarkable 145 average FPS. Black Myth: Wukong is a perfect example of what a great match the IPS panel is for this hardware, given that even a 120Hz panel wouldn't be able to deliver maximum frame rates in this very visually attractive, recent triple-A title. Given its workhorse of a central processor, it's no surprise that the Aurora is a productivity superstar as well. In Geekbench 6, it managed sterling scores in both the CPU (Single-core: 2,983; Multi-core: 19,533) and GPU (OpenCL: 133,714; Vulcan: 132,875) tests. These results put it well ahead of higher-priced competitors like the Razer Blade 14, which also packs an RTX 5070 GPU, with a Strix Point processor from AMD standing in for the 16X's Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX. While the single-core CPU and OpenCL GPU (an indicator of general purpose graphics rendering performance) scores were pretty tight, the 16X trounced the Blade 14 in Vulkan GPU (high performance graphics tasks like gaming) and multi-core CPU scores. While, refreshingly, the AI angle isn't a huge component of Alienware/Dell's marketing push for the Aurora line, the 16X did extremely well in Geekbench AI benchmarks as well. It achieved a single precision score of 6,010, a half precision score of 2,197 and a quantized score of 10,213. These scores also beat the Blade 14's performance, as well as a number of laptops we've recently tested specifically marketed as AI machines, like the MSI Prestige 13 AI+ EVO and Asus Zenbook A14. In fairness, those machines are significantly cheaper than the Aurora 16X, but if you're looking for a laptop with a capable NPU to accelerate AI workloads, the 16X has plenty of horsepower. The 16X also shows promise for creators, especially those that do a lot of intensive video processing. It was able to transcode a 12-minute 4K video to 1080p in Handbrake in a blistering two minutes and 28 seconds, less than half the time it took the M4-powered MacBook Air (five minutes flat) and over a minute faster than the Razer Blade 14 (at 3:39). While the Aurora 16X packs a massive 6-cell, 90Whr battery, it clearly wasn't designed to serve as an all-day productivity machine. In a standard rundown test, looping video with the display set to 50% brightness (and extras like the keyboard backlighting disabled), the Aurora survived for six hours and 49 minutes. Real world use cases will likely drain it faster, and you're unlikely to get a full work day in without having to top it off at some point, but that's a very impressive result for any gaming laptop with a powerful discrete GPU.

[8]

