Asus Vivobook Pro 16X pre-production unit review: Performance, endurance and mighty OLED display

A lot of dark gray to black anodized aluminum with a few accents of black plastic determine the exterior of the Asus Vivobook. Although the laptop is not really thin, the device looks less bulky thanks to a Swiss edge. Small design elements, such as embossments on the display hinge, also liven things up.

The matte aluminum with its smooth surface is always pleasantly cool to the touch. Except for the somewhat flexible display, the laptop looks very stable and hardly shows any manufacturing problems. The somewhat uneven gaps on the underside are not untypical for a pre-production device.

The display can be opened up to an angle of 160° with one hand. A keyboard with gray and red color accents as well as the large touchpad can be seen underneath.

The Asus Vivobook is relatively slim for a 16-inch laptop of the given performance class. Weight and thickness are in the same range as the competition.

The notebook does not offer many connectivity options with its four USB ports (one of them USB Type-C). PowerDelivery and Thunderbolt 4 are not available here. The HDMI port is the only option for connecting an external display via cable.

The microSD card reader is quite slow with a transfer rate of 38 MB/s. The AV PRO microSD with 128 GB used in the test usually delivers much faster data transfer rates.

An Intel AX200 module is responsible for Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 in the Asus Vivobook. However, the otherwise very fast WLAN module is below its potential in the test device's transmission speeds. Positioning the antenna is often particularly difficult in laptops with a metal casing.

The Asus Vivobook has up-to-date security features like SecureBoot and TPM 2.0 thanks to the AMD Ryzen R9. Windows Update reports full compatibility with Windows 11.

A fingerprint sensor integrated into the power button can be used as an authentication method for logging in.

Apart from an appropriate power supply unit, our pre-production device did not come with any other accessories.

The flickering found in the test is due to the display technology used. In OLED displays, the image is typically updated line by line. In the process, a narrow area of the image is briefly turned off. Depending on the brightness setting, more or wider stripes also go dark. However, flickering is somewhat easier on the eyes than PWM-controlled backlighting because the entire display does not go dark in the process.

Two programs are preinstalled on the Asus Vivobook, which can be used to set settings for various hardware components. In the ProArt Creator Hub, you can primarily adjust the color reproduction, the function of the Asus Dial and the performance control.

The MyAsus app, which can also be accessed via one of the function keys, offers a lot of settings. There, settings for the screen, the speakers, battery, the power control and much more can be set. However, the app always requires a log-in with an Asus account or a link via Facebook or Google. Therefore, we did not use the MyAsus app in the rest of the test.

As one of the most powerful mobile processors currently available, the AMD Ryzen R9-5900HX is especially used in larger laptops. The SoC also features an AMD Radeon on-board graphics chip. Thanks to the sufficiently dimensioned cooling, the eight-core processor can permanently operate with a bit more than 54 watts of power (PL1). Thus, the CineBench loop shows very constant high performances. During short-term loads, the processor clock increases up to 4.3 GHz at 65 watts. The strong R9 clearly passes the rivals in most multi-core processor benchmarks. Only the Huawei MateBook 16 AMD can keep up well despite the weaker AMD Ryzen R7.

However, Intel's Core processors are still clearly ahead of AMD's top cores in the single-core benchmarks.

The Vivobook Pro is a very fast laptop. In the PCMark 10 benchmark, the computer delivers very high scores. As the second in the comparison field with overall very powerful contenders, Asus' laptop can deliver more than satisfactory results. Our pre-production unit initially had problems with the performance management and some drivers, which made the system seem sluggish, but Asus has meanwhile made considerable improvements with some updates. The laptop runs smoothly and largely without dropouts on the latest version.

Even though the measurement results of AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark 6.0 are a bit apart, SK Hynix's M.2 NVMe SSD is very fast when transferring larger files. The rest of the scores in access times and transfer of smaller files are in the mediocre of the laptops in the comparison. With one TB of storage, there is enough space for smaller video projects.

The Asus Vivobook Pro is equipped with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti as the dGPU. The 3050 Ti is powerful enough to play current games at high detail levels in Full HD resolution. However, the second smallest graphics card from Nvidia's RTX 3000 series reaches its limits at higher resolutions. Nvidia allows configuring the maximum power consumption between 35 and 80 watts for the 3050 Ti. In the Asus Vivobook Pro, the graphics card operates with a maximum of 50 watts.

To improve energy efficiency, a smaller AMD Radeon graphics supports on the R9 APU. It reliably processes smaller tasks. Only when higher demands are placed on the graphics in games or applications does the Nvidia graphics chip seamlessly switch on.

The results of the benchmarks with 3DMark and 3DMark11 show the maximum performance chosen by Asus very well. The graphics card in the Asus computer operates slightly faster than the 3050 Ti in the Dell XPS 15 but is below the average of the 3050's in our Benchmark table.

The Asus Vivobook Pro shows the performance readiness of an entry-level gaming laptop in the gaming benchmarks. Games in Full HD are no obstacle for the notebook even with current titles and high detail levels. However, as soon as you want to use the full resolution of the OLED panel, the multimedia notebook reaches its limits in current titles.