The Vivobook S 15 is the primary pocket book from Asus to be powered by the brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip. It is also a part of the primary wave of units to ship on this new platform as a part of Microsoft’s renewed push into the ARM-based PC market presently dominated by Apple.
The Vivobook S 15 (or the S5507) is a premium system with a price ticket of $1300. For that cash, you’re getting the Snapdragon Elite X in its base configuration, a 15.6-inch 120Hz OLED show, 16GB reminiscence, 1TB storage, and a 70Wh battery. The system is focused in the direction of house and workplace customers who wish to do some mild productiveness work and media consumption on the go.
On this assessment, we can be how the Vivobook S 15 performs but in addition what it is prefer to stay with an ARM-based Home windows PC.
Design
The S5507 design is not something new and appears much like different Vivobook S 15 fashions earlier than it. The outside, made out of aluminum, has a easy matte end to it with a delicate Vivobook brand on the lid. The again has a row of vents with a protracted raised rubber foot.
Life the lid and you will discover that you just now have your thumbprints on the webcam. Additionally, you managed to slip the webcam cowl whereas opening so now the face detection would not work. The situation of those components is somewhat unlucky, as each the webcam and particularly the sliding mechanism for the quilt are proper the place you’re anticipated to place your thumb to open the lid. It’s important to practice your self to keep away from these which makes one thing so simple as opening the lid extra concerned than I would like.
As soon as open, you will be greeted by the big 15.6-inch show. The show will get very near the facet edges however the high and backside bezels are noticeably thicker. If, for some cause, you stored opening the lid, you will understand that it really opens a full 180 levels, making it flat with the bottom.
Under the show, the keyboard deck can also be made out of aluminum with the identical silver end. Even the keys are silver, which has an unlucky draw back as can be mentioned later. Under the keys is the big trackpad that measures round 13cm x 8.5cm. The trackpad is off-center so it aligns with the keyboard and never the numpad on the proper.
The Vivobook S 15 is comparatively compact regardless of the big show. Extra importantly, it is also very mild, weighing in at simply 1.42kg or 3.13lb. This makes it very simple to slide right into a backpack and I barely even observed the added weight.
The general design of the pocket book may be very business-like. I am not overly keen on the all-silver scheme, particularly the silver keys that even have a considerably boring, tile-like design. A black variant would have been good however this mannequin solely is available in one colour. Nonetheless, there is not a lot to complain in regards to the construct high quality, which is nice general. The keyboard deck has a slight flex to it nevertheless it’s solely noticeable while you press down on it somewhat than whereas typing. Asus additionally claims US MIL-STD 810H score for added peace of thoughts.
Show
The Vivobook S 15 has a 15.6-inch, 2880×1620 OLED show. It has a 120Hz refresh fee with a claimed 0.2ms response time, 600 nits peak brightness, 100 DCI-P3 colour protection, and HDR help.
Asus has included a handful of show choices within the MyASUS app. The OLED Care function permits a pixel refresh mode that runs when the show is static for half-hour to attenuate burn-in. There’s an OLED flicker-free dimming choice that reduces brightness with out inflicting show flicker which some individuals understand. The Adaptive Edge Brightness setting dims the corners of the show on battery, which appears like having a vignette across the display screen. On the default setting of two, it is barely noticeable so it is best to simply depart it on.
The show is color-calibrated on the manufacturing facility and comes with a calibration certificates discovered within the MyASUS app. Asus additionally consists of colour calibration profiles to lock the show to sRGB, DCI-P3, Show-P3, or simply depart it unclamped at its native gamut.
Show setttings
The OLED panel has excellent picture high quality, with distinctive colour accuracy, distinction, and viewing angles. The decision is ample, and supplies a sufficiently sharp and excessive decision picture, particularly on the measurement. The 600 nits brightness is greater than ample for indoor use and can also be wonderful open air except you end up beneath direct daylight.
The 120Hz refresh fee is a good accompaniment to the stellar picture. You get very fluid scrolling, which is aided by OLED’s phenomenal response instances which can be close to instantaneous. HDR efficiency can also be fairly spectacular however with no Dolby Imaginative and prescient help, you’re restricted to static metadata HDR10 content material solely.
