ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED: A Game-Changer in Laptop Technology

Asus Vivobook S 15 review: It's almost everything I wanted in a laptop

Quick Links Asus Vivobook S 15 pricing and availability Design Keyboard and touchpad Display, webcam, and sound Performance and Windows on Arm Copilot+ isn't worth it Should you buy the Asus Vivobook S 15? The era of Qualcomm-powered PCs is finally here. I know I'm a little late to say that considering the first Snapdragon X laptops launched a month ago, but now I've finally had the Asus Vivobook S 15 in my hands for some time, and I love it. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is everything I wanted in a laptop. It offers excellent performance on battery or AC power, and battery life remains terrific despite that. Battery consumption while in sleep mode is also minimal, and the laptop wakes up from sleep nearly instantly every time. And Asus did a lot of good here too. The OLED display looks fantastic, and its large size makes it great for getting things done, and it has a fairly premium-feeling design. I don't quite understand why Asus didn't follow other OEMs, though, and decided to make its only Snapdragon laptop part of the middling Vivobook series rather than the Zenbook line. It feels like a somewhat half-hearted effort when this chip easily warrants going all in. About this review: Asus sent us the Vivobook S 15 for the purposes of this review. The company had no input in its contents. Fast, but efficient Asus Vivobook S 15 (2024, Qualcomm) Excellent performance without sacrificing battery 8 / 10 The Asus Vivobook S 15 is the company's first laptop with the Snapdragon X Elite processor, and it delivers an excellent combination of performance and efficiency, making for a great laptop for everyday use. It's also got a beautiful OLED display and a sleek metal design that feels great. Pros Excellent performance on both AC and battery power Fantastic battery life OLED display looks fantastic Premium metal design Cons 16:9 aspect ratio Don't buy this for Copilot+ Battery life is better on other Snapdragon X laptops $1300 at Best Buy $1300 at Amazon Asus Vivobook S 15 pricing and availability The Asus Vivobook S 15 is part of the first wave of Qualcomm Snapdragon X laptops, meaning it launched on June 18th, 2024. It's been available ever since, and you can currently find it on Best Buy or Amazon, as well as Asus' own website. The Asus Vivobook S 15 costs $1,300 and it comes in a single configuration featuring a Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 chip, 16GB of RAM (though a 32GB version was promised at launch), and a 1TB SSD. Asus Vivobook S 15 (2024, Qualcomm) CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-78-100) GPU Qualcomm Adreno Display type Lumina OLED, 120Hz, 0.2ms response, 100% DCI-P3, 600 nits, DisplayHDR TrueBlack 600, Display (Size, Resolution) 15.6-inch 16:9, 2880x1620 RAM Up to 32GB LPDDR5x (8448MHz) Storage 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD Battery 70Whr Charge speed 90W charger Ports 2x USB4, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, HDMI 2.1, hedphone jack, microSD card reader Operating System Windows 11 Webcam 1080p + IR Cellular connectivity No Wi-Fi connectivity Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth Bluetooth 5.4 Form factor Clamshell Dimensions 352.55x226.82x14.73-16mm Weight 3.13 pounds Speakers Harman Kardon-certified speakers Colors Cool Silver Expand Design It's a mostly premium laptop Close Starting right away with the design, the Asus Vivobook S 15 is a fairly average, albeit premium laptop. Nothing here necessarily stands out, but the chassis is mostly made of aluminum and it comes in a nice silver colorway, with the keys being color-matched to the chassis. That may sound small, but I always dislike when silver laptops have a black keyboard, and that's a fairly common trend with some cheaper laptops, so I'm glad we didn't get stuck with something like that despite this being a Vivobook. At 3.13 pounds, the laptop is decently portable for a 15-inch laptop, especially considering it's made of aluminum. It also comes in at 14.7mm of thickness, so it feels pretty modern. The Vivobook S 15 does lack some of the design elements you might find on other Vivobook laptops, but I like its subdued appearance. The bottom of the lid is sort of cut off to improve airflow while using the laptop, and it makes for a cool look when the laptop is closed, too. I'd say the cheapest-feeling part of the machine is the display, thanks to the black plastic bezel and a plastic coating for the screen itself. There's no glass here. Related Surface Laptop 7 15 review: You don't have to wait for Windows on Arm to get good anymore It does most things right A solid selection of ports Close For ports, the Asus Vivobook S 15 comes equipped with two USB4 ports, HDMI, a headphone jack, and a microSD card reader on the left side, while the right side houses two USB Type-A ports. It's a solid selection overall, and I always appreciate a laptop that's well equipped with ports and doesn't just expect you to use a USB-C hub. On the topic of ports, though, I'll mention that the USB4 ports are a bit too picky with charging. Like most review units I get, this one has a U.S.-style plug, so I tried using multiple of my own chargers, including a 100W charger from another Asus laptop I have. Basically every charger I tried resulted in a warning saying the laptop was charging slowly, and in some cases, sometimes the charger seemed to not work at all. Keyboard and touchpad Asus continues to deliver a great typing experience Asus has surprised me in the past with how good the keyboards are in its non-gaming laptops, so this time around, I'm not surprised anymore. The Asus Vivobook S 15 offers a pretty comfortable typing experience, with large keys, a decent amount of space between them to prevent typos, and most importantly, a comfortable feeling when pressing each key. Asus touts a 1.7mm travel distance, and it feels just right. Anything over 1.5mm is usually pretty good, and that definitely applies here. There's a satisfying feeling when the keys actuate, and I enver feel like they bottom out harshly. It's worth noting that not only is the keyboard backlit, it also has single-zone RGB lighting, so you can choose the color you like the most. It adjusts the brightness automatically depending on your setting, too. The touchpad is also pretty good. It's nice and large, and it feels smooth enough, though it's not the best I've ever used. The big problem is that the keyboard has a number pad, and to keep the touchpad aligned with the space bar, Asus had to push it to the left, which makes it very easy to accidentally press the right button instead of the left button. It's a common problem with laptops like this, unfortunately. Display, webcam, and sound OLED delivers, as usual Close Asus has been using OLED displays in its laptops for longer than most other companies, and it's developed a knack for using great ones. The Asus Vivobook S 15 comes with 15.6-inch OLED panel with what Asus calls 3K resolution, which really means 2880x1620. Yes, you may have seen a lot of laptops with 2880x1800 resolution before, but Asus made this laptop with a 16:9 aspect ratio, which I find very odd for a premium laptop in 2024. The industry has moved to 16:10 basically across the board, so I'm not sure why Asus thought this was a good idea for a $1,300 laptop. Disregarding that, though, this is a fantastic panel. Not only is the resolution very sharp and the 120Hz refresh rate smooth, but colors look as vivid as you could want them to. Of course, you also get deep, true blacks, as you'd expect from an OLED panel. Running the usual tests using the SpyderX Pro colorimeter, I got these results: The display on the Asus Vivobook S 15 covers 100% of sRGB and DCI-P3, plus 96% of Adobe RGB and 95% of NTSC. THose are some of the best results I've ever seen on any display, and it's seriously impressive. As for brightness, I got the display to hit nearly 400 nits, which is in line with what's advertised. Image credit: XDA I never really had problems with the display not being bright enough, but that was until I tried to take pictures of the laptop. Outdoors, with sunlight, the reflectiveness of the screen made it nearly impossible to see on camera. It's not as bad in real life, but still not ideal. The webcam is solid Above the display, Asus packed a 1080p webcam, complete with WIndows Hello support. Laptop webcams have improved a lot in recent years, and thankfully, the Vivobook S 15 is pretty solid, too. There's a good amount of detail and not too much noise (for webcam standards, anyway), so I can't really complain. The webcam is enhanced, in some ways, by Windows Studio Effects, especially the new Portrait Light effect that comes with Copilot+, which does alleviate some of the uneven lighting when I'm sitting next to my window. As for sound, the Vivobook S 15 is fine. The bottom-firing speakers get plenty loud, but they're much muddier than other high-end laptops. My reference has usually been Asus' own Zenbook 14 OLED I reviewed earlier this year, and those speakers still clear the Vivobook's in terms of clarity. The built-in microphones seem to work fine, too, and I've used them for a few work calls without any complaints. Performance and Windows on Arm Qualcomm is finally better than Intel... kind of All of this has really been a prelude to what I really care about with this laptop, and that's the processor. Performance is usually the most boring section of a review, but now that Qualcomm is entering the scene and prmising to shake up the entire industry, things are different. