ASUS VivoBook 15 Thin and Light Laptop, 15.6” Full HD

ASUS VivoBook 15 Thin and Light Laptop, 15.6” Full HD

ASUS VivoBook 15 Thin and Light Laptop, 15.6” Full HD

OUR VERDICT

The Asus VivoBook S15's eye-catching design is backed by good performance and solid battery life.

FOR
Sleek design
Gorgeous color options
Good performance
Runs cool
Affordable

AGAINSTDull display
Lots of bloatware

The Asus VivoBook S15 S530UA proves that innovation isn't limited to premium laptops. This excellent mainstream system is truly one of a kind. Inspired by the laptop maker's pricier ZenBook S, the VivoBook S15 features Asus' new ErgoLift hinge, which angles the keyboard for a more comfortable typing experience. As if that weren't unique enough, the VivoBook S15 is available in several striking color schemes, including a gorgeous turquoise green and a blinding yellow.

The S15's appeal isn't skin-deep, either. With good performance, solid battery life and excellent heat management, the VivoBook S15 is a very good laptop overall, and one of the best Asus laptops. In fact, I'd wholeheartedly recommended it if not for its dull display and obnoxious amount of bloatware. Still, the VivoBook is a compelling option unlike any other on the market.

Design

Take a bow, Asus.

The VivoBook S15 is a beautifully crafted laptop with an exquisite design and jaw-dropping color schemes. Breaking away from the silver aluminum mold, Asus has finally given us what we've been asking for: unique color options in a nonbudget laptop.

We got our eyes on two of the VivoBook S15's five color options: star gray with yellow trim, and firmament green. The other three finishes are gunmetal, silver blue, and star gray with red trim. The green model is undoubtedly the showstopper. That particular machine has a forest-green brushed-aluminum lid and a shiny, green-plastic deck with barely visible stippled crosshatching. The chassis's turquoise trim is the bow around this beautiful package.

If Ikea had a tech section, the VivoBook S15 -- with its sleek, simple design and splash of bold color -- would be the poster child.

The silver model we received also has its own flair, sporting a bright-yellow trim and a smooth, faux-aluminum deck. The tiny stippled dot texture and vibrant color reminded me of a Roy Lichtenstein painting. There is also something undoubtedly Scandinavian about the VivoBook S15: If Ikea had a tech section, the VivoBook S15 -- with its sleek, simple design and splash of bold color -- would be the poster child.

But that's not the only reason to get excited about the VivoBook. The ErgoLift, the clever elevated hinge introduced on the ZenBook S, makes a pleasant return. This time, the back of the keyboard tilts upward at a 3.5-degree angle. This offers a more comfortable typing experience and improves audio and heat management.

At 14.2 x 9.6 x 0.7 inches, the VivoBook S15 is relatively compact for a 15.6-inch laptop. It has a similar footprint to the sleek Lenovo Ideapad 530s (14.1 x 9.6 x 0.6 inches) and is significantly smaller than the Acer Aspire E 15 (15 x 10.2 x 1.2 inches). The VivoBook S15 is also lightweight, at 3.7 pounds. Again, that matches the Ideapad 530s (3.7 pounds) and is much lighter than the Aspire E 15 (4.9 pounds).

Ports

The VivoBook S15 has a good selection of ports for a laptop this slim, but I wish it had Thunderbolt 3 input.

The left side of the laptop holds two USB 2.0 ports, a microSD card slot and LED indicators for charging and battery status.

On the right side, you'll find a DC jack, a USB 3.1 port, an HDMI port, a USB Type-C port and a headphone/mic combo jack.

Display

It's a shame that such a colorful laptop has this dull a display. The VivoBook S15's 15.6-inch, 1080p display is sharp and bright, but it disappoints in the color department.

When I watched a trailer for the upcoming mystery flick Bad Times at the El Royale, the opulent furnishings in the majestic setting were crystal clear, and I could even make out the thin pinstripes in Jon Hamm's dapper suit.

It's a shame that such a colorful laptop has a dull display.

But at the end of the first trailer for the upcoming Captain Marvel film, the red and blue in Brie Larson's suit looked dull as fire raged around her. And although the skin tones and white balance were accurate, the sci-fi effects didn't glow with the same richness of color that you'd find on a higher-quality panel.

