Another week and we have another OLED laptop from ASUS, but this time, the company seems to have made noticeable changes to its Vivobook in terms of design. Let’s try and see if this Rs 85,990 notebook – Vivobook S 15 (K5504VA) is worth the bucks or not.
Design: The Vivobook S 15 has a revamped design with new protruding sections for connectivity options on both sides – a Thunderbolt 4 port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-A port, a USB 2.0 port, an HDMI 1.4 port and 3.5mm combo audio jack, power DC, plus orange rubber foot at the bottom and same coloured escape key. The backlit keyboard is bright enough, tactile and spaced out while the touchpad is quite large, too, with comfortable armrest space to go along with it, making typing and scrolling experience better than before. You have the familiar privacy shutter button on the webcam, ASUS branding near the bottom of the 15.6-inch display, which goes 180 degrees flat. The build quality is a little improved but it definitely has room for improvement in terms of lid still feeling slightly flimsy, but ASUS has the device tested for US military-grade durability standards. The device weighs around 1.7kg, which is that high for a 15.6-inch display laptop that houses a 70WHr battery.
Display: You get a 15.6inch (1920x1080) OLED 60Hz display that’s TUV Rheinland-certified and has less glare compared to some of the previous Vivobook models. The display is quite bright, usable outdoors, handling text rendering as needed. For watching videos and viewing images, the display does a good enough job of producing details, giving vivid colours, though for HDR output, in terms of contrast and dark scenes, you can say there’s something lacking to give out true Dolby Vision playback in these conditions.
Performance: The laptop is powered by Intel’s 13th gen i5-13500H chip (4 performance + 8 efficiency cores up to 4.7Ghz) along with Iris Xe Graphics and 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM plus 512GB PCIe Gen 4 storage. It runs Windows 11 Home edition and it runs it without showing too many hiccups. Apps open and close smoothly; the OS boots up quickly without taking any extra time any single time. You can play a game like 'Call of Duty', but at low settings, otherwise the system would struggle at keeping up with graphics and frame rates along the way. It didn’t heat up during regular day-to-day usage but with if playing graphic-intensive games at highest settings, you can notice the laptop heating up quite a bit rather quickly. Browsing heavy webpages or using Microsoft’s Office apps simultaneously – the Vivobook S15 handles these tasks without breaking a sweat and too much fan noise, but don’t expect it to be your gaming centre.
Battery: The notebook is powered by a 70Whr battery unit that supports 90watt fast charging and comes with a 65watt charger bundled in the box. It lasted me around 9 hours most of the time, used at 40 per cent of screen brightness and using WiFi and Bluetooth almost all the time. With multiple tabs open in Firefox and Edge, Office apps plus watching some full HD videos for an hour or so, the device gave 8-9 hours more often than not. It charges from 1 per cent to full in a little over 2 hours or so.
Verdict: The Vivobook S 15 is an improved laptop from ASUS when it comes to Vivobook’s build quality as well as minor tweaks with performance. It has a great battery life, a nice full HD OLED display and loud and clear speakers for your personal use. Its performance is up to the mark as long as you’re not into gaming heavily.