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is the first time Qualcomm is confident enough to compare itself to the best processors Intel is making in terms of performance, but it doesn't sacrifice the power efficiency that Arm is known for. The idea is that you can get the best of both worlds: great performance and great battery life, while also benefitting from things like instant wake and very low power usage while in sleep mode. The Snapdragon X Elite hasn't struggled to keep up with anything I usually do on an Intel PC Let's talk about performance first. I never got to try the previous Snapdragon chips for Windows, so this is my first experience with one, and honestly, it's been great. For the most part, the Snapdragon X Elite hasn't struggled to keep up with anything I usually do on an Intel PC. Most web browsers are now native on Arm, and performance feels great on them. So is Slack, which is one of the apps I use the most, and again, it feels pretty good to use. Even Photoshop, Lightroom, and DaVinci Resolve all run negatively and with generally excellent performance. DaVinci Resolve is only running natively on Arm in its public beta for version 19, and my PC did BSOD once while using it, but it is a beta, so I can give it a pass to some extent. There's also one exception to the great performance in Lightroom, which has to do with the AI Denoise feature. I tried using it once, and it took over 5 minutes to denoise an image, which is much slower than what I would get on an Intel laptop. The AI denoising uses the GPU, and considering the Snapdragon X Elite has a better GPU than Intel's integrated graphics, I think some kind of optimization needs to be done here. One of my favorite apps, Beeper, is unfortunately still emulated, and there are no plans for a native version right now, which is a bummer. There's a very noticeable lag when running the app on this PC, and I'm sure the emulation layer is to blame (Beeper being a fairly complex app probably doesn't help). If you're interested in benchmark scores, I ran the tests that could run on this PC, so here's how it compares to some of the competition: Asus Vivobook S 15 (Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100, AC) Asus Vivobook S 15 (Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100, Battery) Surface Laptop 7 (Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100, AC) Surface Laptop 7 (Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100, Battery) Lenovo Yoga 9i (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H) Geekbench (Best performance) (single/multi-core) 2,430 / 14,447 2,393 / 14,382 2,803 / 14,497 2,722 / 14,460 2,432 / 13,103 Geekbench (Balanced) (single/multi-core) 2,454 / 14,454 2,397 / 14,273 --- --- --- Cinebench 2024 (single/multi-core) 108 / 961 103 / 948 124 / 972 121 / 960 104 / 544 3DMark Steel Nomad (Light/Normal) 2,019 / 498 1,964 / 491 --- --- --- 3DMark Wild Life (Normal/Extreme) 16,772 / 6,417 16,571 / 6,312 16,878 / 6,540 16,850 / 6,515 14,901 / 4,143 CrossMark (x86) 1,209 --- 1,558 1,581 1,726 In native benchmarks, the Asus Vivobook S 15 has excellent performance and beats Intel at almost every turn, and it's great to see. It's not as fast as the Surface Laptop 7 though, because that X1E-80-100 configuration of the Snapdragon X Elite has dual-core boost, which this model doesn't, so there's a big difference in CPU performance. You see a big drop in CrossMark due to it being run in emulation, but even then, the score is much lower than you'd expect compared to the Surface Laptop 7. I've found CrossMark can be a very inconsistent benchmark at times, though, so I wouldn't put too much stock in it. Gaming on Arm is a problem Close One of the big hurdles Arm-based PCs are going to have to clear to be truly equivalent to existing laptops is gaming. The Snapdragon X Elite has a significantly more powerful GPU than Intel's latest processors, and it's very evident just looking at the native benchmarks. But that's just the thing, those benchmarks run natively. Most real games don't, so what's it like to game on Snapdragon? Well, it's a big gamble. My first attempt was to play Rocket League. It's admittedly a game that's very easy to run, but I was still surprised to see it running at max settings and Full HD incredibly smoothly. Then I tried Apex Legends, but that game refused to launch due to not working on Arm (I believe this is related to the Easy Anti-Cheat software). I then tried The Darkness II, which is another fairly old game, but decently demanding. It ran, but frame drops and stutters were frequent. It was trying to run at the full native resolution of the screen, which is definitely very ambitious. The problem is that when I tried to change the resolution, the game froze and I couldn't launch it again. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, worked up to the title screen, but then resulted in a black screen I couldn't move past, so that was also unplayable. Bioshock Remastered ran and it felt mostly smooth, though texture quality was horrendous in a lot of places. There seem to be no options for changing that, so it looks like the game automatically scales back a lot to run smoothly. These were never meant to be gaming laptops, but if you plan to play any games at all, right now, Snapdragon laptops aren't for you. Even if you're a casual gamer, some games may just not run at all, so it's hard to recommend it for that. Battery life is great Finally, we turn to battery life, which is one of the more exciting things about the new Snapdragon X laptops. The promises of efficiency and power have been making me want an Arm laptop for years, and it's finally here. And the verdict is positive, albeit not as much as what I've heard in reviews of other Snapdragon X laptops. I've only had a few days to test the Vivobook S 15, and in those days, the worst on battery life I got was 7 hours and 16 minutes, which included about 50 minutes of testing the aforementioned games. That's very impressive. Otherwise, the best I've had is 8 hours and 46 minutes, and that's a day where I was on Google Meet for over an hour, so it sucked down battery a lot. I was expecting to see some higher numbers considering devices like the Surface Laptop 7 reached over 15 hours in our review. It's also worth noting I've always run the laptop at 60Hz because that's the default setting, and Asus actually locks the option to change it in Windows. You have to use the MyAsus app, which I didn't realize for the first few days of using the laptop. I've also seen slightly better battery life on the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, which is powered by Intel. You have to remember, though, that laptop didn't perform as well on battery, while this is just as fast regardless of whether it's plugged in or not. I've also not tried as hard to follow a strict set of rules when it comes to using the laptop, so most days involved some task that sucks down more battery, whether it's using Google Meet, editing a video in DaVinci Resolve, or some photos in Lightroom or Photoshop. I haven't exactly had a properly slow day with this laptop, so I believe you could squeeze more time out of it. I'd also wager that constantly running Beeper in emulation might be part of the problem. 2:44 Related Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (2024) review: A terrific laptop for travel with few compromises The Asus Zenbook 14 comes with a sharp OLED display and Intel Core Ultra processors elevating every aspect of the experience. Copilot+ isn't worth it I barely even touched it I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before here, but if you're buying one of these PCs based on the promise of Copilot+, just don't. At least not right now. Copilot+ is a set of features unlocked by PCs that have an NPU with 40 TOPS or more, and since the Snpadragon X Elite delivers 45 TOPS of performance, it's the first one to meet that requirement. The big highlight of Copilot+ was supposed to be Recall, a feature that remembers everything you do on your PC and allows you to easily go back in time to what you were doing at any given point. Essentially, it takes screenshots of everything you do and makes them searchable. But after users found out that all this data was stored unencrypted and that the feature was enabled by default, privacy concerns arose, and Microsoft pulled that feature back. Over a month later, it's still nowhere to be seen. Related I got to play with Microsoft Copilot+, and this could change how you use your computer You're right not to care about AI PCs, but you will So, that leaves Copilot+ PCs with the following exclusive features: On-device Cocreator in Paint and Photos Live captions with translation New Windows Studio effects Unsurprisingly, most of these features really aren't very useful. Cocreator is a feature that can use AI to create images based on a text prompt. In Paint, you can create something completely new, or draw a doodle and ask Cocreator to turn it into a proper image in the style you want. In Photos, you can ask it to apply a new style to a picture you've taken, including a few presets as well as the ability to write your own prompt. It's a cute idea, but I don't think anyone will ever be seriously using this. Live captions with translation are a great feature on paper. Live captions alone are already a good addition for accessibility, and the addition of translation is welcome. But it only works if you're translating into English, and as an English speaker, how often do you really find yourself trying to watch content in a foreign language that doesn't already have subtitles built in? You might say it's useful for meetings, and yes, that makes some sense, but then live captions are only translated for you. If you speak in English back to the person talking to you, they don't get the same benefit to be able to understand you, so what's the point? To top it all off, it's kind of spotty. I tried watching a Portuguese YouTube video, and the live captions missed quite a few things that were said. And finally, Windows Studio Effects can be useful. There are