XMG Pro 16 Studio Review – Creative (Marketing)

This is the XMG Pro 16 Studio, a machine marketed as a “Content Creation Laptop”, but for the life of me I can’t work out how this is any different than a ‘normal’ gaming laptop. Let me show you around and maybe we can work this out together… I’ll start with the specs. This comes with an i9-13900H – not the more powerful HX, just the H. This only has 6 P cores and 8 E cores, not the 8/16 the HX offers. This has a 45W TDP, which is on the lower end for Intel CPUs these days. RAM wise, like all XMG machines you get to pick your configuration, so I’ve gone for 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM and 2TB of M.2 SSD space. You can option up to 64GB of RAM and there’s actually two M.2 slots so you could have 8TB from factory if you wanted to splash out. You can also option the GPU – I went with the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU here, although you can have a 4070 if you’d prefer. Video in the cards above explaining why you probably don’t.

As you might expect from that spec then, this performs pretty well, although not exactly top-of-the-pack. I tested this in both the stock “Entertainment” mode, and “Performance” mode, the latter of which seems to allow the fans to ramp up a little more and helps eke out a touch more performance. In Cinebench, basically Cinema4D’s rendering test, the 13900H in the Studio struggles to keep up with the higher core count chips, including in XMG’s own machines. It offers around 17,700 points, compared to the 13900HX based machines which are a good 10,000 points higher. XMG’s own FOCUS 16 ran 60% faster than this Studio machine. Blender is the same story, with the Studio – even in performance mode – struggling against the 13900HX in the XMG PRO 15, which was running 55% faster in the Gooseberry render. 

Something I haven’t shown in a while, but I think is pretty relevant here, is the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, and the Puget Bench tests for the three main apps – Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop. When sorting for Premiere performance, the results here are somewhat disappointing too, as the STRIX Scar 16 with it’s 13980HX reports a 28% higher score. After Effects is the same, albeit a much smaller margin, although Photoshop shows promise with the Pro 16 Studio outperforming the two other chips I have good data for. 

So if the performance isn’t exactly groundbreaking, there must be something else to this that makes it a “Content Creation” machine. Maybe the cooling package, keeping everything super quiet even under load. A quick peek inside does reveal a large vapour chamber cooler which on the whole does keep the machine remarkably quiet – at least in the “Entertainment” power mode. The problem here is with the fans. When the machine is just idling, the fans have a pretty high pitched whine to them that drove me mad with it next to me for days while testing. It’s a pretty quiet sound, but it’s unmistakably annoying. And of course, when the fans do have to ramp up, they aren’t all that quiet either. 

Ok, maybe it’s the display then. Maybe that’s what makes this a content creation machine… Let’s see what we’ve got here. 2560×1600, ok that’s good, IPS, wonderful, 240Hz..? Uh, ok, fine, good for gaming on the side… Oh. Just 95% coverage of the sRGB spectrum – the smallest colour space available. That’s… disappointing. In practice the panel does actually do better than XMG’s claims, covering over 100% of the sRGB spectrum, and 81% of the DCI P3 colour space, but for a content creation machine I’d really hope for more like 95 to 100% coverage of DCI P3, not sRGB. I’d also liked to have seen a calibration report for the display in the box – seeing as this does come with X-Rite’s software preinstalled. Naturally you’ll need to pick up a calibrator to do the actual calibration. I did use my new SpyderX2 to check the colour accuracy as well – that was pretty good with an average DeltaE of 1.48, although that mid blue was wildly off with a DeltaE of 4.7 which isn’t great on a Studio machine. If you’re interested in the brightness figures, I measured around 375 nits at most, and at 50% brightness a 1500:1 contrast ratio. At least that is better than average, although with just 375 nits at peak you won’t be editing HDR content on this, and you might struggle working in a lighter environment. 

Naturally I did also run it through its paces with my Open Source Response Time Tool, which reported an average response time of 10 milliseconds, or basically 100 hertz equivalent. That’s poor – especially considering this is meant to be a 240 hertz panel! That impacts the gaming performance, adding a reasonable amount of ghosting to what should be a smooth and responsive experience. You might also find its a little slow on the reaction time front too, as my response time tool reported an average on display latency of 7.6 milliseconds, or almost two frames at 240 hertz, with a number of results taking three frames. That’s less than ideal.

Speaking of gaming, we should talk about the gaming performance. At the native 1600p resolution you can expect an average of 140 FPS – a full 100 FPS less than the refresh rate. Still, in esports titles like CS2 and Siege you’ll see the full refresh rate performance, although in basically anything else you’re looking at between 70 and 110 FPS average. That’s certainly not bad, although it could be a little better. At 1080p for the sake of comparison, interestingly the Studio 16 does rather well in Cyberpunk, leaking the pack by a fraction, although sacrificing some stability in the 1% lows to do so. Microsoft Flight Simulator shows a little more realistic result with the Studio in the middle of the pack with 103 FPS average. Fortnite has the Studio near the top again at the top of the RTX 4060 Laptop machines, which is the same in Hitman. At least, it’s at the top of the 4060 machines anyway. Siege has it in the middle again, running on par with the Acer Helios Neo 16, and lastly in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it’s towards the back of the pack, although still matching the FOCUS 16, also with an RTX 4060 Laptop GPU.

The actual playing experience is fairly good – the display does let it down a little, but with this sort of performance it isn’t bad. The keyboard is extremely light which makes for a great gaming experience, but less so for typing and, say, video editing. It definitely is on the quieter side of gaming machines – it’s still not silent, but it’s a good notch lower than most. Of course, this isn’t a gaming machine – or, at least, it isn’t marketed as one – so when we’re talking about the editing experience that’s pretty mixed. The trackpad is massive which is great, it’s responsive and accurate, so no problems there. As I mentioned the keyboard is a little light for my taste, and the whine from the fans drove me up the wall. The display is ok, but could definitely be better – an OLED perhaps… Interestingly, if we peek inside again you’ll notice the battery is a remarkably small 73 watt hour unit, which makes for a less-than-ideal on-battery experience, especially with this sort of hardware. 

So, again, I’m still left wondering… What about this is creator focused? Legitimately, the only thing I can figure out is the pre-installed X-Rite software. It doesn’t come with a calibrator, the display isn’t studio quality, the performance is average for the price… I’m just left feeling confused. As a gaming machine it isn’t bad – an overdrive mode would be great to speed up the display – but otherwise it isn’t bad, and for the price – around 2000EUR for my spec, or probably £2500 once imported to the UK, it isn’t too bad, but it isn’t a content creation machine.