The Asus ProArt P14 is ready for tomorrow's local AI era

John is a writer at Pocket-lint. He is passionate about all things technology, and is always keeping up with the latest smartphone and PC releases. John has previously written at MobileSyrup. When he’s not reading and writing about tech, he enjoys listening to history podcasts and watching documentaries.

Nvidia RTX Spark computers have finally arrived. After a thirteen-year hiatus in the Windows PC processor space, Nvidia is back with an ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) that's designed from the ground up to meet the exacting demands of the local artifical intelligence (AI) era.

Asus' all-new ProArt P14 (H7407BA) is among the very first laptops to ship with the RTX Spark chipset. Promising to be a powerhouse, the ProArt P14 certainly brings a lot to the table, though it's also not without its flaws.

Is the ProArt P14 a MacBook Pro killer? Does the laptop bring enough compute to the table to satiate professionals and to prove competitive in a world of local AI models? After some time using the device out in the real world, here are my thoughts.

Price, availability, and specs

Lots of laptop in a compact package

The Asus ProArt P14 is jammed-packed with hardware. The laptop features a 14-inch 3K OLED display panel, a massive 90 Wh battery pack, and, of course, the aforementioned Nvidia RTX Spark N1X chipset. Other key specifications include a 1080p Full HD webcam with infrared support for Windows Hello facial recognition, human presence detection sensors, a large haptic trackpad, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 5.4.

In terms of port selection, the ProArt P14 features three USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port, a 3.5mm combo audio jack, and a full-sized SDXC card reader. I'm fond of the fact that Type-C can be found on either side of the device, allowing for flexibility when it comes time to charge up the unit.

The Asus ProArt P14 is available now for purchase at a starting MSRP of $2,600 in the United States. The device is available in nano black and neo white colorways, and it can be specced up to a maximum of 128GB of unified LPDDR5X RAM memory and 1TB of M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD internal storage. The base model, by contrast, comes with 24GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage.

What I liked about the Asus ProArt P14

An effortless user experience

The first thing I noticed as soon as I unboxed the ProArt P14 is that it's surprisingly thin and lightweight for a 14-inch 'Pro' caliber device. The notebook features dimensions of 12.23 x 8.62 x 0.55 ~ 0.63-inches (31.07 x 21.89 x 1.39 ~ 1.59 cm), and it tips the scales at 3.26 lbs (1.48 kg).

The product looks aesthetically pleasing with its minimalistic design language, and it feels premium with its tight tolerances, its hinge that can be opened with a single finger, and its metal-clad chassis with US MIL-STD 810H military-grade ruggedness. I do wish Asus had outfitted the product with its in-house Ceraluminum material, which coats aluminum such that it feels more like ceramic, but that's a minor complaint overall.

The touch screen display panel is another high point, with its 3K (2,880 x 1,800) resolution, its OLED punchiness, its 120Hz refresh rate, and its 700 nits of brightness (1,600 nits of HDR peak brightness). It covers 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and it also comes with an anti-reflection (AR) coating for better visibility outdoors. Interestingly, the display also supports stylus input, which might come in handy for certain creative workflows.

I love the oversized haptic trackpad found on the ProArt P14, which is advanced enough to support Microsoft's Haptic Signals feature (which adds little pulses or 'bumps' to the user experience when snapping windows or aligning objects). The backlit chiclet-style keyboard is also comfortable to type on, which is a major plus.

Windows Hello face unlock is much appreciated, as is the addition of human presence detection hardware for quickly locking and unlocking the device based on whether you're in front of it. I wish every PC came standard with human presence detection, and so I'm glad to see it present and accounted for here.

Then, there's the chip. With up to a petaflop of AI compute under the hood, the Nvidia RTX Spark absolutely crushes most things you can think to throw at it. It's purpose-built for local AI workflows, whether it be working with AI agents, running large language models (LLMs) directly on-device, or generating images and videos on the fly.