The show does have two controversial features. First is the 16:9 side ratio, which is nice for media consumption however not for productiveness and even internet shopping. The second is the shiny panel, which is terrific if you end up in a pitch-dark room however anyplace else you’re continually combating reflections.
That apart, it is onerous to not be impressed by the show on the Vivobook S 15. Asus has finished a fantastic job on this one.
Keyboard and trackpad
The Vivobook S 15 has a normal chiclet-style keyboard with 1.7mm key journey and a numpad on the facet. The keys have a single-zone RGB backlight, which could be personalized within the MyASUS app.
The keyboard is comfy with first rate journey. The keys are barely huge with much less spacing than a typical chiclet-style which takes some getting used to however as soon as finished it was a breeze to kind on. I’m personally a bit break up on the devoted numpad on the proper, particularly since Asus has proven it may have a digital numpad on the trackpad that features simply as nicely, and I would somewhat have an evenly spaced keyboard and trackpad.
What I am not break up on is the pointless new Copilot key, which replaces the proper management key. All this does is launch the Copilot ‘app’, which additionally occurs to be only a window in Edge, and one thing you possibly can simply pin to the taskbar. All that is on high of the doubtful worth that Copilot brings. I would a lot somewhat have my management key again, please.
As talked about earlier than, the keyboard options RGB backlighting, which feels a bit odd for a tool of this nature. You possibly can regulate the lighting colour, sample, and brightness from the MyASUS app however since it is a single-zone lighting, it should apply uniformly to your entire keyboard. The backlighting is not very shiny and has the unlucky facet impact of creating the important thing legends tough to see throughout the day as the sunshine simply blends with the silver surrounds, particularly if you happen to decide a impartial colour like white.
Under the keyboard is the somewhat sizable trackpad. The sleek glass floor makes this a pleasure to make use of, though one may argue if it must be this massive. Asus has assigned some gestures to the highest and facet edges, which management issues like quantity, brightness, and playback however I discovered myself triggering them unintentionally too typically. Fortunately, you possibly can simply disable them however you must disable all of them and never simply the one which’s getting in your manner.
The trackpad is hinged on the high as is often the case however you possibly can click on on an excellent 80% of it and get a satisfying response, with solely the highest edge being unable to maneuver.
One recurring problem I had with the trackpad was it will confuse a two-finger scroll gesture within the browser for a pinch-to-zoom gesture. The web page would briefly zoom in a bit earlier than scrolling. This can be a difficulty with the trackpad driver that may doubtlessly be mounted with an replace.
ASUS additionally despatched over its MD100 Marshmallow Mouse Steve Harrington Version, a cutesy system with a cool sample and a useful strap that may be tucked away when not wanted. It is a first rate mouse with Bluetooth and wi-fi connectivity, gentle clicks and scroll wheel, and a slim, light-weight design.
Audio and webcam
The Vivobook S 15 has a pair of bottom-firing Harmon Kardon-tuned audio system. The audio system have first rate audio high quality, particularly when the bundled Dolby Atmos app is enabled. There is not a lot bass however voices sound clear with good timbre.
I used to be not significantly impressed by the headphone jack output. Whereas it acquired very loud, there was noticeable background noise coming by the jack. The sound was additionally oddly mild on bass and all the things sounded skinny and flat by default with the Atmos app disabled. I would not advocate utilizing the Atmos app for headphones because it brings extra distortion with it. Sadly, even if you happen to flip it off, it in some way manages to show itself on once more.
The webcam high quality is mediocre. A lot was made in regards to the picture processing of the Snapdragon chips however I am not seeing it. It appears like another webcam, which is to say it is wonderful for the informal video name however it is best to nonetheless take into account an aftermarket digicam if you happen to want it typically.
{Hardware} and connectivity
The Vivobook S 15 S5507 runs on the Snapdragon X Elite X1E 78 100 chipset. It options 12 CPU cores that may clock as much as 3.4GHz together with the Adreno X1 GPU clocked at 1250MHz.
