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Used for: 6–12 months
Handles 3D and video without ever getting loud
Only two USB-C ports, and a hub covers one
The best thing about this machine is how little attention it demands. It sits there, it does the work, the fans stay at a level you have to listen for, and the panel above the keyboard warms up slightly and never gets hot where my hands are. The pen and touch combination has changed my process more than any spec on the list. Rough sketches happen on the screen, refinement happens with the keyboard, and nothing has to be exported between the two! The port count is the one thing I would fix. Two USB-C and one of them is where the charger goes, so anything involving a drive and a tablet means the hub comes out. Not a deal breaker, just a daily irritation.
Used for: Less than a month
Quiet, light, and the screen is extraordinary
Fingerprints on the lid and the screen, constantly
Replaced an ageing tower and a graphics tablet with one machine, and both have gone to a new home. Sketching on the screen with the pen is close enough to the tablet that I have not missed it once, and the colour is better than the monitor the tablet was plugged into. It is also remarkably quiet. A 20 minute export brings the fans up to a soft rush and that is the extent of it, nothing like the tower it replaced. The only maintenance is a cloth. The lid, the screen and the palm rest all show every mark, and I clean it more often than I clean anything else I own!
Used for: 3–6 months
Ryzen 7 is plenty and the battery lasts longer for it
The speakers are thin for a creative machine
Chose the Ryzen 7 deliberately rather than reaching for the fastest chip, on the grounds that a machine that lasts a full day away from a socket is worth more to me than ten percent on a render. That has been the right call. Speakers are the one cost cut you notice, fine for a video call and disappointing for anything else, which on a machine sold to creative people is an odd corner to trim.
Used for: More than a year
Colour has not drifted at all
The lid flexes more than I would like
Still the obvious recommendation for anyone drawing for a living, and nothing about it has aged badly apart from a lid that has always had a bit of give in it
Used for: Less than a month
Genuinely portable for a 16 inch creative machine
Glossy OLED means reflections anywhere near a window
Came from a much heavier machine and the difference in the bag is the first thing anyone notices. It is thin, it is light for the screen size, and it does not need the charger for a normal day of drawing and email. The screen is the trade. OLED contrast is worth having and the gloss is not, and working near a window means either moving the desk or accepting a reflection over half the canvas. I have moved the desk. Colour has been excellent from the start and the fans have stayed out of the way for anything short of a render, so the four stars are entirely about that finish.
Used for: More than a year
Still holds colour after a year of daily work
OLED burn in on the taskbar is just starting to show
There is now the faintest ghost of the taskbar visible on a flat grey. You have to look for it, and I am looking for it, and it is there, which is what a year of eight hour days with the same interface on screen will do. Everything else about the machine has been excellent, which makes it more annoying rather than less.
Used for: 6–12 months
The OLED panel is properly accurate straight out of the box
The dial is clever and I still forget it is there
Bought as an illustration machine and the screen is the reason. Out of the box it measured close enough to my calibrated desktop panel that I stopped bothering to profile it, which has never been true of a laptop before. The touchscreen and the pen have turned out to matter more than I expected. Sketching directly on the display, then swinging back to the keyboard, is a workflow I did not have on the old machine and would not give up now. The dial is the gimmick that has not quite stuck. It works, and in Photoshop it is genuinely useful for brush size, but nine months in my hand still reaches for the keyboard shortcut instead. Four stars because the Ryzen 7 will fall behind a chip a tier up on long renders, which I knew and accepted for the weight.
Used for: 1–3 months
Battery drops fast the moment anything is rendering
As a portable creative machine it does almost everything I hoped, so the criticism is narrow and specific. On battery, doing ordinary things, it will go most of a working day. Start a render or anything using the graphics and it goes from full to 15 percent in a bit over an hour, which caught me out on a train. The other thing is that the OLED at full brightness eats power far faster than the panel on my old machine did, so there is a constant negotiation between seeing the colours properly and having a machine that is still on at four o'clock. Two months in I have learned to travel with the charger and stop worrying about it.