The VivoBook S15's display can reproduce only 68 percent of the sRGB color spectrum, which is worse than even the Lenovo Ideapad 530s (72 percent) and the Acer Aspire E 15 (74 percent) -- two laptops with particularly dull displays. The mainstream laptop average is 89 percent.

Topping the mainstream-laptop average (242 nits) with a maximum brightness of 257 nits, the VivoBook S15's display should be visible outdoors, even on a sunny day. The Ideapad 530s' 255-nit display was slightly dimmer, and the Aspire E 15's 200-nit screen wasn't anywhere near as luminous.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Asus VivoBook S15's island-style keyboard offers a comfortable typing experience, thanks to tactile keys and an innovative elevated hinge, which make up for faults like shallow key travel.

With 1 millimeter of travel, the VivoBook's keys are shallow for a 15-inch laptop. (We prefer key travel of at least 1.5 mm.) However, the keyboard has several things going in its favor. The keys are well spaced and generously sized, apart from a slightly undersized number pad -- that's right; there's a number pad. And despite the low travel, there is a pleasant springiness to the keys.

What greatly improves typing on the VivoBook S15 is the laptop's elevated ErgoLift hinge, which tilts the back of the keyboard toward you at a 3.5-degree angle. That's a gentler gradient than the one on the ZenBook S, but my wrists still appreciate the natural typing position offered by the gentle slope.

Unsurprisingly, I sped through the 10fastingers.com typing test, achieving 119 words per minute with an accuracy rate of 95 percent. Those figures match my speed and accuracy typing averages.

The Asus VivoBook S15's 4.1 x 2.8-inch touchpad is spacious, and it was quick and responsive when I performed complicated Windows 10 gestures. I had no problem scrolling through web pages and swiping to switch between open windows. A fingerprint reader is embedded in the touchpad for faster, safer login authentication.

Audio

The VivoBook S15's speakers can fill only a medium-size room. Those aren't the loudest speakers you'll find, but they still sound very good, especially on a laptop this thin. When I listened to Lana Del Rey's "Mariners Apartment Complex," the vocals sounded clear, and the drum beats had a nice weight to them.

The S15 did equally well when I listened to Thrice's "My Soul," a more instrumentally complex rock song. Electric guitars shimmered in the upper frequencies atop Dustin Kensrue's husky voice. I do wish the bass went deeper, but there was some nice punch to it.

Performance

Equipped with an Intel Core i5-8250U CPU and 8GB of RAM, the VivoBook S15 breezed through my typical stress test, swiftly loading 20 Google Chrome tabs. The laptop didn't lag or freeze, even when I simultaneously played three 1080p YouTube videos and two full-HD Twitch streams.

The S15 also did well on our lab tests. Its score of 12,163 on the Geekbench 4 overall performance test edged out the mark from the Lenovo Ideapad 530s (Core i5-8250U, 11,966),and crushed the score from the Acer Aspire E 15 (Core i5-8250U, 9,278) and the mainstream-laptop average (8,930).

However, the VivoBook S15's 256GB SSD failed to impress when tasked with duplicating 4.97GB of mixed media files. It completed the task in 41 seconds, for a rate of 124.1 megabytes per second. The Aspire E 15's hard drive (256GB M.2 SATA SSD, 149.7 MBps) achieved a faster rate, and the Ideapad 530s (256GB PCIe SSD, 282 MBps) was more than twice as fast. The VivoBook S15 even fell short of the mainstream-laptop average (136.2 MBps).

The Asus laptop rebounded on the Excel Macro Test, matching 65,000 names with their corresponding addresses in 1 minute and 4 seconds and beating the Ideapad 530s (1:24), the Aspire E 15 (1:30) and the mainstream-laptop average (2:05).

The VivoBook S15 needed only 25 minutes and 38 seconds to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution using the HandBrake app, comfortably beating the 28:39 mainstream-laptop average. The Aspire E 15 (25:15) took about the same amount of time, but the Ideapad 530s (21:05) smoked the competition.

Graphics

Armed with an integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 GPU, the VivoBook S15 can play less-demanding games at low to medium graphics settings. The VivoBook S15 scored 65,313 on the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited graphics test, falling short of the Ideapad 530s (UHD 620 GPU, 69,450) and the mainstream-laptop average (68,579). The Aspire E 15 (122,144), with its dedicated Nvidia GeForce MX150 GPU, blew away the competition.

