When I opened the Vivobook 15 for the first time at 9am on Thursday, I worried I had opened the wrong box. Considering the product’s $549 MSRP (currently $299 at Office Depot), I was expecting something more plastic and cheaply made.this is good computer. It would be nice in the $800 category. This is definitely the most premium build you can find for $300. I literally texted a friend “How nice is this Vivobook 15” along with a picture of her when I turned it on. (This is what happens when I know your phone number. Consider yourself warned.)
The best thing about the Vivobook 15 turned out to be the chassis. I used a test unit with an 11th Gen Core i3-1135G4, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for a day. This is a very capable 15″ Windows laptop with lots of goodies. It also comes with a backlit keyboard and numeric keypad, which are nice perks at this low price. Ultimately, though, the battery life was a big disappointment. I wish I could have survived this gorgeous chassis.
My first task this morning was to update one of my buying guides. This involved reading through old reviews in batches and scrolling through large spreadsheets with benchmark results, measurements and other features. The Core i3 processor was more than powerful enough to sustain this workload. Layering a Google Meet call on top of it didn’t cause any issues, slowdowns, or loud fan noise. I even tried to open something in Premiere Pro (mostly for fun). It took a few minutes, but it didn’t freeze or crash. This is a common phenomenon in low-end laptops (as well as some expensive laptops).
I really like the keyboard. (I’m firmly on record as a fan of his Asus keyboards, often with the perfect combination of click, travel, and readability.) The numeric keypad on the right is also great for spreadsheet creation. Very convenient, quick and easy to operate. How to enter the required data. It also had a fingerprint reader, which was more reliable than the one on the 15-inch Acer Aspire 5.
I was so focused on work in the morning that I didn’t even notice how low the battery was. I took an early lunch break just before noon and left (a Spotify playlist called “Party Hits”) with music playing from my Vivobook while I prepared food. The music is clear and balanced, although the volume was a bit low, we could barely hear the music in the next room even at maximum volume.
And the battery died while boiling water for ramen. I can’t say the exact time because I was so focused on my ramen, but he was very close to the 3 hour mark, noon, even if it was just a few minutes away. That’s… well, for my browser-based workloads he doesn’t expect 3 hours of battery life. That’s shorter than what I’ve seen on the Acer Aspire 5, which was the lowest result I’ve seen on a laptop. This means that if you buy this computer, you will need to charge it several times a day. (Realistically, you’d probably leave it plugged in all the time.) There are also cheaper laptops on the market that have three times the lifespan of his, and his Chromebook. Everyone around me regrets it.
After work, I sat down to watch the next latest episode. yellow jacket using vibobook. The display was colorful enough and did a good job of representing various dark and spooky night scenes. It peaked at 316 nits in our testing, which isn’t particularly bright, but should be more than enough for most uses and is significantly brighter than the Aspire 5. (The Vivobook’s color accuracy is also slightly better, but there is a difference.) The display has a vertical aspect ratio of 16:9 (at 1920 x 1080 resolution), but 15″ is less noticeable than 13″ is. As the night wore on, I used Asus’ Eye Protection mode (accessible in the MyAsus software). I’m not sure how much this actually protects your eyes, but it filters out some of the strong blue light making night viewing more comfortable.
But even here, the Vivobook’s speakers let me down. Even though I was using the Vivobook at maximum volume, I kept having to rewind here and there because I missed what was being said.This became an even bigger problem after that yellow jacket, When I started watching Korean dramas. I don’t understand Korean very well, so sometimes I had to lean quite a bit to hear what was being said. I found myself hitting the volume buttons aimlessly in case the Vivobook ran out of functionality.
Overall, my day with the Vivobook has had its ups and downs. It was a very beautiful, well-built device with all the features I needed to handle browser-based workloads. However, the speakers weren’t my favourite, and the battery life was too short.
If this device had the lifespan of, say, a $289 Gateway 14, it would definitely be recommended in the 15-inch category. As it stands, I’d say the Vivobook and the Acer Aspire 5 are pretty close competitors. The Aspire doesn’t look as good or as good as this device. There are no flashy accents or shimmery blue around the touchpad. But it has a newer, more powerful processor, and he got nearly an hour more battery life. And for students and others who do a lot of work on the go, this can be a big consideration.
