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. 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. So, is there a fly in the ointment? According to Asus, the Vivobook is available with three types of display, all 15.6-inch, 1,920 x 1,080, and 60Hz, but in a crucial way, one of them is not like the other two. And that’s the one that came fitted to my review unit. Let’s dive in. Design and Keyboard 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.

Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video (the open-source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file. It's a timed test, and lower results are better. Vivobook 15 delivers beautifully clear visuals with its three-sided slim-bezel NanoEdge touch screen5 display. The wide viewing angles maintain great quality even for off-center viewing, and the TÜV Rheinland eye-care certification ensures low blue-light levels that reduce the risk of eye strain during long viewing sessions. 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.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. 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. The Core i5-1235U processor inside the Vivobook 15 is a 10-core chip from the Alder Lake 12th generation and has 8 efficiency cores and 2 performance cores, and a TDP of 15W. It is combined with Intel’s integrated Xe graphics chip, 16GB of dual-channel DDR4 RAM and a PCIe 3 512GB SSD. ASUS Audio Booster uses unique audio algorithms to boost audio volume up to 1.5x and take your audio experience to the next level. 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.

Taking the base off the Vivobook 15 is a painless operation, and once inside, you can swap out the 2280 PCIe 4 SSD and replace the 8GB RAM card in the one free slot, the other 8GB being soldered to the motherboard. The wireless card is also easy to access, and surprisingly, the MediaTek card supports the 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E wavelength.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. 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. 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. Nobody is expecting a powerhouse in this price tier, but we still want to see how it can perform. First, let’s look at the parts in this model. There’s an Intel Core i3-1005G1 processor with Intel UHD Graphics, 8GB of memory, and a 128GB SSD. This processor is definitely a budget-grade chip, with just two cores and four threads.

Turn everyday tasks into something special with Vivobook 15, your essential tool for getting things done easier, anywhere. It’s completely user-friendly too, with its 180° lay-flat hinge and physical webcam shield. ASUS Antimicrobial Guard Plus protects frequently-touched surfaces from harmful bacteria, safeguarding your health. Make all your days more enjoyable with Vivobook 15! Thanks to the low TDP of the processor, there were no issues with thermal throttling, and the fan seldom had to spin up to full speed. The noise wasn’t remotely intrusive even when the cooling system ran full-chat. With Vivobook 15, you’re always ready to take on any everyday task, whether it’s work, play or entertainment. Whatever you need to achieve, there’s always plenty of computing power on tap with up to the 12th Gen Intel® Core™ processor, 16 GB of fast memory, 1 TB of speedy SSD storage and comprehensive range of wireless connectivity up to WiFi 6E7 allows you to load online content in the blink of an eye. Another graphics test, Unigine's Superposition, similarly renders and pans through a complex 3D scene but measures results in frames per second (fps), with 30fps generally desirable for smooth animation while serious gamers prefer 60fps or more. We run the test at 720p and 1080p resolution with low and high visual quality settings respectively.COVID-19, H3N2, H1N1, E. coli and Staphylococcus tests were performed by independent third-party laboratories: Boken Quality Evaluation Institute, Japan Textile Products Quality and Technology Center, and National Defense Medical Center. Similarly to the media tests, these laptops are not meant for 3D tasks or gaming, boasting only the graphics chip integrated into the processor. I recently performed some extensive game testing of integrated graphics, and learned that all hope for gaming on such systems is not lost. However, that doesn’t quite apply to this group of budget-friendly laptops: Integrated graphics can get by when paired with a good processor and plenty of RAM, but these laptops are not providing much of that support, leaving the weak chips to do a lot of lifting on their own. Other than the simplest games, don’t expect to play much on these systems. Battery Rundown Test We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image, timing each operation and adding up the total. As with Handbrake, lower times are better here. 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.