ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600) review – deep blacks and ray tracing

ASUS has always been keen on experimenting with its VivoBook brand. Their latest effort is called the VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600). Unsurprisingly, the pinnacle of their engineering lies within the display options, as it offers a 16-inch 16:10 OLED unit with a 4K+ resolution. Why is it so special? Well, you get all of the benefits of OLED like deep blacks and enormously high contrast ratio, but in addition to that, you are treated to a 100% DCI-P3 coverage, and HDR True Black 500 support.

All of that sounds ecstatic, but if you don’t have the hardware to power it, you are left with empty words and unfulfilled potential. And nobody wants that…including ASUS. This is why you get an Intel Tiger Lake H35 CPU for the N7600 model and AMD Zen 3 processor for the M7600 version. For now, we are going to set the differences between the two aside, and focus on the Intel configuration, which we have with us today.

In addition to the aforementioned processor of choice, you get either an RTX 3050 or RTX 3050 Ti. Each of them comes with a rather modest 50W of TGP, but given the raw power of the GA107 chip that resides inside both these graphics cards, we expect a decent performance.

So, let’s put the cards on the table, and see what the VivoBook Pro 16X has to offer and if it’s worth it when compared to the likes of Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″).

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/asus-vivobook-pro-16x-oled-n7600-m7600/

Contents


Specs Sheet

ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED (N7600, 11th Gen Intel) - Specs

  • Samsung ATNA60YV02-0 (SDC415D)
  • Color accuracy  4.0  3.6
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 2000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 32GB
  • OS
  • Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro, Windows 10 Home, No OS, Windows 10 Pro
  • Battery
  • 96Wh, 6-cell
  • Body material
  • Aluminum
  • Dimensions
  • 360.5 x 259 x 18.9 mm (14.19" x 10.20" x 0.74")
  • Weight
  • 1.95 kg (4.3 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 2.0
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • Thunderbolt 4, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 1.4
  • Card reader
  • MicroSD
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • HD with privacy shutter
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Array Microphone with Cortana and Alexa voice rec.
  • Speakers
  • Speakers System, Harman/Kardon
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

All ASUS Vivobook Pro 16X OLED (N7600, 11th Gen Intel) configurations

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What’s in the box?

Inside the package, you will find some paperwork, a 120W charger, and some stickers neatly tucked inside a small paper box.


Design and construction

First, let’s talk about this laptop’s external features. Both the lid and the base are built out of aluminum. Generally, the structure is solid. We observed little-to-no flex from the base, and some bending from the lid. Yet – nothing to worry about. In terms of dimensions, we are talking about weight of 1.95 kg and a profile of 18.9mm. This allows it to sit on the thinner and lighter side of the performance notebook chart. Interestingly, instead of the regular logo, the lid cover houses an extrusion, with some inspirational hashtags and quotes. We don’t really care about the text on it, but the execution really gives a unique feel to the notebook.

Thankfully, the lid opens with a single hand. This reveals slim bezels around a glossy display. The highly reflective surface shouldn’t be an issue given the alleged 500+ nits of maximum brightness. Other than that, you get an HD Web camera with a privacy shutter on top.

Moving to the base we see a keyboard that sports rather large keycaps, a backlight, and a NumberPad. As you can see the color pattern is rather unusual, with ASUS stating that it aims to represent the feel of a professional studio deck. Interestingly, it might just do. Other than that, the key travel isn’t very long, but the feedback is clicky, and we can say that the experience is generally comfortable. The only thing we didn’t particularly like is the size of the Arrow keys.

By the way, the power button of the device is placed in the top right corner of the keyboard. It sits lower than the rest of the deck and employs a fingerprint reader. As we continue with the studio vibes, we go to the touchpad. It is huge, and if you look closely, you will see imprinting in the top right corner. Actually, it is a shortcut to the ASUS DialPad virtual knob. If you slide diagonally, this will enable a circular component, which can be used exactly as a knob. By rotating it you can toggle between functions, or fine-tune a setting. We found it particularly useful in Adobe Photoshop and Premiere, where gliding through the timeline requires precision.

