asus laptops – Tech Raman

Asus TUF F15 2022 Review – Affordable Gaming Beast

Lakshmi — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 04:28:24 +0000

When you think of gaming laptops, you cannot skip Asus gaming machines. They spoil you with choices and have something to offer for every requirement. The premium ROG, with its Zephyrus, Strix and Flow sub-series come guns blazing with top-of-the-line design and hardware. If you are tight on budget but still need a good gaming machine, there is the TUF gaming. The latest refresh to the TUF series, the Asus TUF Gaming F15 2022 comes in multiple configurations. The machine I got here for testing is packed with Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, alongside a 1080p, 300Hz display. The exact model number is Asus TUF 15 FX507Z.

Specifications of Asus TUF 15 (2022) FX507ZM

Processor: 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700H Processor 2.3 GHz (24M Cache, up to 4.7 GHz, 14 cores: 6 P-cores and 8 E-cores)
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 Laptop GPU, 115W (140W with Dynamic Boost) 6GB GDDR6 RAM
Memory: 16GB DDR5 RAM, 2400Hz
Storage : 1TB M.2 NVMe™ PCIe® 4.0 SSD
Display : 15.6-inch, FHD (1920 x 1080) 16:9, anti-glare display, sRGB:100%, Refresh Rate:300Hz, IPS-level, MUX Switch + Optimus
Keyboard: Backlit Chiclet Keyboard 1-Zone RGB
I/O Port: 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack, 1x HDMI 2.0, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1x RJ45 LAN port, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C support DisplayPort™ / G-SYNC, 1x Thunderbolt™ 4 support DisplayPort™
Speaker: Dual speaker with Dolby Atmos, Hi-res audio certification
Battery: 90WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion
Wi-Fi 6(802.11ax) (Dual band) 2*2 + Bluetooth 5.1
720p webcam
Dimensions: 35.4 x 25.1 x 2.24 ~ 2.49 cm
Weight: 2.2 kg
Operating System: Windows 11 Home
Software Included: MS Office 2019

Design and Build Quality of Asus Tuf F15 (2022)

Visually, there is no change to the Asus TUF F15 2022 model over the previous year, it is tad lighter by around 100 gms though and also marginally compact. It screams the same gamer centric design languages. A bit chunky, plenty of vents, gunmetal body complete with fake screws on the lid. I have seen more audacious gaming laptop designs which can have a very split in th middle opinions about it, but I feel this TUF F15 will have more acceptability in terms of design in this segment. Of course, if you are a non-gamer consumer, you might still have some reservations.

It has an angular design. the fake screws adding a dash on interest and TUF series logo embossed in the middle. The lid can be lifted by single finger. Asus claims the build quality meets MIL-STD-810H standards for resistance to shock, vibration, and other environmental extremes. In India it is available in two design variants but both are in grey color.

There is a unique clover-like arrangement of four LED indicators built into the keyboard deck which is also accessible when the lid is closed, these four LEDs give a status glance on key system information.

On the left, there’s the power jack, an RJ45 gigabit Ethernet port, HDMI 2.0, a Thunderbolt 4 port, USB 3.2 Type-C port, USB-A and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Thankfully, the Thunderbolt is labeled to clear confusion with the adjacent identical USB C port.

On the right, you’ve got a Kensington lock and the second USB-A. I think these would sort every needs, well there is no card reader slot if you want to nitpick.

The bottom side has a maze of air vent grilles, speakers and firm footers, that also allow the air to flow underneath.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The deck that houses the keyboard, and trackpad is made of plastic. Having tested their premium ROG and Strix machines, you know some cost-cutting has gone into here. It looks slightly cheaper but in terms of practicality, it serves the job. The keyboard is spread edge to edge, almost the entire width of the deck. It’s backlit, while there is only a single zone but the RGB lighting can be customized via the Armory crate software, you get static, breathing, strobing and colour cycle lighting modes to choose from. There are four dedicated key rows on top – for volume controls and one button to quick launch Asus Armory Crate software. The W A S P keys stand out in white translucent keys.

The keyboard also makes way for the number pad on the left side. With an array of special keys, function keys, and number pads, the keyboard deck does feel a bit cramped. The keys felt good while typing, I did not find it very cramped and hard to type the way it seemed to be. I quite liked the tactile feedback and the key bounce.

The touchpad is large enough measuring 5.7 x 3.1 inches. The touchpad also has the TUF logo at the top right corner. There are no dedicated mouse buttons but the whole area works as a clickpad for your right and left clicks. The gliding is smooth.

