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In every tech enthusiast’s mind, they have different needs—some want a big battery, a gorgeous display, the most lightweight design, better performance, and many more features. Today we are reviewing ASUS’s new Vivobook S16 OLED laptop, which has all the ingredients to be a perfect laptop. Let’s see what it has to offer.
Design
It doesn’t have the old single hinge; now it has two hinge sockets to rotate the laptop, which is quite good overall. There is a slight issue with opening and closing, but you can still open it with a single finger. It can rotate up to 180°, which is very good for a laptop. This laptop has a 16-inch display while being just 13.9mm thick and weighing only 1.5kg. The Vivobook S16 is a full metal body, which is exactly what we need, and it also comes with the U.S. Military Standard 810 certification. This laptop features two fans for air inlet and outlet.
This laptop has simple ports .
- 2 thunderbilt 4
- 2b USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
- 1 HDMI 2.1
- 1 Micro SD Card slot
- 1 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack
Vivo has increase the size of the trackpad. Its very responsive and the cursor movement is also fairly precise with the move of your finger.the plam rejection is very good. There is a Click system in the tracpad for more accessibility.This vivo s16 has full size keyboard with nampad. The numpad is quite Small. The keys spacing is fine and the 1.7 mm travel is good. this laptop has dedicated copilot button and the RGB lightning as well (that you can customise it). this webcam facial recognition it’s quite good. this webcam has 1080p IR Camera and it has cover shield switch on it, to have your privacy.
Display and sound
This OLED panel can reach a peak brightness of 600 nits and, of course, has VESA DisplayHDR 600 certification as well. I watched HDR videos on YouTube and Netflix, and they looked absolutely stunning on this panel. Since it’s OLED, the blacks are really deep, making the colors pop beautifully. Plus, this is a 3.2K resolution panel, which means it’s sharp with plenty of pixels. ASUS also supports 100% DCI-P3 color gamut for this panel, and in our testing, it comes very close to neutral colors. However, to achieve that, you’ll need to switch on the Display P3 mode from the Splendid setting inside the MyASUS app, where you get a range of color gamut options. Additionally, there’s an Eye Care mode.
This is a very well-tuned panel, and you also get a fast screen response time of 0.2 milliseconds along with a 120Hz refresh rate display, making it a smooth experience overall.
Now, there are two Harman Kardon speakers placed on the underside, and when they hit a flat surface, the sound bounces off, producing a loud and rich audio experience. The sound is tuned by Harman Kardon, and you also get support for Dolby Atmos. While the sound can get loud and is free from distortion at peak volumes, I did feel that the bass response was a little weak.
Performance
Our review unit comes with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor. This is a 16-core processor paired with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and it also features a 1TB PCI Express 4.0 M.2 SSD. For performance enthusiasts who want more power, you can opt for the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H as well.
The first thing I tested was the SSD, and the read/write speeds are impressive. In CrystalDiskMark, we got a read speed of over 5000 MBps, and the write speeds were around 3500 MBps, which is quite good. The Geekbench single-core and multi-core scores are in line with the Galaxy Book 4 Pro 360 that I tested earlier.
We also ran the BMW Blender test, and the CPU render time was three minutes and nine seconds, while the GPU render time was one minute and 20 seconds. These are fairly fast render times, so even video editors using Adobe Premiere Pro shouldn’t have any problems with their editing workflows, even with multiple tracks and timelines. It will handle all of this easily.
In fact, the Core Ultra 7 with Intel Arc graphics is also quite decent for gaming. We ran the Forza Horizon 5 benchmark and got around 36 FPS at high graphics settings, which isn’t too bad. So if you’re a gamer like me who enjoys playing indie games or AA titles, like Hades or Sea of Stars, you will definitely enjoy using this laptop. It should handle all of that without any issues.
Battery
The battery is a really nice and large 75-watt-hour unit. Asus claims you can get about 16 hours on a single charge, but I got around 13 hours with basic usage, which is very close to their claim and not too bad. Inside the box—by the way, the box can be turned into a stand (I completely forgot to mention that earlier, how cool is that?)—you also get a Type-C 90-watt charger. Charging from zero to 60% takes about 50 minutes, and a full charge took around two hours and 20 minutes. For a laptop, that’s actually pretty decent.
Now, Intel has changed the naming scheme from i3, i5, i7, and i9 to Core Ultra 5, 7, and 9, primarily because of the built-in NPU and AI capabilities. So, as I mentioned, there’s the copilot key, and it works really well for all the AI tasks you want to run on the system itself. Since I’ve been using a MacBook, which lacks built-in AI features, I’ve been exploring how to integrate AI into my everyday workflow ever since I started testing Windows machines. How do you guys use AI? Share some creative ways you use it so I can try them out.
I really like the MyAsus app as well. It works like a great dashboard, giving you visibility on your system’s stability. You can even troubleshoot any problems with your laptop directly from the app. Additionally, you can link your Android phone to the MyAsus app, allowing you to make calls, drag and drop files, use the phone’s camera for recording, and more. As for the pre-installed software, I noticed McAfee and Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition were pre-installed.
In the end, we can say that in this competitive price range, the ASUS Vivobook S16 can perform very well in all areas of expertise. If you want a laptop, it is a perfect choice for you.