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Asus ProArt PZ13 Review: For the Creative Nomad

Ashish Singh — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 07:45:02 +0000

While a tablet is a good tool for a creative professional, it doesn’t offer the versatility of a full-blown laptop. You could opt for a 2-in-1 laptop, but there aren’t a lot of options out there that won’t blow a hole in your pocket. Until now, that is. The new Asus ProArt PZ13 is a competitively priced 2-in-1 that features the new Snapdragon X Plus chipset and promises to deliver great performance with even better battery life. It’s a good alternative to the Microsoft Surface Pro, especially if you want something cheaper.

The ProArt PZ13 also offers a lot more at a starting price of Rs. 1,04,990. You get a brilliant display, good form factor, lightweight design, and useful accessories. Should this be your new 2-in-1 laptop? Find out below.

Asus ProArt PZ13 Design: Industrial

Dimensions – 297.5 x 202.9 x 9 mm
Weight – 0.85kg (without keyboard), 1.2kg (with keyboard)
Colours – Nano Black

Asus has gone with an industrial look for the ProArt PZ13, which feels tough and premium. It gets an aluminium unibody with chamfered edges and a thickness of 9mm. The bevel around the screen has a pattern that’s supposed to echo ‘pro camera design’, and a few other elements make the otherwise bland design stand out. It would’ve been nice if Asus included a built-in kickstand on the rear panel. Instead, you get a separate case, which adds to the thickness of the tablet.

The tablet doesn’t attract a lot of fingerprints

The ProArt PZ13 also offers an IP52 rating and claims to have passed several MIL-STD-810H tests. The rear panel also houses a small slit that acts as the air intake and a flush-mounted camera. Surprisingly, it doesn’t attract a lot of fingerprints or smudges.

In terms of ports, the Windows tablet features a power button on the top edge and exhaust vents for the single fan. The right edge houses the volume buttons, whereas the left has one exposed USB Type-C port, a rubber flap that hides another USB Type-C port, and a full-size SD card slot.

A flap covers one of the USB Type-C ports

A magnetic Pogo connector is at the bottom to connect the included keyboard. The tablet offers dual speakers placed on either side.

Asus ProArt PZ13 Display: Sharp, bright, and vivid

Size and type – 13.3-inch OLED Touch, 16:10, 500 nits
Resolution – 2,880 x 1,800 pixels
Refresh rate – 60Hz

The touch display on the ProArt PZ13 is bright and colourful. It’s also quite sharp as the 13-inch OLED panel delivers a 2,880 x 1,800 pixels resolution, 0.2ms response time, and a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is great for productivity users and content creators. However, it only offers a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz. The display offers good brightness indoors, but the glossy coating makes it hard to use outside under direct sunlight. To keep the panel scratch-free, Asus has offered Gorilla Glass NBT for protection.

The OLED touch displays offer nice colours and have great viewing angles

When it comes to colours and other enhancements, the display offers Dolby Vision, HDR, and Pantone validation and covers a 100 percent DCI-P3 colour gamut. Watching content was a nice experience on the screen, but photos can be a bit oversaturated in the standard colour profile. It’s best to use a DCI-P3 colour profile if you want more accurate colours or the sRGB profile for photo/video editing. It is to be noted that to gain access to the available colour profiles, you’ll first need to use them on the ProArt Creator Hub app.

Viewing angles and touch response were also quite good on the OLED panel. Talking about touch response, the display also supports pen input and you can use the Asus Pen 2.0 to sketch, write, and more.

Asus ProArt PZ13 Keyboard, Touchpad, speakers, and cameras

Keyboard – Detachable backlit keyboard
Speakers – Dual side-firing with Dolby Atmos
Web camera – 5-megapixel with IR sensor
Rear camera – 13-megapixel

You get a detachable keyboard in the box. It connects to the chassis using pogo pin connectors and strong magnets. I found the keyboard case quality to be good. The keys are backlit with adequate illumination in the dark and offer about 1.35mm of travel. The typing experience is good, and the whole thing feels very stable despite being slim. There’s also a copilot key and a full row of function keys.

The detachable keyboard offers 1.35mm of key travel and a clicky touchpad

Centered below the keyboard is a spacious touchpad. It has a smooth surface, supports multi-touch gestures, and the click mechanism functions effectively. I had no issues using the touchpad for work and navigation.

The ProArt PZ13 features two side-facing stereo speakers that support Dolby Atmos. While they provide decent audio quality for a tablet, they may not be ideal for a laptop. The speakers deliver a full and undistorted sound even at maximum volume. However, their loudness is somewhat limited, and you may inadvertently cover them while holding the tablet.