pcgamer

Asus TUF A14 (2025) review

PC Gamer's got your back Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware. This laptop feels like it was made specifically for me, and those like me. Its lush brushed metal and slightly curved but still square design, plus comfy typing, is exactly what I want for a work and travel machine. But on top of that, you're also getting decent gaming performance and great battery life, all packaged in a lovely 14-inch form factor. There we go, that's the review done... alright, there's a little more to it than that. The Asus TUF A14 (2025)I have in front of me right now is easily the best gaming laptop I've used, and you know what? I don't think I'd swap it out for a single other laptop -- unless Asus starts offering an RTX 5070 or RTX 5080 version, of course. That's because all these design choices speak to me very specifically as someone who spends just as much time working and travelling as I do gaming. This laptop seems tailor-made to people with just such use cases, provided the 'work' isn't very resource-intensive. For me, it's just typing in Chrome with a few tabs and a couple of different apps open, so the TUF suits just fine. As a pure gaming laptop, there are certainly better choices for the admittedly very steep price this is going for. At the time of writing, for instance, you can actually get an RTX 5070 Ti laptop for a little less. And while I'd expect this RTX 5060-touting TUF A14 will go on sale too, at some point, I don't doubt that you'll still be able to get better-performing laptops for cheaper than it even then. Part of the reason for this is because it's a 14-inch laptop and you usually have to pay a premium for this dinky (but still very usable) form factor. The other part is that it's just an incredibly well-made laptop all around. Nothing about it feels accidental or half-assed. You almost get that MacBook feeling when you hold it, which is saying something for a gaming machine, and especially one not in Asus' premium ROG brand. I'm gonna keep on talking about the design for a while longer, actually, because it really is worth highlighting. Our Dave tried the 2024 version of the TUF A14 and found the same as I did with this one: It's lovely. Not much has changed in the design since then because not much needed changing. That slightly annoying touchpad grit, when pressed in the corners, seems to have been fixed, too. The laptop exterior looks very subtly premium, which helps when bringing it out and about in public -- none of that garish 'I'M A GAMER' nonsense. It's pretty light at 3.22 lbs, too, and of course it's nice and dinky, so it's an incredibly portable and publicly usable laptop in all respects. The 16:10 aspect screen helps in that respect, too, though bear in mind that aspect ratio can make you lose out on a little field of view in some games, which might be an issue for the most competitive of gamers, but not for the vast majority, myself included (and I do like competitive shooters). That screen is a 2560 x 1600, 165 Hz IPS affair, which looks plenty vibrant to my eyes. It would have been nice to see an OLED on this, like you get with the Transcend 14, but I'll take a great IPS with few complaints. I suppose I might not like to see how much an OLED version of this laptop would cost. The keyboard is a genuine pleasure to type on. I still prefer my mechanical Keychron, but for a chiclet laptop keeb it's great. Ditto the trackpad, which is large and centred. The speakers are clear and loud, though not particularly bassy, as you would generally expect from little laptop units. There is one annoying thing about them, however. On a flat surface they're fine, but because they're located underneath the laptop, a little on the side, if you use it on your lap it can muffle the sound, which is a shame. Not only is its chassis and overall design lovely but its internals feel perfectly tailored. One might look at the specs list and feel a little underwhelmed by the CPU, GPU, and RAM, but I think they make perfect sense for this laptop. The processor is certainly not aimed at productivity, but for gaming it's great. Likewise, 16 GB of RAM is fine for gaming and light work. Even the cooling fans sound great as they have a surprisingly pleasant timbre. Most importantly, I found the RTX 5060 GPU in the TUF A14 to perform much better than I expected. Admittedly I'm coming from a desktop with a now-ageing RTX 3060 Ti inside, so there's definitely a little frame gen wow factor at play for that reason alone. But still, that aside, I reckon it's a mighty capable chip for 1080p and native 1600p gaming, provided you're happy enabling upscaling and maybe 2X frame gen in more demanding games. You could enable 4X frame gen, but the results and latency can vary massively game to game. You want a decent starting frame rate to reduce input latency when frame gen is enabled. Sadly, I couldn't always attain that here. Thankfully, you should be able to start out with a decent enough frame rate with upscaling enabled in most games. That's thanks to the RTX 5060. I can honestly say this laptop GPU generation feels like the first time I've been able to say that gaming on a (somewhat) affordable laptop GPU is a genuinely great gaming experience. I'm no fan of Nvidia trying to convince us all that generated frames are just the same as real frames, but hey, better those than none as far as I'm concerned. I really didn't think I'd feel like that about 4X frame gen, either. But after