The new Copilot+ PC category announced by Microsoft last month, was kicked off by a slew of hardware announcements by multiple manufacturers. Powered by Microsoft’s Copilot AI model, the Copilot+ PCs offer on-device AI. One of the first wave devices announced was the ASUS Vivobook S15 which went on-sale on June 18th, and now we’re jumping into a full review.
The first wave of Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors, with some fairly big claims in terms of AI performance and battery life.
The Vivobook S15 is priced from $2,699 and comes with 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD and this being ASUS, it also includes a 15.6-inch Lumina OLED display and it’s powered by a 70 Wh battery promising over 18 hours of battery life.
It comes in a Cool Silver colourway with a single-zone RGB keyboard with a dedicated Copilot key for instant AI assistance, with Windows 11 Home for ARM on-board.
I’ve been using the ASUS Vivobook S15 for almost two weeks now, and here’s how it went.
The Vivobook S15 stands out from previous Vivobook models I’ve reviewed of late with the Cool Silver colourway. It’s a nice departure from the darker shades with the silver colour feeling fresh.
There is of course the large 15.6” OLED display filling out an 89% screen to body ratio with minimal bezels around the edges. It’s big and bright, with the default background looking particularly colourful on first boot.
There’s a FHD IR camera above the display with Windows Hello support and a convenient privacy shutter built-in above it, though the camera array melts into the background and is barely noticeable.
The display is in a 16:9 aspect ratio which dictates the shape of the laptop, this additional width allows for a slightly roomier keyboard, which includes a small numeric keypad on the end.
The numeric keypad feels a little cramped, but the chiclet keyboard is roomy with the keys spaced just over 19 mm apart, and it’s comfortable to type on with 1.7mm of key travel. The keyboard is backlit with single zone RGB which has a decent brightness, with colours and patterns easily configurable through the MyASUS app.
The big change of course is the inclusion of the Copilot button on the right hand side of the space bar, replacing the CTRL key. This button instantly launches Copilot, giving you access to that service.
The mylar covered metallic touchpad is fast and responsive, and with the size it’s easy to use for a wide variety of tasks.
Connectivity isn’t an issue with dual USB 3.2 Type-A ports on the right, and dual USB 4.0 Type-C ports, HDMI 2.1 and a 3.5mm combo audio jack. There’s also a micro SD card reader to make transferring files easy. Wireless includes Wi-Fi 7(802.11be) (Tri-band) and Bluetooth 5.4.
The 15.6” OLED display paired with the Dolby Atmos certified Harman Kardon audio system delivers a pretty brilliant system for entertainment as well as work.
The OLED panel offers 3K (2880×1620) resolution in aspect ratio. It’s surprisingly snappy for a machine with an ARM processor, offering 120Hz refresh rate with 0.2ms response. It also offers up 600nits peak brightness which is great for using it in bright sunlight, though the gloss finish tends to show reflections.
The dual Harman Kardon speakers are surprisingly powerful for a laptop, though understandably lacking in bass. The system is Dolby Atmos certified, giving some spatial audio effects and higher quality audio.
The performance of the ASUS Vivobook S15 is great. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 processor, with 32GB DDR5 RAM and a 1TB M.2 Gen 4 SSD, the specs are fantastic on paper.
In reality, the Vivobook is excellent for most jobs. There’s rarely any chugging for your day-to-day use, working in the browser, using some apps. The only performance hiccups I saw was when throwing high-performance games or apps, though I couldn’t try out Premiere due to compatibility issues.
Ok yes, you can technically play games on the Vivobook S15, but it’s not particularly pleasant to do it. Cyberpunk 2077 and Sons of the Forest with low graphics settings at 1920×1080 was around 18-25 FPS – while games like Fortnite don’t offer an ARM based Windows option.
The laptop doesn’t run hot, or even warm thanks to an updated cooling system which includes dual 97-iceblade fans, dual vents, and 2 heat pipes. You do get a pretty solid fan noise in the background when using their Standard fan profile, however you can use whisper mode which reduces the noise.
I ran the Vivobook S15 through a number of Benchmarks, 3DMark and their new Steel Nomad (Light) benchmark. I also ran it through Cinebench 2024 which came fourth behind the Apple M1 Max on Single core and Apple M3 on Multi-core.
The Vivobook S15 includes a 70Whr battery, with a 90W USB Type-C charger included in the box.
Battery life is, well, astonishingly good. Considering the laptop is emulating different CPU architecture for parts of the day, it lasts a surprisingly long time. ASUS says we’ll see over 17 hours of use, and frankly I see no issues confirming this. I used the laptop over three days with casual web surfing, Youtube videos and Google Docs and had no issues with longevity, even with the screen fairly bright – and you’ll have no issues powering through a full day of office type work with hours to spare.
