I say to you $650 and that $650 us thin and light laptop. what is the first thing that comes to your mind, and I bet you, I know what you’re thinking it is something like this a Relatively heavy, relatively thick plastic bodied laptop that has a dim screen and probably makes a ton of sacrifices. Not only that it has a CPU architecture that might have been launched Two Three or maybe even four years ago, but Asus with the vi book S14, they’re thinking about things completely differently it has a lunar Lake CPU an OLED screen and Aluminum construction. It seems like it is the dream laptop.

SPECS & CONNECTORS

That latest generation lunar Lake processor with the Ultra 5 226 v 16 gigs of memory and a 512 gig SSD, It’s exclusively available though at Best Buy at least for now meanwhile there’s an upgraded version of the vivo book S14 with the 258 V and A 1 TB SSD. At Walmart but That’s also significantly more expensive though it still slips in just under that $1,000. Mark one thing, I need to mention is the best buy laptop is technically listed at 950 bucks but we’ve been monitoring its price for about 6 weeks or So now and it’s been sitting at $650 for four of those 6 weeks, I should also mention this is our first introduction to the lowest-end CPU in Intel’s lunar Lake lineup and while it still has eight cores and eight threads there’s pretty significant cutbacks to clock speeds and cache the 226v also gets a cut down Arc 130v GPU and one less neural compute engine and speaking of connectivity what The VivoBook S14 offers you is actually pretty impressive.

Especially when you compare it to a much more expensive device like. I guess Dell’s XPS lineup or something slightly thicker like Lenovo’s slim 7i Aura Edition, There’s a pair of Thunderbolt four ports a full-size HDMI a m SD card reader and the usual 3.5 mm combo Jack but, What sets the Vivo book apart is the fact that it includes two USB 3.2 type A gen 1 ports whereas most of the competition just has one, I just wish that Asus had put one USB C and a on each side because Right now the layout with two type A ports on the right hand side. Well it just feels a little bit odd and either way you look at it that layout is pretty impressive when you consider all of this is packed into a pretty thin and overall very Light 14-in chassis, So Asus has managed to strike that find balance between Port selection and portability.

BATTERY

The problem with a lot of these thin lights especially the ones that cost under $1,000 is that. The manufacturers they skimp on the batteries we’re seeing 50 to 60 watt hour units in these things. Asus on the other hand with the vivo book S14, They’ve gone with a 75w unit and when you combine that with the lowest end lunar Lake processor the results are well fantastic. We’re talking about 16 hours or more which is in a whole other dimension when compared to other windows-based laptops we’ve reviewed, I mean sure there are times when Apple silicon gets close but overall this laptop is just unbeatable right now actually these numbers are simply mind-blowing when you consider that less than a year ago we were struggling to hit over like 12 hours with meteor Lake in some of these tests and now 16 hours or even more is completely possible with the right setup. Even in a heavier load scenario, the only laptop that can beat this one is the MacBook Air M3 which sort of makes sense because that thing needs just 11 watts compared to the Vivo books 30 WTS and those numbers are being put down by a laptop like, This one that’s rocking an OLED screen which technically does consume a little bit more power than the LCD panels that are out there.

 

Now about this screen it’s one of the major pain points on a lot of more affordable laptops but this thing this thing is really good for the price Asus is using a 1610, 1200p 60 HZ OLED. That’s rated to cover 100% of the DC ip3 color spectrum while running at up to 600 nits with HDR enabled and in our tests, it just nailed color reproduction though there is a very slight shifting into oversaturated Reds the brightness numbers on the other hand well without HDR on we got almost 400 nits which is actually very good since. If you wanted better than this, you’d actually need a much higher-end laptop but subjectively when you take a step back and just look at it for a couple of seconds the colors pop its high contrast ratio gives every piece of content that amount of punch that everybody is looking for this is just a great screen, I mean. I got to give props to Asus here what they’re doing is exactly what people want an OLED display at under 1,000 bucks.

BUILD QUALITY

At this point in time, you might be wondering like why you should even consider something like this Asus’s own ZenBook lineup, when something like the Vivo book S4 seems to have everything, you could possibly want and then some at a lower price point and it’s the build quality and materials. I do want to sort of pause here and talk about a little bit more because while you can feel like essence of ZenBook within the Vivo book S14 and it is a massive step up from the creaky plasticky fall apart in your hands feel of a lot of other very budget minded laptops. There are a couple of little slip UPS here. Let’s start with a little pet peeve of mind this thing has the worst finish I’m going to emphasize that again the worst finish I’ve ever come across on a laptop in the last two years. I’m not sure what Asus was thinking with this so called neutral black but it’s, A freaking mess it shows every fingerprint every Speck of dust.