My review unit came with the 20-core CPU and 6,1440-core GPU variant of the RTX Spark. The ability to fit large AI models onto the GPU for faster processing is a major selling point, and the unified memory plays a massive role in how fast AI-based processes and tasks can be accomplished. Having a single, fast pool of RAM for the system to pull from is hugely beneficial on the whole.

Being an ARM-based SoC, there isn't a huge performance dip when on power versus when plugged in, which is another great benefit to this system. Overall, the CPU here is comparable to other high-end ARM-based processors from Apple and Qualcomm, while the GPU outpaces the Snapdragon X2 Elite but doesn't quite best the peak performance of high-end Apple Silicon.

In the real world, this all translates into more than enough compute for demanding AI workloads of all types. Even under heavy load, the ProArt P14's active cooling system keeps fan noise to a minimum, though I did notice a bit of coil whine at times. While the unit's 90Wh battery pack is large and energy-dense, it still (expectedly) depletes relatively quickly when pushing the device to its absolute limits, however.

What I didn't like about the Asus ProArt P14

Windows 11 still bogs down the experience

Windows 11 has gotten a lot better in recent months, with Microsoft's K2 effort resulting in the reintroduction of taskbar resizing and relocating, among other much-appreciated niceties. That being said, the desktop operating system is still bogged down by decades of legacy cruft, and it shows: setting up the ProArt P14 takes far longer to do than a Mac, a Chromebook, or a Googlebook, and system updates are slow and cumbersome.

For some reason, despite the Nvidia RTX Spark featuring a powerful enough neural processing unit (NPU) to support Copilot+ PC additions like Recall and Click to Do, there's no support for such software features -- at least not at launch. The lack of Copilot+ PC certification is unfortunate at this price point, even if the features themselves don't dramatically improve the user experience of using Windows 11.

On the bright side, Microsoft's Prism translation layer is in a better state than ever, and I ran into no issues with Windows on ARM. Programs that haven't been compiled to run natively on ARM still work just fine out of the box for the most part, and more and more applications are making the jump over to the computing architecture seemingly every day.

Microsoft is still actively improving Windows 11 behind-the-scenes, with enhanced performance metrics, a more customizable context menu, and a redesigned Windows Search experience all expected to arrive in the coming months. Over time, I expect these software improvements to elevate the ProArt P14 as a whole, making for a more welcoming PC experience.

Should you buy the Asus ProArt P14?

Yes, if you're prepared to take advantage of the chipset

If you're a creative professional (that is, a video editor, a photo editor, or perhaps someone who works with CAD files), then the Asus ProArt P14 (H7407BA) is an excellent choice -- the laptop is certainly worthy of standing proud and tall next to a MacBook Pro. There's plenty of horsepower here, and its cooling system is capable of keeping up with intensive workloads.

For AI developers and engineers looking to run, test, and fine-tine local AI agents and LLMs, the ProArt P14 absolutely gets the job done and then some. The Nvidia RTX Spark chipset powering the laptop absolutely screams, and there's more than enough AI compute on deck to facilitate demanding workloads.

There's also enough power under-the-hood here to even make basic AAA gaming a reality, though that's not the primary focus of the ProArt P14 -- gamers are better served by dedicated gaming laptops running a discrete graphics card such as from Nvidia's own GeForce RTX series.

Asus has knocked it out of the park when it comes to the fundamentals of building a solid notebook, with a gorgeous display panel, an advanced haptic trackpad, a pleasant keyboard, tons of battery life, and a premium build. The ProArt P14 isn't meant to be a thin-and-light Ultrabook-style device, but its chassis is surprisingly svelte and lightweight for a Pro-level device of its caliber.

Not all is perfect, of course, with Windows 11 still proving a frustrating experience on the software side of things, and with the conspicuous lack of Copilot+ PC features at launch. I also lament the lack of a Ceraluminum finish here, as it'd make the laptop look and feel even more stylish and premium. Nevertheless, I'm a big fan of the ProArt P14 on the whole. It's a very expensive device at a starting price of $2,600, but it absolutely has the silicon chops to back it up.

This device was provided to Pocket-lint by Asus.