The Asus StudioBook Pro 17 offers plenty of performance, but is hampered by some details

The new ProArt StudioBook Pro 17 from Asus is a 17-inch mobile workstation with a very slim chassis (18.4 mm), and it is also one of the thinnest devices equipped with an Nvidia Quadro RTX Studio. Many aspects were very convincing in our comprehensive review, but there are also drawbacks you should definitely know ahead of the purchase.

The performance is good in general, but is limited by the fan profiles from Asus by default. You have to manually adjust the fan profile in the MyAsus app independent of the Windows power settings. The default "Auto" profile limits the performance, but the fans stay pretty quiet under high workloads in return. You should select the "Turbo" profile when you stress both components simultaneously, otherwise the CPU performance will be limited. You will have o live with the sensitive fan control though, because the fans get louder and they are extremely sensitive to load changes, which is very annoying. We would therefore recommend the "Auto" settings for your daily work.

The display cannot really meet the expectations for such an expensive device. We like the fact that it is a matte 16:10 panel (1920 x 1200 pixels), but the results for the brightness and the contrast are average at best. There is also no optional high-resolution panel. However, the panel is very well-calibrated out of the box and a calibration is not necessary.

There are also some smaller things that are annoying in practice. The ports are located very far to the front at the two sides and the central power jack in combination with the angled plug is not great, because you either block some of the ports or the cooling vent. We would have liked to see a dedicated numeric keypad as well. The touchpad acts as an optional numpad (which does work pretty well), but the missing feedback means you cannot operate it without looking. Then there is also the comparatively small battery, which affects the battery runtime.

• Review Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro 17