A laptop for home, work or just relaxing on the couch. That’s the spec for the new ASUS Vivobook S14 which you can find on-sale now.
Starting from $1,849, the Vivobook S14 offers an excellent value proposition for anyone wanting a new laptop. The base spec includes a 14.5” OLED display, and is powered by a 13th Gen Intel Core i9 H-series processor with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD on-board, though you can update to a 1TB SSD at point of sale with that unit priced at $2,099.
The Vivobook series is an excellent starting point for new users, with the stylish lightweight design promising to deliver performance, while sticking to a budget.
I’ve been using the Vivobook S14 for a couple of weeks now, and here’s how it went.
Hardware and Design
The Vivobook S 14 OLED fits the ultra-book category well with the ultra-light aluminum alloy lid aiding in a weight of just 1.5kg, and at just 17.9mm thin It slips easily into most bags.
It’s a good looking, though fairly standard clamshell design, with the ASUS design team opting for an orange flair for the escape key, with the ‘Enter’ key getting a bit of flair with a graphic embossed on the lower half. The metal lid also gets a little flair with an embossed plaque with the ASUS branding and slogans engraved into it.
The full-sized keyboard is pleasant to type on, with a slight depression on each key making it pleasant to simply rest your fingers on them. There’s minimal key travel for fast and smooth typing and it’s backlit with three levels of intensity so you can work in low-light.
The touchpad is smooth, responsive and supports multi-touch gestures. There’s also the ASUS NumPad 2.0 built-in to the touchpad so you can effectively have a numeric keypad for fast data entry.
The slim profile on the laptop still allows for an impressive array of I/O, with dual USB Type-A (one 2.0, the other type 3.2 Gen 1), with a Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) port, HDMI (1.4) and a combination audio jack. The single USB-C port supports high-speed data transfer, as well as Power Delivery so you can also charge the laptop in a pinch. There’s also Bluetooth 5.3 on-board as well as Wi-Fi 6E on the wireless front.
The 14.5” OLED display obviously dominates the top, though ASUS have still managed to squeeze in a 1080p resolution webcam above the display, which also includes a privacy shutter. The webcam is decent quality, though can be a little washed out.
The OLED display is connected by a 180-degree lay-flat hinge on the Vivobook S14, which allows for greater presentation options when in a group.
Overall it’s a relatively simple, light design though while it would be quick to write off the durability of such a compact design, ASUS have engineered it to pass US MIL-STD-810H military-grade standards. These tests cover a lot of ground including so it’s ready to face the road, or whatever challenges you can throw at it.
Display and Audio
ASUS have become a real leader in their displays, supplying excellent quality OLED panels across their range. On the Vivobook S14 there’s a 2.8K resolution OLED panel, and while it’s not touch enabled, it’s still big, bright and responsive.
The OLED panel in the Vivobook S14 is no different. It’s super bright, making it easy to view the display inside and out, and with a 2.8K resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, it makes for a clear, smooth user experience. The display is glossy, so you will get some reflections, however with up to 600 nits peak brightness, the Vivobook S14 overcomes it quite easily.
The panel also includes support for low blue-light emissions, and also include support for 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut. The panel also includes certification for VESA DisplayHDR 600 True Black and it’s also PANTONE Validated.
The gloss finish on the panel can give a little bit of reflection when you’re working in brighter areas, but boosting the brightness overcomes this.
The OLED panel is great for work, as well as watching videos, with a decent quality audio system included. The Harman Kardon tuned stereo speakers built-in to the base, with Dolby Atmos support supplying ‘Dimensional Audio’ – spatial audio to the rest of us.
The audio is pretty decent, though can be a little muted unless you crank the volume. There’s a good audio balance with the Smart Amplifier able to keep the sound distortion free even when you crank up the audio. There’s a little lacking in the low-end, but the mid and high range audio is fantastic.
Performance
Powered by an Intel i9 H-series processor with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD on-board, the Vivobook S14 has power to spare.
The laptop is fast to boot and there are very few, if any issues with running apps on the Vivobook S14. Gaming does tend to be an issue with the integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics really not up to the task for higher end gaming. You can of course run the classics including Minecraft, but any 3D games tend to struggle.
On the business front, the Vivobook S14 runs MSOffice, Google Docs etc. extremely well, with no issues found during my time. I also ran some Adobe Photoshop and Premiere trials and found it to be quite a decent performer.
Of course we threw 3DMark benchmarks across it and here’s how it went.
Battery and Charging
There’s a 75WHr, 4-cell Lithium-Ion battery included inside the Vivobook S14, with a 90W DC charger with barrel style connector included in the box.
The battery life is solid for an ultra-book, easily lasting over 10 hours doing my usual office work with a few YouTube videos and web surfing as well. Scaling the display brightness didn’t have any noticeable effect, so it was great to be on full brightness for the full time – though inside in low-light I tended to bump it down.
In terms of charging, the 90W charger does a decent job, though I achieved the same using a 100W Charger through the Power Delivery compatible Thunderbolt port on the laptop. It’s handy to not have to lug yet another charger around, so make use of this.
The charging times with the included charger saw the laptop fully charged in just under two hours, though a quick 30 minute charge got the Vivobook S14 to almost 50% full.
Software
Coming with Microsoft Windows 11 Pro pre-installed, the Vivobook S14 also includes an assortment of pre-installed apps.
The app selection includes Microsoft apps including the Xbox app, and of course the Office suite with a trial. There’s also a range of ASUS utilities including the MyASUS app, their central app for support, optimising your new laptop and more. The ASUS ScreenXpert and GlideX apps for optimising and using screen sharing or managing your app windows and ASUS Switch software for easily getting your new laptop up and running.
There are also a number of utilities preinstalled for accessing and configuring hardware in your new laptop. These apps include the Dolby Atmos app, a smattering of Intel apps, a Realtek app for audio, and of course the Mcafee Livesafe app.
The LiveSafe app will scan files, sites and anything else you need, though of course you’ll receive a variety of reminders as the expiry of the trial period is approaching. You can keep this installed and resubscribe, or just uninstall it and replace it with your choice.
Overall there’s not a lot of pre-installed apps and most of them are helpful, including the Xbox app which can give you a bonus 3 Months of Xbox GamePass Ultimate, and the myASUS app can net you a three month Adobe Creative Cloud sub as well.
Should you buy it?
The Vivobook S14 is an excellent laptop with a slim and lightweight design that is easy to carry or transport, with a long battery life to boot.
The inclusion of the Intel Core i9 processor means you aren’t lacking for power, however it also bumps the pricing up a little – though when you consider this laptop still clocks in at sub-$2000 with a Core i9 it’s a pretty good deal.
The Vivobook S14 offers everything you can want from an ultra-portable laptop for getting your work done on the go, with full I/O ports and a big, bright OLED panel.
You can find the more on the Vivobook S14 over on the ASUS website.