The X1E 78 100 is likely one of the 4 Snapdragon X Elite fashions and is technically the runt of the litter. Not solely does it have the bottom enhance clock pace, nevertheless it’s additionally the one one with no single or dual-core enhance like on the opposite chips, which might quickly enhance one or two of their cores even larger. The GPU can also be slower than the highest two fashions.
Paired with the chip is 16GB or 32GB of LPDDR5X reminiscence clocked at 8448MHz. In contrast to Apple’s M-series chips, the Snapdragon X Elite doesn’t embody the reminiscence on-die. Reasonably, it is soldered onto the motherboard like on most different notebooks as of late. Whereas it is good {that a} 32GB choice exists, it appears it is solely out there in choose areas, and ours solely got here in 16GB with no different choice out there.
For storage, our assessment unit had a 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD with a 512GB choice out there in some areas. Fortunately, the SSD here’s a customary 2280 M.2 drive, which might simply get replaced must you require extra storage.
Regardless of what you would possibly assume, the Vivobook S 15 has a decently-sized cooling system inside with twin followers cooling twin warmth pipes. There are not any fanless notebooks but based mostly on this chip since it may pull a good bit of energy. However extra on that later.
In terms of connectivity, the Vivobook S 15 does rather well, particularly in comparison with its rivals. You get two full-size USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports on the proper with 5Gbps bandwidth and on the left are two USB 4.0 Gen 3 Kind-C ports, which help 40Gbps bandwidth and quick charging. There’s additionally an HDMI 2.1 TDMS port right here however in actuality, it is simply HDMI 2.0 when it comes to precise bandwidth. Lastly, there’s a microSD card reader and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
For wi-fi connectivity, you get tri-band Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) and Bluetooth 5.4 with LE audio.
Software program
The Vivobook S 15 comes with Home windows 11 Residence Version put in. That is clearly the model constructed for the ARM 64-bit platform, and virtually all of the apps that come pre-installed are additionally constructed for ARM.
By way of bloatware, Asus is usually fairly good. There are only a handful of Asus apps which can be pre-installed, all of which could be eliminated. Nonetheless, it is best to maintain the MyASUS app because it provides an enormous array of settings for the system together with the flexibility to improve the system firmware, which is separate from the Home windows updates.
Being an ARM-based system, there was all the time going to be a query mark on how the system runs all of the apps you’re used to operating on a Home windows machine. This was a significant bugbear of early ARM-based Home windows units, which may solely run a choose few apps from the Home windows retailer that had been constructed for ARM.
Luckily, we have now come a good distance since then, and making issues rather a lot simpler this time round is Prism, the Home windows emulator that allows you to run x86-64 apps on the system with out you even realizing it. Significantly, all you must do is set up the app as you usually would and it simply runs as you’d anticipate it to. Effectively, besides if it is a recreation, however extra on that within the Efficiency part.
Nonetheless, emulation is not a free lunch, and there’s a price to translating the app to a different structure each time you’re operating it. When you will not discover the distinction a lot in light-weight apps apart from some delayed launch instances, extra demanding apps will run noticeably slower.
That is the place native ARM apps are available in. Fortunately, with a bit little bit of looking out, you possibly can often discover an ARM model of your app. Typically will probably be in beta and even alpha however relying on the character of the app can nonetheless run vastly higher than a steady x86-64 model. The previous month or so of utilizing the Vivobook S 15 despatched me down the rabbit gap of discovering the ARM model of each app I take advantage of and it was really sort of enjoyable. I used to be shocked to see simply what number of apps do have an ARM model now, at the very least in some state of growth. Funnily sufficient, it was often the apps with small dev groups who had been fast on the uptake however even greater apps like DaVinci Resolve and Photoshop now have a local ARM model.
The mixture of a sturdy emulator and a rising library of native apps means Home windows on ARM is presently in an excellent place, at the very least so far as each day or generally used productiveness apps. After all, there can be circumstances the place the emulator would not work nicely neither is there a local app out there however at the very least in my utilization I by no means got here throughout this state of affairs. Primarily based on my private expertise as of August 2024, I would not hesitate to advocate Home windows ARM notebooks to on a regular basis house or workplace customers.
