ASUS VivoBook S15 S533FL review: A colourful and affordable big screen notebook

Note: This review was first published on 29 Sept 2020.

A case for 15-inch notebooks

For the longest time, I have turned my nose up at 15-inch notebooks. They are too much of a compromise. Neither portable enough to carry around easily nor powerful enough to rival traditional desktops. They used to be pricey too. These days, however, advances in technology have made them much more portable and affordable machines. Case in point is the new VivoBook S15 from the ASUS.

What’s a VivoBook S15?

The VivoBook is ASUS’ range of more affordable notebooks. Clearly targeted at a younger audience, they often come in more colours and are priced more accessibly than their ZenBook counterparts. In other words, the VivoBook S15 can be thought to be the more affordable version of the ZenBook 15. Be that as it may, the S$1,498 VivoBook S15 looks like a very capable notebook on paper.

Here are it’s key specifications:

Design & Features

The VivoBook S15 comes in three colours. There’s Indie Black and Dreamy White, and then there’s the offbeat Gaia Green. I can’t remember the last time I saw a notebook come in green. The unit I have is Dreamy White. It’s really mostly silver but it has a white display panel that has a pearlescent finish. When light hits it just right, the panel looks almost iridescent.

ASUS claims the VivoBook S15 has an all-metal chassis but some panels feel suspiciously like plastic. Certainly, it doesn’t feel as expensive as its ZenBook counterparts. Even so, the important thing is that it feels sturdy and I have no complaints on that front. The notebook feels solidly put together. It’s also remarkably thin and light for a 15-inch notebook. It’s just 16.1mm thick and weighs well under 2kg – 1.8kg to be exact.

The 15.6-inch display has fairly thin bezels, which is a pleasant surprise to see in a notebook at this price (S$1,498) – ASUS claims a body-to-screen ratio of 86%. It doesn’t support touch inputs and it’s only Full-HD (1,920 x 1,080 pixels). On the whole, this is a reasonably good display, and from regular viewing distances (between 50cm to 60cm), the display looks sharp enough. It’s biggest problem is that it doesn’t get bright enough and as a result has a tendency to look cool and washed out – which, to be fair, is a problem that plagues many notebooks.

Connectivity options are adequate at this price. There’s no Thunderbolt port, but you do get a single USB 3.2 USB-C port. However, this USB-C port doesn’t support charging. You’ll have to charge using the DC-in jack, which is a real letdown for a notebook released in 2020, and a huge misstep for ASUS. USB-C port aside, there’s a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port and two additional USB 2.0 Type-A ports. There’s also a full-size HDMI port, a 3.5mm audio combo jack, and a microSD card reader. Wireless connectivity is faultless since this notebook supports the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard and Bluetooth 5.0.

Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard of ASUS’ notebooks have typically been good but I have mixed feelings about this one. Mainly it has to do with the Return key, which has what ASUS calls “colour-blocking edges” but I don’t get the significance of it. To me, it only serves to point out that it is smaller than what it should have been. This applies to the Backspace key too, which, like the Return key, is clearly squashed on this keyboard. Speaking of squashed keys, the Tilde key has suffered the same fate as Backspace and Return too.

Fortunately, the rest of the keyboard is quite good. There’s a number pad which I often find superfluous but will no doubt be appreciated by folks who have to crunch numbers on Excel. The keys have a substantial amount of travel and at least some semblance of tactility. They are backlit too. Really, my only gripe is the squashed Backspace and Return keys.

The trackpad, on the other hand, is far too small for a notebook of this size. My measurements indicate a width of 10.5cm and a height of 7.3cm, and that’s smaller than the trackpad of ASUS’ own ZenBook 14. To make matters worse, there’s a fingerprint scanner in the top right corner which further reduces the actual usable area of the trackpad.

Performance analysis

The VivoBook S15 might be a 15-inch notebook but its innards (as you'd see below) isn't all that different from ultraportable notebooks like ASUS' own ZenBook UX434 or even the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 and HP Spectre x360. I'm expecting performance to be very comparable. But what's really interesting is how it'll fare in our battery life tests with its larger 15-inch display.

General computing performance was quite good despite the VivoBook S15 having only half the memory as the other notebooks. Its scores on PCMark 10 were easily the highest and its Cinebench scores were commendable too. Perhaps this is because its larger 15-inch chassis could better dissipate heat and allow its processor to run faster for longer.

This was true in graphics benchmarks too. The VivoBook S15 recorded the highest 3DMark scores and its numbers on Tomb Raiders were a tie for first place with the Huawei MateBook 13. Overall, the VivoBook S15 is an excellent performer.

Battery life

Note: Battery tests were conducted using PCMark 10's battery benchmark with display set to 100% brightness.

Battery life was outstanding for a 15-inch notebook. Despite the larger display, it lasted nearly six hours in the Modern Office workload, beating ASUS’ own ZenBook 14 UX434 and even the Acer Swift 5 and Dell XPS 13 2-in-1. This is even more impressive when you consider the VivoBook S15 only has a 50Wh capacity battery. However, when it came to the Gaming workload, the VivoBook S15 could only muster 58 minutes, which was considerably shorter than the only notebooks. However, this poor performance can be explained by the fact that it was much faster than the other notebooks – as evidenced by its higher 3DMark scores.

The VivoBook S15 was never going to be competitive when it came to the Portability Index mainly because it has a much larger chassis. But it’s worth noting that its scores are quite remarkable for a 15-inch notebook. Practically speaking and all things considered, the VivoBook S15 should be considered as a highly portable notebook. At 16.1mm, it is relatively thin. And any 15-inch notebook weighing less than 2kg is a praiseworthy feat, even more so if it can run for nearly 6 hours at full display brightness.

For the love of big screens

The VivoBook S15 addresses the needs of users who want a portable notebook with a large display but do not necessarily want to shell out the big bucks for one of those ultra-slim and powerful gaming notebooks (think Blade 15 or Prestige 15). Essentially, it’s a notebook that delivers ultraportable-class performance with a larger 15-inch display. Some people prefer big displays, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Overall performance is pretty good, and battery life is remarkable for such a large notebook. Furthermore, despite the larger display, it isn’t too thick or heavy to carry around. But a few things prevent the VivoBook S15 from getting a higher score. Some of the most important keys on the keyboard are squashed, the trackpad is too small for a notebook of this size, and it doesn’t support USB-C charging. They aren’t necessarily dealbreakers but they are certainly annoying enough for me to mention them again here.

The upside to this is that the VivoBook S15 is sensibly priced. At S$1,498, it isn’t too much more than a comparable 14-inch VivoBook. But I won’t call it a steal either because you can get similarly spec’d and similarly priced 15-inch notebooks from rivals like Acer.

On the whole, this is a competent entry-level 15-inch notebook that will tick a lot of boxes for most people. It’s by no means perfect and it has its flaws, but it gets quite a lot of the fundamentals right and buying one won’t feel like you’ve made too much of a compromise.

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