trying it for hour after hour (after hour) in Killing Floor 3, I'm on board. I was able to whip that UE5 game on high settings at 1440p or 1600p and get a comfortable mid-high-100s frame rate with 4X frame gen enabled, and the latency was perfectly playable. The fact is, I consistently chose to play the game on my laptop (usually on my external monitor) rather than on my RTX 3060 Ti desktop, and it wasn't even a tough decision. I ran into some issues with the hybrid GPU setup switching between AMD and Nvidia on my external display and crashing, however, this stopped with some tinkering. It didn't happen much in the first place, and at any rate seems to be an issue that you'd get with any AMD-Nvidia hybrid system. Now, if I turn UE5's lighting system Lumen on and crank some other settings up, latency becomes a problem, but the fact is I'm able to play a great-looking UE5 game at 165 Hz with the frames to match and practically unnoticeable latency. Admittedly, frame gen is a mixed bag and very game-dependent, but that it's worth it even some of the time is no small thing. I'd still recommend the laptop without it -- just look at those non-frame gen frame rates, they're perfectly reasonable -- but with it? You bet. And then there's Turbo mode. Most of my testing was done at the highest performance settings Windows offers, but I thought I should try Turbo mode in Asus Armoury Crate, too, and that surprised me. By boosting the amount of power fed to the CPU and GPU (from 68 W average power draw during a Metro Exodus run up to 98 W average power draw, in the case of the latter), you can see from the 1080p benchmarks above that frame rates increased significantly in all but one of the games I tried. In fact, it even starts to approach an RTX 5070 laptop level of performance -- perhaps RTX 5060 Ti mobile performance, if there were such a chip. That being said, I'd personally opt to drop those few frames and keep it in the usual performance mode, because the fans do kick into overdrive in Turbo. It's not a grating sound -- the timbre and pitch of the fans is surprisingly pleasant, like a standing fan on a warm summer's day -- but it is loud. I had them running at full Turbo whack in a work meeting not long ago and I struggled to hear what people were saying. For such a sleek laptop as this, that Turbo mode is best left for closed-back headphone sessions only. Even then, I might still opt to leave it on the standard performance mode. Moving in the opposite direction, in addition to the usual silent/eco mode gubbins, remember you also have the option to ditch the Nvidia GPU for gaming entirely and just use the iGPU. With just a little fiddling in the Windows settings, I set Risk of Rain 2 to use just the Radeon 860M in the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 APU, and it worked just fine. It was perfectly playable at 1920 x 1200, and saved a lot of power and therefore battery life. I'd definitely recommend doing this for less intensive games. Saying that, though, the TUF A14 (2025)'s battery life even when using the RTX 5060 is fantastic, which is surprising considering it's only rated to 73 Wh. But we've already seen that RTX 50-series laptops are incredibly capable in the efficiency department, thanks to a new generation of MaxQ tech that involves such fancy shmancy things as memory voltage optimisations, fast frequency switching, advanced power gating, quicker entry into low-power states, and so on. The details don't matter as much as the results, really, and these speak for themselves with the TUF A14 (2025). I actually didn't believe the results at first, but after triple-checking all my settings and running the battery life test another two times and checking it was indeed running the test on the RTX 5060 rather than the iGPU, I can confirm: This 73 Wh battery can really stretch itself far. Over two hours and thirty minutes during the PCMark 10 gaming test is very impressive, even if that is in large part because the RTX 5060 wasn't guzzling much power at default Windows performance settings. Outside of gaming and day-to-day work/browsing, you shouldn't expect much, however. The Ryzen processor in this is actually a downgrade over last year's RTX 4060 version. As you can see, it performs worse at productivity tasks than higher-end Ryzen AI 300-series chips. Not massively so, but not unnoticeably so, either. And it certainly won't compare with a full-fat 13th or 14th Gen Core i7 or Core i9. But for a gaming and light workload machine, that's a sacrifice I'm more than willing to make. In fact, it's not really a sacrifice when you consider the gains in efficiency. That's why I said this machine feels perfectly tailored. I'm under no illusions, though -- I know that while this is perfectly tailored to someone like me, it might not be for everyone. Not for its MSRP, anyway. That's because, as I stated at the beginning, there are cheaper options that perform better. If you're just looking for the best performance for your buck, this isn't it. But if, like me, you're happy sacrificing a little performance -- in the knowledge that it's still good current-gen performance nonetheless -- for wonderful design, form factor, and battery life, then I don't hesitate in recommending it. If I were only using my laptop for gaming at home, I might look for an RTX 5070 or RTX 5080 machine, but if I want to travel and/or use my laptop for other things, this Asus TUF A14 (2025) is without a doubt the laptop I'm looking for.

