VivoBook S series is ASUS’s mainstream lineup laptops that offer excellent value for the price. ASUS Malaysia has just announced their updated VivoBook S-series for 2020.

The folks from ASUS Malaysia has sent us their ASUS VivoBook S15 S533F, a laptop that can be a replacement for your home entry-level desktop and portable for you to take it around.

Let’s begin with an unboxing and first look video;

Specification

• Intel Core i5 10th Generation 10210U (6MB Cache, up to 4.2GHz)
• Intel UHD 620 Graphic Card + NVIDIA GeForce MX250 2GB GDDR5
• 8GB 2,400 MHz DDR4 RAM
• 15.6-inch Full HD IPS (1,920 x 1,080) Panel with Anti Glare Display
• Intel Optane Memory H10 with Solid State Storage (32GB Optane + 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD)
• Intel WiFi 6 GIG+ (802.11ax) + Bluetooth 5.0
• 50Wh 3-cell Lithium-polymer Battery
• 65W Power Adaptor
• Weight: 1.8 kg
• Windows 10 Home
• Dimension: 1.61cm x 35.98cm x 23.38cm (H x W x D)

Design for Gen Z

The VivoBook S is designed for the younger users which offers minimalist design and striking colours. It comes in four colour options; Indie Black, Resolute Red, Gaia Green and Dreamy White that we have for this review.

The clean top cover has just the ASUS VivoBook logo on the most right and a white bar on the top which we believe the all antennas housed. The company include some Limited Edition VivoBook stickers where you can personalize the laptop to your preference, breaks away from traditional designs.

When you lift up the display, you will notice there’s a bright eye-catching yellow Enter button. It uses a backlit chiclet keyboard with the standard 98 keys layout and features numeric keypad on the right. The 1.4mm travel distance key is pretty average and comfortable to type.

In term of built, the laptop is constructed almost entirely with aluminium alloy making up the chassis. This is a leap upgrade with a more luxury touch compared to other laptops in the same price category.

Despite it features a 15.6-inch display and a robust material, the VivoBook S15 maintains an equitable weight which at only 1.8kg. The laptop is measured at 35.98cm by 23.38cm and 1.61cm at the thickest point. This is a fairly small footprint that can slip into any notebook bag easily.

Display

This isn’t a gaming laptop, the 15.6-inch Full HD IPS panel sports a standard 60Hz refresh rate. The IPS panel offers a 178⁰ viewing angle, 45% NTSC colour gamuts and an anti-glare coating display that could sustain harsh lighting.

The ASUS VivoBook S15 has an impressive 86% screen-to-body-ratio and pleasant-looking without the usual thick bezels that you get from the most budget laptops out there.

With the ASUS Tru2Life Video Technology, the display was enhanced in term of clarity, colour and contrast. The brightness of the laptop is pretty average at 250 nits which not really ideal to use under bright sunlight. Still, it’s a great panel for productivity, watch movies and play games.

Ports, Connectivity & Speaker

It has a pretty complete port selection including full-sized HDMI port, 1x USB 3.1 (Gen 1), 1x USB 3.1 Type-C (Gen 1) and 3.5mm combo jack on the left. While the right, there are 2x USB 2.0 ports and a microSD card slot.

Featuring Intel AX201 WiFi 6 GIG+ WiFi card which is the new form of WiFi technology. The WiFi 6 is capable of delivering speeds of up to 2.4Gbps, that’s 3x faster and 75% lower latency compared to the WiFi 5. It also equipped with low power and stable Bluetooth 5.0.

The underside of the laptop there is two speakers that tuned and certified by Harman Kardon. The speakers are pretty loud yet and crisp even at 80% sound levels, after all, it’s Harman Kardon.

Performance & Link to MyASUS

The VivoBook S15 is powered by the 10th Generation Intel Core i5 processor based on the 14nm process. It’s 4 cores, 8 threads with a base frequency of 1.6GHz to max boost to 4.2GHz. It’s an ultra-low voltage processor with TDP 15W. It coupled with 8GB 2,666MHz DDR4 RAM that non-upgradeable which is a bummer.

Here are some synthetic benchmark test results;

The Intel Core i5 10210U scored an impressive 1,077 (Single Core) and 3,423 (Multi Core) on GeekBench 5 which is a quite snappy for a 15W processor. GPU wise, it scored a decent 11,752 OpenCL score which isn’t bad for a laptop equipped with NVIDIA GeForce MX250 2GB GDDR5 discrete card.

With the setup, it should able to handle some less-demanding titles games at Full HD resolution at Medium/Low details like Far Cry 5, Assassins Creed Odyssey and Mortal Kombat 11. If you planning to use it for editings like Photoshop/Lightroom and Premiere Pro, it still usable but do expect some bottleneck. You may utilize the Intel Quick Sync Video for faster decode and encode by using the integrated UHD 620 GPU. The only holdback is the non-upgradeable memory.

ASUS didn’t cheap out on the storage by offering Intel Optane Memory H10 with SSD. Featured Intel QLC 3D NAND with Intel Optane technology in one chip. It offers a responsive and low-latency by speeding up the storage speed with the 32GB Optane memory for caching. There’s an M.2 slot for storage expansion in case you would need to know.

On my field test for almost a week now, I able to edit photos and even 4K video that I shoot with my smartphone. There wasn’t any problem occurs, in fact, the video exporting speed on Premiere Pro is pretty fast thanks to the Intel Quick Sync Video technology.

ASUS also introduced Link to MyASUS that allows seamless connection your ASUS VivoBook with your Android or iOS smartphones. By using this, you can enjoy all the function and operation of your smartphone through your laptops input devices like keyboard, mouse and touch-screen.

This is part of MyASUS exclusive software that include; ASUS Live Update, System Diagnosis, ASUS Splendid, ASUS Tru2Life Video, Charging Mode, Fan Mode, Keyboard Hotkeys, ASUS Online Chat, Repair Status Tracking and AppDeals.

Battery Life and Charging

The laptop houses a 3-cell battery with 50Wh that supports fast charging at 65W via barrel charging port. The provided 65W power brick is very compact that can top-up the VivoBook S15 from 1% to 60% in less than 50 minutes.

On the specs sheet, the VivoBook S15 provides nearly 15 hours of battery life on a single charge. In a real-life test, I able to get around 5 hours with high usages including video edit/render/export, some photo editing and watch videos on YouTube. On normal usage like browsing, writing some articles and enjoying some music on Spotify, I can get easily get 6 hours with 30% battery left. I don’t mind to carry it around despite it can offer a pretty good battery life.