KEYBORD

The entire shell is made of aluminum alloy the screen’s hinge doesn’t exhibit excess wobble there’s no flexing in the keyboard area and in general Everything feels just well put together except for one thing we’ve had this in the lab for about a month now and At some point during the course of normal opening and closing the lid actually started to Bow slightly upwards along the top Edge and the keyboard on this thing, I mean anybody who’s watched one of my laptop reviews probably already knows this I a little bit of a laptop keyboard elitist and I’m biased here because even the Zen books asus’s higher-end devices. I don’t like the keyboards all that much on those things and this one this one actually takes sort of like a step back from even those I mean sure Asus advertises 1.7 mm of key travel but the whole experience just feels a bit dead and lifeless without much feedback slightly wobbly keys and frankly, It’s a bit claustrophobic I guess you would say while I’m usually able to hit decent words per minute on most 14-inch laptops.

 

I found my accuracy really struggling on this one then again when compared to other sub $1,000 laptops well it’s better than what Aser and Del offer that’s for sure plus it’s got full RGB backlighting though it’s way way too dim. You can actually see more light spilling out from behind the keys than coming through the letters and while it’s RGB actually changing the color isn’t all that evident at first but Asus is using The windows Dynamic lighting feature just open it up use the drop down next to effects and choose whatever color you want as for the trackpad. Well there isn’t much to say other than it’s a good size it actually has better palm detection than I expected and the buttons feature a great amount of tactile feedback Asus also incorporates a few additional gestures into it like tapping in the upper right hand corner brings up the settings sliding your finger left and right at the top Edge advances or rewinds media playback while the left and right edges can be used to control volume and brightness.

WEBCAM

We absolutely need to talk about is the webcam and the microphone array on this thing because it is one area, That Asus Prides themselves on having a premium experience across their entire laptop lineup okay so this is raw this is the first time that I’m seeing this webcam in person and for a sub $1,000 laptop. I you couldn’t ask for more this thing actually beats a lot of the other laptops that we’ve had here at the office at least visually the way I’m looking at it right now my skin tone looks proper the contrast is good there’s no lens flare from the overhead lighting above me, I mean this is very very good now as for the microphone array. I can’t really tell you because I’m just doing this off the cuff here I’m not listening to my own microphone phone array here but you guys could be the judge of that.

SPEAKER & POWER

The speaker setup and they are what they are it’s a thin and light laptop so you’re going to get thin low sound without much bass you shouldn’t be expecting much from this thing especially considering that me and I’m sure a lot of you guys are going to use headphones while we’re on the go with an ultra portable but you know what else isn’t all that great well you guessed it upgrade options but with this being a thin and light laptop using Lunar lake with its on package memory you probably already guess that not only is the Vivo book harder to get into than like Fort Knox but the only user upgradable item here is the Gen 4×4 m.2 SSD, Which uses a standard 2280 form factor and that leads us believe it or not to another surprise the way Asus ended up managing performance on this thing is is actually really interesting.

 

You might think that just because this is a entry level lunar Lake laptop. that is going to be a complete pushover. when it comes to Performance well I’ve got some news for you on that one first of all there are four modes within the Asus Control Center and in full core workloads there of those four are functionally identical in terms of power temperatures and Even noise with the only standout being whisper mode, which Cuts things down in every single category and Those temperatures well for a thin and light laptop. They’re really really good even with the laptop being pretty quiet overall, There’s something pretty ironic here too this Vivo book is actually running its processor at a slightly higher power level. Than the 258 V we tested in the Zenbook S14 while also getting better temperatures too and all of this leads into one of the Hallmarks of lunar Lake. It runs really really cool and that translates to low laptop skin temperatures even in heavy workloads since there’s simply less heat to disperse.

Asus has also worked hard to ensure The few hotpots that do pop up are outside of areas that will typically make contact with your hands or lap so at this point in time I’m sure a lot of you guys are wondering this $650 laptop with Intel’s entry level Ultra 5 226 v. How does this thing hold up against the competition let’s start off in areas where these laptops will be used the most which is General tasks like office productivity and Here well the Vivo book is no faster yet no slower than most of the other devices here even the much more expensive Zenbook S14 with its Ultra 7 258 V. The same thing goes for single threaded benchmarks and cine bench it’s pretty much in line with every other thin and light. We’ve tested in the last few months which means for everyday Computing you’ll likely won’t be able to tell the difference between something like the Vivo book S14 and the zenbooks or slim 7 eyes of this world but the second you hit this thing or any lunar Lake based laptop for that matter with a heavy allcore workload well things tend to go just a little bit sideways in those situations. The Vivo book heads closer to the bottom of our charts and yet it isn’t as bad as you might have thought in a lot of cases.

