Asus Vivobook 15 Thin and Light Laptop Review
Our Verdict
The Asus VivoBook 15 is capable of common tasks and a fleck of video game nostalgia, only information technology's not the upgrade you're looking for.
For
- Affordable
- Full keyboard layout
- Extremely light
- Aplenty port choice
Against
- Poor battery life
- Dull display
- Muffled sound
Tom's Guide Verdict
The Asus VivoBook 15 is capable of common tasks and a fleck of video game nostalgia, but it's not the upgrade you're looking for.
Pros
- +
Affordable
- +
Full keyboard layout
- +
Extremely light
- +
Ample port selection
Cons
- -
Poor battery life
- -
Tedious brandish
- -
Muffled sound
Asus VivoBook fifteen specs
Price: $399
CPU: Intel Core i3-1005G1
GPU: Intel UHD
RAM: 8GB
Storage: 128GB SSD
Display: 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080
Battery: five:20
Size: 14.i x 9.2 x 0.viii inches
Weight: 3.7 pounds
The Asus VivoBook xv is a budget laptop we had loftier hopes for. Upkeep laptops, as you lot might well know, ofttimes seem like they're too skillful to be true. The thought that you lot tin can become plenty performance to behave you through a few years at an exceptionally reasonable toll is quite enticing. But oft, when y'all're paying less, you're getting less, too.
In the example of the latest refresh of the Asus VivoBook 15, you're paying for less performance and less bombardment life and opting for a less vibrant display. In substitution, you go numerous ports, a sparse chassis, and a nearly edge-to-edge widescreen display, just this Asus VivoBook fifteen review will show how the event is merely a reminder of the compromises one has to brand to save money.
Asus VivoBook 15 review: Toll and Configurations
The $400 Asus VivoBook fifteen featured here is an Intel Core i3-1005G1 model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD storage. If you tin can spring an extra $200, y'all might consider another variant of the VivoBook 15 with an Intel i5-1035G1 processor and a 512GB SSD. There'south also an AMD option with a Ryzen 7 3700U processor and 512GB of storage for $650.
Asus VivoBook 15 review: Design
The Asus VivoBook 15 excels at dressing for the chore it wants. Its slate-gray chassis doesn't look like a budget laptop, and despite its plastic build and relative lightness — a mere three.7-pounds, lighter than the Acer Aspire v and HP fifteen (3.viii pounds and 4.4 pounds, respectively) — information technology all feels cohesive in its overall design and construction.
The inside of the VivoBook 15 reveals a keyboard fitted to the rest of the laptop like on Asus' premium models. The trackpad is flush on the wrist rest without beingness too obvious, and in that location'due south even a fingerprint scanner for locking upwards your system.
Asus managed to fit in a whole number pad without crowding the keyboard area, and in that location's enough room for comfortably resting your wrist while thumbing through your work.
The VivoBook 15's ErgoLift Swivel is one of its more helpful facets, as it angles the keyboard then that it's raised a fleck for more comfy typing when yous're seated at a desk-bound. It's a feature carried over from some of Asus' ROG gaming laptops (some of the best gaming laptops you can purchase) for increasing ergonomics on the go. It's dainty that the company implemented it into its lower-tier laptops.
Asus VivoBook 15 review: Ports
Buying a laptop with plenty of ports is a good idea if you're e'er considering docking the device and working with a full set up. The laptop's left side has ii traditional USB 2.0 Type-A ports, plus a status indicator light.
The right side has the residue of the bounty, housing a proprietary power jack, a USB 3.1 Type-A port, an HDMI two.0 port for tethering the laptop, and a combination headphone and microphone jack. There's a USB Type-C port, a rarity for a laptop in this price range, and a way for you to add an Ethernet port by mode of a compatible adapter.
There's likewise a MicroSD slot, which is a prissy-to-have and allows adding on storage space, merely I would have preferred a standard SD slot to work with my DSLR on the go.
Asus VivoBook 15 review: Display
The VivoBook 15's 15.6-inch, 1920 ten 1080 NanoEdge display offers little bezel on either side of the laptop, with a chip more at the height to suit the webcam. But beyond its widescreen look, the display's dim color profile and weird viewing angles make information technology an underwhelming device for consuming online video. It made episodes of vintage TV shows like Baywatch, already with a worn-in colour palette, look older than they are, while movies like the recent remake of Emma were extremely hard to meet in dark scenes.
In lab tests, the VivoBook 15 scored a beggarly 65 pct on the sRGB color gamut. While that's ahead of similarly-priced laptops, including the Acer Aspire 5, which scored 63 percentage, and the HP 15, which scored 67 pct, information technology's backside the manufacture average of 85 pct. Anecdotally, the display on the VivoBook fifteen is obviously off-kilter. I can get through a YouTube video without immediately recognizing information technology, but it becomes apparent once I switch displays. And while I was able to edit RAW photos in Adobe Lightroom, I felt more confident well-nigh the result merely after connecting to an external monitor with meliorate color reproduction.
The viewing angles of the VivoBook 15 are a flake odd, besides. Y'all have to look at the laptop at an exact bending — nigh 100 degrees — to see the display without a sheen. The issue affects dark colors, specifically black and grays, and if you lot rely on nighttime way inside well-nigh apps, it's hard to ignore. I institute the laptop hard to employ with the Windows 10 dark mode because of this sheen issue. It's also not very vivid, with the VivoBook fifteen maxing out at 205 nits in lab tests. The Acer Aspire 5 and HP 15 Laptop are brighter, measuring at 258 nits and 222 nits, respectively, though even those models are below the industry boilerplate of 268 nits. Whichever way you shake information technology, the VivoBook 15 isn't meant for a cinematic viewing experience.
