As someone who required several strong pale ales before he was persuaded to go up Toronto's CN Tower, heights aren’t exactly my thing. Screw my acrophobia, though, because I’m still intrigued at the prospect of a laptop you can use at the top of a mountain.
Marketed as “all terrain”, a new suite of laptops by Asus is set to be released at the Computex event in Taiwan on June 3. The firm claims its new ProArt series of lightweight machines are capable of withstanding up to 15,000 feet of altitude, seriously toasty temperatures and high levels of humidity. Someone should probably get Bear Grylls on the phone, as a laptop that’s been purpose-built for extreme outdoor conditions sounds right up the British trooper’s alley.
Staying on that military theme, the ProArt series is MIL-STD 810 certified, a method of testing drummed up by the U.S. Department of Defense to see how equipment withstands the harshest environmental conditions. So if you’re a content creator who regularly scales Mt Kilimanjaro, you’ll be glad to know you’ll be able to set up camp 4,000 feet short of its peak and still be able to edit videos.
And that’s exactly who the Asus ProArt range is being aimed at: content creators. Coming in various form factors (spanning a traditional clamshell design, a more convertible model and a tablet), these machines have been designed to help you make videos in the great outdoors.
While we don’t have the exact specs on the ProArt lineup yet, the video above seemingly confirms at least one model will have a 4K OLED display, which should come in handy for prosumer video editors.
As with many new laptops ranges, Asus' new Windows 11 systems will make use of some form of AI, though what specific artificial intelligence features ProArt machines will adopt is unclear at time of writing. I don’t know if the first thought that would cross my mind is “oh good, my AI laptop can more effectively let me edit videos” if I was stuck on a dinghy during a raging storm, but it’s still good to see the ProArt series embrace a future-looking focus.
Before June 3 rolls around, though, I’ll probably stick to testing the best gaming laptops in my incredibly dull yet equally safe Scottish apartment.