a few additions here, starting with Creative Filters, which apply styles like Illustrated or Animated to your video feed. These are totally useless and I don't know anyone who'd ever use these in a call aside from just showing off the feature for the first time. Automatic framing is another one, and it's a bit more useful since it can zoom in on your face and keep it centered if you move around. Portrait Light is also somewhat useful since it can even out poor lighting. I sit next to a window all day, so it does help a bit. Finally, there's a new, more aggressive version of Eye Contact, which makes it so it looks like you're starting directly at the camera, even if you're not. I find this more unsettling than useful most of the time, though I can see why some might want it. Close The bottom line is none of these things really matter, though. Nice to have, maybe, but there's not a single thing here that would make anyone think "I should buy a laptop that can do that". The reason why Snapdragon PCs are exciting is the efficiency and battery life they offer while still being very fast. Copilot+ doesn't matter, at least until Recall is available. Should you buy the Asus Vivobook S 15? By all accounts, the Asus Vivobook S 15 is a great laptop. It has a premium design, a pretty good keyboard, a fantastic display as far as resolution and colors go, a very good performance and battery life. It's the kind of complete package anyone would love to have in a laptop. I think the problem with this laptop is that it's just a bit misguided, especially for its price. At $1,300, it's clearly a premium machine, but by making it a Vivobook, Asus treated it like a second-class citizen in some ways. The plastic bezel around the display, the 16:9 aspect ratio, and the good-but-not-great speakers are all signs of that. And for $1,300, you're just $50 away from the Galaxy Book 4 Edge, which has a taller display (with touch support), a thinner and lighter design that's also more premium, and a more powerful version of the Snapdragon X Elite. Related Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge review: The era of Qualcomm PCs has arrived The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge is one of the first Copilot+ PCs to hit the market, and it's bringing power, endurance, and tons of AI to the table That makes the Asus Vivobook S 15 a bit more questionable in terms of value, but it doesn't mean you're getting a bad laptop. It just pays to explore your options before committing. You should buy the Asus Vivobook S 15 if: You want a 15-inch laptop with a 16:9 display (that looks fantastic) You want a laptop with great performance and battery life You like having a lot of ports on your laptop You should not buy the Asus Vivobook S 15 if: You prefer a taller aspect ratio for the display You want a truly premium build quality You think Copilot+ is a big factor Asus Vivobook S 15 (2024, Qualcomm) 8 / 10 The Asus Vivobook S 15 offers an excellent experience all around with great performance, long battery life, a stunning display, and a comfortable keyboard. Some odd decisions hold it back from true greatness, but it's still a perfectly valid option to consider. $1300 at Best Buy $1300 at Amazon

This Asus Copilot+ PC has one of the best displays I've seen on a laptop (and it exudes premium)

The nature of Windows on ARM laptops means it's not yet optimized for certain apps and games. Asus' first Copilot+ PC with the Snapdragon X Elite chip is the Vivobook S 15, a sleek and lightweight 15-inch laptop with a gorgeous display and ultra-snappy performance. The chassis' minimalist, all-metal design is lightweight and airy, and it feels more premium than last year's Vivobook S 14. It's only 0.58 inches at its thinnest point, and it weighs just 3.13 pounds, making it particularly well-suited for hybrid or remote workers who want a powerful laptop with a gorgeous display that doesn't weigh a ton. Also: This versatile Dell laptop surprised me with 3 standout features Like all of the new Windows on ARM laptops released this summer, the Vivobook S 15 is fast and responsive with nice battery life, but it comes with new technology that isn't fully optimized for all tasks quite yet, which could limit its use case for some users. For the average consumer, however, this is the epitome of a laptop that looks and feels good right out of the box, and it starts with the brilliant 3K OLED display. With an 89% screen-to-body ratio and ultra-thin bezels, the screen is brilliant and high-contrast, rocking a max 600-nit brightness and 120Hz refresh rate for some silky-smooth and crisp image quality. The display's 16:9 resolution gives it that premium widescreen feel, lending itself well to both watching and editing media, but it might not be for everyone. Most 15-inch laptops come with a 16:10 resolution, which might feel more "natural" for some, but ultimately the distinction is subtle. With 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, Asus is able to keep costs close to that $1,000 price point with just the right amount of hardware on this machine. And it feels even better in tandem with the snappy, responsive performance the Snapdragon X Elite processor provides. Also: One of the best work laptops I've tested is not a Lenovo ThinkPad or MacBook The Vivobook S 15 features the 12-core, 3.4GHz chip with a 45 TOPS NPU, the same one found in the HP Omnibook X 14, but slightly below the 3.8GHz chip in the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge. The benchmarking scores in Cinebench reflect that same hierarchy, with numbers above the Omnibook and just below the Galaxy Book 4 Edge. In testing the CPU's performance, I got a single-core score of 106 and a multi-core score of 969. In Geekbench, I got a single-core of 2447 and a multi-core of 14384. Keep in mind that these scores were recorded while the device was plugged into power. While on battery, I got scores about 30% lower -- somewhat more of a difference than I expected. This is in comparison to the HP Omnibook X 14, which had a much narrower gap in scores in my testing, something I noted as I was reviewing it. Also: The best laptops of 2024 under $1,000: Expert tested and reviewed This paints a picture of a laptop that has somewhat variable battery life, depending on what you're doing and what kind of mode you have the laptop in. There's no escaping the power this display requires, and if you're someone who typically ignores battery setting profiles and keeps your machine blasting at "Best Performance," you may want to adjust the power modes in either the MyAsus software or in Windows (or both) because you'll see a drastic difference. That being said, the 70Wh battery performance on the Vivobook S 15 is good, but the user must manage it to maximize its efficiency. During the battery test that ZDNET runs on all laptops, I got about 10 and a half hours before it died, but that number fluctuated in subsequent tests with different power mode settings. Also: I tested Samsung's new Copilot+ PC, and it stands out from the crowd in 3 major ways Optimization is the theme here, and this also extends to its performance. The Windows on ARM architecture provides fantastic up-front performance in ways that are immediately apparent to most users. But when you start looking closely at more specialized tasks, things have the potential to get tricky. For example, the Vivobook S 15's aforementioned 16:9 resolution OLED screen seems like it would be perfect for editing video. While the integrated Qualcomm Adreno GPU is up to the task, its interaction with different apps and their performance in Windows (via Prism) is still a work in progress. During my testing, I ran DaVinci Resolve for Windows on ARM, and it worked mostly fine, but the performance is still not 100% optimized. There was some lag, graphic stuttering, and quirkiness, especially with 4K video. Adobe Photoshop, however, ran smoothly, with local AI-generative tasks popping off seamlessly with help from the NPU on board the Snapdragon. I expect performance to continue to improve as Windows gets better and developers improve their products for the platform. The other elephant in the room is gaming, which is not entirely up to speed with Windows on ARM. Yes, technically, you can game on this laptop, but many titles still don't run, and the ones that do are not well-optimized. Although the Vivobook S 15 looks like something you might want to game on, I wouldn't recommend it as a dedicated gaming laptop. At least not yet. Also: Three reasons why gamers should be paying close attention to Apple Instead, I see the Vivobook S 15 as a primary driver for remote workers or digital nomads who are already integrating AI into their workflows and appreciate an aesthetic laptop with a brilliant display that handles media well. Supporting that use case, it has a generous selection of ports: two USB-A ports on the right-hand side, two USB-C on the left, an HDMI port, a MicroSD slot, and a headphone jack. It also has a "full" keyboard (the number pad on the right side has slightly smaller keys, as typical for sub-16-inch machines), which is satisfying and responsive to typing on. The keyboard has colorful LED backlighting that can be configured in many different lights and effects, but again, this is not something that I would consider high on the priority list when optimizing battery life. The Asus Vivobook S 15 is a sleek and lightweight laptop with a gorgeous OLED display and solid battery life -- as long as you're mindful about your power usage. I'd recommend it to forward-thinking digital nomads who want a performant, AI-ready laptop with the blazing-fast Snapdragon X Elite processor. It's a solid investment for people who regularly swap between creative work, productivity software, and media. All things considered, the starting price of $1,299 is quite competitive for this laptop, particularly for the display alone.

