Asus Vivobook S 15 review: new chip in a throwback laptop

Asus Vivobook S 15

MSRP $1,100.00

Score Details

“The Asus Vivobook S15 is the best large-display Copilot+ laptop so far in an old-school form factor.”

Pros

• Reasonably affordable
• Very good OLED display
• Surprisingly fast
• Excellent battery life

Cons

• Old-school 16:9 display
• Keyboard isn't great

Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC initiative is focused first on support for AI with faster neural processing units (NPUs). Copilot+ was first introduced on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chipsets running Windows on Arm, promising better efficiency than Intel with good performance. So far, the results have been mixed but mostly positive — with Apple’s Arm-based M3 laptops retaining their superior battery life even while being a bit slower.

The Asus Vivobook S 15 is another Qualcomm-based Copilot+ PC, coming in an old-school 16:9 aspect ratio for a wider laptop. It’s fast and gets good battery life, and it’s reasonably priced. If you’re OK with the trend-bucking display, then it’s a reasonable alternative in a 15-inch laptop meeting the CoPilot+ specifications.

Specs and configurations

There are currently two configurations of the Vivobook S 15, starting at $1,100 for a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 15.6-inch 3K OLED display. For $1,300 list (on sale for the same $1,100), you get a Snapdragon X Elite chipset and a 1TB SSD.

That’s a fair price for a well-equipped 15-inch laptop, and it’s similar in price to most of the new Microsoft CoPilot+ PC laptops. It’s about $100 more than the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 with the same Snapdragon X Plus chipset that doesn’t have an OLED display. The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is considerably more expensive, costing at least $1,500 for a Snapdragon X Elite and a 16-inch 3K OLED display, so at least $300 more.

Design

The Vivobook is within the Asus midrange laptop lineup, as opposed to the more premium Zenbook lineup — although that’s not always reflected in pricing. The very good Zenbook 14 Q425, for example, can be had for well under $1,000. Sometimes, Vivobooks provide better performance at lower prices. So, it’s hard to pigeonhole the Vivobook S 15.

The reason I bring that up is because one thing I immediately noticed was that the Vivobook doesn’t feel as premium as most Zenbooks I’ve reviewed. In particular, the lid is quite bendable, and there’s some give in the chassis and keyboard deck. Zenbooks tend to be more rock-solid. It falls a bit behind some other Copilot+ PC laptops like the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441, the HP OmniBook X, and the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x.

Aesthetically, the Vivobook S 15 follows suit with so many other recent laptops with very simple lines, single color way (in this case, all black), and little or no chrome. As with almost all laptops today, the Vivobook is attractive enough but plays it safe. The Yoga Slim 7x has more character, while the Inspiron 14 Plus is even more nondescript. To say the Vivobook S 15 looks just OK seems fair.

It’s reasonably thin and light, in line with most Copilot+ laptops. In fact, it’s almost identical to the Inspiron 14 Plus. But it’s larger, obviously, given the 15.6-inch display and larger top and bottom display bezels (the sides are quite thin). And the Vivobook S 15 looks very old-school thanks to the 16:9 display aspect ratio that makes it seem wider and more rectangular (because it is). I rarely review a laptop that’s not 16:10 or 3:2, and so the Vivobook takes me back a bit.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard has large keycaps and enough, taking up most of the available space on the wide keyboard deck. The numeric keypad, which is becoming anachronistic, is quite small and so the Vivobook leverages its wider chassis for a keyboard that’s comfortable to use. My biggest problem with it is that the switches are a bit loose and felt sort of wobbly to me. They also weren’t as snappy as some, making it feel a bit mushy. Every other Copilot+ laptop I’ve reviewed has a better keyboard.

The touchpad was large enough and its buttons were reasonably quiet. I’d rate it as similar to most mechanical touchpads I’ve reviewed lately, but more and more laptops are moving to the vastly superior haptic touchpads. Maybe it’s all about price points, but only the Dell XPS 13 9345 has a haptic version among Copilot+ laptops I’ve reviewed.

Connectivity and webcam

The Vivobook S 15 has solid connectivity, with a mix of modern and legacy ports. Given the Qualcomm chipset, we’re seeing USB4 and not Intel’s Thunderbolt 4, but the two protocols are similar in speed and capabilities. Then there’s a microSD card reader, which some laptops have been skipping — although I always prefer a full-size slot. Wireless connectivity is fully up-to-date with the latest Wi-Fi 7.