And if you turn the laptop upside down, you will find two cutouts, hiding the Harman Kardon-tuned speakers. Additionally, there is a rather big ventilation grill, while the hot air gets exhausted from the back, with half of the hot air making its way through the hinge cover gaps and towards the bottom part of the screen.

Ports

On the left side, you get two USB Type-A 2.0 ports… quite unfortunate. However, on the right, there is the charging plug, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, an HDMI 1.4 connector, a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port with DisplayPort output, a MicroSD card slot, and an audio jack.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

There are 11 Torx-head screws holding this laptop’s bottom panel. After you undo them, pry the panel with a plastic tool and carefully remove it from the chassis.

Here, we have a 96Wh battery pack. If you want to remove it, there are four Phillips-head screws securing it to the device. Make sure to unlatch the speaker cables from the battery. Before you continue, unplug the battery connector.

Unfortunately, all of the memory is soldered to the motherboard. Thankfully, ASUS supplies this device with up to 32GB of dual-channel RAM. As for the storage, you get one M.2 PCIe x4 slot.

In terms of cooling, there are two heat pipes of different sizes shared between the CPU and the GPU. Respectively, the large one leads to a larger heat sink, while two fans are blowing the heat away from the chassis.


Display quality

ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X (N7600) is equipped with an AMOLED panel, Samsung ATNA60YV02-0 (SDC415D). Its diagonal is 16.0-inch (40.6 cm), and the resolution – 3840 x 2400p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:10, the pixel density – 283 ppi, their pitch – 0.09 x 0.09 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 30 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Viewing angles are comfortable. We offer images at different angles to evaluate the quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

The maximum measured brightness is 385 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen (HDR off). The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6400K – almost matching the 6500K temperature for sRGB.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective.
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio here is incomparably better than that of the IPS and TN panels and is mathematically infinite.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X (N7600)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 100% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976 and 100% of DCI-P3 providing a punchy and vibrant image.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X (N7600) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 3 ms – insane speed.

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Unfortunately, ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X (N7600)’s panel uses low-frequency PWM for brightness adjustment up until 100 nits. Afterwards, we detected small pulsations, which makes the display relatively safe in this aspect (after 100 nits).

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X (N7600) configurations with 16.0″ Samsung ATNA60YV02-0 (SDC415D) (3840 x 2400p) AMOLED panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X (N7600)’s Harman Kardon speakers produce a sound of good quality. Its low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.asus.com/Laptops/For-Home/Vivobook/Vivobook-Pro-16X-OLED-N7600-11th-Gen-Intel/HelpDesk_Download/

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This device’s huge 96Wh battery delivers up to 17 hours and 47 minutes of Web browsing, or around 11 hours of video playback.


Storage

We got a pretty decent average bandwidth of 412 MB/s and a latency of 75µs.

CPU options

We got the Intel version of this device, and it comes with a choice of two processors – the Core i5-11300H, and the Core i7-11370H. If you opt for AMD, the choices go down to the Ryzen 5 5600H, Ryzen 7 5800H, and Ryzen 9 5900HX.


GPU options

Graphics-wise, you can pair your notebook with the RTX 3050 or RTX 3050 Ti, both coming with 50W TGP and 4GB of GDDR6 VRAM.


Gaming tests

Metro ExodusFull HD, Low (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Extreme (Check settings)
Average FPS85 fps40 fps19 fps

Borderlands 3Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Badass (Check settings)
Average fps75 fps51 fps39 fps

Shadow of the Tomb RaiderFull HD, Lowest (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)
Average fps108 fps68 fps60 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average fps70 fps63 fps55 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i7-11370H (35W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600)4.01 GHz (B+22%) @ 95°C @ 61W3.81 GHz (B+15%) @ 95°C @ 53W3.80 GHz (B+15%) @ 95°C @ 49W
ASUS ZenBook Flip 15 UX5643.66 GHz (B+11%) @ 92°C @ 43W3.47 GHz (B+5%) @ 91°C @ 38W3.39 GHz (B+3%) @ 92°C @ 34W
Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)3.97 GHz (B+20%) @ 95°C @ 64W4.03 GHz (B+22%) @ 97°C @ 63W3.87 GHz (B+17%) @ 93°C @ 50W
ASUS TUF Dash F15 (FX516)4.01 GHz (B+22%) @ 78°C @ 64W4.00 GHz (B+21%) @ 82°C @ 64W3.96 GHz (B+20%) @ 90°C @ 60W

