Windows 10 has enough junk of its own included as stock these days (looking at you Candy Crush) without manufacturers making it worse. You also don't want the built in McAfee software that keeps trying to convince you to register and use it. Useful stuff is fine, especially things that will help less nerdy people keep on top of their BIOS updates.īut the Giftbox app is back, throwing itself in front of your eyeballs on first setup of the laptop, and you don't want anything that's inside it, really. The Splendid app for managing the display's colors and even the built in application to make flashing updated versions of the BIOS. The included ASUS software is fine, and very useful. That's not the story though, and it's, sadly, something we have to bring up every time an ASUS laptop comes across our desk. It compares favorably with the more expensive Surface Laptop, but only falls to much more expensive Ultrabooks.ĭepending which version of the S15 you get you'll either be using Windows 10 Home or Pro, in our case it's Home.
This is, after all, a mid-range laptop costing around $800, and it's not too shabby at all. Running it through CrystalDiskMark it comes up with a decent 519.9 MB/s read and 154.3 MB/s write. Our review unit comes with a solitary 256GB SSD and while it's no super-fast NVMe (instead, a SATA drive), it doesn't perform too badly in the benchmarks. The PCMark Home Conventional test measures how well a bunch of your hardware works together to perform a number of everyday tasks.ĬrystalDiskMark (Higher is better) Device Just a little square in the top right corner, with single touch operation.
The review model we have doesn't have this, but it appears to be the same as the one on the Zenbook 3. On higher spec models of the VivoBook S15 the trackpad is also where you'll find the Windows Hello compatible fingerprint scanner. The cursor was darting around all over the screen, but knocking that down a little in settings soon remedied it. What is worth noting is that the sensitivity out of the box was up way to high for my liking. Smooth and with no resistance, even with slightly clammy fingers. It's responsive and the finish on the touchpad itself is perfect. Looking a bit lower at the touchpad, and the first point to note is that it has that all important precision touchpad.
It's got a 1.6mm key travel distance which I think is about perfect for this kind of laptop, and the full sized layout doesn't miss anything out. One consistency across ASUS laptops is that it has a great keyboard, and that's true here. If good looking video calls are important to you, invest in a dedicated webcam. At VGA resolution, even if all you're doing is the occasional Skype call, it looks terrible. The VivoBook S15 also has a solitary front facing camera, as you'd expect.
The speakers themselves are pretty loud, and decent sounding for laptop speakers, but aside from watching a movie or something when you're on the go you'll probably just use headphones. The VivoBook S15 has ASUS' SonicMaster technology, which in truth is more about under the hood improvements to make audio sound better. The laptop hinge hides the ventilation grille, while the speakers are located towards the front. The VivoBook S15 has an 80 percent screen-to-body ratio, leaving your eyes focused solely on what's important: The display. I've criticised ASUS in the past for being too bezel heavy on some of their laptops, adding additional footprint where you probably don't need it.
Upon opening the lid you're greeted with the 15.6-inch non-touch, matte finish, 1080p display.