Speakers , Webcam and Biometrics

The FX507 has dual speakers with Dolby Atmos and Hi-res audio certification. There are two speakers firing on the bottom and to the sides. It is Ok for daily use.

The webcam is housed in an outward protruding cutout. It houses the webcam and microphone. You get a standard 720p webcam, which does a basic job. There is no privacy shutter. The laptop does not support Windows Hello support, fingerprint scanner is also not available.

Display of Asus TUF F15 FX507ZM

The laptop I got here has a 1080p panel with 300Hz refresh rate, but the F15 series also offers other variants that have 1080p panel with 144Hz as well WQHD 2K resolution panel with 165Hz. All variants support MUX Switch + Optimus. .

If you are looking for eSports gaming, you should be going with FHD screen with a very smooth 300Hz refresh rate offering. You get a matte panel with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The 320 nits brightness, just about makes to the agreeable limit. While this is a decent display, if you want top-notch you need to shell out more for the premium series. While binge-watching movies, I was ok with the display but in certain games, you might find the colour contrast bit wanting. Nevertheless, for gaming, the higher refresh rate and MUX Switch + Optimus are a welcome addition.

Performance of TUF Gaming F15 FX507Z

This is where the FX508X sprints a home run. Equipped with Intel Core i7-12700K CPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, it makes mince meat of almost everything you throw at it. Open over two dozen Chrome tabs, 4K video editing, and multi-tasking everything is a breeze.

On the 3D Mark Time Spy test, it got an 8442 score, and PC Mark 10 returned a 7064 score.

In the Far Cry 5 benchmark score, it threw an impressive 125 avg FPS, making for a good gameplay on high graphics. Even in the Handbrake benchmark, it crushes most other competitors in the segment by transcoding 4K video to 1080p in just four-minute 40 seconds much lesser than the segment average time.

The F15 transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in just four minutes and 49 seconds on our HandBrake benchmark,

So if you are going by performance yardstick, the variant I have is a beast at work. Be it gaming or video editing, it does a brilliant job.

Battery

The TUF 15 2022 comes with a 90Whrs 4-cell battery. The battery life is pretty impressive. For non-gaming usage, I got around 6 hours of battery life which is pretty good for a gaming laptop.

Verdict

The latest refresh to the TUF F15 series makes the series a serious contender in the affordable gaming laptop segment. The TUF F15 FX507ZM I tested, proved to be a very capable machine for gaming as well as video editing and other heavy tasks.

Pros of Asus TUF F15 FX507ZM

Impressive performance
Good battery life
Good array of I/O
Slightly smaller and lighter than previous gen
Competitive pricing in this segment

Cons of Asus TUF F15 FX507ZM

Not exactly a con, but gameresque look and build do not exactly suits everyone

Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY – Gaming Laptop on a Budget

Lakshmi Rajan — Mon, 13 May 2019 00:04:33 +0000

Asus unveiled the TUF FX505DY and FX705DY at CES 2019 this year with AMD chops. The new machines come with all AMD inside and also the first to carry a Zen+ Ryzen 5 3550H CPU. Before we dive into the review let’s be clear about a few things. While ROG series goes all out with guns blazing targetting the mainstream hardcore gamers, the TUF Gaming series is focussed on mainstream gamers on a budget. Asus is trying to give a feel of the gaming machines here without having to spend a whole lot. So it’s quiet a difficult task but TUF gaming series tries to the balancing act. Coming to the machine we have, the FX705DY can this TUG Gaming laptop tough enough for your gaming binge? Let’s find out.

Difference between TUF FX505DY and FX705DY

While both the machines share key hardware muscles, the difference lies in the screen size and the battery. The 15-inch FX505DY laptop features a higher refresh rate range of 48Hz to 120Hz on FreeSync, the FX705DY, on the other hand, is restricted to 40 to 60Hz on its 17-inch FreeSync display. So it depends on your gaming choices while higher rate would be recommended for games like Counterstrike: GO, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and CS: Global Offensive and Overwatch, if you are mainly playing eSports games the FX705DY would suffice. It purely boils down to your gaming style and preferences and how much precise you need to be in certain games. The FX705DY also has a bigger 4 -Cell 64 Wh Polymer Battery to cater to its larger screen display while the FX505DY has a 48Wh battery. Due to the differences to the screen size, the overall battery life should be comparable though.

