ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED review: a new era for VivoBooks

ASUS has a penchant for making excellent notebooks that don’t break the bank. Case in point, the company’s VivoBook series, which has undoubtedly served office goers and students well. That said, the company is revamping its product lineup to incorporate a wider audience – in particular, creators, designers and digital artists. To that note, the brand recently announced a slew of decked out laptops including the VivoBook Pro 14X OLED (review) and the VivoBook Pro 16X OLED in India. We put the smaller of the two notebooks through its paces earlier and were mighty impressed with what it had to offer. So, today, let’s take a closer look at the VivoBook Pro 16X OLED to see if it’s worthy of your bucks too. 

Table of Contents

The lowdown 

• ASUS has, for long, put forth good-looking machines and the company’s VivoBook Pro 16X OLED is no different. The laptop has been constructed using aluminium and the device looks the part of an upmarket, luxurious product. What’s more, despite its robust construction, the laptop tips the scales at just 1.95kg, ensuring buyers don’t have to forego on the portability front should they opt for ASUS’ latest creator-centric contender.

• To be clear, both the 14X as well as the 16X OLED models draw similarities in the design department. As such, you’ll notice that the VivoBook Pro 16X OLED also ships with colour-blocked keys comprising grey and red accents, along with a metallic logo on the lid. Rest assured, ASUS’ latest stand out amidst the herd of black and grey workbooks. 

• If anything, we would’ve liked to see more ports on the bigger model. As things stand, the VivoBook Pro 16X features the same number of ports as found on the smaller 14X unit. To wit, the device ships with a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A connector, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port, two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a full-sized HDMI 1.4 socket and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Also, the AMD variants of the device aren’t compliant with the latest Thunderbolt 4 protocol. 
  On the bright side, we had no qualms with the keyboard and the trackpad on the ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED. To that note, the laptop offers an accommodating keyboard with ample room to place your wrists for a comfortable typing experience. The keys offered satisfactory travel and didn’t wobble to the touch either, which is great. Furthermore, unlike the smaller 14X OLED model, the VivoBook Pro 16X OLED features a full-sized Numpad which should come in handy if you routinely spend time drafting Excel sheets. The company has furnished the unit with backlit LEDs too and consequently, you can comfortably type even with the lights in your room turned off. Lastly, we should add that the laptop features a fingerprint sensor embedded within the power button. Interestingly, the power button offers a slightly different texture than the rest of the keys. Furthermore, the accuracy of the sensor was to our liking as well, so no complaints here. 

  As for the trackpad, the unit ships with Windows precision drivers and can track all your swipes and gestures seamlessly. Furthermore, much like last-gen VivoBooks, the company’s prosumer models also ship with some nifty trackpad enhancements. Case in point, the ASUS DialPad, which can be enabled by swiping inwards from the top-right edge of the trackpad. In doing so, you will get access to a virtual knob of sorts that can be used to finetune various settings in Adobe’s creator-centric software. That said, you can also use the virtual dial to variate the display’s brightness, as well as the system volume. 

• ASUS has left no stone unturned in the display department either. Now, as its moniker suggests, the laptop ships with a 16-inch, OLED screen that packs in a ton of pixels. In fact, the panel touts 3,840 x 2,400 pixels, WQUXGA+ resolution, making it plenty sharp for consuming and creating content on the fly. What’s more, the screen has been tuned quite well too and the laptop supports 133 percent of the Adobe sRGB colour gamut. Coupled with the inky blacks that are on offer courtesy of the screen’s OLED technology, along with the panel’s peak brightness of 600 nits and the VivoBook Pro 16X OLED offers one of the nicest displays in its price range. 

• That’s not to say that the display is without any faults. For one, the screen is capped at 60Hz and consequently, the panel is not tailored for competitive, eSports gaming. That’s quite a shame, as the VivoBook Pro 16X OLED is loaded to the brim with impressive hardware and the laptop performs like a champ too. Furthermore, OLED screens are prone to burn-in issues as well. Thankfully, ASUS has mitigated the same by adding a slew of features with its latest notebooks, chief among them being Samsung’s OLED burn-in refine technology. With it, the laptop can smartly drive more current through ageing pixels, thereby ensuring the user perceives authentic colours, come night or day.

• Under the hood, the ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED makes use of AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900HX processor. The octa-core CPU works alongside 16GB of DDR4 memory clocked at 3,200MHz, an RTX 3050Ti GPU and a terabyte of M.2 NVMe storage. Now, we did run a slew of benchmarks to give you a better idea of the machine’s performance, so take a look at the slider attached below for more insights. 

• But, suffice it to say, we were quite content with the unit’s day to day performance and the laptop crunched through our workflow comprising apps like Slack, Microsoft’s Office suite as well as numerous browser tabs, all running in tandem. Of course, the laptop is geared towards creators and as such, we didn’t run into any performance niggles whilst editing photos on Photoshop, or creating templates on Adobe XD either. Moving on, the unit ships with a 96Whr cell that lasted us around seven hours off a single charge. What’s more, the device tops up rather quickly too, thanks to its bundled 120W charging brick, so no complaints here either. 

Verdict 

The ASUS VivoBook 16X retails for Rs 1,24,990 in India and for the price, gets a lot right. For one, the laptop offers a ginormous and attractive display that’ll be greatly appreciated by content creators. Furthermore, the device performs like a champ too, and we didn’t run into any major hiccups during our time with the unit. On the flip side, the laptop’s 60Hz screen might be a deal-breaker for those looking to buy a device that can also double up as a gaming rig. Furthermore, we would’ve liked to see a healthier selection of I/O. Be that as it may, the ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X is a fantastic machine for those who want to create on the fly. 

Editor’s rating: 3.5 / 5 

Pros:

• Stunning, high-res display 
• Spacious keyboard and trackpad
• Capable performer 

Cons: 

• Screen capped at 60Hz
• No Thunderbolt 4 for AMD variants 
• Limited I/O