ASUS Opens Preorders for Local-AI Creator Laptops Starting at $2,599.99

ASUS opened preorders for its ProArt P16 and P14 laptops on October 7, 2026, with the lineup starting at $2,599.99. The Windows machines pair Nvidia RTX Spark hardware with up to 128GB of unified memory and creative software integrations, aiming to keep more AI generation and agent work on the computer rather than in the cloud.

Preorders now, regional rollout next

The U.S. announcement lists purchasing options through the ASUS Store, Best Buy online and participating Best Buy stores. Memory choices extend from 24GB to 128GB, though some configurations are marked “coming soon” at particular retailers. The starting price therefore should not be read as the price of a top-memory machine.

In Canada, ASUS estimates shipping will start October 16, 2026. The P14 starts at C$3,499 and the P16 at C$4,999. Its Canadian announcement cautions that pricing, configurations and retail availability vary by region. The coordinated lineup also includes the ProArt GR1X mini PC, which the U.S. release schedules for later in 2026.

Memory is the foundation, not a workload guarantee

RTX Spark combines a Nvidia Blackwell RTX graphics processor with a Grace CPU. ASUS rates the platform at up to one petaflop of AI performance, a company-supplied specification. It targets local language and vision-language models, image and video generation, model customization and multistep agent workflows.

ASUS qualifies that workload pitch: what fits depends on the model’s design, quantization—the precision used to represent it—context length and available system memory. The 128GB ceiling is not a promise that every large model or generation pipeline will run equally well.

We built Hermes to provide intelligence you can truly own, rather than simply rent.

Dillon Rolnick, CEO of Nous Research

From creative apps to agent-run workflows

ASUS is packaging the hardware with its own applications and partner tools. The announced ecosystem gives each a different role:

• MuseTree integrates FLUX and Wan for local generative creation. StoryCube handles AI-powered scene recognition, media organization and asset management.
• Hermes Agent, from Nous Research, works across desktop apps, terminal commands and local files. A dedicated integration connects it with MuseTree.
• ComfyUI supplies visual AI workflows and resource packs for image and video creation. ASUS says agents such as Hermes can build and run those workflows.

ASUS pitches local execution as a way to keep prompts, source files and project data on-device while avoiding per-token or per-generation charges for local work. It also leaves room for cloud services, explicitly describing them as useful for frontier-scale models and extra capacity. The promised workflow is local-first, not necessarily cloud-free.