ASUS - Vivobook S 14 - 14" OLED Laptop - Copilot+ PC - Intel Core Ultra 5 - 16GB Memory - 512GB SSD - Neutral Black

My old Surface Book finally died so I've been in the market for a general all-purpose laptop for light work and home use, and knew I wanted either Intel's Lunar Lake or AMD's Strix Point. The ASUS Vivobook came up on sale and without too many professional reviews out there, decided that it was too good to pass up and give it a try at $650 ($300 off). Overall, really really good and happy with this! Pros: -Battery Life. The battery is genuinely fantastic and as advertised, getting close to Snapdragon X levels. No formal benchmarking tools for me but taking it on a holiday trip and it lasted a whole day doing web browsing, streaming a basketball game, and testing out some games while visiting family. It handled it no problem over the entire day which is all I can ask for. -Performance. A lot of reviews talk about the Core Ultra Series 2 CPUs being weaker in multithreading from the last gen, but honestly for day to day use it's been fine for me. Web, Email, Office, Streaming are all perfectly fine which is what I'd expect at this price point. Andrew Marc David has a great review on YouTube showing that the Core Ultra 5 is not too far behind the Core Ultra 7 in performance, and on sale the price difference seemed worth the sacrifice for the lower end model. 16 GB of RAM is fine for general use as well. -Build. Really solid metal build. Zenbooks seem lauded for their chassis so I was worried that Vivobooks would feel much cheaper, but the metal construction is solid and the 14 inch laptop size is great and lightweight. -Features/Ports. OLED screen is great and beautiful, especially at this price point. Love having both USB-C and A, as I still have tons of USB A devices and charging cables. Full sized HDMI port is great to avoid needing adapters. -Light Gaming. There's no dedicated GPU, but using PC Game Pass I can play light games without an issue. Small games like Pentiment, Ori and the Blind Forest, and tried out the game Nine Sols and they all run just fine. Pretty nice for integrated graphics to play some older games or indies, which is great for me to pass the time. Cons: -Fingerprint Magnet. The metal chassis is nice, but definitely leaves fingerprints everywhere. Throw a micro fiber cloth in your bag if you're OCD about it looking clean. -Other Features. Hard to be picky at this price, but it would be nice to get a higher refresh rate screen since this is only 60hz, and there's also no touch screen. Not a huge deal for me, but people that are looking for those in a laptop and you'll need to look at higher end options. Overall, extremely happy with this laptop. It's already been on a plane with me and travels well because it's light weight, and performance is great for office use and light gaming. Power users will probably look elsewhere or want 32 GB RAM since the RAM isn't ugpradeable, and gamers will probably want AMD Strix Point or a dedicated Nvidia GPU, but I definitely recommended for anyone that just needs a portable machine for home and office work that doesn't break the bank.

This is a very nice thin and light sporting notable features like an OLED screen, Intel's Lunar Lake processor for greater electrical efficiency and longer battery life, good I/O with 2 thunderbolt ports as well as 2 - 10 Gbps USB ports and Wifi 7. All of the components are very nice quality and have a good feel. The screen is gorgeous, though 1920x1200 and 60 Hz, which for me is perfectly good at the 14" size. Battery life and electrical efficiency appear to be as advertised, in other words, it's a step up for intel chips and makes it more competitive with Apple M chips. The machine supports 2 external monitors for a total of 3 screens at one time. It also comes with a micro SD slot which is nice. The performance is good and should meet most everyday type needs. You can do more intense compute tasks but they just take longer such as a video render. It is not meant to be workstation substitute. It has AI stuff in it. I don't know what to do with it, but if I ever do, I'm ready. Linux is almost there. I tried Ubuntu MATE 24.10 for a little bit by running it from an external drive and noticed that YouTube videos were skipping a few frames on a consistent basis and it wouldn't connect to the wifi network automatically after waking from suspension. I got it on sale with an extra discount for some BB membership at $550. At that price there's little competition if this meets your performance needs.

Overall this is a very good productivity laptop, great for office work/docs, can casually game esport titles. First off, the display of this device is fantastic, colors pop and it's bright. The refresh rate is only 60hz but if this is on sale, it's still a deal below $600. When shut, the lid does not stay flush with the rest of the laptop, which really doesn't effect anything but makes you question build quality. Given Asus lately questionable support reputation this does not inspire confidence. Keyboard is very good, feels great to type on and customizable backlight is a bonus (under windows settings - personalization). Setting fan profiles (Alt + F) is a breeze and fans are moderately loud at full performance mode but still a big improvement over the last two gens of Intel. Runs hot as expected under load but coil wine is minimal, like a noticeable gust more than anything. Performance is snappy, iGPU is very good, capable of handling Marvel Rivals on low, DOTA 2 and LOL on high with no sweat. Even DOOM (2016) runs great at medium/low settings. The only real cons of this device are the build quality and trackpad. Case is sturdy but gets dirty easily, big fingerprint magnet as other reviews point out. Trackpad is just sub par and doesn't register clicks, taps or scrolling reliably. You either need a mouse or to temper your expectations significantly. Screen is also very reflective which I'm not a fan of. Overall the value is there, if you're looking for a starter/student/basic/office laptop this is it and then some. Display is truly amazing to look at, but right now I am returning only because my m1 MacBook Air will suffice for at least another year.