Efficiency
Productiveness
The Vivobook S 15 has 4 ‘Fan profile’ choices within the MyASUS app which, counterintuitively, are literally the ability restrict choices that in flip additionally have an effect on the fan speeds. You get Whisper mode, which targets 20W as the height energy worth, Commonplace, which is the default, targets 35W, Efficiency (45W), and at last, Full-speed mode, which targets 50W.
It is necessary to notice these energy figures as that is the one actual data we get concerning how a lot energy this chip pulls. Qualcomm has not offered entry to any of the ability consumption metrics from the chip so although apps like HWiNFO can entry data concerning clock speeds and temperatures, there’s completely no knowledge out there on the quantity of energy being pulled.
No matter which energy profile you choose, the chip can hit the said 3.4GHz throughout all 12 cores. Whisper can solely maintain 3.4GHz in an all-core workload for a few seconds earlier than dropping all the way down to 2.2GHz for the remaining length. Commonplace stays a couple of seconds longer earlier than dropping all the way down to 2.7GHz. Efficiency will drop all the way down to 3GHz and Full-speed will preserve 3.4GHz till it hits its 95-degree thermal restrict. The chip regulates the variety of cores it may assign to a process in batches of 4, so you will see 4, eight, or all twelve cores being energetic relying on the duty.
With all that in thoughts, the next benchmarks had been run utilizing the Full-speed profile in MyASUS and the Home windows energy profile left on the default Balanced. All makes an attempt had been made to get the ARM model of the benchmark wherever potential however sadly, among the checks are nonetheless x86 solely.
| Benchmark | Class | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Cinebench R23 (x86) | Single | 1120 |
| Multi | 12753 | |
| Cinebench 2024 | Single | 107 |
| Multi | 1130 | |
| Blender (Classroom) | Time (seconds) | 372 |
| 7-Zip | Compression | 91781 |
| Decompression | 90799 | |
| Geekbench 6 | Single | 2446 |
| Multi | 14277 | |
| GPU (Vulkan) | 23662 | |
| Geekbench AI | CPU (Quantized) | 5837 |
| NPU (Quantized) | 21633 | |
| Corona 10 (x86) | Rays/s | 4332801 |
| WebXPRT 4 | Total | 280 |
| JetStream 2 | Rating | 282 |
| Speedometer 3.0 | Rating | 20.9 |
As talked about earlier than, there’s a penalty for utilizing emulation and you’re looking at anyplace from 12.5% in 7-Zip to an enormous 74% worse efficiency in Blender when switching from the native ARM to the x86 model.
| Benchmark | Class | Rating (ARM) | Rating (x86) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blender (Classroom) | Time (seconds) | 372 | 646 |
| 7-ZIP | Compression | 91781 | 80377 |
| Decompression | 90799 | 79341 |
The 4 energy profiles in MyASUS have a proportionately larger affect on efficiency as you go down the checklist. From Full-speed to Efficiency, you lose about 9% efficiency in Blender within the Classroom scene. Happening to the default Commonplace makes you lose about 22% of the efficiency of Full-speed after which lastly at Whisper, you lose a major 53% of the efficiency.
| Benchmark | Energy profile | Time (seconds) |
|---|---|---|
| Blender (Classroom) | Full-speed | 372 |
| Efficiency | 404 | |
| Commonplace | 451 | |
| Whisper | 567 |
Nonetheless, as you possibly can see, even operating on the lowest energy stage is healthier than operating in x86 for Blender, because the Whisper mode on ARM outperforms Full-speed in x86.
On battery, the ability profiles in MyASUS app don’t change and you may nonetheless get the identical efficiency, offered you allow the Home windows energy profile to Steadiness. Nonetheless, by default, Home windows switches to the Greatest Energy Effectivity profile on battery, which has a extreme affect on measurable efficiency.
| Benchmark | Class | Time (seconds) |
|---|---|---|
| Blender (Classroom) | Energy | 372 |
| Battery | 750 |
Now for some real-life testing. I attempted utilizing the Vivobook S 15 in a typical house use case consisting largely of internet shopping and media consumption and likewise in a extra productivity-oriented setting with heavy picture and video enhancing.
