The start of the new school year often also means a new laptop. Asus seems to be targeting high school and college students with the new version of the VivoBook S14. The laptop is available in different colors and you get stickers to decorate it. But is it also a good laptop?
Asus VivoBook S14
price € 699, –
Processor Intel Intel Core i5-10210U
Memory 8 GB
Screen 14 inch IPS (1920x1080p)
Storage 256 GB ssd
Dimensions 32.5 x 21.4 x 1.6 cm
Weight 1.4 kilos
Battery 50 Wh
Connections 2x usb 2.0, usb 3.1 (gen 1), usb-c (gen 1), hdmi, 3.5mm jack, card reader
Wireless Wifi 6, bluetooth 5.0
Website www.asus.com
8 Score 80 
- Pros
- Battery life
- Beautiful housing
- Smooth hardware
- Negatives
- Contrast keyboard
- Twice USB 2.0
- USB-C no video / loading
The Asus VivoBook S14 S433FA is a beautiful laptop to look at and largely made of aluminum. The lid is finished in white in a color that Asus calls Dreamy White, but the laptop is also available in other colors. In any case, the laptop seems to be visually oriented, because Asus supplies stickers that you can stick on the laptop and the keyboard to decorate it. Funny and also striking is the yellow-rimmed Enter key, which I personally think is a nice detail. I suspect that Asus focuses on schoolchildren or students, given its appearance. The laptop weighs 1.4 kilos. That is not the lightest available, but it is handy and light enough to always take with you. In any case, that is already a good basis for the study.
The build quality is fine, although the housing around the keyboard is somewhat flexible. In itself, the VivoBook has enough connections with four USB ports, but unfortunately two of the ports are only USB2.0 ports. It is also unfortunate that the USB-C port does not support video output or charging. For video output, Asus has provided an HDMI connection and charging is via a separate charging connection. It is nice that there is a micro-SD card reader. The WiFi card is a WiFi 6 variant from Intel and that is the best you can currently get, so an excellent choice.
Use
The screen is a 14-inch panel that uses IPS technology. The viewing angles are good and the color reproduction is satisfactory, but the maximum brightness is somewhat disappointing. It is bright enough for indoors, but working outdoors becomes difficult. In any case, you can work pleasantly inside. The keyboard has a fine touch and is equipped with three-level key illumination. The keyboard has silver-colored letters in almost the same color as the housing. That looks nice, but it does have an important disadvantage. When the key illumination is on during the day, the contrast of the letters becomes so low that they are difficult to see. The black version of this laptop also has black keys and this disadvantage will probably not apply.
The glass touchpad is a precision touchpad that works smoothly. The touchpad has a trick that we saw on Asus laptops before. If you press the top right corner, the touchpad changes into a virtual numeric field. Handy if you work with Excel, for example, although they are of course virtual keys that you can hardly use blindly.
Performance
The configuration I tested (S433FA-EB043T) is equipped with an Intel Core i5-10210U, 8 GB ram and a 256 GB SSD. The working memory of the laptop cannot be upgraded, but a free m.2 slot is provided. You can expand the storage relatively easily without having to replace the SSD. The SSD is an NVME version of WD and performs well with a maximum read and write speed of 1747 and 1298 MB / s. The laptop feels smooth and the score of 3948 points that the laptop achieves in PCMark confirms this image. The laptop is equipped with a 50Wh battery, which is nice and spacious in practice. You can count on about 8 hours of battery time for normal light office work.
Conclusion
The Asus VivoBook S14 S433FA is a quirky laptop that stands out for its cheerful appearance thanks to an edge around the Enter, colored lid and included stickers. The build quality is also excellent. The performance is also good and due to the long battery life and the weight of 1.4 kilos, this is a laptop that you can always take with you. The only real downside are the connections. It is a pity that two of the four USB ports are only USB 2.0 and that the USB-C port is only suitable for data. For 699 euros you get a nice laptop that performs all normal (office) activities smoothly. This makes it a perfect laptop for students or pupils who are not interested in gaming, because a separate GPU is missing.
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