[9]

TweakTown

MSI Raider A18 HX A9W (Ryzen 9 9955HX3D + RTX 5090) Gaming Laptop Review

MSI sent over something really special with its flagship new Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop. It rocks AMD's latest flagship Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor, which boasts a huge 16 cores and 32 threads of Zen 5 processing power enhanced with 3D V-Cache technology that supercharges gaming performance. The new MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop is something really special. It has a 16C/32T CPU, 64GB of DDR5 memory, and NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU with 24GB of GDDR7 memory. All of this CPU and GPU power goes into a huge 18-inch 4K 120Hz Mini-LED display, which is gorgeous to look at, and makes your 120FPS gaming ultra-smooth. For content creators and AI workloads, you've got the 16C/32T processor with second-generation 3D V-Cache, which has been uber-popular on the desktop CPU market with the best gaming CPU on the market being AMD's powerful Ryzen 9 9800X3D processor (but with 8C/16T + 3D V-Cache). In comparison, the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X3D has 16C/32T + 3D V-Cache (the same as the 9955HX3D inside the Raider A18 AI A9W laptop). I transitioned from my desktop gaming PC, which features the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (8C/16T of first-gen 3D V-Cache), 32GB of RAM, and a desktop GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, to the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop for approximately three weeks as part of this review. Working, gaming, editing photos, watching 4K content, I did it all on the laptop and with a huge smile on my face in the meantime. The powerful 9955HX3D and RTX 5090 Laptop GPU combo on the 18-inch 4K 120Hz Mini-LED is nothing short of perfection when it comes to CPU + GPU + Mini-LED display inside of a gaming laptop. I'm a huge fan of Overwatch 2 and play it almost every day, and on the Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, it was a joy at 4K 120FPS+ with DLSS enabled on the Balanced setting. Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with Ray Tracing + Frame Generation + Ray Reconstruction + DLSS on Balanced mode was an uber-impressive 90FPS+ on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop. If you need all of the CPU power you can get with 16 cores and 32 threads with second-gen X3D cache mixed with the most powerful GPU in the RTX 5090 with 24GB of GDDR7 memory, and a huge 18-inch display, then the recommendation goes to MSI's new Raider A18 HX A9W, the new gaming laptop champion. Let's dive in! Specs Reviewed: * CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D (16C/32T) * GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU + 24GB GDDR7 3.5) * RAM: 64GB * Storage: 2TB Gen4 * Display: 18-inch 4K (3840 x 2600) @ 120Hz Mini-LED Overview MSI's flagship Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop features a huge 18-inch 4K 120Hz Mini-LED display, a massive display, and a high-end Mini-LED panel. We actually have a higher-than-4K resolution with the 18-inch Mini-LED rocking a 16:10 aspect ratio, giving a native resolution of 3840 x 2400 (2400p) versus 3840 x 2160 (2160p or 4K). There's a 6-speaker surround sound system inside the gaming laptop powered by Dynaudio, with powerful bass and clear sound with support for Nahimic and Hi-Res Audio. It's an impressive audio system if you want to watch something without headphones on, but for the best directional audio, you'll want to use a pair of high-end headphones with a high-end gaming laptop like the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W. Features + I/O On the I/O side of things, MSI includes everything you could think of for a high-end gaming laptop with USB4 ports that support Power Delivery 3.1, and they're Thunderbolt 4 compatible. There's also a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port for up to 8K 60Hz and 4K 120Hz out to a high-end TV or display, a full-sized card reader, an RJ45 Ethernet port, and multiple USB Type-A ports. Detailed Look MSI has a striking design for its flagship Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, which looks great in the flesh when it's out of the box and all lit up with its Mystic Light RGB technology. MSI keeps everything underneath and inside of the Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop as cool as it can with its MSI Overboost Ultra Technology, with a total of 260W of combined power output from the CPU + GPU, looked after by Cooler Boost 5 technology. Cooler Boost 5 is an innovative cooling design inside the Raider A18 HX's 3D cooling stands, alongside dual fans and seven copper pipes, with MSI claiming that "it completely transforms thermal efficiency". This ensures that the gaming laptop maintains its peak performance with boosted CPU + GPU clocks at their highest, even during demanding workloads like content creation and gaming. There's also an extra pipe that keeps the ultra-fast Gen5 SSD cooler when pumping out 15GB/sec (15,000MB/sec) through your system. MSI uses a huge 18-inch display on the Raider A18 HX A9W, with our review unit packing the flagship 2400p (3840 x 2400) resolution and 120Hz refresh rate on a gorgeous Mini-LED panel. The full-sized keyboard and inclusion of a number pad are something we love to see on a larger 18-inch laptop, with MSI's in-house Mystic Light RGB technology lighting up the keyboard and laptop. I had no issues typing on this keyboard, while the WASD keys are tweaked here for gamers, and the function keys for the up/down/left/right buttons have multiple functions. The design of the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W looks fantastic in the flesh, bringing me back to graphics cards from many generations ago with similar red/black accents. They're aligned with the openings for the fan, so that the 260W of cooling can do its job, while looking cool, too... pun intended. On the rear of the laptop, we've got the power plug, full-sized HDMI 2.1 output for 8K 60Hz and 4K 120Hz out, and a full-sized RJ45 Ethernet jack. On the left, we've got dual USB-A ports and a full-sized SD card reader, perfect for content creators. On the right, we've got dual USB-C ports, another USB-A port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Benchmarks (Synthetic + CPU + SSD) Cinebench R24 Inside the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop is the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor, rocking the full 16 cores and 32 threads of Zen 5 processing power with second-generation 3D V-Cache technology. This means it absolutely RULES the Cinebench R24 charts in our benchmarking. 2084 points in multi-core testing is a new record for our charts, beating out the Strix Halo APU (12C/24T) inside of the HP ZBook Ultra G1a 14 workstation laptop, and it thrashes the desktop Ryzen 7 7800X3D and its 8C/16T. CrystalDiskMark MSI ships a Gen5 SSD inside of its Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, and it's bloody powerful, spitting out a frankly insane 14.4GB/sec (14,491MB/sec) reads in CrystalDiskMark testing, while write speeds sit at 5.2GB/sec (5245MB/sec). If you're a content creator or working with AI workloads, the super-fast Gen5 SSD is going to put a huge smile on your face. 3DMark Speed Way + Steel Nomad 3DMark Speed Way sees the new flagship MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop excel, with 6001 points in total thanks to the 9955HX3D + RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, beating out the 7800X3D + RTX 4070 SUPER inside of Aftershock's Nimbus desktop PC. Impressive stuff. 3DMark Steel Nomad has the same impressive results, but they're even better than the Speed Way run with the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, pushing 6035 points in total, beating out the Aftershock Nimbus PC with its 4604 points, and utterly destroying everything else on the chart. 