Asus Vivobook S15 S5507 (Snapdragon X Elite) review: An excellent, affordable 15-inch notebook

Looking for a beast of a 15-inch laptop that'll get you superb performance and long battery life without leaving you penniless? Meet the Asus Vivobook S15 S5507. Asus outfitted this 15-inch wonder with the powerful new Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 processor, a stunning OLED display, and nearly 13 hours of battery life for just $1,299. While it's beset with poor speakers and middling graphics, its real offense is the plastic touchpad, which is so tough to navigate. However, if you can overlook a few grievances, the Asus Vivobook S15 is an excellent choice for those looking to upgrade to an affordable 15-inch notebook. Will the Asus Vivobook S15 S5507 make Laptop Mag's guide to the best 15-inch laptops? Let's find out. I tested the higher-end model of the Asus Vivobook S15 ($1,299), which comes with a Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 15.6-inch, 2880 x 1620, 120Hz display. A lower-specced model -- for $1,099 -- offers the also-new Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100 CPU and 512GB SSD. And that's about it. There are only two configurations. Want something even cheaper? Check out our best laptops under $1,000. It's been a hot minute since I've reviewed a 15-inch laptop. As you might've noticed, the era of 16-inch notebooks is here. However, the Asus Vivobook S15 is out here flaunting its anodized aluminum 15.6-inch silver chassis. The font on the glossy Asus Vivobook logo has a futuristic air, and the Vivobook overall feels quite elegant -- despite its lack of the bright color that I wish this laptop category could embrace. (Not everything needs to mimic a MacBook.) A similar theme extends to the interior, with a silver deck and keys consuming the space. The hinge allows the display to stretch 180 degrees, and what's more impressive are the super-thin bezels all around (including the bottom). Also, we can appreciate a webcam up top with a privacy shutter in a world of privacy concerns. At 3.2 pounds and 13.88 x 8.93 x 0.58~0.63 inches, the Vivobook S15 is lighter than an Apple and is smaller in depth than the rest of the competition. For better or worse, these laptops offer more space on the deck than the Vivobook S15 S5507: Seeing this many ports, even in a 15-inch laptop, is refreshing, to say the least (I'm looking at you, Apple). On the left, you'll find an HDMI port, two USB Type-C ports, a microSD card slot, and a headphone jack, while the right side features two USB Type-A ports. If you still need more ports, check out our best USB Type-C hubs and best laptop docking stations. While the Asus Vivobook S15's 15.6-inch, 2880 x 1620, 120Hz OLED display may not be the best, especially up against its current competition, it offers respectable color and brightness for the price. In the Borderlands trailer, the stars and massive planet on the horizon looked vivid on the Vivobook's display. However, half of the space captured the glare of the window behind me. But its high resolution shined when highlighting the sharp geometrical objects in the vault. Use the Asus Vivobook in a dark room and you'll get the absolute best out of its OLED display. We tossed our colorimeter on the Asus Vivobook S15, which reproduced 82.8% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, slightly below the average premium laptop (86.7%). It is more colorful than the MacBook Air (77.5%), but both were trounced by the Swift Edge (139.2%) and LG SuperSlim (139%). At 370 nits of brightness, the Asus Vivobook S15 is well-lit, but it might not be enough for some, especially since the Vivobook features a glossy display. It's also dimmer than the average premium laptop (464 nits), the MacBook Air (482 nits), the Swift Edge (387 nits), and the LG SuperSlim (384 nits). I expected to like this keyboard, especially since Asus advertised it with 1.7mm key travel, which is great. That depth translates well when I depress each key. However, there isn't much click or bounce to it, so the typing experience feels average at best. I hit 79 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing test, slightly below my usual 81-wpm average. Like I said, I didn't feel much bounce to get me to each key. And, while this didn't impact me, the corners of the laptop are rather sharp. Someone with larger hands might be uncomfortable typing. Another surprise is its keyboard lighting: It's RGB-lit! It may be only one zone, but it's a neat feature. The 3.5 x 4.3-inch touchpad comes with a few unique features. You can adjust the brightness and volume of the laptop by scrolling on the right or left side of the touchpad, respectively. However, it's super resistant to my fingers, so I'm fighting to click on anything half the time. The Asus Vivobook S15's bottom-firing speakers are unbalanced and nasally. I listened to Chappell Roan's "Good Luck, Babe!" and its usual ethereal percussion decided to come in sharp and nasally. The percussion found itself at the forefront of the track, keeping pace with the vocals in an awkward balance. If my ears could squint, that's what they would be doing when listening for the synths buried beneath every other instrument. It is outfitted with the Dolby Access app, but I wasn't a fan of any of the selections when applied, which include Dynamic, Music, Game, and Movie. Rocking a shiny new Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100, the Asus Vivobook S15 tore through a couple of dozen Google Chrome tabs and a handful of YouTube videos without issue while Spotify played in the background. On the Geekbench 6.3 overall performance test, the Asus Vivobook S15 nailed 14,522, which crushes the average premium laptop (9,078). It also did a number on the MacBook Air's M3 (12,052), the Swift Edge's AMD Ryzen 7 7840U (10,682), and the LG SuperSlim's Intel Core i7-1360p (10,282). The Vivobook S15 transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in just 4 minutes and 27 seconds on our HandBrake benchmark, flying past the category average (7:16), MacBook Air (6:30), Swift Edge (6:04), and LG SuperSlim (10:41). Asus' 1TB SSD features a transfer rate of 1,296 megabytes per second, which is only slightly behind the average (1,412 MBps). It's faster than the Swift Edge (1,270 MBps) but slower than the LG SuperSlim (1,692 MBps). We've tested a wave of Snapdragon X Elite CPUs as the age of Copilot+ PCs has dawned upon us. The Vivobook's Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 is the third-highest performing chipset in the Snapdragon X Elite series. We put the Vivobook S15 and others through rigorous testing to judge their AI capabilities (see how we test AI PCs). As we learn more about what these AI PCs can do, our methods will adapt as necessary. But let's see how the Vivobook S15 did. On the Geekbench ML 0.6 AI performance test, the Vivobook S15 hit an ONNX/CPU score of 2,913. None of its current competitors took this test, but it does outmatch the HP Spectre x360 14 2024 (2,876) and just misses the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Q425M (2,971). Remember that Qualcomm's CPU is likely not optimized for Geekbench ML 0.6. And this doesn't test the NPU, which is where Qualcomm ultimately beats the competition. There's more than AI performance under the hood of Copilot+ PCs. They support new software and features. Naturally, the biggest and most controversial feature is Recall. Imagine a playback of the entire history of your PC's use. You can hop around your timeline to see what you did hours ago. This information is intended to be stored locally, but it only makes sense to worry about it connecting to the cloud. However, you do have the option to adjust the type of information stored. Plus, Recall is limited to Windows Insiders and disabled by default. Our favorite Copilot+ PC features include Windows Studio Effects and Live Captions. AI art programs are also available, but they are not without controversy. As we've seen with each test of the Qualcomm Adreno GPU, there's not much gaming or graphically intensive software you'll be using with the Asus Vivobook S15. On the benchmark for Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (Medium, 1080p), the Asus Vivobook S15 averaged 21 frames per second, which doesn't make it across the necessary 30-fps minimum threshold. The LG SuperSlim's Intel Iris Xe Graphics did relatively better (25 fps) -- meanwhile, the Swift Edge's Radeon Graphics 780M clocks in at a solid 44 fps. Turning to the 3DMark Fire Strike synthetic graphics test, the Asus Vivobook S15 scored 