The charging times are decently fast. A 15 minute charge gets the battery to 25%, a 30 minute charge to 50%, and you’ll get just over 80% charge in an hour. It took a shade over 2 hours to charge to 100% – those last few percent are always the longest.
Between the great battery life and decently fast charging, ASUS and Qualcomm seem to be on a winner here.
The ASUS Vivobook S15 comes with Windows 11 Home Edition for ARM. Microsoft has been running Windows on ARM since it was announced as a dev preview back in 2020 for Windows 10.
This new era of Microsoft Copilot+ PCs will work using the ARM integration, as well as emulation to ensure your X86-64 apps work on the ARM architecture. The Microsoft emulator is called PRISM, and in theory just works in the background.
In all respects, Windows 11 Home ARM looks, feels and handles exactly the same as Windows 11 on x86 architecture. Launch an app and it runs – mostly.
I’ve run through loading my usual apps, Chrome and Firefox, as well as WinRar, VLC, mIRC, OBS, Fastone (great bulk image resizer) and they all install and run fine – some of these apps are fairly old and to have PRISM run them without issue is decently impressive. I’ve also launched more traditional web apps including Google Drive and Office 365, as well as my copy of Office Professional 2021 – all ran with no issues.
As above, I also loaded up some game launchers installing the Steam, Epic and GOG Galaxy. Games install fine, and will run at fairly low resolution, and low frame rate, but it’s not particularl;y pleasant.
It’s not all plain sailing though.
I can load the Xbox app, but there’s no search bar – it appears on all my other PCs, but not this one. I can certainly stream games from the selection available – which is admittedly vast, but you can’t search up any games.
I also hit a snag with the installation of Premiere Pro, it simply wouldn’t let me – however Photoshop is ready to go, but it’s not a super smooth launch on all fronts from Adobe and we just need to wait a little longer.
And the last pain point for me was no Fortnite support for ARM – this isn’t new, but is still frustrating.
Of course the big news on the new Copilot+ PC’s is the AI capabilities. The Snapdragon X Elite includes an integrated Qualcomm Hexagon NPU (Neural Processing Unit), delivering up to 45 TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second) of AI computing performance.
ASUS have baked in AI into their video and audio capture, meaning you get less background noise for both video conferencing and calls, as well as improved blurring effects for your background – and it will also make sure your eyes appear to be looking down the camera, which is a little disconcerting
The main source of difference for most is the new Copilot button, which works well to quickly launch the Copilot app. If you’ve used Copilot on Windows, there’s no difference, just easier to access.
There are some AI features included in Windows, as well as some that ASUS have included.
The one big feature of the Copilot+ PC launch – isn’t launching. Microsoft announced their Recall feature has been ‘delayed’ over privacy concerns.
Recall was the AI powered feature which would be built-in to Windows, allowing you to easily find apps, documents, or messages you’ve previously used, visited or looked at, simply by asking the AI.
AI CoCreator in Paint is a pretty fun way to get your ideas into a digital image. You simply enter a description of what you want it to look like, and you just start drawing.
I think this may have been a little easier with a touch display and USI Pen to draw on the screen, however my lack of artistic talent means the legacy of messrs Laird and Eastman are safe from my attempts
I would love to have tried this feature, but it seems I can’t accrue credits to generate images. I have Bing Image Creator Credits, I’m signed into MSPaint, and no dice. Not even the 50 credits supposedly issued by Microsoft when you join the preview – so, back to you Microsoft.
ASUS AI in StoryCube
Beyond the AI improvements to video and audio in chats and calls, ASUS have included AI improvements in their StoryCube app. The app can import photos from your local storage, connected devices, and cloud services including Google Photos, iCloud and OneDrive.
The import process is a little clunky for cloud services but works pretty well for local storage. The AI can group faces of your family, friends etc. making it easy to find them. I’m not sure I’d use it much over my current Google Photos subscription and offline storage, but it’s not a bad option.
There’s a two part answer here on whether this laptop is right for you. On the hardware front, ASUS have built a great machine with a great display, excellent battery life and some great performance.
On the Software side there’s still some uncertainty. There are still compatability issues for some games/apps, and there’s still the utility of AI as a whole. Generative AI works quite well, though it comes down to how much generative AI you need in your life – and for me, the answer is not much.
Fundamentally, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is a heck of a platform, and at $2699 the Vivobook S15 is one of the best examples. You can find the Vivobook S15 at the ASUS E-shop, or through JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman and Officeworks
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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