3DMark TimeSpy Extreme + TimeSpy The same goes for 3DMark's TimeSpy Extreme and TimeSpy benchmarks, with the new MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop sitting at the top of the charts with a huge 12001 points in the GPU score of TimeSpy Extreme, versus the 9865 points from the desktop RTX 4070 SUPER inside of the Aftershock Nimbus desktop gaming PC. Benchmarks (Gaming) If you want the very best in gaming performance, then the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop is what you want. It was able to scream through every game that I ran through it, every benchmark performed, and everything in between. I'm a huge fan of Overwatch 2, so I pumped some considerable hours into it at 2400p with DLSS enabled and set to "Balanced," where I was getting 200FPS+ average most of the time... and it was a beautiful thing to play on. Note: Moving onto the gaming benchmarks, I re-ran the benchmarks on the systems that I had on hand at the time, running Cyberpunk 2077 twice. First, without RT and DLSS enabled to see the raw performance of the gaming laptop, and then once more with RT + DLSS + GF + RR enabled. * RT = Ray Tracing * DLSS = Deep Learning Super Sampling (AI upscaling) * FG = Frame Generation * RR = Ray Reconstruction I also used the Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) to create a custom 3840 x 2160 (2160p or 4K) resolution, as the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop features a 16:10 aspect ratio panel with a 3840 x 2400 (2400p) resolution. This makes the comparison against the other GPUs much fairer. Cyberpunk 2077 Starting with the 4K results of Cyberpunk 2077 running on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, we have 70FPS average at the native 4K resolution, which is impressive, especially when compared to the RDNA 3.5-based integrated Radeon 8050S GPU inside the Strix Point APU. 70FPS average with the RTX 5090 Laptop GPU compared to 52FPS average on the desktop RTX 4070 SUPER isn't bad at all. You could enjoy some higher-performance 134FPS average at 1440p on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, with 111FPS minimum, another impressive result. The RTX 4070 SUPER isn't far behind at 1440p either, with 111FPS average, while the Radeon 8050S integrated GPU on the Strix Point APU scores just 44FPS at 1440p. Cyberpunk 2077 + RT + DLSS Alright, with DLSS enabled and set to Balanced, RT enabled, FG enabled, and RR enabled, the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop scores an impressive 91FPS average. This is 21FPS more performance with all of the graphical bells and whistles enabled; it looks better, runs better than 4K without RT, etc. enabled. If the 91FPS wasn't enough and you wanted to squeeze out 120FPS+ out of the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop at 4K in Cyberpunk 2077, you could dial down some of the settings, or you could run it at 1440p, where performance jumps up to 161FPS average. Forza Horizon 5 Forza Horizon 5 absolutely screams along on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, pushing 221FPS+ at native 4K without any DLSS enabled. 190FPS minimum is another excellent thing to see, but it's not that much more performance than the desktop RTX 4070 SUPER, which is just 3FPS behind. Shadow of the Tomb Raider The same goes for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, with the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop running at 4K on the High preset, pushing 147FPS average, just 1FPS above the desktop RTX 4070 SUPER inside of the custom Aftershock Nimbus desktop gaming PC. I wouldn't bother running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at a lower resolution, because the 2400p Mini-LED display on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop spitting out 147FPS average is all you need. Anything above 120FPS and you're good to go! Performance + Thermals + Battery Life For those of you who have a Wi-Fi 7 router at home, the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop has Wi-Fi 7 ready to go out of the box, as well as Bluetooth 5.4 (which I used to connect my Apple AirPods Max headphones), and a 2.5GbE LAN port on the rear. MSI's new Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop has a 99.9Whr battery capacity inside, which, when running on battery mode without being plugged in, will reduce gaming performance. I don't think many people are going to do that at all, but you'll get less than two hours of battery life (and less gaming performance) if you do. MSI takes care of the thermals inside the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop with an impressive array of heatsinks and fans on the underside (and sides) of the laptop. It doesn't get too hot at all, with my hands never getting to the point of being sweaty when gaming on it, unlike gaming laptops of the past. The thermal system also looks great, with an almost old-school feel to it, of MSI's graphics cards of the past. Performance Thoughts Just like any other laptop review, I used the flagship MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop as my daily driver for around 2 weeks for this review. The 18-inch 4K 120Hz Mini-LED panel was not just a delight to look at all day and night long, but the Mini-LED panel makes everything look better... Windows, gaming, movies, the mouse cursor... all of it looks gorgeous. Overwatch 2 running at 2400p and 200FPS+ with DLSS enabled was definitely a sight to behold, especially on the higher-end Mini-LED panel on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop. Cyberpunk 2077 looked exceptionally clean on the 2400p Mini-LED display, as did everything else that I ran through and on the laptop. You won't look at this display and be disappointed. In fact, once you go to Mini-LED or OLED, you won't go back to a regular IPS or TN panel. Battery Life + Charging + Software MSI's new Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop can handle up to 260W of power flowing through it between the 9955HX3D + RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, with the power plug on the back sitting next to a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port and 2.5GbE LAN port. MSI has its MSI Center with the AI Engine that allows automatic adjustment to performance, with three settings to choose from when it comes to performance: Extreme Performance (that sets CPU and GPU clocks to maximum, as well as the fans to 100%), Balanced, and ECO Silent. I used the Extreme Performance profile the entire time, ensuring maximum performance for all my tasks, but when I was using it for work or media consumption, the Balanced mode was used. It's nice and easy to use, which is what you want from software on the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop. Final Thoughts MSI hits a home run with its new MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop, a tour de force of hardware components where AMD's latest flagship Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor with its 16 cores and 32 threads + X3D cache mixed with NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU with 24GB of GDDR7 memory are married together in an amazingly awesome gaming laptop. The 18-inch 2400p @ 120Hz Mini-LED display is nothing short of gorgeous to look at, and it's the type of premium display you want on a laptop this expensive. You've got some of the bleeding-edge silicon inside the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop. For content creators who are thirsty for all of the cores and threads they can get, the 16C/32T inside of the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D is an absolute treat. You've got a 32-thread CPU with second-gen 3D V-Cache that just screams along, joined by 64GB of RAM (in the review unit) with a maximum of 96GB through upgrading. The ultra-fast Gen5 SSD also helps if you need wicked-fast SSD storage, with 14GB/sec+ of reads being a huge upgrade over the 7GB/sec reads from a Gen4 SSD. Gamers won't notice it, but content creators and people working with AI workloads that want screaming-fast storage will love it. Seriously, 14GB/sec inside of the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop almost feels criminal. If you do a job where you're away from home all the time, like a fly-in, fly-out job like we have here in Australia, and you're away from your desktop gaming PC for long periods, and you're looking for a new gaming laptop to fill the void, look no further. The MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop has your back, and some, where it has desktop power that you can slide into your backpack and take with you to enjoy 4K 120FPS+ gaming wherever you are. MSI's new Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop is an absolute beast, acting as one of the very best gaming laptops money can buy. The Ryzen 9 9955HX3D is a champion of a laptop CPU for AMD, offering more performance than Intel has to offer with its 16C/32T + X3D, while on the GPU side, NVIDIA crushes it with the GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU and 24GB of GDDR7 memory. If the pricing of the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop isn't a worry for you and you just want the very best gaming performance inside of a laptop, you will have a smile on your face for months with the MSI Raider A18 HX A9W gaming laptop. To MSI: you crushed it!

