A few months ago, we published the review of the ASUS VivoBook S15 S533F which powered by 10th Gen Intel Core i5 and coupled with NVIDIA GeForce MX250 GPU. It was one of the best-selling Intel-based laptops that sold out everywhere.

Now they have launched the new ASUS VivoBook 15 K513 which equipped with the Intel’s 11th Gen Tiger Lake processor and updated NVIDIA GeForce MX350 discreet card.

ASUS listened and made a few new enhancement on the RAM, storage and much more.

Contents 1. Unboxing 2. Specifications 3. Design 4. Display 5. Connectivity & Speaker 6. Upgradability 7. Performance 8. Battery Life 9. Verdict

Unboxing

Here’s our unboxing and first look of the laptop;

ASUS VivoBook 15 K513 Specs

• Intel Core i5 11th Generation 1135G7 (8MB Cache, up to 4.2GHz)
• Intel Iris Xe G7 Graphic Card + NVIDIA GeForce MX350 2GB GDDR5
• 8GB 3,200 MHz DDR4 RAM
• 15.6-inch Full HD IPS (1,920 x 1,080) Panel with Anti Glare Display
• 512GB Intel SSD 660P NVMe PCIe SSD
• Intel WiFi 6 GIG+ (802.11ax) + Bluetooth 5.0
• 42Wh 3-cell Lithium-polymer Battery
• 65W Power Adapter
• Weight: 1.7 kg
• Windows 10 Home
• Dimension: 1.79cm x 35.9cm x 23.5cm (H x W x D)
• Retail: RM 3,299

Design

There is a lot of familiarity in term of design and built with the ASUS VivoBook S15 S533F which we like it very much. The minimalist back cover has only an ASUS VivoBook logo on the most right.

The colour that I have is the Hearty Gold that looks like Rose Gold matched pretty well with a silver keyboard. It also comes with two other colours; Indie Black and Transparent Silver. There are some Limited Edition VivoBook stickers included where you can spice up your laptop to make it look stand out.

It uses a backlit chiclet keyboard with a standard 98 keys layout and features numeric keypad on the left. The signature eye-catching yellow Enter key is still present that does help me to pinpoint the location of the enter key.

The overall typing experience is good and the 1.4mm travel distance key is responsive and comfortable to type. Not too sure the keycap would fade over time as I never had a good experience with non-black colour keycap.

The large trackpad supports all Windows 10 gestures and features a fingerprint scanner on the top right corner for easy login.

Display

The ASUS VivoBook 15 K513 uses 15.6-inch Anti-Glare Full HD IPS LCD panel with narrow bezels. It offers an impressive 84% screen-to-body-ratio and features an HD camera at the top centre bezel.

This laptop may not get the most accurate colour, it still looks decent enough for most daily use as a laptop. The 250 nits brightness output is great with the anti-glare coating it helps in better viewing under harsh lighting.

ASUS Tru2Life Video technology is nothing new and it enhances clarity, colour and contrast on video playback. This offers a more vivid and sharper image while reducing blur motion.

Connectivity & Speaker

It has a pretty complete port selection. On the right side, it has two USB 2.0 Type-A and on the left, there are a full-sized HDMI, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C, a 3.5mm audio combo jack and a microSD 4.0 card reader. Unfortunately, no Thunderbolt or higher speed USB 3.2 Gen 2.

The ASUS VivoBook 15 uses Intel AX201 WiFi 6 Gig+ that capable delivering speeds of up to 2.4Gbps. The latest WiFi 6 features OFDMA, 1,024 QAM, BSS Coloring and Target Waketime for a more stable and efficient network.

You will not have any complaint with harman kardon tuned speakers. It sounds pretty solid and great when you use it on a flat table as it’s a stereo down-firing. If you are using it on bed or laptop, the sound output might get muffled.

Upgradability

ASUS has heard us and improved in this area. Compared to the VivoBook S15 S533F, the VivoBook 15 K513 has not only included expansion storage but also memory. The 8GB 3,200 Mhz DDR4 RAM was soldered onto the mainboard and the company also included a RAM slot for further expansion. You can put a single piece 32GB DDR4 RAM bumped it to 40GB of memory.

On top of that, in the box, an HDD/SSD upgrade kit is included. Meaning you can chunk in a more standard 2.5″ SATA HDD/SSD. Although it’s only SATA speeds, the secondary drive normally is use just for storage or back up. Not forgetting the standard 2.5″ HDD/SSD are much cheaper by per GB.

The system uses 512GB Intel 660P PCIe NVMe SSD which offers close to 1,400MB/s read and 1,000Mb/s write speeds. It’ more than enough for productivity and also gaming usages.

Performance

The new ASUS VivoBook 15 K513 is powered by Intel’s latest 11th Generation Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor and coupled with NVIDIA GeForce MX350 2GB GDDR5 VRAM discreet graphic card.

Intel Core i5 1135G7 is built on 10nm process 4 cores, 8 threads processor with configurable TDP as low as 12W for more power efficiency and up to 28W for better performance.

ASUS also introduced three intelligent modes in AIPT (ASUS Intelligent Performance Mode) Whisper Mode, Balanced Mode & Performance Mode. It dynamically adjust power consumption according to the loading status and temperature so you can get the best performance and power efficient from the Intel Tiger Lake processor. According to ASUS, their laptops can set to 28W throughput continuously unlike other brand laptops that powered the same processor.

Here are some synthetic benchmark test results;

The laptop can handle most the application that I throw at it; like Adobe Photoshop and even Adobe Premiere Pro. Surprisingly there’s no hiccup scrubbing 4K video on Premiere Pro, thanks to the optimized NVIDIA Cuda core acceleration.

Yes, you can play games on it. CS:GO, Assassins Creed Odyssey and Far Cry 5 at Medium/Low details without any issue.

Throughout the benchmark and gaming, I do notice that the fan noise level is much lowered compared to the previous gen ASUS VivoBook. According to ASUS, they use a new Aerodynamic IceBlades fan and fluid dynamics bearing that efficiently accelerates heat transfer while offering a better vibration reduction.

I might get better result and experience if the RAM is upgraded with additional 32GB which is now supported.

Battery Life

ASUS uses a smaller battery capacity at 42Wh which we assume to make space for additional storage and RAM expansion. Besides that, the new 11th Gen Intel Tiger-Lake processor is a power-efficient chipset that builds right up on the 10nm process.

I managed to get about 5 – 6 hours on a single charge with high usages including Premiere Pro video editing, Photoshop photos editing and video watching on YouTube. The battery life is pretty good as I have been pushing the processor to run at almost maximum speeds to cope up with the intensive workload.