Within the former, the Vivobook S 15 carried out flawlessly. No matter whether or not you’re on energy or battery, there all the time appears to be ample energy out there and the system feels fast and responsive. After all, this was largely when operating native ARM apps however even non-native apps appeared to run wonderful more often than not outdoors of benchmarks to the purpose it was simple to neglect they had been operating beneath emulation.
When it got here to heavier productiveness duties, there was an issue, and it was not the Snapdragon chip. Seems, the chip has sufficient energy to deal with the issues that I do for work, which is enhancing high-resolution RAW photos in Affinity Photograph (which additionally is available in native ARM) and sometimes enhancing a 4K video in DaVinci Resolve (additionally ARM however in beta). I used to be in a position to energy by these apps with out experiencing any main slowdowns. That’s till I hit the bounds of the 16GB reminiscence. Sadly, this merely is not ample to do any actual productiveness work on the system, and the second I opened greater than three RAW recordsdata or bigger video tasks, the efficiency floor to a halt.
As talked about earlier than, Asus does supply a 32GB reminiscence choice in some markets. That will be the go-to if you happen to plan on doing memory-heavy duties. Sadly, not having that choice in every single place appears like leaving efficiency on the desk because the Snapdragon X Elite chip, and thus the Vivobook S 15, is able to extra however is held again by the 16GB configuration. Residence customers in all probability would not take care of internet and media functions however then once more, you may as well simply use an iPad if that is all you wish to do.
The 1TB drive that got here with our Vivobook S 15 carried out fairly nicely. It isn’t the quickest drive we have now seen however for the use circumstances this system is designed for it ought to be ample.
Gaming
That is the place issues go pear-shaped for the Vivobook S 15 and the ARM-based Home windows platform generally.
That is the unlucky actuality of the present scenario; there are merely no video games out there for Home windows on the time of writing which can be based mostly on the ARM structure. This implies each recreation you strive should undergo emulation, which impacts video games disproportionately in comparison with common apps.
All of the video games I attempted (and I attempted rather a lot) fell into three classes:
- The sport put in, launched, and ran as anticipated with lowered efficiency
- The sport put in, launched, however had graphical errors and/or unplayable efficiency
- The sport put in however couldn’t be launched
A small subset of video games fell within the first class. They put in and functioned kind of as they’d on a local x86 system. The typical body fee wasn’t nice owing to the emulation, lack of drivers, or only a basic lack of GPU efficiency, nevertheless it was steady and playable. Some examples of those embody titles like Management, Metro Exodus, Alien: Isolation, Stray, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Sadly, many of the video games fell into the second and third classes. Whereas some video games launched wonderful, the efficiency was typically unplayable. In case you had been to simply take a look at common body charges, you would possibly make the error of considering the sport runs wonderful however the body time efficiency was everywhere with huge spikes that made the sport tough to play and not possible to take pleasure in. This consists of titles equivalent to God of Warfare, Outer Wilds, Resident Evil 3, Counter-Strike 2, and Overwatch 2.
Some titles appeared to run wonderful however had visible points. The Tomb Raider I-III Remastered assortment, for instance, ran completely however was too darkish, which made it tough to see. A few others additionally had artifacts like flashing textures and visible glitches whereas enjoying.
Then some video games merely wouldn’t even launch. This included titles like Demise Stranding and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The primary immediately crashes on launch. The second, like many others, searches for suitable drivers seemingly from Nvidia or AMD, and upon not discovering any throws the system would not meet minimal necessities message and peaces out. Then there was Doom Everlasting, which initially didn’t launch in any respect, then later would launch and crash after the opening logos, and most lately would launch and attain the menu earlier than crashing.
A overwhelming majority of video games that will not launch had been multiplayer titles with anti-cheat. Even when the sport itself would run beneath emulation, the anti-cheat software program would forestall the sport from launching because of an incompatibility error. In some circumstances like Elden Ring the place the multiplayer is an non-obligatory element of the sport, it was potential to bypass the anti-cheat and instantly launch the sport to play offline. However with titles like Fall Guys, there isn’t any manner in.