TUF FX705DY Design and Build Quality

Asus has taken some cost cutting but hidden it really well. To start with, it’s an all-plastic build which might be deceiving when you look at but you realize once you feel it. The lid has a textured brushed aluminium look combined with the design elements on the lid with marked lines flowing from the sides, it does give a mean tough look to the machine. But a closer look or side by side comparison will make higher-end Zephyrus or Strix series stand apart from this, which is understandable with the huge price differences though. The signature Asus gaming range feel is there in the machine. It feels robust too. The textured finish flows in too when you open the lid. The chassis design as last year’s FX504 but shorter in length. The lid can open to a maximum of 150 degrees. The bezels are thinner around the display, making it one of the compact 17-inch gaming laptops in the budget segment. Asus claims these TUF Gaming has passed the rigorous military-grade MIL-STD-810G durability test and reliable against solar radiation exposure, high altitude, and temperature extremes. while these might look too much for you for normal use, they also assure adequate shockproof that can withstand accidental falls.

Keyboard and Trackpad

In India, the Asus FX507DY is available in what Asus calls as Red Matter colour variant basically a black machine with red finishes. The Keyboard gets a red backlit to go with the colour scheme. It’s not colour customizable LED lighting. The keys have travel of 1.8 millimetres and Asus claims the keys are rated for up to 20 million keystrokes. They also employ Asus’ Overstroke technology, which helps them register keystrokes better. I found the keyboard easy to type and was comfortable. Though there is a bit of flex in the middle if you have to nitpick. The WASD keys are highlighted for easy recognition and the W key has a small raised dot on the surface to figure the key easily. If you are an ardent gamer though you would not need this it does help when you adapt to new machines and for those who have difficulty in reaching out to the keys. The keyboard also has a dedicated num pad. The arrow keys are aligned towards them and I often ended up confused between the upper arrow and zero 0 key. On a short note, the keyboard I found to be comfortable both for gaming and regular use for typing. The trackpad is big but has a flex when applied pressure. It has a tiny arrow mark on the four corners pointing in to let know may be where the trackpad ends. The bottom has the left and right clicks. The pad works with multi-finger taps and swipes. F10 Function key in the keyboard can turn on/off the trackpad. The trackpad for me was a bit of a disappointment mainly for the flex.

Connectivity options of FX507DY

Let me pull out the disappointing note first, there is no USB Type-C ports which by now should be standard for the gaming laptops to future proof them for the gaming peripherals. There is no place for SD reader too. The ports are all positioned on the left side. There is AC adapter, Gigabit RJ-45, HDMI 2.0, USB 2.0 Type-A, 2x USB Type-A 3.1 Gen. 1, 3.5 mm combo audio. The right side has a Kensington lock.

Display of Asus FX507DY

The Asus TUF Gaming FX505DY features a 17.3 -inch IPS backlit LCD screen with a Full HD resolution and a non-glare matte finish. As mentioned earlier, it offers a Freesync refresh range of 40 to 60Hz. The bezels on the sides, in particular, are narrow making it one of the compact gaming laptop in the segment. Its only 7.1mm thickness on the sides and Asus calls this Nano Edge display. The top bezel accommodates a 720p HD webcam. The display offers 1000:1 contrast ratio which is good. Personally given a choice between the glossy and matte panel, I prefer the later, so this was good for me. The display may not be comparable with the higher end machines but was way acceptable. The viewing angles are good too. The outdoor visibility suffers a bit, with ambient lighting causing washed out colours and glare evident in spite of the matte panel. Being a budget offering the display is not on par with the big brother higher end gaming laptops. When playing some heavy 3D gaming titles, you might note ghosting.

