ASUS Vivobook S 15 features the Snapdragon X Elite processor--an ARM instead of an x86 processor. Arthur Fuentes, ABS-CBN News 

MANILA - Something exciting has been happening in PC laptops lately, and that something is ARM, or the Snapdragon X chip to be exact. When ASUS debuted its Snapdragon laptops earlier this year, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one of these new devices which promised to change the game for Windows notebooks.

Thankfully, ASUS sent us the Vivobook S 15 for review.

For a long time, Intel has been the king of the laptop world. That all changed when Apple introduced the Apple Silicon M-series ARM-based chips in 2020, which delivered crazy battery life for mobile computers. Apple claimed 18 hours of battery life. While this was not really the case in real-world use cases, the fact that people could finally use their laptops all day on a single charge was a game changer. 

While Windows has technically been ahead of Apple in porting itself to ARM chips (the same platform that’s used in smartphones), Windows-ARM had been underwhelming. Which was why Snapdragon X was such a big deal, as it was seen to be the “Apple Silicon” moment for Windows. 

ASUS also claims 18 hours of battery life for the Vivobook S 15. So did it deliver?

COPILOT+ PC

The ASUS Vivobook S15 is the venerable Taiwanese tech giant’s first foray into the Windows-Snapdragon Copilot+ melee. We also need to mention that this is ASUS’ first Copilot+ PC, which has AI features not found in other PCs. 

Copilot is Microsoft’s generative AI platform, which has been widely available on Windows PCs since late last year. It’s a web-based tool that can generate text, create images, answer your questions, summarize text and more.

A Copilot+ PC however takes more than just being able to access Copilot on your browser or having a dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard. Microsoft specifies that this new class of PCs needs to have a neural processing unit (NPU) that can handle at least 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS). According to Microsoft, this AI-enhanced experiences in Windows 11 and apps. It also allows new features, namely:

•  Automatic Super Resolution

•  Live Captions

•  Paint Cocreator

•  Restyle Image and Image Creator in Photos

•  Windows Studio Effects

 Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips used to be found only in phones. But now they can also run laptops. Arthur Fuentes, ABS-CBN News 

ASUS sent us their top-of-the-line S5507QAD with the Snapdragon X Elite chip which runs at 3.4GHz  with 42MB Cache and 12 cores. Its NPU clocks at 45 TOPS. Another model comes with the Snapdragon X Plus which also runs 3.4GHz but has a lower 30MB cache and 8 cores. 

The review unit also came with 16 gigabytes of LPDDR5X RAM and a 1 terabyte SSD. Those are generous specs for a 15-inch laptop with a sticker price of  P84,995. As ASUS cheekily pointed out the 15-inch MacBook Air which is almost the same price, has only 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage. Bump it up to 16GB and 1TB and the price quickly skyrockets to P118,990. So while that sticker price might seem high at first glance, know that you are getting much more bang for the buck.

Speaking of stickers, I don’t know what it is about stickers, but they really get in the way of the sleekness of a well-designed laptop. I’d peel them off quick if I could. That being said, this is a very well-designed laptop.

The brushed aluminum body looks premium and sturdy. Weight is also kept down, at just 1.42 kilos, which is not bad for a 15.6-inch laptop. It looks very well-built.

The OLED screen has a 3K resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 16:9 aspect ratio. I would have liked a more work-oriented 16:10 or 3:2 ratio, but in this case I didn’t really mind because the screen was still tall enough to show lots of content. While this probably is not ASUS’ best-looking screen in terms of color (the blacks not looking as deep as other high end screens), it is still very good, with the 120Hz screen delivering buttery smooth performance. 

It also comes with Dolby Atmos and Harman Kardon-certified speakers, which are plenty loud and clear, although they do get tinny if you turn up the volume to 100.  

The Vivobook S 15 has a nice clicky keyboard and a large trackpad. Arthur Fuentes, ABS-CBN News 

 The keyboard is very nice and clicky. It's a decent keyboard that’s pretty good for typing, with a satisfying travel with each click. It also has numeric keys on the right side, which should be a big help for engineers and number-crunching business people who need snappier calculations and input. 

However, a silver-colored keyboard with RGB backlighting was a strange choice. While it may have a gamer aesthetic to it, this type of backlighting doesn’t make the white keys easier to see in dark surroundings. Black keys with white backlighting would have made the keyboard much easier to look at when the lights are dim. I don’t think this Snapdragon laptop was aimed at gamers in any case.

Its trackpad meanwhile is very large, very responsive, and very nice to glide your fingers on. I have no complaints.

This laptop also has a plethora of ports: 

•  2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A

•  2x USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C with support for display/power delivery (data speed up to 40Gbps)

•  1x HDMI 2.1 TMDS

•  1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack

•  Micro SD card reader

This laptop has plenty of ports. Arthur Fuentes, ABS-CBN News 

This laptop has plenty of ports. Arthur Fuentes, ABS-CBN News 

ALL DAY BATTERY LIFE

I loved working on this laptop–the keyboard, the screen, the sleek design, the light weight–all blended harmoniously together into a fine tool for getting work done. I could plug in my old USB drives, put in an SD card, and listen to music on a wired earphone. I had no need to use the HDMI, but it was comforting to know that it was there. 

And the best part of using the Vivobook S 15 is that it delivers on its promise of all-day battery life. 

My work is done mostly on a browser with sometimes up to 30 tabs open at any one time, including 3 or 4 tabs on YouTube, several Facebook pages, websites of media and online tools for writing.  This thing handled meetings on Teams, interviews on Zoom quite well.

At the end of a typical nine-hour working day, I still had around 35 percent charge left. It took me twelve hours of work (Yes, sometimes I have no life) to get the battery down to around 15 percent, and even then it seemed like it go on for another hour or so without shutting down. While this was not exactly 18 hours of battery life, it was still a lot, and it was a big deal.

Another thing I liked about it is its strong Wifi reception. Sometimes, I work far away from the router, with several walls in between. On my regular laptop, I would often get just 1 or 2 bars of signal strength. On the Vivobook S 15, I could get 3 or 4 bars. 

The caveat for getting a Snapdragon-powered laptop though is app compatibility. Since I just use a browser along with some 365 apps for work, this was not a problem. But if you need a more specialized app for work, you may want to check first if it’s supported or at least emulated. 

There's a website that lists the apps that run natively on ARM, as well as apps that are emulated, and also apps that have yet to be supported.

At P84,995, I think this Snapdragon X Elite notebook is a good buy if you’re looking for an all-day machine. An even better deal is the Snapdragon X Plus version with a more affordable P69,995 price if you don’t think you need the extra 4 cores of the Elite version.