6,172, far from the average premium laptop (9,033). It beat the LG SuperSlim (4,842) again, but not the Swift Edge (6,873). It may not be a gaming laptop, but Qualcomm made a few claims about gaming on the Snapdragon X Elite chipset, so naturally, I tried gaming on the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition... I wanted to cry. At this point, it's not surprising that the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 offers that killer battery life. On the Laptop Mag battery test, the Asus Vivobook S15 survived 12 hours and 53 minutes, cranking in over an hour more than the average premium laptop (11:17). It also outlasted the Swift Edge (7:18) and LG SuperSlim (11:38). However, the MacBook Air (15:03) did take the lead. Qualcomm has had a tough time catching up to Apple's battery life scores, but it did, once at least. I am, of course, talking about the Dell XPS 13, on which we spent over 115 hours testing the battery life. Nothing makes me look more like a grainy hot mess than a laptop webcam, and that remains true with the Vivobook S15's 1080p shooter. My hair and skin blended so awkwardly that I can't tell where one begins and the other ends. Parts of my face are so pink that I look like a nesting doll. Even the divide between my hairline and the image made it look like my scalp was straight-up bleeding. The poor contrast blew out the window behind me, turning my blue shirt black. Do yourself a favor and check out the best webcams. It might get uncomfortable in your lap. After streaming a 15-minute video, the Asus Vivobook S15 measured 97 degrees Fahrenheit on its underside, just slightly above our 95-degree comfort threshold. At the center of the keyboard and touchpad, the Vivobook reached 94 and 77 degrees, respectively. The hottest it got was 111 degrees on the underside, between vents just left of the center. You get MyASUS, which provides access to your device settings, system diagnostics, system updates, and warranty. You can monitor your CPU, memory, battery, and hard disk space. There are additional display and audio settings. Since this is a Copilot+ PC, you also get the AI features mentioned above. The XPS 13 9345 comes with a one-year limited warranty. See how Dell performed on our Tech Support Showdown ranking. While the Asus Vivobook S15 S5507 isn't perfect, it hits the key notes that make a tremendous 15-inch laptop: performance, battery life, and display -- all of which are stellar. However, my biggest pet peeve is the touchpad. It's the window in which you access the laptop; my finger should not feel like it's sprinting to get control of the cursor. Do you know which laptop doesn't have this problem? That's right, the MacBook Air 15. MacBooks use glass touchpads, whereas this particular laptop uses plastic. Going with the MacBook also nets you longer battery life. However, it's also pricier ($1,699). For the price, the Asus Vivobook S15 S5507 does many things right. So, if you're comfortable with getting a wireless mouse or you don't mind a stiff touchpad, then this laptop is perfect for you.

HP EliteBook Ultra review: Another win for Snapdragon, but not so much for HP

Quick Links HP EliteBook Ultra and OmniBook X pricing and availability Design Display and keyboard AI and Copilot+ Performance and battery life Should you buy the HP EliteBook Ultra or OmniBook X? The HP EliteBook Ultra is the successor to one of the best laptops on the market, the Dragonfly G4, so does it live up to it? Probably not, to be honest. It's a wonderful laptop, but there are a ton of compromises that made me wish the company just made a new model and swapped out the motherboard and chipset. I've reviewed hundreds of laptops, and while I'm so used to jumping from PC to PC, Qualcomm's new chipset makes me not want to use anything else. HP sent me the EliteBook Ultra for review, although it's identical to the consumer-aimed OmniBook X where the hardware is concerned. This product is the successor to the Dragonfly G4, a product I've been using regularly since it was launched. Indeed, when we all go to product launches, more and more of us are using Dragonfly laptops, since it's that good. Related HP Dragonfly G4 review: What else could you want? HP's Dragonfly G4 isn't just a great business laptop. It's great for everybody It still has an excellent keyboard, and it's relatively lightweight. Gone are the days of the Elite Dragonfly being an ultra-light convertible, and the 3:2 display is gone now too. In fact, for a business laptop, there are very few options at all. There's no OLED display, no Sure View, no 5G connectivity, and there's only one USB4 port. With the Snapdragon X Elite being so new, and the failure of Windows on Arm in previous years, I suspect HP just played it safe with this one. And that's fine. Performance is fantastic, battery life is long, and everything about the EliteBook Ultra just feels delightful to use. HP sent us the EliteBook Ultra for review. It had no input on the contents of this article. HP EliteBook Ultra 7/ 10 $1599 $1699 Save $100 ProsSnapdragon X Elite is what people should be usingExcellent keyboardSmart AI features ConsNo display optionsNo 5GMissing a lot of features that the Dragonfly was known for $1599 at HP$1699 at B&H HP EliteBook Ultra and OmniBook X pricing and availability The HP EliteBook Ultra and OmniBook X were released on June 18 as part of the first wave of Copilot+ PCs. They were two of 14 laptops to be the first to ship with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chipsets. The EliteBook Ultra starts at $1,699.99, while the OmniBook X starts at $1,149.99. While they're the same hardware, albeit coming in different colors, the EliteBook Ultra is a business laptop, so it comes with Windows 11 Pro, a better warranty, and so on. Specifically, the chip used is the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100, which is the lower-tier SKU, and you'll see that when we talk about benchmarks. However, unlike OEMs that used the X1E-80-100, the base model doesn't come with the Snapdragon X Plus. HP went all-in on X Elite. Other specs include 16GB RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 14-inch 2.2K display, while there are options to boost the storage to 1TB for a surprisingly small premium. Specifications CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite GPU Qualcomm Adreno graphics Display type IPS LCD 60Hz, touch, up to 300 nits Display (Size, Resolution) 14 inches, 2240 x 1400 RAM Up to 32GB LPDDR5x 8400MHz (soldered), dual-channel Storage Up to 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD Battery 59Whr Ports 2x USB Type-C, 1x USB Type-A, 1 3.5mm audio jack Operating System Up to Windows 11 Pro Webcam 5MP IR Wi-Fi connectivity Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth Bluetooth 5.4 Dimensions 12.32 x 8.8 x 0.33-0.57 inches (312.9 x 223.5 x 8.5-14.4 mm) Weight From 2.97 pounds (1.35kg) Speakers Dual speakers Colors Atmospheric Blue Price Starts at $1,699 Expand Design All-aluminum and all-blue Close Pretty much the only thing that the EliteBook Ultra has in common with the Dragonfly series is that it's blue (Atmospheric Blue is what it's called now), and hardware-wise, it's the one thing that's different from the gray or white OmniBook X. It's even made out of aluminum now, so the days of machined magnesium are gone. Along with the magnesium chassis, it's also no longer under a kilogram in weight, something that was the Dragonfly's claim to fame for four generations. It now weighs in at 2.97 pounds, which is light for a 14-inch aluminum laptop. If this is the fifth generation of the Dragonfly, it's the third time the mainline product has been overhauled, while we've also seen variants like the Dragonfly Folio and Dragonfly Pro. I should take a step back and talk about branding, because Elite and Pro are taking over all of HP's business laptops. It's not as much of a change as Omni taking over the consumer portfolio, but you should know that EliteBook Ultra is the new Dragonfly and EliteBook X will be the successor to the premium EliteBook 1000 series. As for what will become of the inexplicably consumer-focused Pro version of the Dragonfly, that's anyone's guess. OK, back to the product. The Atmospheric Blue color is stunning, and designed to be so. Most business laptops come in a boring silver color, but this is meant to stand out. This is the product that the CEO of the company uses, and that person can stand out from the pack. As for ports, it's somewhat limited for a business laptop. There's one USB Type-A port on the right, alongside a headphone