Performance of Asus FX507DY

The machine is fired by quad-core Ryzen 5 3550H CPU and Radeon RX 560X GPU. While the CPU is new, curiously Asus has combined it with almost two generations old Radeon RX 560X GPU. The GPU has 4GB, GDDR5 VRAM. The machine I have comes with single-channel 8GB DDR4 2400MHz SDRAM. It has a 2 x SO-DIMM socket for expansion to accommodate up to 32GB SDRAM. For storage, the review unit came with a Seagate 1TB hard drive spinning at 5,400 rpm. Asus FX507DY scores decent benchmark results for a budget gaming laptop. What matters the most though is the real world experience, which is not disappointing either. To begin with, you will not find any hiccups in normal use of the laptop which is expected though. Of course, being a gaming machine this is bulkier and heavy compared to normal mainstream laptops so I would not be suggesting you to buy this unless your thought process is gaming first. A slow hard drive puts a partial brake though and Asus could have done something about it. On a positive note, there is an empty M.2 slot inside which could be put to good use if you really want to do something about the speed, how about an SSD to speed up things. Now let’s focus on gaming, that’s what you would be buying this machine for. Like I said earlier the Asus FX507DY gets discrete graphics in the form of an AMD Radeon RX560X GPU with 4GB of GDDR5 vRAM. It’s not one size fits all for all your gaming. Depending on your game, you might have to tweak the graphics and resolution settings to get the best of the gaming performance. On the most part, the games handled well in low or medium settings well depending on the game. Not heartwarming but then consider this as a budget gaming laptop with its inherent ups and downs. You want more firepower, you need to stretch the budget and the whole world of ROG steps in. A good gaming machine should keep the temperature in check, and with a twin fan inside and their technologies like an anti-dust tunnel, Hyper Fan which automatically adjusts fan speeds according to CPU and GPU temperatures the heating part is taken care of. There is also an option for Turbo, Balanced, and Silent modes. There is audible sound when you stress the machine on graphics intensive games when all the fans come into play. Asus has included an Armoury Crate for key system insights and also configure the settings. You can also add gaming profile here.

The battery life of TUF Gaming FX705DY

On a real-life scenario, you get a battery life around 3 hours 45 minutes on mixed normal use. If you are putting into gaming on a stretch expect much less but like in most gaming laptops heavy gamings work better on the power source. Charging from 0% to full charge takes around one and a half hours. The battery is not the key strength of the laptop to mildly put.

Verdict – TUF Gaming FX705DY – To Buy or Not

If you are not into gaming, then clearly this is not the laptop you should even think of. But if you are an avid gamer and want to own a gaming laptop on a budget – this might work for you. Also, if you prefer AMD Ryzen-powered machine. The FX705DY is available for Rs 59,990, at this price it brings a gaming laptop features onboard with decent looks, rugged build, upgradability options. For a gaming beginner on a tight budget and game enthusiasts who want a portable gaming machine with a bigger display, this could be an option you could try.]]>

Asus ROG Zephyrus M GM501 Review – The Gaming Beast

Lakshmi Rajan — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 23:17:06 +0000

Gaming is a serious play for some. For hardcore gamers, the right equipment matters a lot. While desktop has always been preferred by gamers for their customization and easy configuration capabilities, for true gamers who would want to play on the go and everywhere they go, a good gaming laptop really matters. Asus has been one of the strong players in the gaming laptop segment with their Republic of Gamers (ROG) sub-brand. The ROG portfolio itself has a wide range of gaming machines and what I got here is Zephyrus GM501 which is manageable as an ultrabook but delivers the performance of a gaming PC to bring the best of both the worlds.

General Specifications of Asus ROG Zephyrus M GM501

Dimension \| weight	15.1 x 10.3 x 0.7~0.8 inches; 2.5kgs
Display size/resolution	15.6-inch, 1,920×1,080-pixel display
CPU	2.2GHz Intel Core i7-8750H
Memory	16GB DDR4 SDRAM 2,666MHz
Graphics	8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
Storage	512GB SSD
Networking	802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0
Operating system	Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)

Design of ROG GM 501:

Gaming laptops are different breeds when compared to the regular laptops which focus more on aesthetics in a please-all way or being functional or thinner the better design language. On the other hand, the gaming machines need to have a unique DNA and more importantly be a powerhouse. The Zephyrus instantly catches our attention when you hold it or even touch the brushed aluminium chassis. It comes in what Asus calls Black Titanium colour. Most gaming laptops with muscles are comparitively chunky but GM 501 manages to be more portable as a day to day machine comparatively. The lid has two distinct panels with linear marks diagonally split – one has horizontal lines and other vertical lines. The brushed finish gives the machine a robust look and feel and it does feel robust when you hold it. A chrome ROG emblem sits boldly and gets lit in red when you open the lid with the machine powered on. It does mean a powerful statement of the brand with confidence. On the back of the lid towards the hinges proclaims Republic of Gamers which again is not garish in the branding but bold. The hinge part also sports the Zephyrus branding. A copper accent finish goes around the sides of the system to cut the monotonous of the alluminum finish. On the right, you find a type-A port and also a Thunderbolt 3 port along with a secure lock slot. On the left, you get an HDMI port, a combination microphone/headphone jack and a power jack along with another 3 USB Type-A ports. All the four type-A ports are 3.1 types. What I didn’t really subscribe to the design part is the power jack positioning which is at the middle rather than the top end which is the regular position in most laptops.