Both cameras on the ProArt PZ13 perform well in daylight conditions

Asus has provided two cameras on the ProArt PZ13, which are pretty good. The 5-megapixel front-facing camera does well in daylight conditions and produces somewhat noisy video in lowlight conditions. It supports Windows Hello facial recognition and comes with IR sensors as well. You also get a 3-microphone array for clear voice recording. There’s also a 13-megapixel rear camera, but I’m not sure what it’s for. It does record 1080p video and takes decent photos in daylight conditions.

OS – Windows 11 Home
Additional apps – MyAsus, StoryCube, ProArt Creator Hub

It’s software time, and there are quite a few extras on the ProArt PZ13 apart from your standard Windows 11 tools, which include some AI features such as Copilot, Cocreator in Paint, Live captions, Windows Studio Effects, and Automatic Super Resolution. Eventually, you’ll also get access to the controversial Windows Recall feature, but it’s not here yet.

You can use AI to help with drawings in the Paint app

The extra tools on the 2-in-1 include the trusty MyAsus app, a tool for automatically organising all your exported digital photo files called StoryCube, and the ProArt Creator Hub that lets you optimise the tablet the way you want. You can choose the display profile, control fan speed, and change operating profiles. The Asus ScreenXpert app is also available on the tablet, which lets you manage various aspects of the touch display.

Asus ProArt PZ13 Performance: Not elite

Processor – Snapdragon X Plus X1P42100
RAM – 16GB LPDDR5x (non-upgradeable)
Storage – 1TB M.2 NVMe (non-upgradeable)
GPU – Adreno X1-45

Alright, let’s talk about performance. The ProArt PZ13 comes with a lower-tier Snapdragon X Plus chipset, which is somewhat noticeable when running heavy apps or performing resource-intensive tasks. The tablet also starts to heat up when opening multiple tabs on Chrome or streaming videos on Netflix, YouTube and Prime Video. You will notice some performance lag if you stress the chipset. Compared to the X Elite chipset, there is a drop in power output when it comes to multi-core usage. That’s expected since the X Plus has an octa-core CPU, whereas the X Elite features 12 cores. However, there’s not much difference when it comes to AI computing.

The Snapdragon X Plus is an octa-core CPU

I ran a couple of synthetic benchmarks on the PZ13 to see how it performed compared to a laptop with a Snapdragon X Elite CPU. As expected, the multi-core scores on Geekbench, Cinebench and 3DMark are lower, but the AI performance is pretty similar. All the benchmarks were run in the Performance profile.

Benchmark	Asus ProArt PZ13
Geekbench 6 Single	2,410
Geekbench 6 Multi	11,209
Geekbench AI	20,439 (Quantised)
3DMark Steel Nomad Light (GPU)	1,141
3DMark CPU Profile	6,237
3DMark Night Raid (GPU)	16,068
Cinebench 2024 Single	107
Cinebench 2024 Multi	551

You can use the ProArt PZ13 for most daily tasks, such as browsing the web, creating artwork using the stylus, watching content, and a lot more without having to face any major hiccups. I found most apps to be compatible with ARM; if something doesn’t run, you can always run it in emulated mode. However, during my testing, I did not encounter such compatibility issues, at least with the apps I used.

Gaming is a no-go on the tablet unless you’re playing some old-school titles. I tried to run a couple of Xbox Game Pass titles, and the games didn’t even install. The tablet did not perform well in the 3DMark Night Raid and Steel Nomad Light GPU benchmarks.

In terms of connectivity, the tablet offers tri-band WiFi 7 (where supported) and Bluetooth 5.4. During the review period, both worked well.

Asus ProArt PZ13 Battery: Long-lasting

Capacity – 70Wh
Charging – 65W

While the Snapdragon X Plus chipset may not offer top-notch performance, it does offer excellent efficiency. The battery life on the ProArt PZ13 is very good, and you can go days without having to charge it up when you’re using it for a couple of hours in a day. I could easily get a full day’s work done with the keyboard connected. The large 70Wh battery also helps here.

The tablet can go days without a charge if used only for a couple of hours daily

Fast charging is also available thanks to the included 65W charger. It took about 1 hour and 40 minutes to fully charge the tablet from 10 percent.

Asus ProArt PZ13 Verdict

The Asus ProArt PZ13 is a competitively priced 2-in-1 that offers a good display, excellent battery life, decent performance, and portability. The detachable keyboard and the extra kickstand cover make it as thick as a traditional laptop, but you can use it as a tablet with the stylus. It’s also cheaper than other Snapdragon-powered 2-in-1s on the market.

If you aren’t looking to spend major cash and are on the lookout for a good value-for-money 2-in-1 with a great display and long-lasting battery life for your travels, you should probably consider the Asus ProArt PZ13.