ASUS ProArt Studiobook
I’m a local to various architecture-related Facebook and Reddit communities. They have their pros and cons but overall I think they’re pretty helpful for sharing information and knowledge. Especially as a full-time remote worker. One thing I see asked every single day multiple times a day is the age-old question: “what laptop should I get for architecture?”
I see the following types of people asking this question:
High school students preparing for college.
College students who realize they don’t have the right computer.
Professionals who needs an upgrade to their 12 year old machine.
Spouses who are shopping for their non-tech-savvy architect spouses.
When I see this question asked, the common answers I see from others are:
Just use the search bar, this question has been asked 10 times this week.
Get a gaming laptop so you can render everything.
Get a desktop, stupid (okay, they don’t use the word “stupid” but it comes across that way).
Get whatever I have (usually something I wouldn’t recommend).
I jump at answering this question any chance I can. My answer has been a moving target for years and has really come down to asking follow up questions regarding budget, interests, and needs. For example, I’d recommend different laptops to a student who is in love with rendering than I would a project manager who only opens Revit models to mark-up screenshots. Often times, however, I don’t get answers to my follow-up questions. It’s just the downside to strangers who ask questions to strangers. It’s a thankless job, but that’s okay. It’s a topic I care a lot about and spend a lot of time thinking about regardless of how many people are asking it on Reddit daily.
Just a little background: I’ve bought/returned/resold probably 50 laptops over the past decade as I’ve looked for the “perfect” one. Everything ranging from Apple to Dell to Surface to Razer to Alienware etc. I’ve never found it. I’ve gotten close, but there’s always some deal-breaking problem for some niche of my workflow. But I’ve never given up on the mission. And that’s allowed me to answer the questions from online strangers a little more thoughtfully than most, I think.
So why am I talking about this? Over the last few months, I’ve noticed myself answering this question without asking follow-up questions about the person’s specific needs. I’ve found myself recommending a laptop that I feel confident will work for almost everybody in the above list of people who ask it. And I want to talk more about why. So I’m about to do 2 things.
I’m going to answer this question the best I can in April 2024 with a single computer that I think most architects would be thrilled to use for their work.
And I’m also going to create a permanent webpage that will flesh out my thoughts on this question with a few additional considerations for niches. It will be updated as necessary (probably 2-3 times a year). My hope is that it can become a resource that can be used to answer this question when I can’t. Other people will have their own opinions and that’s awesome. But maybe instead of replying with “use the search function, you goofball,” somebody can say “check out theroarklab.com.”
So what is this amazing laptop that should work for 95% of people in the architecture profession?
The Asus ProArt Studiobook
I’ve been using this laptop for the last several months and it’s fantastic. It’s not perfect; but it’s closer than anything else I’ve tried. It’s a great balance of power, display, features, build quality, and size that makes it fit the toolbox for the architecture profession with the fewest compromises thus far. It’s not a coincidence either—Asus made this machine for design professionals. We are the target audience. There are multiple configurations and price points that the Asus Studiobook Pro comes in. I will be basing my recommendation on the following configuration that currently sells for $2,499:
2.2 GHz Intel Core i9 24-Core (13th Gen)
32GB DDR5 RAM | 1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD
16" 3200 x 2000 120 Hz OLED Touchscreen
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (8GB GDDR6)
SD Express Card Reader
Thunderbolt 4 | USB 3.2 Gen 2 | HDMI
Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) | Bluetooth | 1GbE
1080p IR Webcam | ASUS Dial Control
Includes ASUS Pen 2.0 & Backpack
Windows 11 Home
The above configuration is what I have been running, except I did upgrade the RAM to 64GB and added an additional 2TB SSD. However, those upgrades don’t change anything about my recommendation as they out-of-the-box laptop is sufficient for most people. And upgrading is easy if you need it. Let’s dive deeper.
POWER
The Asus Studiobook Pro is a very powerful computer. It has a 13th Gen i9 Intel CPU which isn’t the latest, but the 14th Gen is overall not that much different in benchmarks I’ve seen on other machines.