[10]

TweakTown

GIGABYTE's GAMING A16 laptop pairs RTX 50 Series performance with a long-lasting battery

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you. Even with similar hardware, no two gaming laptops are the same. Offering up to GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop GPU levels of performance is one thing, but backing that up with a vibrant display, a robust, thin, and lightweight build, advanced AI capabilities, and a long-lasting battery is something else. And these are just some of the things that help separate the new GIGABYTE GAMING A16 from the pack. Available in multiple configurations aimed at budget-conscious gamers, students, or those looking to explore the world of generative AI for the first time, the new GAMING A16 for 2025 is a formidable unit built for the modern era of AI computing and cinematic, ray-traced gaming. The GIGABYTE GAMING A16 offers up to 14 hours of battery life, optimized with NVIDIA Blackwell Max-Q and GIGABYTE's WINDFORCE cooling and AI technology to ensure you're only getting the power you need, when you need it. For gamers, the vibrant 1900x1200 WUXGA resolution display is built for seamless, smooth gameplay. The 3ms response time ensures crisp detail isn't lost during fast motion, while the 165 Hz refresh rate is the perfect match for the GeForce RTX 5070 and the all-new DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation technology. With DLSS 4, the GIGABYTE GAMING A16 delivers 100+ FPS performance in some of the most popular games of today, like the intense first-person action of DOOM: The Dark Ages, the vibrant, fast-paced multiplayer chaos of Marvel Rivals, and the intense speed of F1 25. A closer look at the GIGABYTE GAMING A16 The GIGABYTE GAMING A16's 'Black Steel' aesthetic blends futuristic design with subtle design choices that immediately stand out. From the engraved GIGABYTE logo on the lid to the underside vents, which are arranged in a way that resembles a Star Wars ship, it's sleek and stylish in all the right ways. Best of all, the GIGABYTE GAMING A16 continues the trend of new laptops from the company arriving in thin and lightweight form factors. The A16 measures only 19.45mm thin and weighs 2.2kg, making it perfect for on-the-go gamers, creators, and students. The slim bezel design also delivers a clean look when the lid is opened, thanks to the impressive 90% screen-to-body ratio. The GIGABYTE GAMING A16 can also be laid flat, at 180 degrees, showcasing the A16's versatility in different usage based on users' needs and remarkable engineering and design. And the sleek sci-fi-looking keyboard that lights up in blue is more than an aesthetic statement; it's built for performance in ways you wouldn't expect to find on a laptop keyboard. GIGABYTE calls it the Golden Curve Keyboard, which includes larger keycaps for easier typing and WASD movement, an integrated force curve, and ample 1.7mm of travel distance, making it a laptop keyboard that you'll actually want to game with. Add the large trackpad and down-facing Dolby Atmos speakers, and the GIGABYTE GAMING A16 provides an optimal portable experience, regardless of the location or workload. And things get even more impressive when you take a peek underneath the hood. Cutting-edge hardware meets on-the-go performance Unlike some laptops, the GIGABYTE GAMING A16 is built for on-the-go performance, powered by its Intel Core processor, GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics, fast DDR5-5600 memory, and up to 4TB of NVMe SSD storage. It's a powerful laptop designed not to leave you waiting or have you constantly checking to see how much battery is left. With PD 3.0 Charging Support, 30 minutes will restore around 50% of the 76Wh battery capacity. Meanwhile, GIGABYTE's WINDFORCE cooling and AI-enhanced power management ensure optimal efficiency, regardless of whether you're gaming, editing a video, or working on a paper. GIGABYTE's WINDFORCE cooling covers a wide range of products, with each deployment customized and tailored to match a product's specific requirements, such as power needs and space constraints. The GIGABYTE GAMING A16's WINDFORCE cooling is the result of decades of engineering excellence. That result means you're getting tiny yet efficient 0.2 mm-thick fans with 74 blades, four ultra-thin heat pipes, and a custom 3D VortX air-channeling system for air intake and exhaust, ensuring the WASD keys always remain cool to the touch. Thanks to AI Cooling on device, the GIGABYTE GAMING A16 also features a silent 0dB mode when ambient, for whisper-quiet performance. RTX-powered gaming you can take with you With up to GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop GPU performance, the new GIGABYTE GAMING A16 for 2025 is a laptop built for gaming in 2025. NVIDIA's new RTX Blackwell architecture is not only designed to usher in a new era of power-efficient, lightweight, and thin laptops, such as the A16, but it also powers the company's latest advances in AI-enhanced rendering. NVIDIA DLSS probably needs no introduction, but with DLSS 4, the new AI 'transformer' model for DLSS Super Resolution delivers image quality that is on par with and even surpasses native rendering. And when you pair this with the new Multi Frame Generation technology exclusive to the GeForce RTX 50 Series, the GIGABYTE GAMING A16 can deliver the sort of fidelity, smoothness, and responsiveness that wouldn't have been possible on a gaming laptop just a few short years ago. New technologies, such as NVIDIA Reflex 2, also dramatically reduce latency, allowing you to play competitive titles with pro-like responsiveness and movement. And for those that prefer to play single-player titles, you've got enough power to deliver stunning ray-traced visuals in titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong, and many more. DLSS 4 even makes the impossible possible, as seen in the fully path-traced DOOM: The Dark Ages and Alan Wake II, where every lighting effect, shadow, and reflection is ray-traced, delivering the sort of cinematic visuals that will shape the next decade of interactive entertainment. The GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop GPU is built for more than just gaming. It features MaxQ technologies designed to enhance day-to-day creativity through intelligent power management and efficiency, as well as RTX AI hardware and cutting-edge GDDR7 memory, delivering a whopping 798 AI TOPS of performance. And yes, alongside GIGABYTE's technologies, this is enough to make the GIGABYTE GAMING A16 an ideal choice for budding generative AI enthusiasts. AI excellence, thanks to RTX and GIGABYTE's innovative GiMATE assistant The GIGABYTE GAMING A16 is built for productivity, from its CPU, GPU, memory, and storage being ready to handle anything, through to the laptop shipping with multiple USB ports (including a Type-C port with DisplayPort 1.4 functionality), a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port for connecting an external display, and a dedicated RJ-45 Ethernet port for when you want to bypass using the fast Wi-Fi 6E for a more direct and hard-wired approach. There's also a built-in microphone and a Full HD webcam for making calls, chatting with friends on Discord, or streaming to the world. However, with GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics and GIGABYTE's innovative GiMATE assistant, the GIGABYTE GAMING A16 unlocks the power of AI for just about anything you can think of or would like to do with all of this hardware. With its simple-to-use interface, GiMATE is not only an AI tool that you call on using natural language to do things like enhance your voice for a call or calibrate the cooling on the GIGABYTE GAMING A16 for peak gaming performance, but it can be used to generate images, answer questions, or enhance the privacy of using the laptop in public spaces. And with RTX AI and the new RTX Blackwell architecture, tasks like video editing, broadcasting, and more are all faster than ever, enhanced by AI. For budding AI developers and tinkerers, NVIDIA's advanced local tools like Chat with RTX allow you to build your own custom Large Language Model (LLM) tailored for what you want it to do. As it runs locally, on-device, it offers a fast and secure way to engage with AI. From analyzing documents and research papers through to answering questions on how to optimize code, it's another feature of the GIGABYTE GAMING A16 that makes it stand out. Whether you're a gamer looking for an affordable solution, a student, a creator, or an AI beginner, the GIGABYTE GAMING A16's portability and power are hard to beat.