jack. On the left, you'll find one USB4 Type-C port and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port. It's a bit disappointing. For one thing, every premium Intel laptop has a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, so it's unfortunate that one of these USB Type-C ports is USB 3.2. And on products like the Surface Laptop 7, Surface Pro 11, Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, and Dell XPS 13, they have Snapdragon X Elite chips and have all USB4 ports. It's not a chipset limitation. Related Surface Laptop 7 15 review: You don't have to wait for Windows on Arm to get good anymore It does most things right The other thing I don't like is that both USB Type-C ports are on the left side of the device. It's a small annoyance, but life is a little easier with one port on each side, and HP knows this because that's how the latest EliteBook 1040 is designed. Overall, the design is lovely. It's a crisp aluminum laptop that comes in a deep blue color, weighing in at under three pounds. My biggest issue with it is really just that it's not the Dragonfly, which just happened to be my favorite laptop on the market last year. Display and keyboard It's 2.2K, and that's your only choice Close The HP EliteBook Ultra and OmniBook X come with a 14-inch 2240x1400 60Hz touchscreen, and that's it. Unlike other products in the company's portfolio, there are no OLED options, no Sure View privacy screen, and no different resolutions or refresh rates. I appreciate that HP went for a proper 2.2K instead of FHD, so you don't get that little bit of pixelation that you have with 1200p, while it's not so high-res that it'll affect battery life. That said, there isn't much else to write home about with this screen. In my testing, it supports 100% sRGB, 73% NTSC, 79% Adobe RGB, and 79% P3. That's not terribly bad, but it's not good either. Brightness came in at under 300 nits. The keyboard is excellent and quiet. HP's keyboards are usually best-in-class, so there's no surprise there. Seriously, every HP presentation I sit in on talks about new steps they've taken to fight wobbly keys. It's great. However, I should point out that it's probably not accurate to call this particular keyboard best-in-class, despite being very good, because the keyboard on the EliteBook 1040 G11 is actually better. While you certainly won't find it to be lacking in any way, it doesn't quite live up to the keyboards of its EliteBook and Dragonfly predecessors. The touchpad is solid too, and it's large enough, taking up most of the available real estate. I feel like I'm starting to get spoiled by haptic touchpads though, and I find myself wishing HP used one here. It comes with a 5.2MP 16:10 webcam, which is excellent. It's not quite as good as the sensors HP is using on other premium laptops, but it still beats most of the competition. That resolution gives you plenty of room for 1080p broadcasting to meetings, while still cropping the field of view for auto reframing. Aside from Windows Studio Effects, which is a suite of features included in Copilot+, HP bundles its own Poly Studio Pro software, which has its own array of features. Along with effects that you can add, you can adjust things like brightness, saturation, and contrast, add spotlight lighting, adjust your field of view, and more. It's pretty great, and it's one thing that's unique to HP PCs. AI and Copilot+ Do you care, and should you? I've written pretty extensively about Microsoft's Copilot+ initiative in my reviews of the Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11. The bottom line is that while some of the features are nice to have, you shouldn't go out and buy a new PC to get it, especially with the flagship Recall feature MIA. Related Surface Pro 11 review: Microsoft almost gets it right A great laptop with a bad tablet OS HP is packing its own AI Companion software on the EliteBook Ultra, something that differentiates it from the competition. Indeed, the company is really going hard on AI. It's betting big on the idea that people are going to care about this. I hope it's a long-term bet though, because I don't think anyone is buying a laptop for AI right now. People are going to buy a great laptop, and they can be delighted when new AI features are lit up for them, assuming they're not forced upon them in some annoying way. Once that starts to happen, then people start buying PCs for AI. HP AI Companion, which comes in a window that's inexplicably not resizable, has a few features, none of which are truly unique. 'Ask' is a chat feature, similar to Microsoft's own Copilot. 'Analyze' is pretty neat, allowing you to drop some files into the app and have it do things like summarize documents. Then there's 'Discover', which looks like an FAQ, but it's actually a series of prompts. If you click on something like, "How can I improve my prompts," it asks AI Companion for the answer, and you can converse with it for more details. Thanks to the NPU on the Snapdragon X Elite, this is happening on-device, and that's the whole point. If you're using the Analyze feature, you don't have to worry about dropping sensitive documents into the cloud. HP AI Companion is a pretty smart implementation of AI on a laptop, and it's interesting to see HP succeed in using it for productivity in a way where Microsoft has failed. Copilot+ feels like a toy, filled with features that are more like party tricks. Performance and battery life Performance is great with one caveat Like I said, after using a Snapdragon X Elite laptop, it's hard to recommend anything else. There are some compatibility issues, particularly with games, and I wouldn't recommend it for video editing just yet, but for most users, it's the best thing going. If you do want to play games, even casually, I'd look toward Intel Lunar Lake later this year. Performance is great, and almost everything I use runs natively on Arm64, such as Google Chrome, Slack, OneNote, Photoshop, and so on. The one thing I use that's not native is Adobe Lightroom Classic, and it seems fine, except for the AI Denoise feature, which is awful. The newer Lightroom is native, so if you use that, you're good to go. I've been told that Lightroom Classic is never going native. Adobe promised Premiere Pro and Illustrator by the end of July but, well...here we are. There are three SKUs of the Snapdragon X Elite, and HP went with the lowest one. It seems like almost every OEM either used the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 in all of its SKUs, or used the Snapdragon X Plus in its base models and the X Elite X1E-80-100 in upper-tier SKUs. I don't know what the price difference is between an X1E-78-100 and an X1E-80-100, but they're just different ways of hitting a certain starting price. The bad news is that there's a considerable gap between the X1E-78-100 and the X1E-80-100. They're both 12-core chips, but the X1E-80-100 has two boost cores that are essentially overclocked when they need to be. The gap isn't as big between the X1E-80-100 and the X1E-84-100, which is only in the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge, because the only difference between those chips is that the boost cores are boosted a little more. Lenovo also opted for the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 in its Yoga Slim 7x and ThinkPad T14s, while you'll find the X1E-80-100 in the Surface Pro 11, Surface Laptop 7, and Dell XPS 13. HP EliteBook Ultra Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 Surface Laptop 7 Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 HP EliteBook 1040 G11 Core Ultra 7 165H Geekbench 6 (single / multi) 2,392 / 13,266 2,803 / 14,497 2,394 / 12,642 Cinebench 2024 (single / multi) 101 / 826 124 / 972 103 / 835 Cinebench R23 (x86) (single / multi) 1,108 / 8,643 1,304 / 10,021 1,845 / 14,609 3DMark (Time Spy (x86) / Wild Life Extreme / Night Raid) 1,793 / 5,941 / 24,654 1,892 / 6,540 / 25,257 3,871 / 6,354 / 28,929 CrossMark (x86) (Overall) 1,007 1,558 1,741 You can see that there's a considerable delta in scores between the EliteBook Ultra and the Surface Laptop 7. I included the EliteBook 1040 G11 as well, which uses Intel's Meteor Lake platform. The Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 is mostly on par with it, except for tests that are being run in emulation. As far as battery life goes, it's solid, although not quite as good as the 10+ hours I was getting on the Surface Laptop 7. My median scores were between 465 and 475 minutes, although there were some rare cases where I could stretch it over 10 hours. Certain things, like