The issue right here is twofold. Firstly, recreation builders are going to should construct native variations of their titles to have the ability to run correctly. Within the interim, a few of them may at the very least make them launch in order that even when the efficiency is not nice, one may nonetheless at the very least get into the sport and possibly with a little bit of fiddling round with the settings, have a considerably playable expertise. Second, Qualcomm wants to begin delivery graphics drivers for titles. Nvidia does this, AMD does it, and now even Intel does it. There is no such thing as a getting round it and if Qualcomm must be taken significantly on this area, it additionally must meet up with the others.
Microsoft has included a temporal picture upscaling resolution in Home windows referred to as Computerized tremendous decision, which runs a handful of whitelisted video games at a decrease inside decision after which upscales them. Sadly, all of the titles I attempted that supported this function appeared terrible because the decision is much too low and non-adjustable. You might be much better off launching the sport usually and utilizing no matter picture upscaling expertise the sport comes with, like TSR, FSR, or XeSS.
In case you’re questioning why there are not any recreation benchmarks on this web page, the reply for that’s that the benchmarking device I take advantage of wasn’t in a position to run appropriately. Initially, it would not work in any respect and later having the device operating would trigger any recreation launched to crash instantly, even when the sport would run in any other case.
By way of precise playability, I used to be in a position to get less complicated titles to run fairly nicely sufficient. I may, for instance, play Inside or Gris nicely sufficient on the system. Fundamental 2D titles just like the Ace Legal professional sequence additionally ran wonderful. I used to be additionally in a position to run Management at a fairly steady body fee. The trick with these was to all the time simply drop the decision to the bottom quantity you possibly can tolerate, which for me was 720p on this display screen after which set all the things to the bottom settings.
One may argue that the chip is not geared toward players neither is Asus’ Vivobook sequence generally. Nonetheless, the sensation I had enjoying video games on the system was that there was ample energy right here to get a PS4-level of efficiency, which is to say, 1080p with medium settings and 30fps locked body fee. That is not too unhealthy, however for that to occur there would have to be native titles out there, in addition to optimized drivers from Qualcomm.
Funnily sufficient, the Mac now has a good variety of native ARM titles out there for it. You’ve titles like Resident Evil 4, Baldur’s Gate 3, Murderer’s Creed Mirage, Demise Stranding Director’s Lower, and a number of other others natively out there on the Mac App Retailer, with extra within the pipeline. Not solely is there not a single ARM title out there for Home windows, nobody has even made any claims to launch them sooner or later. It is so bizarre to see macOS and Home windows swapping locations on the subject of video games when switching over to ARM.
Funnier nonetheless, our Vivobook S 15 got here with three months of Xbox PC Recreation Move Final membership. The factor is, you possibly can’t entry most of those video games for the reason that Xbox app on ARM will merely not present any of them to you. You possibly can obtain a handful from the Microsoft Retailer app however once I say handful, I actually imply handful. A lot of the others won’t present up within the retailer in any respect or won’t allow you to obtain them citing compatibility causes. It is potential the Recreation Move membership was a one-off factor for assessment models because it is unnecessary to bundle this for precise shoppers.
Lengthy story brief, gaming, for probably the most half, is a no-go on the Vivobook S 15 in the meanwhile and if that is an issue then this is not the system nor the platform for you.
Thermals
The Vivobook S 15 has a decently sized thermal resolution regardless of what one would possibly anticipate from an ARM chip. The reality is, the Snapdragon X Elite can pull a variety of energy, and operating it fanless would not appear to be an choice for the second.
As such, the followers on the Vivobook S 15 are virtually all the time operating. Nonetheless, by default they’re so quiet, you’ll not often hear them, even in a quiet room. The one technique to get the followers audible is to run the 2 larger energy profiles and do one thing closely multi-threaded on the CPU. For all the things else, it is virtually like having a fanless system.
