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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.