It comes with an RTX 4070 GPU, which is plenty good enough for most* work in D5 (my real-time engine of choice), Twinmotion, Enscape, and Lumion. As well as basic needs in Revit, Sketchup, Archicad etc. I use Archicad primarily and even my most-detailed models have no issues flying around (it performs far better than the maxed out M3 Macbook Pro I compared it to).
32GB of DDR5 RAM is also a nice starting point. It’s generally the lowest I recommend; but considering how many laptops still start at 16GB, it’s great that you don’t have to immediately upgrade yourself. That said, you always could go to 64GB pretty easily.
Under heavy loads, this machine does get hot and the fans can get loud. That’s somewhat due to physics and also due to the design of the ventilation system. This is probably my biggest knock on the laptop overall. I don’t think I’d want to run a rendering program on it for 24 hours straight.
*if your rendering work is super heavy on animation and vegetation, you may benefit from a GPU with more VRAM like a 4090, but that’s a different kind of laptop
BATTERY
I debated whether to have a battery section at all, but I figured I should to avoid the questions. If you’re buying a laptop with decent performance, you probably shouldn’t expect much from the battery. Any laptop will last long enough to log on and send an email or print a PDF from a model. 1-2 hours of work is reasonable. But that’s really about all you should expect. The batteries in current PC laptops are just not good enough to brag about. On top of that, performance is heavily neutered when not plugged in. Long story short, you’re going to want to be plugged in pretty much always. If that’s a dealbreaker, it may be worth waiting for the Snapdragon laptops coming later this year or to consider an Apple Silicon Mac if that’s an option for your workflow.
DISPLAY
This laptop has a beautiful high refresh OLED display. The blacks are black and the colors are vibrant. It has a touchscreen which is really nice for pinching to zoom in on PDFs and such. It’s not 4K, but it’s not low-resolution either. It only comes in a 16” size at the moment. Which is probably the right balance for most people in terms of portability while still being large enough to do real work with typical 3D modeling user interfaces that are full of buttons and menus. But I do wish there was an 18” option as well as 4K… that little bit of extra crispness would be nice when I’m leaned forward with my face 6” from the screen.
BUILD QUALITY
The body is pretty much all aluminum. Very little plastic. That said, it’s not quite Apple, Razer, Surface, or Dell quality as far as sleek styling and minimalist assembly go. It’s a little quirky with how the hinge is located (although this serves a purpose for the display laying flat) and some of the angles and vents. It is really well made though and feels worthy of a designer who appreciates well-made objects to assist them in the design of well-made buildings. Asus also boasts impressive military-grade drop testing and protection…something I haven’t had the misery of testing for myself; but pretty cool to see them address given the site visits, conference room hopping, and remote working of the profession.
As an aside, I’ve never understood how many in our profession don’t care much at all about the design quality of tech they use daily. It would be like an architect in the 60’s having no preference on what pen they use.
SIZE
It’s not the thinnest laptop ever and it’s not the lightest ever. But it’s also not overly thick or heavy either. I’d say it’s probably closer to the class of gaming laptops rather than the “thin-and-light” ones. As mentioned in the display section, I do wish there was an 18” option. And some people may prefer a 14” option. Size is a very personal factor that depends on a lot of things. 16” is probably the right size for most people.
FEATURES
The unique features of this laptop are where it really shines as being a device meant for architects and designers in general. It’s this combination of features with the performance, display, and build that make this the laptop that I recommend by default now.
Touchscreen + Pen
I love having a touchscreen for one main reason: PDF navigation. It feels natural after being so accustomed to tablets and smartphones. The ability to swipe and zoom in is preferable to keyboard shortcuts, in my opinion. That said, many laptop touchscreens often lack pen support unless it’s a Surface device… and the problem with those is lack of power. So it’s really nice that Asus also made it work with a pen. The screen tilts backwards to lay nearly flat. While this still isn’t as ideal as a convertible or tablet, perhaps, it’s still doable and preferable to not having it at all.