Google Meet, will really drain the battery. It makes sense. Streaming video uses more battery than general productivity tasks. Should you buy the HP EliteBook Ultra or OmniBook X? You should buy the HP EliteBook Ultra or OmniBook X if: You're looking for a premium business laptop You're on the go a lot You care about AI features You should NOT buy the HP EliteBook Ultra or OmniBook X if: You need connectivity on the go You want an OLED display You're ediiting video a lot Ultimately, I think the people purchasing an EliteBook Ultra should want a Snapdragon X Elite in a business PC. Right now, Dell has some Latitudes and Lenovo has the ThinkPad T14s, but those are meant to be more mainstream. And the Snapdragon X Elite is great. If you're not gaming or editing video, it's hard to imagine anything else. However, I've also got the EliteBook 1040 G11 on-hand and I have to say, it really reminds me of the things missing from the EliteBook Ultra, like 5G, different display options, and even a keyboard that's better than the already excellent one on the Ultra. Still, the EliteBook Ultra is easy to recommend, partly because the Snapdragon X Elite is so good and there are few proper competing products that use the chipset. HP OmniBook X $1199 at Best Buy$1150 at HP HP EliteBook Ultra $1599 $1699 Save $100 $1599 at HP$1699 at B&H

Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ PC review: Elegant design meets powerful performance

To put this in context, Apple and Microsoft used to be neck-and-neck in the laptop market until around 2020. Things changed this year, however, when Apple ditched Intel processors for its own M1 chip based on ARM architecture, resulting in massive performance and battery life gains, along with a better user experience due to software and hardware integration. With the new Snapdragon X series processors, Microsoft and its OEM partners such as Asus are looking to replicate some of these gains, while also trying to jump on the AI bandwagon that has been the talk of the town for the better part of two years. As for the star of the show, Asus' revamped S series laptops were already pretty impressive, as evidenced by the S16 OLED I reviewed earlier this year. Asus has now given the S15 a big boost with the addition of the Snapdragon X Elite chipset, in a bid to take on not only other Windows OEMs, but also the MacBook's of the world. But does the first Snapdragon X Elite powered laptop in India really live up to the promise of powerful performance and long battery life, or are there still a few kinks to be ironed out? Well, I used the S15 Copilot+ PC for about 15 days and below is my detailed analysis of how the laptop fared in real-world use. One of the pain points for me with the S16 OLED was its massive 16 inch display which despite being lightweight was a bit too much to carry for me. However, I had no such complaints with the new S15 Copilot+ PC. With a weight of around 1.42kg and a thickness of just 14.7mm, the new S15 laptop is definitely easy to carry for long periods of time. Like its siblings, the S15 comes in a metal body design which gives the laptop a very premium touch and for its worth, it has also received the US MIL-STD 810H military-grade standard which does ensure a certain peace of mind in the long run. In terms of real world usage, the laptop easily opens with one finger and there is very little keyboard or display flex when typing. There are plenty of connectivity options on the laptop including 2 USB 3.2 ports, 2 USB 4.0 ports, 1 HDMI port, a Micro SD card reader and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Asus has also provided support for Wi-fi 7 with this laptop and while it may not come in handy for most Indian users right now, it is always a good thing to have advanced features for a premium device. The S15 Copilot+ PC features a 15.6-inch 3K OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate and a 16:9 aspect ratio. With a peak brightness of 600 nits, there are no problems using the laptop indoors or on the move. It has the same customisation as the S16, so you can switch between different display profiles, sound modes and fan profiles to suit your needs. One feature that I really liked about the Asus S Series laptops this year is the 'Pixel Refresh' feature, which refreshes the pixels on the screen to prevent burn-in problems with the OLED display. The S15 Copilot+ PC features a dual speaker setup with Dolby Atmos support, which acutally provides a pretty decent output and should be good enough for most users. But since my room is a little noisy, I opted for volume enhancer option in the My Asus app that boosted the audio by 300% while causing only minor loss in clarity. The exceptional clarity and colour accuracy of this panel really enhances the viewing experience and, combined with the stereo speaker setup, makes it the ideal device for media consumption. As mentioned above, the S15 Copilot+ PC runs on the Snapdragon X Elite chipset, and there is also a dedicated NPU to handle AI-related tasks on the device. However, as things stand, there aren't many AI tasks that you can perform with this Copilot+ PC. Windows Recall is, well, recalled, and there aren't a whole lot of other things that necessitate a dedicated NPU. For anyone wondering, yes, there is a designated Copilot button on this laptop, along with other Copilot+ PC features like Live Captions and Cocreator on Paint. Hopefully Microsoft or Asus will add support for more AI tools in the future that can take advantage of the powerful hardware on board. All the other interesting Asus features that I talked about in the S16 review, such as Auto Framing, Eye Contact (which helps you maintain eye contact during video calls even when looking elsewhere) and Background Blur, are all here. There are also some cool new trackpad gestures this time around. For example, swiping up on the right-hand side of the trackpad increases the volume, and the same action on the left-hand side increases the brightness. I'm not much of a gamer, but it's safe to say that the new Copilot+ PC can easily handle light gaming. Given the slim form factor and the lack of a dedicated GPU, it's hard to expect more. However, I had no problems with my day-to-day tasks and the laptop never broke a sweat, no matter how many tabs or even browsers I had open at the same time. While software support for ARM-based Windows PCs has been an issue in the past, I had no problems with any of my everyday applications such as Slack, Google Chrome, Firefox, Arc and even media players such as VLC. As these are early days for ARM based processors, some applications have yet to be ported and there may be minor software glitches with some applications. The S15 Copilot+ PC has a massive 70Wh battery and comes with a 90W fast charger. Asus claims 18 hours of battery life for this laptop, but my usage suggests that this figure is a bit inflated and the actual number is around 13-14 hours or 1.5 hours of work on standard display settings. However, switching to DCI P3 colour gamut in the display settings reduces the battery life to around a day or so. In any case, this is definitely a benchmark for Windows laptops, and this was the first time I had used a Windows laptop where I didn't have to worry about carrying a charger when going out for all day meetings. Charging is also relatively fast, I found that the battery went from 0-50 percent in around 35-40 minutes, while a full charge took around 1 hour 40-50 minutes. One problem I noticed with the S15 Coplilot+ PC is that it tends to heat up quite a bit when plugged in. This means that you cannot use it on your lap while charging and have to move the laptop to a solid surface instead. The Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ PC with Snapdragon X Elite processor is a definite buy for people who want a Windows laptop that looks good (and is easy to hold), is powerful enough to handle all the everyday tasks and, most importantly, has great battery life. While there aren't many AI features on this Copilot+ that take advantage of the powerful chipset on board, I liked the customisation options provided via the My Asus application. Plus, the addition of new gesture controls via the trackpad really improved the user experience for me. While the price tag of ₹1,24,999 may put many people off, I believe that this laptop actually has what it takes to actually qualify as a flagship offering worthy of this price tag. 3.6 Crore Indians visited in a single day choosing us as India's undisputed platform for General Election Results. Explore the latest updates here!