Display of ROG GM 501 Gaming laptop:

The Zephyrus GM 501 has a 15.6-inch matte display with full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution tailormade for gaming. How is it tailormade for gaming? It offers a seamless refresh rate of 144Hz, now your generall all-purpose laptops probably have a 60Hz which is considered decent in their world. This is possible with the Nvidia G-Sync technology which almost nullifies the latency and little to no screen tearing or latency. The display is also good for watching movies when you take a break from gaming. The 178-degree viewing angles mean sit around anywhere and you don’t find the display fading or dimming. Keyboard layout of GM 501: The Zephyrus has a traditional keyboard layout including a number pad at the right. The chicklet keys are well placed and there is also good palm rest for comfortable typing. The key travel is also pretty neat and also produces a nice clicky sound.

For the visual lightings what most gamers love, the keyboard lits up when you touch. You can sync your colour schemes with Asus-compatible monitors, mice and other peripherals via the cloud. You get the Auto core utility app for customization of the light elements with a 16.8 million colour wheel allowing to pick your own colours. You don’t get to individually program each key but four designated zones.

The trackpad is fairly large and has a 4.1 x 2.3 dimension.

The audio performance of ROG GM 501:

A good audio performance is a big advantage for a gamer to listen the direction of the sound and react to the opponents especially in shooting games. The included Sonic Radar 3 software pinpoints sound direction like footsteps and gunshots which helped me eat many chicken dinner in my PUBG gaming. Coming to the quality of the sound, the Zephyrus 501 delivers a deep bass which was of my liking. I love such bass and I enjoyed it. While am not necessarily going to spend my time listening songs on this machine, which my phone serves better the audio when watching movies or gaming is a winner for me. Of course with a predominant bass, the lows do get crowded a bit. The software also has four presets for music, movie, gaming and communication preferences and many effects like bass boost, treble boost, surround, clarity, smart volume and reverb which can be turned on/off.

Performance of ROG GM501:

Now let’s focus on the core competence of the machine – the gaming aspect of how it handles the graphics and the processing capabilities. With a Core i7-875OH and Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU, this machine is an absolute beast or at least amongst the top of the and can rival desktops rig of similar configurations. The six-core chipset is highly capable and hits the sweet spot for gaming. It will run at around 3.9GHz for brief periods, before falling back to 3.3–3.4GHz during workloads such as sustained rendering. Even the GTX 1070 GPU consistently hovers over 1700MHz even on a long run of gaming. The 144Hz refresh rate also aids in a butter smooth, slick gaming experience. Even the synthetic tests benchmarks are very impressive with a whooping 20,590 on Geekbench 4 for overall performance.

Battery life:

The machine lasted 2 hours and 50 minutes on our battery tests.

Does the ROG Zephyrus GM 501 heats up?

To be frank, all gaming machines worth its salt are bound to get hot, it is inevitable with all the desktop competing muscle power packed into a laptop format what matters is how the OEMs match this with proper thermal control. For Zephyrus, Asus has come up with few tricks. It has designed with Nvidia, an Active Aerodynamics System with hardware modifications for heat management. When you open the lid, you find a 0.24-inch gap. The gap draws air into the system, which is then blow out of vents along the sides. There is also 71 thinner blades in the system. Having said that the machine does heat up but not to the point of uncomfortable propositions, you can still play while resting on the lap. The fans do make a bit of sound when you start playing not at alarming levels though.

Verdict – Is this the perfect gaming machine?

I cannot say if this is the perfect gaming machine, I haven’t tried all the mighty beasts out there but what I can confidently say is that the Asus Zephyrus ROG GM501 sits right on top of best gaming laptops system. It is amongst the best high configuration desktop machines in laptop form. For intense gamers, the Zephyrus ROG is a great pick offering a slim yet powerful machine.

What works for Zephyrus ROG:

Excellent build
Beast of a configuration
Good audio performance
144Hz refresh rate
upgradable memory
Good thermal management

What is bad

Short battery life
no built-in Ethernet jack

]]>

Asus VivoBook S510U Review – Performance, Features and Verdict

Lakshmi Rajan — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 13:27:44 +0000

Asus VivoBook S is an underrated laptop range overlooked by many, it has the looks and features that very few competing models offer for the same kind of money right now and comes packed with backlit keyboard, matte IPS screen, good IO, fast wireless and modern hardware. VivoBook range is a wide series of laptop with different configurations to choose from. Aavailable in a bunch of different options, with dedicated graphics (S510UN – MX150, S510UQ – 940MX, S510UR – 930MX) or without (S510UA), as well as various Intel Core U processors, screen options and amounts of memory and storage to fit your needs. If you are thinking of buying a laptop, go ahead read our Asus VivoBook S510U review, and see what I have to conclude after using the laptop for a week now using it for both work and play. Specs of the model I reviewed:

	ASUS VivoBook S15 S510UQ
Screen	15.6 inch, 1920 x 1080 px, IPS, non-touch, matte
Processor	Intel Kaby Lake Core i7-8550U CPU
Video	Intel HD 620 + Nvidia GTX 940MX 2 GB GDDR5
Memory	8GB*2 DDR4
Storage	128 GB SSD (SATA3) + 1TB 5400 rpm HDD (2.5″)
Connectivity	Intel AC 8265 Wireless AC , Bluetooth 4.1
Ports	2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.1 gen 1, HDMI, mic/earphone, SD card reader
Battery	42 Wh, 65 Wh charger
Operating system	Windows 10
Size	362 mm or 14.25” (w) x 242 mm or 9.52” (d) x 18 mm or 0.70” (h)
Weight	1.62 kg + .24 kg charger and cables
Extras	white backlit keyboard, VGA webcam, stereo speakers

Design and build quality

The VivoBook S series uses a mix of aluminum and plastic for its construction. The top is metal with a gold, brushed finish while the bottom and the interiors are made of plastic. A clever mix of materials to make the laptop look good while ensuring it weighs less. The gold brushed look reminds me of the many Smartphones you see these days. The laptop is easy to carry around and is fairly thin. Thanks to the metal lid, it feels adequately strong to protect the screen beneath. When you open up, the main frame is plastics and unless you are used to a sturdy, metal chasis in your earlier laptop, you won’t find it bothering much. What you get is a matte IPS screen, which I personally prefer over glossy displays. The bezels are thin measuring just 7.8mm. The palm rest is spacious enough to work with and it fits in a proper keyboard and still have space for a big trackpad. The screen can tilt back to about 150 degrees. The model I have sports a 1920 x 1080 resolution, while there is also a 1366 x 768 option available. The display is sharp, with vivid colors and saturation and free of reflections. The brightness could have a been a little more, if I have to nitpick. The texts are sharp and watching movies had been a good experience. The right side houses the 3.5mm audio jack, a lone USB C port ( Gen 1 without Thunderbolt 3), full-size HDMI, a USB 3.1 port, and the DC charging port. The left side is where you’ll find both USB 2.0 ports and a standard SD card reader. You do feel the keyboard flex at the center not during regular use but if you deliberately apply a bit of pressure, a tell-sign of the plastic construction. The keyboard is nicely spaced and I had no issues or nags while punching the keys. The keypad is backlit, with white white LEDs and you can choose from two brightness levels. There is no separate numerical pad though, while I didn’t miss it for those working on a lot of numbers, the absence would be felt. The fingerprint reader is located in the top-right corner of the trackpad. The placement at the top right corner of the trackpad doesn’t hinder the general gestures you use on the trackpad. The fingerprint sensor works with Windows Hello to personalize sign-ins.

Performance:

Talking about daily use and pefrormance, overall the VivoBook S is a one good machine to work with. Though I should mention, I had one of the top line model with a highly capable hardware. It’s a nimble workhorse and I didn’t find it strain at the tasks I put it to. It delivers sprightly performance, with quick system startup and app launches and hiccup-free multitasking. It didn’t sweat during my office work, web browsing and even some bit of video editing on it. The machine I used was not entirely quiet, the hiss was a bit audible. Connectivity wise there’s Wireless AC and Bluetooth 4.1 in this laptop. Asus has opted for Intel 8265 wireless and I didn’t had any issue with the wireless signal quality and performance.

Battery Life:

Asus claims a battery life of eight hours , but let’s do a reality check. The 42 Wh battery inside might be slightly lesser than what some of the competition offer at this range. It got me around 4 hours in average when put to use. The power brick is compact and you can quickly charge the battery’s capacity to 60% in about 50 minutes. The small sized power brick is a bit of a consolation since it occupies relatively less space in my bag compared to the one that comes from my own laptop.

Verdict:

Asus VivoBook S510U offers a good options if you are scouting for a laptop. It’s light weight and easy to carry around, the gold-brushed metal does look good though not exactly flauntable material. It’s a practical machine to own and comes in various configuration with modern requirements and bells and whistles like fingerprint sensor. The battery is a let down though, though not bad enough. The top model I used, hits all the checklist for a decent performance.]]>