The new £699 (inc. VAT)/$699.ninety nine Asus VivoBook S fourteen is a solidly crafted fourteen-inch Windows 10 laptop working on a 10th generation Intel Main processor. And if you happen to be on the lookout for some thing a bit far more hanging than common, it’s obtainable with a inexperienced or pink lid in addition to black and white. That mentioned, I could only discover it on the internet in the British isles with the similar black lid I was despatched for review.
The steel chassis presents very good defense for the innards. I was capable to bow the lid in my hands a small, but over-all this is a durable device. You will have to have 1.4kg (three.08lbs) all over in your backpack or bag, although, and this laptop will occupy a house 32.49cm wide by 21.35cm deep by 1.59cm thick (12.79in. x 8.4in. x .62in.). The foundation has ‘diamond cut’ edges to the higher of 3 sides, which even when the lid is shut provides visible curiosity.
The fourteen-inch Asus VivoBook S14 S433FA runs on 10th-generation Main i5 or i7 processors with up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of SSD storage. Lid colours are obtainable in white, pink, inexperienced and black.
Photographs: Asus
In circumstance you cannot discover the Enter key, it’s prominently highlighted.
Graphic: Sandra Vogel/ZDNet
When you open the lid the eye is drawn to the Enter key, which has been specified a marker-pen yellow surround. It genuinely does glance odd. The keyboard itself is snug to use, and unique keys are significant and springy. Nonetheless, you can find a whole lot of flex — enough for even a gentle-fingered typist like me to detect. This is genuinely the only create problem of take note, and it’s a bit of a disappointment.
Tap the icon in the best suitable of the touchpad, and an embedded calculator appears.
Graphic: Sandra Vogel/ZDNet
The trackpad has a genuinely great sense to it, and is responsive. Asus presents next screens in the touchpad on some of its ZenBook laptops (the ZenBook Flip fifteen UX563FD and ZenBook fourteen UX434FL for case in point), but the trickery is far more muted in the VivoBook assortment. You will find a modest icon in the best suitable corner of the touchpad that, when tapped, delivers up an embedded calculator that permits you to do some standard maths. I instead like this plan — it’s efficient, uncomplicated, and isn’t going to appear to be more than-specified. If my laptop experienced this feature I am confident I might use it. There is an option with no calculator and a fingerprint reader best suitable of the touchpad rather.
The fourteen-inch display is what Asus calls ‘frameless NanoEdge’, whilst in truth you can find a bit far more bezel in this article than on some other styles, and ‘frameless’ is a bit of a extend. Asus isn’t going to give us bezel proportions but I calculated the short edge bezels at 7mm and the best edge at 11mm (loads of area for the webcam, whilst it does deficiency a sliding privacy protect). The recess of the display will make it glance a small old-fashioned, and it’s not touch delicate. However, it has great viewing angles, is fairly vibrant, and the matte finish will attractiveness to all those who don’t like staring at their own reflection.
The Intel Main i5-10210U processor in the £699/$699 iteration of this laptop has 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. You also get a 12-thirty day period membership to Microsoft 365 Individual and 1TB of cloud storage. There is also a Main i7-10510U variant, and alternatives for up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of on-board storage, but none of these are obtainable in the British isles.
There are loads of ports and connectors on board. On the suitable edge are two USB two. ports and a MicroSD card slot, even though the remaining edge properties the round-pin power jack, a whole-dimension HDMI port, a USB three.two port and a USB-C port as perfectly as a three.5mm audio jack. It truly is great to see Wi-Fi 6 rounding out the connectivity alternatives.
SEE: Microsoft 365: A cheat sheet (free PDF)
Battery daily life is quite very good. I put in a person four-hour session crafting into a website app even though streaming tunes about 50 percent the time and undertaking some website browsing, in the course of which time the battery went from a hundred percent to fifty five percent. All-working day battery daily life may well be achievable with in the same way undemanding workloads.
The Asus VivoBook S14 S443FA is a durable and efficient Windows 10 Pro laptop with a nifty feature in the touchpad-embedded calculator. All-working day battery daily life is a different furthermore position, but beware the flexy keyboard.
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