The webcam is 1080p, which has become the new standard, and there’s an infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition. The fast NPU with up to 45 tera operations per second (TOPS) exceeds the Copilot+ specification of 40 TOPS, and right now it supports Copilot+ features like enhanced Microsoft Studio Effects, Live Captions, and Cocreator. The controversial Recall feature, which was the standout when the Copilot+ PC initiative was announced, remains on hold. Asus also includes a host of utilities that might use the NPU to some extent, but it’s hard to quantify at this point.

Performance

According to the Asus website, Vivobook S 15 is supposed to equip either a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100 or the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100. However, my review unit arrived with the Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100, a newer model that’s been slipstreamed into the Snapdragon X Plus lineup. That’s the slowest Snapdragon X chipset, with eight cores running at 3.4GHz. That’s per various online sources and not from Qualcomm’s site, which doesn’t yet list this model. It compares to the Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100 that we’ve reviewed, which features 10 cores running at 3.4GHz. Neither chipset has the dual-core boost of the faster Snapdragon X Elite chipsets. The X1P-42-100 also has the slowest Adreno GPU running at 1.7 teraflops (TFLOPS), behind the 3.8 or 4.6 TFLOPS of the faster chipsets.

Surprisingly, the Vivobook S 15 was much faster than the Inspiron 14 Plus with the theoretically faster Snapdragon X Plus chipset. The Vivobook was almost as fast as some Snapdragon X Elite machines. So that’s hard to understand. We do see, though, the impact of the slower Adreno GPU in the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme benchmark.

That means the Vivobook S 15 will be very fast for productivity tasks, but it will be even slower than the already-slow Snapdragon X laptops for gaming and creative tasks. The choice of chipsets is an odd one for a laptop with a large OLED display that will be attractive to anyone wanting to use the laptop for photo or video editing.

One thing we can’t yet determine is how well the Vivobook S 15 — or any other Copilot+ laptop — will perform at running AI tasks. The on-board NPU is fast as far as NPUs go, but those are generally intended for running AI on-device and more efficiently. Discrete GPUs remain much faster. The challenge, though, is in how to benchmark AI performance. Current tools aren’t quite there yet, leaving us scratching our heads.

Battery life

I’ve included a bunch of comparison laptops here, because perhaps the most important aspect of the Qualcomm chipsets is that they’re Arm-based and thus promise better efficiency than previous Intel and AMD chipsets. As we can see, that’s largely true — although the Intel laptops I’ve included here have better-than-average battery life for the Intel Meteor Lake platform. Most Intel laptops get around eight hours in web browsing and around 12 hours of video looping.

The Vivobook S 15 fits the pattern, getting very good battery life in web browsing and even better in video looping. At the same time, it’s also clear that as you push the Qualcomm laptops harder, their relative efficiency drops off. That’s demonstrated when running the demanding Cinebench 2024 multi-core test, although the Vivobook does reasonably well. The Apple MacBook Air M3 remains the most efficient laptop, especially with more demanding tasks.

Display and audio

As mentioned above, the Vivobook S 15 has a wider 16:9 display, which has pretty much given way completely to the taller 16:10. If you want to watch video without black borders, then you’ll like the OLED display. Of course, most people also want to get work done, and that’s why taller displays have become almost universal.

I can’t complain about the OLED panel’s quality, though. I have yet to review a laptop with an OLED display that was anything less than awesome. The Vivobook’s display didn’t disappoint. It was very bright at 415 nits with the usual perfect black and an excellent contrast ratio of 28,230:1. Colors were typically wide at 100% of sRGB, 97% of AdobeRGB, and 100% of DCI-P3, and color accuracy was just a hair above excellent at a Delta-E of 1.13.

You’ll love this display, especially if you watch a lot of video.

Audio was just OK, with two downward-firing speakers. Use headphones or an external speakers for anything more than YouTube videos.

A reasonably priced Copilot+ laptop if you want a larger display

Most Copilot+ laptops have been 14 inches or smaller, leaving out those looking for a larger display. There’s a compromise in the 16:9 aspect ratio, so anyone who wants the best productivity experience will be disappointed. It’s great for media consumption, though.

Performance is surprisingly good given the slower Snapdragon X Plus chipset, while battery life is good but not nearly the best. And the price is reasonably attractive, but again, not a standout. But for now, it’s the most attractive Qualcomm machine that’s larger than 14 inches.