Interestingly, the VivoBook Pro 16X is on the back foot of both the TUF Dash F15 and the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE. What is weird about it, is that the latter is a 14-inch notebook. On the other hand, the noise levels of the machine, even with the Performance profile applied, were not that high. And we were generally happy with the clocks we got. It is just that this CPU likes to run hot.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan)
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600)1576 MHz @ 68°C @ 50W1571 MHz @ 69°C @ 50W
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″)1651 MHz @ 72°C @ 55W1636 MHz @ 75°C @ 55W
HP Victus 16 (16-e0000)1824 MHz @ 73°C @ 75W1814 MHz @ 73°C @ 75W1822 MHz @ 73°C @ 75W
MSI Katana GF661675 MHz @ 73°C @ 60W1660 MHz @ 78°C @ 60W1699 MHz @ 67°C @ 60W

It’s safe to say that ASUS has calculated the cooling capacity of this device pretty well. Its 50W RTX 3050 runs at decent clocks, low temperatures, and fully maximizes its TGP limit.

Gaming comfort

What is even better is that all of this is happening, while the laptop isn’t very loud. With that said, it’s not quiet either, but the device is comfortable both in terms of noise, and external temperatures.


Verdict

Usually, pairing a performance-related product with a Tiger Lake H35 CPU isn’t the best idea. The main reason for that is the low core count. Capped at four cores, they just can’t deliver the raw power of their H45 counterparts, or AMD’s Zen 3 laptop lineup. On the other hand, you get a package, that is slightly easier to cool, and is just sipping of the battery. This results in more than 17 hours and a half of Web browsing on a single charge – a huge result from the VivoBook Pro 16X. Ultimately, this is not only due to the efficiency of the processor but also because of the large 96Wh battery pack.

ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X (N7600)’s OLED display has a 4K resolution, high maximum brightness, and comfortable viewing angles. Additionally, it offers really fast pixel response times, as well as deep blacks. The latter is because each pixel can turn itself off, practically resulting in zero illumination in this area. Moreover, this unit covers 100% of the sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts, which results in a very punchy image. On the downside, we saw a rather aggressive PWM usage below 100 nits.

Unfortunately, there are two things that we found unsettling about this machine. First, the lack of memory upgrades. Indeed, you get the option of up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM, but you have to pay the premium for it initially, as the memory chips are soldered onto the motherboard. You get options with 8 and 16GB as well, but if you are buying this device for professional work, like content creation, you shouldn’t consider the base option.

Now the second is a bit more straightforward – two of the three USB Type-A ports here are of 2.0 speeds. Yes, this segment of the market is pretty competitive, and ASUS has invested a lot in the display, and build quality of the device, but we would have loved seeing three proper Type-A ports.

As we said, the build quality of this machine is great. It is sturdy, relatively light, and offers a premium feel. Well, the glass touchpad needs some work, as it didn’t always register our clicks and wasn’t super precise, but we feel it has the potential. Plus, the virtual knob you get is pretty useful.

Although ASUS is playing it a bit safe with this notebook, we actually feel pretty comfortable about it. If you are going to need it mostly for processor-intensive work, go for the AMD version, otherwise, the Intel one will suit you great. Of course, keep the memory situation in mind, and if possible skip the base 8GB option.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/asus-vivobook-pro-16x-oled-n7600-m7600/

Pros

  • Great price-to-performance ratio
  • Strong aluminum chassis
  • 100% sRGB and DCI-P3 coverage + HDR support
  • High resolution and 16:10 aspect ratio + fast pixel response times
  • Deep blacks and virtually infinite contrast ratio
  • DialPad
  • Fingerprint reader + MicroSD card slot


Cons

  • Uses PWM below 100 nits
  • 2 out of 3 USB Type-A ports run at 2.0 speeds
  • Soldered memory

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Fran
Fran
2 years ago

PWM? No for me, thanks!

Frank
Frank
2 years ago
Reply to  Fran

There is PWM below 100 nits, but there is also PWM above.