Still, the VivoBook S15 outperformed its competitors in real-world testing. The laptop ran the racing game Dirt 3 at 59 frames per second, beating the Ideapad 530s (49 fps), the Aspire E 15 (33 fps) and the mainstream-laptop average (44 fps) -- all of which topped our 30-fps threshold.

Battery Life

The Asus VivoBook S15's battery life is good, but not great. The laptop lasted 8 hours and 23 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of display brightness. The S15 outlasted the Ideapad 530s, which powered down after 7 hours and 41 minutes; however, the Aspire E 15 lasted an excellent 9 hours and 26 minutes. The mainstream-laptop average, 7:29, is about an hour shorter than the VivoBook S15's runtime.

Webcam

The Asus VivoBook S15's webcam is decent. In a selfie, the 720p lens accurately captured my burnt-orange shirt, and I could see the stubble of my freshly shaved beard. Unlike the images from other webcams I've tested, the VivoBook's picture was well-exposed, even with sun streaking in from a window behind me. Best of all, the webcam is placed above the screen, despite the laptop's razor-thin bezels.

Still, a smartphone camera produces better selfies than the VivoBook S15. While the lens is sharp, there was a lot of visual noise in the image I took under our dim office lights -- so much that I couldn't read the small Sony logo on my headphones.

Heat

A claimed benefit of the ErgoLift hinge is improved heat management from increased airflow. While that wasn't the case with the ZenBook S, the VivoBook S15 remained remarkably cool in our testing. After we played a 15-minute YouTube video, the center of the keyboard heated to just 86 degrees Fahrenheit, which is well below our 95-degree comfort threshold. The touchpad, at 82 degrees, and the underside, at 86 degrees, were even cooler.

Software and Warranty

There's a host of programs preinstalled on the VivoBook S15's Windows 10 Home operating system. From Asus, there are apps like Hello, which offers a Dropbox-like cloud service, and ZenAnywhere, which lets you access files on your laptop from Android and iOS phones. Asus also brought a program dedicated to keyboard hot keys. The only Asus-branded apps I'd see myself using are MyAsus and Asus Install, which offer diagnostic support and let you download laptop drivers and key applications.

Unfortunately, there is plenty of bloatware on the Asus VivoBook S15, including those obnoxious games that come courtesy of Microsoft, like Candy Crush Saga, Hidden City and Minecraft. LinkedIn, Netflix and McAfee Security also make an unwelcome appearance.

The Asus VivoBook S15 comes with a one-year warranty. See how the company performed on our Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands ranking.

How Much Does the VivoBook S15 Cost?

There is a single configuration of the Asus VivoBook S15. For , the 15.6-inch laptop comes with an 8th Gen Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD -- our minimum recommended setup for a mainstream laptop.

Bottom Line

The colorful Asus VivoBook S15 is one of the most visually stunning laptops to cross our desks this year, and at it's much more affordable than you might expect. Furthermore, the laptop has very good performance, speakers that output clear audio and a clever hinge that angles the keyboard toward you. The only considerable knocks against the portable 15-inch laptop are a dull display and an unfortunate amount of bloatware.

But the VivoBook S15 has some tough competition in this price range. The Lenovo Ideapad 530s is remarkably similar to the VivoBook S15. It has gorgeous looks, a borderless display and a thin-and-light footprint. It also has similar internals -- a Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD -- for the same price. However, like the Asus, the Lenovo's biggest shortcoming is a dull display.

Ultimately, your decision between these two laptops should come down to your personality. If you prefer a more buttoned-up look, go with the Lenovo. But if you want a laptop that stands out, the Asus VivoBook S15 is a great option.

ASUS VivoBook 15 Thin and Light Laptop, 15.6” Full HD

Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.2
Brand	ASUS
CPU	Intel Core i5-8250U
Card Slots	microSD
Display Size	15.6
Graphics Card	Intel UHD Graphics 620
Hard Drive Size	256GB
Highest Available Resolution	1920 x 1080
Native Resolution	1920x1080
Operating System	Windows 10 Home
Ports (excluding USB)	USB 3.1 Gen 1, Combo Headphone/Mic Jack, HDMI, USB 2.0, USB Type-C
RAM	8GB
Size	14.22 x 9.58 x 0.7 inches
Touchpad Size	4.1 x 2.8 inches
USB Ports	4
Warranty/Support	one-year warranty
Weight	3.67 pounds
Wi-Fi	802.11ac

Asus VivoBook S15 design – Sultry and silvery, with a secondary Screen(Pad)

Asus VivoBook S15 laptops are available in a number of metallic colour options, including a fetching muted gold, dazzling cyan, as well as silver models with red and yellow trims. However, our review unit was of the standard all-silver variety.

