Asus bolsters its ProArt series of products for professionals, taking on Acer’s ConceptD lineup
Asus’s new portfolio of products focuses on professional users
Photo Credit: Asus
Product announcements from IFA 2019 are in full swing and at Asus's press event, the company announced a slew of new products, many of which were targeted at professional users. Asus expanded its ProArt series of products with brand new laptops, monitors, and a desktop. It also announced the AsusPro B9 business laptop, which it claims is the “world's lightest” at just 880 grams. It also teased an upcoming gaming laptop called the ROG Zephyrus S GX701, which is touted to be the world's first gaming laptop with a 300Hz refresh rate display. This will be arriving sometime in October. Asus also introduced the ZenBook Pro Duo and ZenBook Duo for the European market. For now, pricing for all products has not been disclosed, and can be expected closer to their releases.
Claimed to be the most powerful StudioBook in the series, Asus says it's the first laptop to feature an Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 professional-grade graphics card. It's powered by Intel's 9th generation CPUs and features a 4K Pantone validated display with a 120Hz refresh rate and edge-to-edge glass on the screen. It also has a wide colour gamut, covering 100 percent of the Adobe RGB spectrum and a Delta-E value of less that one, for more accurate colour reproduction. The laptop is also said to have a powerful cooling system, which features a lightweight aerospace grade aluminium alloy thermal module. With the lid open, the chassis is tilted by 4.57 degrees to maximise airflow.
Asus says this is the first Nvidia Quadro-powered StudioBook to have the company's ScreenPad 2 (which uses a display for the trackpad) and a four-sided NanoEdge display. Due to the slim bezels, Asus has managed to squeeze in a 17-inch display into a form-factor comparable to most 15-inch laptops. The display also has a wide gamut, covering 97 percent of the DCI-P3 colour space. The laptop is powered by Intel Xeon or 9th Gen Core i7 CPUs, Nvidia's Quadro 5000 series GPU, and comes with storage drives in a RAID 0 configuration capable of speeds of up to 6GBps.
The Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro X
The ProArt Station D940MX is a workstation-grade desktop that features an 8-litre chassis, making it one of the smallest professional-grade desktop computers. It's powered by Intel's 9th Gen CPUs; up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM; Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 or RTX 2080 Ti GPU; a 512GB PCIe SSD and 1TB hard drive; and dual Thunderbolt 3 ports on the front panel. The desktop also boasts of a stylish design, featuring a LED indicator at the bottom of the chassis so users can check the status of the PC even from afar. For cooling, it uses a 2D vapour chamber and heat pipes for controlling the temperatures and the four strategically placed fans is said to help dissipate heat quickly. The desktop is also said to run very quiet, generating up to 37dB of noise at full load. It also meets the MIL-STD 810G standard for durability.
Asus's new ProArt Display is an attempt at taking on Apple's ProDisplay XDR, which was announced at this year's WWDC. The new PA32UCG monitor claims to be the world's first HDR 1600 display with a 120Hz refresh rate. It offers a 4K resolution with mini LED backlighting which is claimed to deliver 1000nits of sustained brightness, 1600nits of peak brightness and a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1. The display also supports popular HDR standards such as HDR 10, HLG, and Dolby Vision. The display panel uses Quantum Dot technology and supports DCI-P3, Adobe RGB, sRGB, Rec. 709 and Rec. 2020 colour spaces; 10-bit colour depth; comes factory-calibrated and has a Delta-E rating of less than one. The refresh of the PA32UCG can vary from 48–120Hz, which is said to benefit game development workflows. It also features 2x Thunderbolt 3, 1x DisplayPort, 3x HDMI ports, along with a built-in USB hub.
The Asus ProArt Display PA32UCG
The new AsusPro B9 (B9450) claims to be the world's lightest business laptop, weighing just 880g. It features Intel's 10th Gen Core CPUs; up to two 1TB PCIe SSDs with support for RAID 0 or 1; Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 3. The laptop is also compact thanks to slim bezels, which has allowed Asus to fit a 14-inch screen in the body of a typical 13-inch laptop. It also measures 14.9mm in depth and is said to have “long lasting” battery life. The B9 is also tested for MIL-STD 810G military standard, has a Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM) security chip for data security and IR camera for Windows Hello authentication.
The AsusPro B9 (B9450)
At the press event, Asus teased an upcoming laptop, which should be the world's first laptop to have a 300Hz refresh rate display. The Zephyrus S GX701 will be available in October of this year and will feature Intel's 9th Gen CPUs; an Nvidia RTX 2080 GPU; and have a Pantone validated display. The laptop will also have the company's Active Aerodynamic System for cooling, Aura Sync lighting, and GPU Switch. We should have more details about it closer to launch.
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