[11]

NDTV Gadgets 360

Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 2025 Review: Powerful and Flashy

The ROG Strix Scar 16 2025 gets an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU It supports up to 64GB DDR5 RAM Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 2025 features an improved cooling system Asus has refreshed its ROG Strix Scar lineup for 2025, equipping the new models with the latest Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series laptop GPUs and Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processors. The laptops also sport a revamped design that's flashier than before, but also more functional as they offer easier access for upgrading RAM and storage. Asus says it has improved the cooling system as well, which is now quieter than the previous generation. One standout addition is the AniMe Vision display on the lid, a feature that first gained popularity with the Zephyrus lineup. With all these upgrades, the base variant featuring the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU is priced at Rs. 3,79,990. If you're aiming for the top-tier model with the RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, be prepared to spend Rs. 4,24,990. Both variants feature the Intel Core Ultra 275HX CPU. Now that's a steep price for a gaming laptop. So is it worth the price tag? Read on to find out. The 2025 ROG Strix Scar 16 looks very different to its predecessor thanks to a new lid, bottom panel, and improved RGB lighting. The lid gets 8,353 precision-milled holes for the Anime Vision display, which uses 810 LEDs to play animations in dot-matrix style. You'll also find an RGB ROG logo and the text 'For Those Who Dare' printed on the lid. The lid features 8,353 precision-milled and 810 LEDs for the AniMe Vision display Asus has also made the sides more chamfered and smoother for a premium look. Unlike last year's model, which featured sharp edges, the 2025 variant gets rounded edges, making the laptop appear slimmer. There's also a full 360 RGB strip at the bottom that passes all kinds of gamer checks. The laptop offers a 360-degree wrap-around RGB light bar at the bottom The left side houses a proprietary AC input port, a 2.5G Ethernet port, HDMI 2.1, dual Thunderbolt 5 inputs, a hybrid 3.5mm jack, and a USB 3.2 Type-A port. On the right side, the laptop offers two USB 3.2 Type A connectors. You get plenty of ports on the laptop, but it misses out on an SD card slot You'll find the exhaust ports at the back, and the intake vents at the bottom and the sides. Turning over the laptop reveals the new rear cover, which now offers tool-less removal thanks to a latch system. There's also a new Q-latch system, which makes storage upgrades easy and fast. Asus has used magnesium alloy and plastic on the ROG Strix Scar 16. The build quality is top-notch, with both the lid and keyboard area showing no signs of flex. It's also quite heavy at 2.8kgs, making this more of a desk machine than a portable laptop. Opening the lid, which can be done with one finger, reveals the beautiful anti-glare Mini LED panel. Asus calls it the ROG Nebula HDR display, and it offers over 2,000 dimming zones, 1,200 nits peak brightness, and 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage. The display also offers Dolby Vision, HDR, and Nvidia G-Sync support. Add the 240Hz refresh rate and 3ms GTG response time, and the ROG Strix Scar 16's display is a delight for gaming and content consumption. The Mini LED display supports HDR and Dolby Vision The Mini LED display boasts deep blacks and vivid colours. It also gets super bright indoors, especially when HDR is enabled. The anti-glare coating also helps keep reflections at bay. The display features slim bezels on the sides and thicker bezels on the top and bottom. The laptop features a full-size keyboard on the Strix Scar 16 with dedicated media controls and customisable keys. The keyboard supports per-key RGB and includes a Copilot key. You get excellent travel and feedback from the well-spaced keys. Asus also claims that the switches used in the keyboard are rated to last over 20 million presses. I was pleasantly surprised by the touchpad on the laptop. It's large, offers multi-touch support, good palm rejection, decent feedback, and features a glass surface for a smooth glide. The touchpad also gets a digital numpad. Simply tap the Num LK switch placed on the top left corner of the touchpad, and you'll have access to a digital number pad. The touchpad is now 36 percent larger than the last-generation model Asus has installed four speakers on the Strix Scar 16 that comprise two tweeters and two woofers. The sound output from the speakers is loud enough for indoor use, and you also get some bass. The laptop also offers Dolby Atmos, Virtual surround sound, and Smart Amp technology. The headphone jack on the laptop also supports Hi-Res Audio output. The laptop also offers Two-Way AI Noise Cancellation technology Moving on to the web camera, which is a 1080p IR unit with Windows Hello support. The camera performs well when there's plenty of light, but it's nothing out of the ordinary. In lowlight conditions, noise starts creeping in, making the image look soft. Before getting on that video call, make sure you've got good lighting around. Windows Hello works well, is secure, and fast. The laptop runs Windows 11 Home out of the box and comes preinstalled with Office Home 2024. Microsoft Copilot is also available on the laptop, offering quick answers to queries and more. Armoury Crate lets you manage all kinds of settings on the laptop You will also find additional Asus tools such as Armoury Crate, which lets you customise all the RGB lighting on the laptop. The tool provides access to the AniMe Vision display, allowing you to select custom or pre-made animations. Aura Sync is part of Armoury Crate and lets you create custom lighting zones across the keyboard, the ROG logo on the lid, and the 360 light strip. Armoury Crate also lets you switch between the five Performance modes, manage Scenario Profiles, and set macros. The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX is a powerful mobile CPU, and our review unit came bundled with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU with 16GB GDDR7 VRAM, 32GB DDR5-5600 MHz RAM, and a 2TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD. You get dual RAM and SSD slots for expansion. You can also configure the ROG Strix Scar 16 with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU Although most of the hardware here is top-notch, my only gripe is with the type of storage used. Asus could've offered a PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSD, which the laptop supports, but instead comes with the now older 4.0 SSD. While end users won't notice any major difference, the synthetic benchmarks show that the laptop is slower than the competition, such as the HP Omen Max 16 (Review), which gets a 5.0 drive. Take a look at the benchmark scores below. In benchmarks, the laptop did quite well. I ran the tests in Turbo mode, which delivers a total wattage of 230W. However, there's also a Manual mode that unlocks more performance, offering a total of 255W of wattage. The GPU is rated for 175W TGP, and the CPU can go up to 80W TDP. To keep everything running smoothly, the laptop also features an upgraded cooling system. There's a larger vapour chamber, three fans, liquid metal thermal paste, and a sandwiched heatsink design. Asus claims that the upgraded cooling can keep the temperatures down by 15 degrees Celsius. Needless to say, you can play all kinds of AAA games at high frame rates without any worry. Asus moving all the exhaust vents to the back also means that the keyboard and the surrounding area remain cool during long gaming sessions. I ran CyberPunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, and The Last of Us Part 1 on the laptop to test out its performance. Since the laptop uses the new RTX 50 series GPU, you also get DLSS 4.0 AI frame generation. Hogwarts Legacy is running on the ROG Strix Scar 16 with Ultra graphic settings In CyberPunk 2077, without DLSS 4.0 enabled, texture quality set to high, and resolution at 2K, the game delivered about 45-50fps. With DLSS enabled, I got about 75-80fps. Meanwhile, Hogwarts Legacy ran at around 120fps with DLSS turned on at Ultra settings. With DLSS disabled, the game delivered a frame rate of 80-90fps. Running The Last of Us Part 1 with all settings at max, I got about 85-100fps. For AAA gaming, 4K video editing, and all sorts of creative work, the ROG Strix Scar 16 won't let you down. It also appears that Asus has indeed improved the cooling system on the new laptop. In terms of wireless connectivity, the laptop offers fast triple-band Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. Wireless performance was excellent, and I did not face any random disconnections. The laptop packs a 90Whr battery, which is the same capacity as the predecessor, but I don't think anyone thinks about battery life when purchasing such a powerful gaming laptop. During gaming sessions, with the profile set to Turbo, I got about 1-2 hours of battery life with brightness set to around 50 percent. In normal usage, I got about 4 hours of battery life with the iGPU enabled. Charging is handled by a large 380W brick of an adapter, but you can also charge the laptop using the USB Type-C port, which supports up to 100W PD. Using the provided 380W adapter, I was able to charge the laptop from 20 to 60 percent in about 30 minutes, with a full charge taking about 1 hour and 20 minutes. If you've got the money, I'd recommend buying the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 for its excellent performance and cooling, flashy gamer-approved design, and the bright Mini LED display. The laptop also has a nice keyboard and a large touchpad. The tool-less rear panel is also quite useful and something other laptop manufacturers should adopt. The only downside, albeit minor, is the use of PCIe Gen 4 storage, particularly when the laptop supports Gen 5 SSDs. The ROG Strix Scar 16 can easily replace your gaming desktop and add some portability to the mix. Of course, a gaming desktop offers better upgradeability, but does it have AniMe Vision? The laptop is definitely worth the price tag.