That’s not to say it’s unattractive – on the contrary, the matte finish, clean lines and gently recessed keyboard area are all rather appealing.

In addition, and in keeping with the ZenBook range from last year, Asus has brought its “ErgoLift” design game to the VivoBook laptops. This is a little design quirk that sees the deck of the laptop lifted off the desk’s surface. Not only does this serve to angle the keys towards your hands, making for a slightly nicer typing experience, it also ensures warm air can escape from the cooling vent more easily.

That ErgoLift hinge in action.

ErgoLift is a feature that’s becoming more common in all Windows laptops, not only Asus units. The HP Envy 13 employs a similar trick, too. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see it appearing in the VivoBook range all the same.

The Asus VivoBook S15 measures 18 x 361 x 243mm and weighs 1.8kg. As such, it’s slim enough to pop into a satchel or rucksack, and it isn’t going to be a drag to lug around all day. Then again, the lightweight LG Gram 15 weighs just 1.1kg and the even bigger LG Gram 17 weighs 1.3kg, so it’s not the lightest laptop out there.

Slim bezels (5.2mm on the sides, 6.5mm on the top) give the VivoBook S15 an extra degree of style, and draw attention to the 15.6-inch Full HD display.

The laptop is more than adequately furnished with ports. As well as two old-school Type-A USB 2.0, there are faster USB 3.1 ports (one Type-A, the other Type-C), a microSD card slot, and an HDMI port. Transferring photos and files to and from your phone or digital camera, either via memory card or directly from the device, will be a breeze regardless of the device you’re using.

If we had to quibble, we’d say that an Ethernet port – or Thunderbolt 3 on the USB-C port – would have been welcome, for situations where you’d want a fast and dedicated wired connection.

The ScreenPad 2.0 measures 5.6in, has an Android-esque interface. At times it feels like a phone has been bolted on to the VivoBook S15.
Asus VivoBook S15 ScreenPad 2.0 – What is it and what can it do?

The ScreenPad is a hybrid touchscreen/secondary display. You can elect to have it on, or turned off entirely if you just want to use it as a trackpad. You do this by toggling the F6 key.

The ScreenPad has a number of uses. Some are obvious: you could watch a live stream of a football match on the ScreenPad, while filling in spreadsheets and replying to emails. Others, less so: as office productivity tools.

The main ScreenPad interface is similar in appearance and function to the stock Android user interface, in that you have Home and Menu controls tacked to the bottom of the display for easy navigation between apps.

You can expand apps launched in the ScreenPad by pushing them to the VivoBook 15’s main display by tapping on the arrow icon on the left. Launched apps can then be easily dragged back down to the ScreenPad, if you want to be able to control something from the secondary display.

ScreenPad features all of the same productivity apps present on the new Asus ZenBook 14. DocXpert, SheetXpert, and SlideXpert all load up formatting and style shortcuts for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Quick Key is a dashboard that comes loaded with hot keys for standard keyboard shortcuts such as Ctrl + A (select all), Ctrl + C (copy), Ctrl + V (paste), which may or may not be useful to you, depending on how well you get on with existing keyboard shortcuts. Personally, I didn’t find myself using Quick Key often, but I can see why some would find it handy.

The interface takes a bit of getting used to, but in time you’ll be able to easily flip between ScreenPad apps and launch full versions such as Spotify on the main display.

There’s also a handwriting recognition app called simply Handwriting. I was happy to see this working well, with the app accurately detecting poorly scribbled words. You can even download extra language packs (it detected long Russian words too), which may come in use for language students or those learning another language in their spare time.

In the future, it would be great if Asus ScreenPads would let you write with a stylus, because writing words with your fingers feels unnatural. It’s less accurate than writing with a pen, which is arguably more conducive to picking up another language.

Along with the first-party apps, there’s Evernote and Spotify – which, at the time of writing, don’t really leverage the ScreenPad in a clever or practical way. You can simply launch the Windows versions of those apps in the small screen. What would have been better is if, say, the ScreenPad could give you a quick look at what’s stored in your Clipboard, or you could control Spotify in the way you can via Spotify Connect.

