ASUS's ProArt P16 is the first laptop to ship with NVIDIA's RTX Spark chip, and it is a fast, handsome machine. It is also expensive, and according to Engadget reviewer Devindra Hardawar, it is really only meant for people who plan to put it to work on artificial intelligence. He gave it 8.7 out of 10.
The laptop starts at $2,800, and the price climbs quickly as buyers add memory. Hardawar's review unit cost $7,000, mostly because of its 128GB of RAM.
The hardware looks familiar. The ProArt P16 has an aluminum case, a 16-inch OLED display that Hardawar called wonderfully bright, a roomy keyboard and a large haptic touchpad. It weighs 3.9 pounds, lighter than Apple's 16-inch MacBook Pro at 4.7 pounds. Ports include three USB-C connections, a USB Type-A port, HDMI, a headphone jack and a full-size SD card reader. There is no Ethernet port, which Hardawar said is becoming rare on thin, professional laptops.
What sets the machine apart is what sits inside. The RTX Spark system-on-a-chip combines a 20-core Arm CPU, a Blackwell GPU and up to 128GB of unified memory. That design resembles the way Apple builds its M-series chips. But RTX Spark will not replace Intel and AMD processors across the PC market. It is a new option aimed at AI researchers and enthusiasts, and it will run alongside Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips, which use a similar Arm-based design in entry-level and midrange systems.
The benchmark results are mixed. The P16 scored about 3,000 points lower than ASUS's ultra-slim A16, which runs a Snapdragon X2 Elite chip, on PCMark 10's Applications test. It also trailed slightly in the single-threaded CPU test of Geekbench 6. The laptop did much better on graphics and AI workloads. It scored 4,700 points higher than the MacBook Pro with M5 Max on Geekbench 6's GPU test. On UL Procyon's AI Computer Vision 2 benchmark, it posted 3,895 points, compared with 3,267 for the same MacBook. Its score on the AI Image Generation test was 600 points higher than Apple's.
Hardawar also ran real AI work on the machine. It handled OpenClaw and the Qwen3.8 27B model, which alone uses 42GB of RAM, and still left plenty of memory free for other tasks. It also played Control Resonant and Cyberpunk 2077 at high settings. The fans got loud, but he noticed no slowdown. In Control Resonant, the laptop ran at 70 frames per second at 1440p with ultra graphics settings, medium ray tracing and 4x frame generation. Lowering the settings pushed it to 120 frames per second. NVIDIA says the graphics hardware is roughly on par with the RTX 5070 mobile GPU while using less power, and Hardawar said his tests bore that out.
Game compatibility is the platform's biggest question. Because the CPU is Arm-based, most games run through Microsoft's Prism emulator, which slows performance and can cause problems. Some popular titles, including Fortnite, DOTA 2 and Marvel Rivals, have native Arm64 versions, and World of Warcraft: Forever will as well when it arrives. Hardawar said he had no trouble with older Windows software in his testing, but he warned that some niche games may not run well.
The screen is one of the laptop's strengths. Its peak brightness reaches 1,600 nits, which matches Apple's Mini LED MacBook Pro displays. Hardawar said that brightness made it easy to work outdoors. The keyboard and touchpad also impressed him, although the dual speakers, which support Dolby Atmos, lack the quad-speaker setup found on some large premium laptops.
The P16 has real drawbacks. Its jet-black finish shows fingerprints almost immediately. Battery life is also weak. The laptop ran for 10 hours and 51 minutes on PCMark 10's Applications battery test, well below the 15-plus hours Hardawar has seen on many premium machines. Dell's XPS 16 lasted nearly 12 hours on the same test. Performance held steady on battery power, however, and benchmarks and games did not drop when the power cord came out.
Hardawar's advice comes down to who will use the laptop. AI professionals who know how they will use the RTX Spark hardware are the buyers NVIDIA has in mind, and they may find the price easier to justify. Gamers have better options. At the time of the review, Hardawar noted, a similarly sized ASUS Zephyrus G16 with an RTX 5070 GPU and a 240Hz OLED screen cost $2,124 at Best Buy. That laptop offers faster gaming and full compatibility with Windows games. Editors whose work depends on the widest software support should also look at AMD or Intel systems, although Adobe has brought some of its best-known programs to the RTX Spark platform.
Hardawar also said RTX Spark is unlikely to bring PC prices down. AI demand has already pushed up memory prices, and the platform depends heavily on memory. He expects competition from NVIDIA to push AMD, Intel and Qualcomm to improve their hardware. NVIDIA says it is working with major anti-cheat companies to support the platform, but some multiplayer games may still not work on RTX Spark systems. Hardawar said he would give the platform at least a year before recommending it to general users or gamers.
Dieser Artikel wurde mit Unterstützung von KI verfasst.
News Factory APP - agentische News für besseres SEO & AEO.