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Asus unveils the ProArt P16 2025, a high-performance laptop designed for creative professionals, offering strong competition to Apple's MacBook Pro with advanced features and competitive pricing.

Asus Unveils ProArt P16 2025: A Powerful Contender in the Creative Laptop Market

Asus has introduced its latest offering in the creative professional laptop space, the ProArt P16 2025. This new device is positioned as a strong alternative to Apple's MacBook Pro, boasting impressive hardware and specialized features for content creators 1.

Source: ZDNet

Design and Build

The ProArt P16 2025 maintains a design similar to its predecessor, focusing on what worked well previously. It features a lightweight build, making it portable for on-the-go professionals. The laptop includes a spacious touchpad and Harman/Kardon speakers, although the keyboard received mixed reviews for its mushy feel 1.

High-Performance Hardware

Under the hood, the ProArt P16 2025 packs powerful components:

AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 processor
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card
32GB of RAM

This configuration allows for smooth multitasking and efficient handling of demanding creative tasks. However, the laptop tends to run hot, especially during intensive operations 2.

Display and Visual Performance

The laptop features a 16-inch 4K OLED display, offering vibrant colors and stunning image quality. While the screen impresses with its visual output, it has two notable drawbacks:

A 60Hz refresh rate, which may be limiting for some users
A glossy finish that can cause significant reflections in bright environments 3

Specialized Features for Creatives

Source: ZDNet

Asus has incorporated several features tailored for creative professionals:

ProCreator Hub: A central application for managing laptop features and performance settings
WorkSmart tool: Allows grouping of multiple apps for simultaneous launch
Color Control: Enables on-the-fly screen output adjustments
DialPad: A customizable control interface located on the touchpad for precise tool management in creative applications 1

Performance and Benchmarks

In benchmark tests, the ProArt P16 2025 outperformed many of its competitors, including its predecessor and some MacBook Pro models. The laptop handled 3D rendering, 4K video editing, and multitasking with ease 2.

Pricing and Value Proposition

The Asus ProArt P16 2025 is priced at $2,500, positioning it as a premium offering in the creative laptop market. While this is higher than the previous year's model, the significant performance improvements may justify the cost for professionals seeking top-tier capabilities 3.

Conclusion

Source: ZDNet

The Asus ProArt P16 2025 emerges as a compelling option for creative professionals looking for a powerful Windows-based alternative to the MacBook Pro. With its high-performance hardware, specialized features, and stunning display, it offers a comprehensive package for content creators, despite some minor drawbacks in thermal management and display reflectivity.

References

Summarized by

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[1]

ZDNet

|Why I recommend this Asus laptop for creatives over my MacBook Pro M4 (and it's not just price)

[2]

ZDNet

|Why I pick this Windows laptop for creatives over my MacBook Pro (and it's not just price)

[3]

ZDNet

|Finally, a Windows laptop that I wouldn't mind putting away my MacBook Pro for

[4]

ZDNet

|I was skeptical about big-screen laptops, but this Acer model is my new go-to for work

[5]

TechRadar

|The Asus Zenbook S 16 is built from a mysterious new material - but does this space-age laptop live up to the hype?

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