Whereas the fan noise is pretty nice on the Commonplace and even the Efficiency mode, the Full-speed profile appears like summoning a demon as instantly the followers get very loud. After all, regardless of the identify, the followers will solely spin as much as their full pace when doing one thing extraordinarily taxing on the CPU, that means you may as well simply run the system on this profile and never hear the followers in any respect till you determine to run Cinebench for some cause.
Beneath load, the underside half of the keyboard deck stays at a snug temperature though the world above the highest row will get fairly heat.
Battery life
The Vivobook S 15 has a 70Wh battery. Asus makes a somewhat daring declare of 18+ hours of battery life, a determine they obtained whereas enjoying video domestically.
For my testing, I left the system on the default Commonplace mode within the MyASUS app and the Greatest Energy Effectivity profile in Home windows settings. The show was set to 60% brightness and the keyboard lighting was off. The Adaptive Edge Brightness function was left on the default worth of two. All different battery-saving and standby mode options had been disabled.
Utilizing these settings, I acquired about 12 hours of pure internet shopping in Edge. For video, I acquired about 14 hours when enjoying YouTube 4K and 15 hours when enjoying Netflix 1080p.
The Home windows Greatest Energy Effectivity profile is completely ample for internet shopping and media consumption. Nonetheless, you’d wish to change to Balanced if you wish to do productiveness work on the go, because it makes a giant distinction to efficiency. It additionally has a significant affect on battery life and I acquired about 6-8 hours when attempting to do blended productiveness duties on this mode, which concerned enhancing RAW recordsdata in Affinity Photograph and watching the occasional YouTube video.
One nice function of all these new ARM-based PCs is that the idle energy draw is considerably lowered. I can shut the lid and depart the PC in a single day solely to search out about 3% drained within the morning.
Total, the battery life on the Vivobook S 15 is unbelievable. I used to be in a position to go on a two-day journey with out the charger and nonetheless had energy left once I got here again. The effectivity positive aspects over earlier x86 chips are actual and you’re not blowing loopy quantities of energy for fundamental duties. If all you do is a few hours of internet shopping or watching Netflix in a day, you will not must cost greater than as soon as per week.
Talking of charging, the Vivobook S 15 comes with a 90W USB-C charger. Wanting on the HWiNFO figures, the machine was pulling about 72W whereas charging. I additionally tried a 65W USB-C PD charger, which Home windows promptly informed me wasn’t quick, and it pushed about 48W. Contemplating the battery lifetime of the Vivobook S 15, you possibly can simply carry a single high-power USB-PD cellphone charger for all of your units for a brief journey as a substitute of lugging across the a lot bigger and heavier Vivobook S 15 charger.
One factor to notice is that the left edge will get extraordinarily scorching when the system is charging. The floor temperature is larger than even whereas operating one thing CPU-demanding on the system. If you’re utilizing the system whereas charging, your left hand goes to begin feeling it quickly.
Conclusion
The Vivobook S 15 S5507 is a wonderful system for house and workplace customers. It is skinny and light-weight but well-built, has a incredible show, a wide variety of ports, a snug keyboard and trackpad, quiet operation, and an distinctive battery life. The general efficiency for internet shopping, workplace work, internet shopping, and even mild picture and picture enhancing is greater than ample.
What the machine is not good at is heavy manufacturing work because of the restricted 16GB-only reminiscence configuration out there in some areas and the 16:9 side ratio show, and the gaming expertise was largely poor because of a scarcity of native titles and driver help.
If you’re in search of a jack of all trades, this would possibly not be the choice for you and also you may be higher off trying on the new Ryzen AI 300 fashions. However for these doing largely house, workplace, or faculty work with a little bit of media consumption on the facet, the Vivobook S 15 is a extremely compelling choice that is solely going to get higher with time.
Professionals
- Skinny, mild, and well-built design
- Wonderful show
- Nice general efficiency from the Snapdragon chip
- Good keyboard and trackpad
- Barely audible cooling
- Excellent battery life in mild utilization
- Good number of ports
Cons
- 16GB not sufficient for productiveness; 32GB has restricted availability
- Poor gaming expertise
- 16:9 side ratio not very best for productiveness
- Dim keyboard backlight
- Replaces the proper Ctrl key with a pointless Copilot button
