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Asus Vivobook S 14 Flip review: a value-first laptop

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October 1, 2022

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Asus Vivobook S 14 Flip

MSRP $690.00

“Its display aside, the Asus Vivobook S 14 Flip is a really solid laptop for the worth.”

Pros

• Decent productivity performance
• Good battery life
• Solid built quality for the worth
• Touch and pen support
• LED numeric keypad

Cons

• Display has poor colours
• Too expensive in higher end configuration
• Keyboard is somewhat harsh

Laptops have gotten expensive in recent times, especially with many cheaper models being sold out last 12 months.

At $690, though, the Vivobook S 14 Flip is a breathe of fresh air on the earth of budget laptops. For probably the most part, the Vivobook S 14 Flip manages to balance price, quality, and performance, making it an affordable value in an increasingly competitive market. The disappointing display aside, the Vivobook S 14 Flip has loads to supply for its price.

Specs

I do know of two configurations of the Vivobook S 14 Flip which are available. There’s the $690 review unit configuration that I tested, which comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600H CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 14-inch WUXGA IPS display.

Then you definitely’ll spend $1,100 to bump to an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. That places the laptop either in budget or mid-range territory, depending on the configuration.

Inexpensive doesn’t should mean low-cost

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Let’s get this one out of the way in which: The Vivobook S 14 Flip is constructed partially of plastic, specifically the chassis, while the lid is metal. While plastic is usually related to low-cost, that’s an unfair characterization. The Vivbook S 14 Flip is solid enough for a budget laptop, with just the slightest bending of the lid and flexing within the keyboard deck. If this were a $1,500 laptop, then I’d have more of a problem with the construct quality.

But, it’s not. Note that I’d feel somewhat less confident concerning the $1,000 configuration. As well as, the hinge is just too tight to open with one hand, nevertheless it does hold the display firmly in place in clamshell, tent, media, and tablet modes. Most truly premium laptops have smoother hinges.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The general aesthetic is minimalist, but that’s not an attribute of budget laptops. In reality, in previous years, budget machines were often kitted out with tons of plastic “chrome” that made them garish and low-cost looking. The Vivobook S 14 Flip is a uniform blue color with the road’s latest logo on the lid and no embellishments apart from chrome hinges. The only, barely weird standout feature is a striped pattern running along the underside of the Enter key.

Still, I don’t have any complaints concerning the Vivobook’s appearance, and it’s not much different from last 12 months’s Vivobook Flip 14. The laptop within reason thin at 0.74 inches and weighs 3.3 kilos.

Interestingly, the Vivobook S 14 Flip is one in every of a handful of Asus laptops that incorporate the corporate’s Bacterial Guard technology. That’s a coating throughout the laptop that inhibits the expansion of 99% of bacteria, making the laptop less prone to spread disease. It doesn’t protect against COVID-19 and other viruses, but for the standard day-to-day bacteria that sometimes coat electronic devices, it’s welcome. And it’s a pleasant feature for a budget machine.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The keyboard is spacious with large enough keycaps, and its switch mechanism has loads of depth with a light-weight feel. There’s a confident click midway through a keystroke, however the bottoming motion is harsh. It’s not pretty much as good a keyboard as you’ll find on premium laptops like HP’s Spectre and Dell’s XPS lines, nevertheless it’s higher than another budget offerings. The touchpad is wide and spacious with a smooth surface and firm clicks which are only a tad too loud.

In a nod to the “S” designation within the laptop’s name, Asus included its NumberPad 2.0 technology that embeds an LED numeric keypad within the touchpad that could be easily switched on and off. For those who enter quite a lot of numeric data, then you definately’ll find it irresistible, and in the event you don’t, then you definately can just switch it off and forget it’s there.

Nevertheless it’s not something you usually find on a $690 laptop. Finally, the display is touch-enabled and supports the lively Asus Pen 2.0 (not included) with 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and USB-C charging, one other surprise given the worth.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The webcam is Full HD, while some newer premium laptops just like the Dell XPS 13 Plus are still stuck on 720p. It incorporates Asus’s 3D noise reduction technology and provides an awesome image with loads of detail in every kind of lighting conditions. The resolution alone, though, is superb for a laptop of this price. A physical shutter, meanwhile, provides peace of mind regarding privacy.

There’s no infrared camera for Windows 11 passwordless login support; as a substitute, Asus incorporated a reliable fingerprint reader in the facility button, the right location.

Finally, connectivity is solid. There’s a single USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port (no Thunderbolt 4 given the AMD chipset), a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, a USB-A 2.0 port, a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Power is provided by a propriety connection running at 90 watts, leaving the USB-C port available for connectivity. Wireless connectivity is a step behind with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.

Inexpensive also doesn’t should mean slow or short-lived

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

My review unit was equipped with the AMD Ryzen 5 5600H, a six-core/12-thread CPU running at as much as 4.2GHz with a default 45-watt TDP that’s configurable between 35 and 54 watts. On paper, the CPU should provide solid productivity performance.

In our benchmarks, the Vivobook S 14 Flip does well against the slower Vivobook Flip 14 AMD and the VAIO Fe 14.1 with a 15-watt Core i7-1255U. It might’t sustain with the 28-watt Core i7-1260P. Interestingly, the Ryzen 5 5600H was fast in Cinebench R23 multi-core while slower in Geekbench 5 and our Handbrake test that encodes a 420MB video as H.265. It also did well within the PCMark 10 Completely benchmark that tests quite a lot of productivity, multimedia, and inventive tasks.

Overall, as expected, the Vivobook S 14 Flip was a solid productivity performer but isn’t going to be very well-suited for greater than lightweight creative tasks. Its Radeon graphics scored unusually low within the 3DMark Time Spy graphics test, at just 727 and about half of what Intel’s Iris Xe graphics achieve. The laptop hit just seven frames per second (fps) in Fortnite at 1200p and epic graphics — poor by any standard.

Battery life is very important here, too, because it’s a characteristic that old-school budget machines once compromised. The Vivobook S 14 Flip does well enough, though.

With its 50 watt-hour battery (a 70 watt-hour version comes with the OLED display configuration), the Vivobook S 14 Flip did well in our web browsing test, leading our comparison group. It fell behind in our video test but still managed a median rating. Overall, the Vivobook S 14 Flip can likely manage a full day’s work with a light-weight enough productivity workload. Like another AMD systems I’ve reviewed, it was unable to finish the PCMark 10 Applications battery test that’s the perfect indication of productivity battery life.

A really budget display

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

So, where did Asus cut a corner to slide into such a low price? Arguably, the display qualifies. While it was shiny enough at 321 nits, exceeding our 300-nit standard, and its contrast was good at 1,230:1, its colours were narrow and never terribly accurate.

It shared similar results with the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 while falling well behind contemporary premium and midrange display standards. You certainly don’t need to do any photo editing or design work on this laptop — not less than not without connecting to a greater premium monitor.

Audio was just okay, with two downward-firing speakers providing adequate volume and clear enough mids and highs. Bass was lacking, though, meaning you’ll want a great pair of headphones for binging Netflix and listening to music.

A solid budget alternative with the correct configuration

At a price of $690, the Asus Vivobook S 14 Flip is a gorgeous laptop with solid if not spectacular performance, good battery life, and a solid enough construct. Its display lacks colours, which is the laptop’s primary weakness. That’s common at these prices, though — even today.

Jump as much as the $1,000 configuration, though, and also you’re competing more directly with laptops just like the HP Pavilion Plus 14 and the Acer Swift 3 OLED which have spectacular displays and stronger performance. So, pick the low-end configuration and luxuriate in a solid value.

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