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It’s easy immerse yourself in the brilliance of laptop glasses and design premium segmentbut sometimes you just want a smooth experience without a lot of frills. That’s what the Asus Vivobook S 14 OLED delivers, offering great hardware in a pretty cool shell. It’s also priced pretty well at $900, which is out range of budget laptops but strikes a good balance between performance and not hurting the wallet.
The model Asus sent me is the Vivobook S 14 OLED (S5406MA-AS96), which includes an Intel Core Ultra 9 Series 1 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of solid-state storage is a Core Ultra 7 Series 2 processor and 32GB of RAM for $1,200.If that’s not confusing enough, another model ditches Intel altogether with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processor for $1,200.
A simple power plant
The base model reviewed here is probably more than enough horsepower for most people.The Core 9 processor handled almost all my daily tasks without breaking a sweat. You’ll want to look elsewhere if you’re doing graphically intensive work (like video editing or gaming.) We’re not yet at the point where 16GB of RAM is limiting, and the onboard storage leaves plenty of breathing room for long periods of time.
Photo: Dan Thorpe-Lancaster
I really like the screen, although it’s not the brightest screen I’ve used on a laptop. The 10 aspect ratio also offers more vertical screen space at the cost of width, which makes it great for documents, but means you’ll see horizontal lines with full-screen video.
The camera setup is another bright spot that honestly surprised me at this price. You get an HD webcam that looks clear during video calls and works well in low light conditions. It also has face recognition that you can use With Windows Hello for quick access to your PC, while an easily accessible privacy cover ensures you can quickly cover the camera when it’s not in use.
The Vivobook has a nice selection of ports, with just about everything you could want in a modern laptop.There are two USB-A ports for legacy accessories, two Thunderbolt 4-capable USB-C ports, one HDMI 2.1 for external monitors and a microSD card reader.There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack if you haven’t jumped on it wireless headset gang still.
