Asus ProArt PZ13 review: look out, Surface Pro

The ProArt PZ13 includes its detachable tablet, which makes its low price even more attractive. And it’s a pretty good keyboard, with a spacious layout, comfortable keycaps, and snappy, precise switches. It doesn’t prop up at an angle like the Surface Pro 11’s Flex Keyboard, and it doesn’t have a place to store and charge a pen like Microsoft’s version. And Apple’s Magic Keyboard that doubles as a stand and cover enjoys that company’s excellent switches. The Asus keyboard isn’t quite as good overall.

One problem I ran into is that the ProArt PZ13’s keyboard isn’t recognized by Windows. So, all the usual tablet features like selection checkboxes and a sliding taskbar remain even when the keyboard is connected. It’s a minor quibble and presumably Asus will get it sorted in a future firmware update.

Then, the Asus touchpad is mechanical, and while it’s large, it doesn’t have the same responsiveness as the haptic touchpads on the Microsoft and Apple keyboards. That’s another downside.

Asus didn’t include its Active Pen 2.0 with my review unit, so I couldn’t test it. I can say, though, that it doesn’t offer the haptic feedback that the Microsoft Pen 2 provides that makes writing and drawing on the display feel more natural. And it doesn’t have the haptic feedback when squeezing like Apple’s latest Pencil Pro. So, again, the Asus solution falls a bit short.

There are two cameras on the ProArt PZ13, which is common to tablets, including a front-facing 5MP webcam with an infrared camera for Windows 11 on Arm facial recognition and a 13MP rear camera. Like the Surface Pro 11, the ProArt PZ13 supports Microsoft’s enhanced Studio Effects software as part of the Copilot+ PC initiate, with a hardware assist by the Qualcomm chipset’s neural processing unit (NPU).

Like virtually all tablets, the ProArt PZ13’s connectivity is limited. There are two USB4 ports, which equals the Surface Pro 11 and doubles the number of Thunderbolt 4 ports on the iPad Pro 13. It lacks the NanoSIM slot and cellular connectivity option of Microsoft’s tablet, and the iPad Pro also has a 5G cellular version. But local wireless connectivity is fully up-to-date with Wi-Fi 7.

The ProArt PZ13 uses a version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus, released in September and a couple of months after the original lineup. The X1P-42-100 has eight cores compared to the X1P-64-100 with 10 cores that we tested. Both chipsets run at up to 3.4GHz, while the X1P-42-100 has a significantly slower Adreno GPU rated at up to 1.7 teraflops (TFLOPS) compared to the faster version at 3.8 TFLOPS. The Snapdragon X Elite is a much faster chipset than all of the Plus versions. It’s important to note that these Qualcomm laptops run Windows on Arm, which will run applications in emulation when they’re not written natively for the chipset. Thus, your overall mileage may vary — and that includes potential incompatibility with both software and hardware.

Interestingly, though, the ProArt PZ13 wasn’t significantly slower at CPU-intensive tasks than the Surface Pro 11 with the 12-core Snapdragon X1E-80-100. The Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 was much slower with the faster Snapdragon X Plus, demonstrating a a chipset alone isn’t a guarantee of a given level of performance. In terms of its GPU performance, the ProArt PZ13 (and the Asus Vivobook S 15) was in line with expectations.

Ultimately, the ProArt PZ13 is a very fast laptop for demanding productivity users. Asus seems to have squeezed out better CPU performance than Microsoft did with the theoretically much faster Surface Pro 11. And none of these machines are good for gaming or for creative tasks that can utilized the GPU. And, the MacBook Air M3 holds its own, and it’s meaningfully faster for creative tasks like video editing thanks to various CPU optimizations.

The Qualcomm chipsets and Windows on Arm are reasonably fast chipsets, but their greater claim to fame has been a promise of better efficiency. That’s to differentiate not only from Intel but perhaps more importantly from Apple’s very efficient M3 chipset.

In my testing, the ProArt PZ13 did well, lasting a little longer in our video looping test and not quite as long as the Surface Pro 11 in our web browsing test. We didn’t test the Microsoft tablet in running the demanding Cinebench 2024 multi-core test while on battery, but the ProArt PZ13 did better than we’ve seen from the Snapdragon X Elite chipsets. That promises better performance when doing work, where overall, the Qualcomm machines have done better with less-demanding tasks.

Like pretty much every premium Asus laptop, the ProArt PZ13 features a high-quality OLED display. It’s a 13.3-inch panel at a 16:10 aspect ratio that’s not quite as close to a piece of paper’s dimension’s as the Surface Pro 11’s 13-inch 3:2 display. The iPad Pro 13’s display is also more comfortable for inking and drawing. Subjectively, the ProArt PZ13’s display is spectacular, with bright, dynamic colors and inky blacks. It’s easily as good as the Surface Pro 11’s OLED option, although Microsoft’s IPS option will likely get better battery life.

According to my colorimeter, the ProArt PZ13’s colors are wider at 100% of sRGB, 95% of AdobeRGB, and 100% of DCI-P3 compared to the Surface Pro 11’s 100%, 85%, and 97% at its best. Color accuracy is similar at a DeltaE of 0.98 versus 0.74, and both tablets are excellent. The Surface Pro 11’s display is brighter at 532 nits versus 394, and both have perfect blacks and insanely high contrast.

The iPad Pro 13 can’t be tested with our colorimeter, but it also has bright, accurate colors and it’s a tandem OLED panel with much higher brightness. That means it will provide better high dynamic range (HDR) performance than the Windows tablets.

Ultimately, you’ll find the ProArt PZ13’s display excellent for productivity use, creativity, and media consumption.

Audio is nothing special, with two side-firing speakers that provide just-OK audio. The Surface Pro 11 is similar, while the iPad Pro 13 has four speakers that provide louder and deeper sound.

The Surface Pro 11 offers a more elegant design and some haptic feedback advantages. It’s easy to argue that overall, it’s a more refined Copilot+ detachable tablet. But that doesn’t mean the ProArt PZ13 isn’t also a great Windows on Arm tablet.

The Asus machine is just as fast, even when using a Qualcomm chipset that’s slower on paper, and it gets the same kind of battery life. The ProArt PZ13’s display is more colorful but not as bright. But for many people, its lower price will be the deciding factor.