Trackpad + Pen
The Studiobook has a haptic trackpad, which is awesome. I haven’t really seen a haptic trackpad on laptops that are equipped with higher end components—they’re usually on the lower-end laptops. I guess the assumption is that if you’re buying something with a GPU, you’re probably a gamer who is using a mouse and keyboard or controller and don’t care much about the trackpad. So props to Asus here. Especially because it unlocks a killer feature: you can use the haptic trackpad in combination with the Asus Pen to use it as a drawing tablet of sorts. The trackpad is the same aspect ratio as the display, which means with a little bit of practice, you can mark up drawings using your trackpad just as you would with a Wacom tablet. Pretty stinking cool. To me, this is the feature that really elevates this laptop above and beyond other competitors.
Dial
The dial is cool. It’s kind of gimmicky, I won’t lie. And it takes a little bit of brain training to consider it over keyboard shortcuts; but it does work mostly as advertised. Adobe has some built-in integration for brush sizes and such which works pretty well. I wish there was out-of-the-box support from Autodesk for it, however. That may be a lot to ask for a niche feature on one line of laptop. But essentially, Dial usage will depend on how devoted you are to it. You’ll need to think about how it will help your workflow and what you want to do with it. Which has pros and cons. I just haven’t wrapped my head around how to best use it yet. To be honest, I’ve largely used it for volume controls and undo/redo commands—which feels like a disservice to its potential, but is still nice.
Ports
It’s got all the ports you realistically want. USB-C, USB-A, SD, HDMI, Aux, Ethernet. The power connector is a common one. And the brick feels nice and custom too, for what it’s worth. You can also charge it via USB-C… although the location of the Type-C ports are in an inconvenient spot if you’re using a mouse. I purchased a cable with a right angle connector to help keep it out of the way. Charging via Type-C is a nice convenience, but it shouldn’t be counted on as a primary charging method as it delivers less power than the 240W brick. But it works fine if you’re doing emails in bed and just want to use your phone’s charger.
Keyboard
Initially, I thought the keyboard felt a little cheap. It’s amongst the only plastic to be found on the thing. However, after getting used to it, I found it to be very nice. One of my favorites, even. There is slight texture on some keys and the right ctrl key is larger than I’ve seen on many laptops. It’s a small thing, but I found the bigger key made recalling shortcuts in certain programs much more natural. I don’t know… keyboards are a very subjective thing to review and your opinions may vary; but I do think it’s objectively an above-average keyboard that few would complain about.
Webcam
The 1080p webcam is one of the best I’ve ever used on a laptop. The ASUS application has AI features that combine with the IR sensor to allow you to fine tune how it works a little bit too. It can mask background environmental noise (or aims to… nobody has ever complained to me so I’m assuming it works pretty well). It’s also the first laptop where Windows Hello actually works well enough for me that I turned it on.
CONCLUSION
This is a great laptop for most people in the architecture world. It’s the combination of all of the above that make it really stand out to me. It’s not perfect. And there are other laptops out there that do a few of the above extremely well, sometimes even better. But this is the only laptop that does all of them very well. It’s the all-in-one package for those who don’t want several devices to buy and keep track of. I expect Asus to only improve this line even further over time. They seem to be steadily releasing new devices and peripherals with creatives in mind under the ProArt name.
Apple doesn’t care about us. Dell doesn’t care about us. Various gaming laptop makers don’t care about us. Microsoft says they care about us, but the actual products they release don’t suggest that to be true. I believe ASUS actually does. And I’m here for it.
DOWNSIDES
No 18” option
No 4k option
Gets pretty hot
Fans are loud when it’s hot (although it’s good that they’re working to cool it)
Not as sexy aesthetically as a Macbook
YOU SHOULD BUY IT IF
You are an architecture student who uses all the usual programs
You are a project manager who marks up a lot of drawings and spins around models
You are a designer who models, documents, and renders using real-time engines
You love Apple but need Windows in your workflow
You want some of the touch/drawing ideals of Surface products, except with higher end specs
You don’t want a flashy gaming laptop
YOU SHOULDN’T BUY IT IF
You do heavy rendering with long wait times… get a gaming laptop with a 4090 instead
You absolutely love Apple and don’t need Windows in your workflow … just get a Macbook instead for the ecosystem