PERFORMANCE & BANCHMARKS

It actually gets almost the same performance as The Zenbook 14 OLED with the ultra 755 H. A laptop that you can still will buy but one that usually goes for over 1,000 bucks it also manages to hang with the ultra 7 258 V equipped Zenbook S14 and The yoga slim 7i and that’s a huge problem for Intel’s Partners in general since they’re now selling laptops with that CPU for big money yet it can barely distinguish itself from their entry level models. So if a design gives that 226v just enough juice it’ll hit pretty hard and in a laptop that costs half what many others do, I mean look we already knew this thing wasn’t going to set our charts on fire but we have to frame this based on what the viob book S14 sets out to achieve it’s an everyday laptop. That’s primarily focused on providing decent performance and yet in many situations it competes pretty well against laptops that are double or in some cases.

 

There times its price it also delivers some pretty impressive results whenever the arc 130v integrated Graphics or The media encode decode engine gets factored into the equation and that’s something lunar lake has been known for it’s got an absolutely banging GPU. That’s piggy backing onto an efficient CPU architecture and that is just critical for GPU. Accelerated workloads in Creator focused apps like Premier and resolve another benefit to Intel’s approach and of course Asus’s implementation here is that a lot of the processor’s overall performance actually remains intact when it’s on battery power, I mean sure there’s some cut Downs here and there but overall this is one of the better devices out there when it comes to using it in more intensive tasks if you need to in a pinch while like traveling or something then again nothing and I mean nothing comes close to the Apple M3 in these tests and it’ll last a whole lot longer too since it’s only using 11 Watts while the Vivo book S14 is using almost triple that.

GAMING & FRAMERATES

We also need to talk about Gaming performance starting with some synthetics and 3D Mark and I’ve got to say these numbers are well surprisingly decent remember Asus is using the entry level Arc 130v, That has less cores and lower frequencies than the one in the Zenbook 14 or slim 7i and yet it manages to hang right up there with those two devices while also trading blows with the Vivo book S14. That’s using AMD’s ryzen Ai 9 365 and Remember again. That device costs about 1,200 to, 1300 bucks but then again these are just synthetics. How that translates into real world gaming performance and If you’re just joining us from like two or 3 years ago this is going to become a complete surprise out of the blue for you because, Gaming is now one of Intel’s core strengths, even in its cut down form The Arc 130v in this Vivobook delivers really really competitive numbers mostly because Asus is pushing almost 13 watts to it in this situation. That means it’s more likely to hit Peak frequencies which in effect pushes frame rates to the point this device can pretty much embarrass last year’s Zenbook S3 OLED with this 155h and That cost almost 1,500 bucks. When it launched it also tends to keep up pretty well with laptops that are using the higher end ultra 7258 V and all that points towards a S14 team being able to provide surprisingly decent gaming performance for a thin and light laptop, I mean in many situations you won’t be able to tell the difference between it. and something like the $1,500 slim 7i or Edition at least not with your naked eye, and I can’t emphasize enough just how important this is for Budget focused laptop buyers, that want to do some gaming on the side. This is the first device; I’ve seen that can offer a decent gameplay experience at a really entry-level price point since other similarly priced laptops either have much older CPU’s or like The Inspiron 14 rely on a Windows on arm ecosystem.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This is a laptop when lunar Lake launched that I was ultimately waiting for because where every single other budget sub $1,000 thin and light makes some major sacrifices everywhere it doesn’t matter if it’s the CPU build quality screen or just a combination of those the Vivo book S14 for 650 even if it was $750 it’s a breath of fresh air the market needed this. Now you might think this whole review shows in general how less expensive laptops are finally maybe, finally getting good well I’d actually challenge That it’s This particular laptop that hits way above its price category in almost every single way. Meanwhile competing devices like the Acer, Swift Series, Dell Inspiron, HP, Omni book even Samsung’s Galaxy book and a lot more aren’t anywhere near as good. They look behave and feel like cheap budget devices where As the vivo book S14 has the DNA of something That feels a lot more premium.