This ScreenPad also features Asus’s new ScreenPad 2.0 tech. The new 2019 ScreenPads are bigger than previous-gen units, they’re less battery-hungry, and feature a better user interface, which includes the ability to toggle the ScreenPad for times when you just want to use it as a bog-standard trackpad.

Fast action and solid design makes typing on the VivoBook S15 a cinch.
Asus Vivobook S15 keyboard – What is the keyboard like to type on?

The Asus Vivobook S15’s keyboard features standard chiclet-style keys that you see on numerous laptops. However, despite the keycaps being made from plastic, it all feels remarkably sturdy – and not at all cheap.

Keys snap back at you fiercely, and the layout is clever. I particularly liked the wider than usual arrow keys, and since these can double-up as navigation keys, there’s enough room for a number pad to sit alongside the main keys.

It won’t be long before you’re super-comfortable with the keyboard, hammering out hundreds of words in no time at all. The entire board is back lit, so working at night or in dark lecture theatres/press rooms will be less of an issue.

Personally, I found the Function keys a little small, but they’re not unusable. Some keys feel ever so slightly wobbly, which makes me worry things won’t be quite so responsive following three or four years of wear and tear.

Super-slim bezels give the VivoBook S15 an elegant look.
Asus VivoBook S15 display – A little on the dull side

The Asus VivoBook S15’s display is a little disappointing.

I recorded maximum brightness at 291.34 nits – not much under the 300-nit minimum you should expect from any laptop display these days. This means that working outside on a bright day may prove a struggle.

While maximum brightness is a slightly sub-average 291.34, I recorded a good black level of 0.23 nits with the display’s brightness pushed all the way up. On paper, contrast is pretty good – at maximum brightness, I recorded a contrast ratio of 1229:1, which is above the standard 1000:1 – and, generally speaking, there’s plenty of separation between the extremely dark and extremely bright portions of the screen.

Colour temperature is also good, ensuring white lights don’t look distorted and feature a close resemblance to natural light. At 6115K, it’s not hitting the 6500K target for absolute pure white light, but nothing looked especially warm or red to me, which occurs when a screen’s colour temperature is significantly lower than the target.

However, viewing angles are poor, with discolouration noticeable even at the slightest angles. If you’re working in a well-lit office or study room and facing the screen head on, you’ll likely be able to ignore the VivoBook 15’s shortcomings, but just don’t expect this to be the ideal display for Netflix.

With the brightness dipped to 150 nits, colour space coverage was 56.8% for sRGB, 39.4% for Adobe RGB, and 40.5% for DCI P3.

For context, the sRGB (standard RGB) colour gamut is the industry standard for web design work, meaning, in practical terms, a laptop with low coverage won’t always display web pages the way their creators intended. Generally, any digital display covering over 80% of the sRGB space is good; as such, a score of 56.8% is pretty poor.

The Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 colour spaces are wider than sRGB – they contain more colours – and are of interest to digital photographers and videographers. Seeing as the VivoBook S15 isn’t a laptop designed for heavy photo or video work (you’d want a device covering 70% of either, at the very least), low coverage in these areas isn’t such a big deal.

You could argue these scores are typical of laptops in this price range; colour space coverage of the Acer Nitro 5 and HP Pavilion 15 are in the same ballpark. That said, the HP Envy 13 range, which starts at just more, boasts much higher-quality displays and proves laptops under the mark don’t have to compromise on displays.

Gentle keyboard lighting ensures you can easily work at night or in dark rooms.
Asus VivoBook S15 battery – Does the ScreenPad seriously impact battery levels?

One of my biggest gripes about the first edition of the ScreenPad, as seen on the likes of the 2018 Asus ZenBook Pro 15, was the fact it would significantly dent the laptop’s battery levelswhen turned on for the whole day.

Part of the reason that ScreenPad version 1.0 was such a hungry beast on older laptops was the fact that it was powered by the dedicated graphics processor. Fortunately, version 2.0 of Asus’s ScreenPad tech sees the secondary screen draw processing power straight from the integrated graphics instead, so it’s less of a battery hog.

That said, having the ScreenPad turned on still has an impact on the battery, but I’m happy to report it doesn’t seem to be that much of a big deal.

