ASUS is known to make some of the best Windows laptops out there and it did not surprise me when I heard about the claims made with the Snapdragon X Elite-based ASUS Vivobook S15, so, I decided to step forward and review the one sent to us by ASUS. When you hold the laptop for the first time, you realise that it is quite sleek. At 14.7mm thin and weighing 1.42kg, it is surprisingly light for a 15-inch screen laptop. At first, I mistook the Aluminum construction for fibre; the lightness confuses you. But the construction feels sturdy, even the hinges are well built.
Let’s address the elephant in the room, the Snapdragon Elite X processor. The Elite X is the first processor from Snapdragon designed specifically for laptops and the Vivobook is one of the first laptops to be equipped with the Elite X. One of the biggest claims of the chipmaker is the enhanced battery life and after using it for more than a month as my daily workstation, I can say the claims are absolutely true. The S15 gave me a super impressive 820 minutes of battery life while being used in different modes!
The Snapdragon X Elite processor with Adreno graphics and Hexagon NPU is quick for most of the regular tasks and you won’t miss your Intel or AMD-based processors. Even during heavier usage, it performed relatively well, and the best part is it stayed cool as if it wasn’t even running; credit goes to the 16GB LPDDR5X RAM and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD aided by ASUS IceCool thermal tech.
The 15.6-inch 3K 120Hz ASUS Lumina OLED display is bright with 600-nits peak brightness. The colors seem to pop out and watching videos is a treat, but the images seem a little oversaturated when you place it beside another OLED display. It comes VESA HDR True Black 600, 100% DCI-P3 and Pantone-certified for color accuracy though. Although it is marketed as a Copilot + PC, I wasn’t able to test the AI based assistant much with my kind of usage.
Another one of the things I absolutely loved is the tactile feel of the keyboard. The keyboard comes with RGB lighting, which is usually provided in gaming laptops, but I simply selected a single preferred colour and kept it like that.
The ASUS Vivobook S15 seems like the perfect laptop, but there is a catch. The Elite X still doesn’t support a lot of apps, software and games and this lack of support can be a dealbreaker for many, including me. At the price of ₹ 1,46,990/- this is an expensive laptop but makes a strong case for itself and with an increasing support for apps, it can actually become a viable alternative to Intel or AMD-powered machines.
ASUS Vivobook S15: Specifications
Processor: Snapdragon X Elite Processor with Qualcomm AI Engine up to 45 TOPS NPU
Memory: 16 GB 8448 MHz LPDDR5X RAM
Storage: 1 TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe TLC M.2 SSD
Display: 15.6-inch 3K (2880 x 1620) 120Hz ASUS Lumina OLED
Graphics: Qualcomm Adreno GPU
Battery: 70 kWh
Price: ₹ 1,46,990/-