Asus VivoBook fifteen review: Audio and Cameras
The bottom-facing dual speakers on the Asus VivoBook fifteen need a little boost. You lot can listen to music and sentry a movie without headphones, simply the audio will seem every bit if information technology's strained. The Midnight's Deep Bluish'due south strong melody, for case, came through clearly plenty, while the vocals seemed every bit if they were coming in from a distance. Bassier genres of music, like house and synthwave, sound just as hollow, and sometimes it'due south difficult to hear vocals fifty-fifty on podcasts. While I was watching Emma, I could barely hear the dialogue with the laptop set downwards on a tabular array. You're meliorate off pairing the laptop with external speakers to listen to anything.
The 720p congenital-in webcam exists equally a failsafe for when you're called into an unexpected video conference. But you lot'll want an external webcam to pair with the VivoBook xv, as the quality on the included i is comparable to a webcam I had over ten years agone. It's besides bad the camera is an after-thought even on upkeep laptops because at that place are so many students and professionals who could benefit from the presence of college quality video.
Asus VivoBook 15 review: Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard on the VivoBook 15 is a bit polarizing. The chiclet keys are comfy to blazon on, and there is ample backlighting to get piece of work done with the lights down low. I capeesh the number pad squeezed into the correct side of the keyboard and that it tin can be easily turned on and off with a Number Lock fundamental, like a full-sized external keyboard.
But after nearly an hour of working with the keyboard, I found myself frustrated by the distance between the keys. They're so widely spaced that it feels like trudging through the Sahara. I lost myself in the configuration any time the backlight went out. I also found the placement of a few keys, Page Upwards and Folio Down, farther apart than where I naturally wanted to rest my fingers. Plan to work with this laptop docked if you lot want to get things washed.
Trying to use Windows x gestures on the VivoBook 15's iv.1 ten 2.9-inch trackpad proved annoying at times. I found myself with lots of unwanted swipes, and so I just turned them off. The trackpad could be a bit bigger, as it feels off-center at its current placement and width.
Asus VivoBook fifteen review: Performance
The VivoBook'southward Intel Cadre-i3 processor and 8GB of RAM are quite able, despite their mediocre benchmarks. I was able to sift through dozens of Google Chrome tabs, plus shuffle through my cloud-based library in Adobe Lightroom without the fans sounding like they were readying for takeoff. I gave the integrated Intel UHD graphics a spin to encounter if it could run an erstwhile favorite. I loaded upwardly Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the VivoBook 15 maintained between xviii and 25 frames-per-second as I walked through low-quality-rendered snowy mountains.
It seems like you tin can practise plenty with the VivoBook xv, but most budget laptops feel this way at first. The VivoBook 15'south benchmark numbers show how little the laptop has to kickoff with. It scored 2,399 overall on Geekbench 5, a testing suite that measures everyday figurer tasks similar browsing the internet and rendering augmented reality furnishings. That's beneath the Acer Aspire 5, which scored 2,744, and even further down the graph from the industry average of 2,983.
Our Handbrake video transcoding tests gave the VivoBook fifteen another chance to get outperformed. The VivoBook fifteen managed to transcode 4K video to 1080p resolution within 28 minutes and 33 seconds. The Acer Aspire 5 and HP xv were much faster, transcoding at 21:55 and 25:53, respectively. The VivoBook xv was faster than the twoscore minute average for other upkeep laptops that took this examination.
Asus VivoBook fifteen review: Battery Life
Most budget laptops can concluding well over half-dozen hours on 1 charge of the battery, but the VivoBook 15 struggled to hitting this mark. It lasted only v hours and 20 minutes through continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of effulgence. Although this trounce the Acer Aspire 5 (six:55) and the HP fifteen Laptop (four:57) in lab tests, it'due south at the tail end of the spectrum compared to the average of other budget laptops tested (vi:39).
I used the VivoBook fifteen with depression brightness and the least aggressive setting in Windows 10'southward battery-saving mode and noticed only slightly improve numbers than the lab tests. The VivoBook 15 burned through 15 percent of battery after nigh an hour into a work session. Two hours afterward, the laptop used up 45 percent at the aforementioned setting. That's almost l pct after three hours of employ. Perhaps I could have eked out a bit more time by futzing with the power saving settings. It's clear from the numbers that the VivoBook 15 tin can barely manage six hours of continuous use.
Asus VivoBook 15 review: Heat
The VivoBook 15 is consistent and capable at distributing heat, and it felt temperate enough to employ on my lap. In lab tests, the VivoBook 15's keyboard measured well-nigh 72 degrees Fahrenheit throughout, while the underside measured higher at 91 degrees. Overall, the laptop never felt too hot to use.
I didn't find the fans in the Asus VivoBook 15 to be as loud as other laptops we've tested, namely the Acer Aspire five.
Asus VivoBook 15 Verdict
Theoretically, if I were in a rush and needed a so-called throwaway laptop to perform a few quick deeds, the Asus VivoBook 15 would be likely to comport me through. It has enough ability to run an older game at depression-quality settings to help fulfill the nostalgia quotient. Information technology has enough battery life to file words at a Denny'due south in time for the adjacent borderline. But as this Asus VivoBook 15 review showed, performance doesn't particularly impress, which doesn't get in a laptop worth an upgrade.
At least there are plenty of ports, so if the VivoBook 15 is the just choice you have in your arsenal, an external monitor, a set of speakers, and a mouse can help with some of its quirks. But if you can swing it, at to the lowest degree consider spending a few hundred more on the Core-i5 version of the VivoBook 15 for a little more than ability in the processor.
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Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/asus-vivobook-15
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