With the ScreenPad turned on, the laptop lasted 6-7 hours; it lasted 8-10 hours with it off. Either way, for most work and study situations, that should be enough power to keep you from worrying about getting all of your notes down between meetings/seminars.

The Asus VivoBook S15’s ports on the right-hand side, L-R: microSD card slot, 3.5mm jack, USB-C, USB-A, HDMI.
Asus VivoBook S15 performance – How does it handle day-to-day PC tasks?

Performance of the Asus VivoBook S15 is on a par with that of other laptops we’ve tested with the Core i7 processor from Intel’s Whiskey Lake range.

More powerful 10th-gen Ice Lake and Comet Lake laptops are starting to hit the shelves, but what we’ve seen so far suggests Whiskey Lake-based systems won’t be horribly outclassed – although this could change as more 10th-gen laptops come in for review.

In everyday terms, I found that the VivoBook S15 was able to easily juggle basic office tasks while running Spotify, Festify, Bandcamp, YouTube, and other sources of streamed music without anything locking up horribly.

Relatively fast SSD read and write speeds of 2467.10MB/s and 1180.60MB/s respectively mean the great majority of what you’ll be launching and saving on this laptop will be as quick as you need it to be.

While the display isn’t cut out for photo work, there was sufficient power for simple photo editing using free photo editing suite GIMP, although I’d be wary about doing anything more intensive than cropping and resizing your holiday snaps on the VivoBook S15.

To support my day-to-day observations, I ran a series of benchmarks, including the recently released Geekbench 5. In previous reviews, we used Primate Labs’s Geekbench 4 CPU test to measure processor performance, but Geekbench 5 is more up to date version.

The Asus VivoBook S15’s ports on the left-hand side, L-R: 2 x USB-A.

As with Geekbench 4, Geekbench 5 provides single and multi-core scores to give you an idea of how well a laptop will perform at single-threaded tasks (such as gaming) and more complex, multi-threaded applications such as video editing or 3D modelling, or PC multi-tasking in general.

A Geekbench 5 score of 1000 is considered the baseline, so the VivoBook S15’s single-core and multi-core scores of 926 and 2723 are interesting, suggesting this laptop is just about good enough for today’s PC tasks.

To get a sense of how well the Asus VivoBook S15 would handle games, I ran the 3DMark: Ice Storm benchmark. This stress-tests a system’s GPU; while the VivoBook S15 doesn’t have a dedicated graphics processor, the CPU features integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620.

The less-demanding Ice Storm test gave a score of 66,405, which is similar to what we’ve seen with other Whiskey Lake-based laptops such as the Lenovo ThinkPad T490s and the HP Pavilion 15.

Realistically, you’re unlikely to be able to squeeze out a game of Fortnite or Apex Legends on the VivoBook S15. My attempt at Apex Legends wasn’t wholly successful: using Origin’s in-game frame-rate counter, I found that even with all the textures and graphics dialled all the way down, the game would limp along at 10-20fps.

Finally, I ran PCMark 10, a holistic benchmark that simulates a range of PC tasks. A PCMark 10 score of 4000 indicates a system is suitable for basic PC work, and the Asus VivoBook S15 landed just wide of the mark here with a score of 3953.

Should I buy the Asus VivoBook S15?

The Asus VivoBook S15 is a well-built and nice-looking Windows 10 laptop with a 15.6in main display and a very interesting selling point.

I’m a huge fan of the ScreenPad, and feel the multi-lingual Handwriting app could prove super-useful for language students. However, third-party app support is still lacking, and until this improves, the ScreenPad remains a nice-to-have feature rather than an essential one.

The fact the display can’t show you a wide range of colours is a drawback too, but only if you want to edit photos on your laptop. For most buyers, it will suffice.

The Asus VivoBook S15 is fine for basic PC work, but it can’t do much more than that. For many in the market for a sub- laptop, that will be enough, but for those who want a device that can cope with some light gaming on the side though, this device falls short.
Verdict

The Asus VivoBook S15 is a well built machine and one of the more impressive laptops under the mark. If you’re really digging that ScreenPad feature, allowing for more efficient multitasking, then thyis will no doubt be a great buy.

The biggest problem with the Asus VivoBook S15 though, is you can find better value alternatives around the same price. The HP Envy 13, for example, features a Nvidia GeForce MX250 dedicated graphics card and a superior display, and so remains our top recommended sub- laptop.