Do You Need a Copilot+ PC? Testing the New Qualcomm-Based Machines

Do you need a Copilot+ PC with a spiffy new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor based on the ARM architecture instead of the familiar x86 architecture in the Intel and AMD processors? After traveling with several of these new machines lately, I found that they offer some pluses and minuses -- though fewer of each than I expected. The three machines I've been testing -- the HP EliteBook Ultra G1q and the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7and ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 -- are high-end entries in the enterprise and business markets, and all show similar strengths and weaknesses compared with the competitive x86 (Intel or AMD) machines. I'll talk more about specific performance and unique features in the individual machine reviews that follow, but here are some general thoughts. First, recall that the big defining hardware feature of a Copilot+ PC is a processor with a neural processing unit (NPU) capable of at least 40 Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS). For now, that means the Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor family, though new entrants that qualify from AMD (Strix Point) and Intel (Lunar Lake) should be arriving now. So testing a Copilot+ PC now means testing a Snapdragon X-based machine. On the plus side, compatibility is notably stronger than on the previous generations of Qualcomm-based Windows machines like the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s, which used the earlier Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 processor. There are now more ARM native applications, including Microsoft's Office suite and the rest of the Microsoft environment, plus browsers and more, which Qualcomm and Microsoft say cumulatively account for the vast majority of the time people spend on Windows. Just as important, the included method for emulating x86 on ARM so you can run other Windows applications, known as PRISM, is much improved. A number of applications that simply wouldn't run on early ARM-based machines now work quite well. But on the downside, there are still IT management and utilities such as antivirus programs that don't work yet; and of course many games. (For games, you can check for compatibility here. Qualcomm recently released a beta graphics driver it says works better for games, but it's up to the OEMs to distribute it. In any case, these machines aren't your best choice for a gaming PC; for that, you probably still want a dedicated GPU anyway). For the IT and security programs, one issue seems to be getting the correct device drivers. Performance is also greatly enhanced, not only for AI applications (due to the faster NPU in these machines compared to current x86 ones), but also for more traditional applications. Performance still varies by application, but in general, I found the ARM-based machines to be quite competitive on most things, although graphics still lags. Qualcomm has long pushed improved battery life as one of the big benefits of its architecture, and indeed I did see better battery life -- past 19 hours in some cases, compared with just under 16 hours for the best current Windows machine I had available. That's a win, but maybe not as big of a win as I had thought. (Qualcomm says the machine should have 2x the battery life if you're just doing video playback, but I didn't see this.) Microsoft's Copilot+ Applications And of course, there are the AI applications, but at the moment, most are underwhelming. All of these machines, and many other new Windows PCs, come with a dedicated Copilot key, which brings up the Microsoft Copilot itself. Naming conventions are confusing, but recall there's Copilot for Edge, Copilot for Microsoft 365, and the Copilot app, which is what comes up with the Copilot key. That app works the same as Copilot does on other Windows 11 systems, with the ability to toggle between the regular version (marked as "web") and, if your company supports it, "work," which uses the data you have access to in your company's Microsoft 365 account. Despite the name, Copilot+ PCs do not seem to use the NPU for the Copilot application itself, at least not yet, which seems odd. Indeed, to a large extent, Copilot+ PCs remain a work in progress, with the most compelling (albeit potentially problematic) feature still missing. That would be Recall, which is supposed to capture what you are doing on the machine every few seconds so you can more easily go back and find things. It's an interesting concept, but security and privacy concerns have held it back. Microsoft first said Recall would arrive with the Copilot+ PCs, then said it was changing it to be opt-in, making it clear how to pause its capturing of data, and adding encryption so you would need to use biometrics (Windows Hello) to decrypt. These all sounded like improvements, but security and privacy concerns prompted Microsoft to delay the rollout and test with Windows Insiders first. I have to believe that capturing all that data could cause all sorts of legal and compliance issues, especially in an enterprise environment, and I won't be at all surprised if enterprises turn off this feature before deploying such machines, at least initially. That leaves a limited number of actual applications that take advantage of it being a Copilot+ machine. Of the built-in features, perhaps the most useful is an improved version of Live Captions, a system-level feature that provides captions to audio or video on screen. With Copilot+ PCs, the big change is the ability to live translate audio from 44 languages into English (presumably the reverse and more languages will come over time.) Right now, this works fairly well; I was able to watch newscasts in other languages and get a reasonably good translation on screen. This works from the browser on sites like YouTube and in applications such as video conferencing. It was far from perfect, but still quite useful. Windows Paint added one of the most interesting new features, called Cocreator. The Windows 11 version of Paint added an Image Creator feature (theoretically in beta) that uses Dall-E; you tell it what you want to draw and it creates an image. It's fun, but not wildly different than what you'd see with many other services, except that it's designed to run on the local machine. Cocreator is somewhat different, in that you describe what you want and then start drawing it using the normal Paint tools, and it creates an improved image of what you've drawn. After you get an image generated, you can continue drawing and that modifies the image. This lets you add more details, change colors, and modify the image to some extent. For instance, you can ask it to draw "a turtle swimming in the ocean" and then just draw some green circles for the turtle and some blue lines for the ocean and it will create an image based on that. You can then select that image, and edit it, changing colors, or adding things like the sun. Now, I'm no artist, but I have to admit this was fun. It's not really a professional tool, but it's interesting. Similarly, the Photos App has gained a "Restyle" option that takes your photo and can redo it in one of several styles, such as Fantasy, Anime, Impressionist, and Cyberpunk. As always, Photos isn't as sophisticated as the professional tools available, but this is a fun way of producing unusual-looking photos. Both Paint and Photos seem to do most of these AI effects on device using the NPU, but only work if you are signed on with a personal Windows account. Windows Studio Effects, which controls how you look in video conferencing calls, was introduced earlier, and is part of most machines I've seen with current Intel Core Ultra /Meteor Lake and Ryzen Pro 7840/Phoenix processors. But the version included in the Copilot+ PCs I've tested shows off the NPU by including notably better blur and background control, as well as framing for video calls without impacting the rest of the system performance. Third-Party Applications In addition, there a number of third-party applications that take advantage of the NPU, although these too seem to be developing over time. Here are a few I have tried. Zoom is one of the most notable, and it works pretty seamlessly, by moving long-standing features such as backgrounds and blur to the NPU. As with Windows Studio Effects, the impact is pretty noticeable. The quality of background blur seems to be enhanced, with fewer artifacts, and by using the NPU, the CPU is free for other applications. Virtual Sapiens offers an interesting tool for improving presentation skills, including a Sidekick application you run when you are speaking that tells you when you are too close or too far from the screen, not centered, showing bad posture, not focusing, etc. It also rates your presentation and speaking ability, with the goal of making you look better in video conferencing. Much of this runs on the NPU, though when it optionally creates a transcript of your conversation, so it can show you things like too many pause, that transcription is done on a server. The product seems a little rough around the edges now -- Microsoft still flags it as a risky application -- but the concept is very intriguing, Skylum's Luminar Neo is a photo editor that works mainly through presets and effects that easily let you edit a photo without using brushes. It automatically selects a number of presets that you can choose to change the style of your photo, and also contains a number of tools you can use for more specific editing, from cropping to specific color editing, as well as effects like automatically improving the look of colors on your skin. The product came out a few years ago, and the big change now is the NPU support. At this point, the only features that use the NPU are those that upscale images and sharpen images, with the rest drawing heavily on the GPU and the CPU. But it's an indication of how applications will be able to use such features in the future, particularly as the NPUs grow more powerful. I haven't had the chance to use it in a lot of detail, but I like the concept a lot. One application I really thought could be useful is from Cephable, which offers a variety of accessibility tools, so people can control their PCs with voice controls or hand gestures. By running on the NPU, it doesn't interfere with the other functions of the computer. I didn't use this myself, but the demos are very impressive. A lot of other companies have promised more features and more programs that will take advantage of NPU capabilities going forward, and it will be interesting to see how many actually add new capabilities as opposed to just offloading the computing so as not to impact other apps. Final Grade: Incomplete Overall, I'd give the Copilot+ PCs we've seen so far an incomplete grade. Consumers who want to be among the first to try out the new AI features will find enough to get them started, and presumably Recall and more NPU-enabled applications will follow. Businesses want to test them, particularly for compatibility with the broad range of specialized applications many of them run, but I doubt that enterprises will be ready to deploy them until more of the management and security tools have been thoroughly tested on the ARM platform.