Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED review - A new age of laptops with the new Snapdragon X Elite?

Note: We have recently updated our rating system and the results of version 8 are not comparable with the results of version 7. More information is available here .

The case of the new Vivobook S 15 with the Snapdragon processor has received a slight update. Its general design consisting of a silver case continues to follow that of the previous AMD/Intel models, however, the old models are around 2 cm deeper and in particular the bottom bezel on the new Snapdragon Vivobook is considerably narrower. In total, the Vivobook feels very modern and the dark frame around the display gives it a nice contrast. 

The quality of the aluminum case is great. The base unit can only be slightly dented in the middle area but we weren't able to elicit any creaking noises from it when trying to twist it. The thin screen is a little more flexible but creaking noises are foreign to this part of the device too and thanks to the manufacturer's use of an OLED panel, it never came to any image errors during our test. Both hinges are set well and only allow the display to wobble a small amount when adjusting its opening angle (maximum 180 degrees). At the same time, the lid can be easily opened with one hand.

We already touched on the size difference between the AMD/Intel models and the Vivobook. The MacBook Air, which is also 15 inches in size, is slightly deeper but in turn, it is a little narrower (this is mostly to do with its different aspect ratio). Naturally, the 16-inch devices take up a little more space on your desk. The new Vivobook weighs 1.43 kg, so it is slightly lighter than the MacBook Air 15 (1.5 kg). The included 90-watt power supply adds another 392 grams on to the scales with its cable included.

The Vivobook features a good selection of connectivity options and both of its USB-C ports support the 4.0 standard. However, we would like to have seen a further USB-C connection on the right-hand side to be able to charge the device on both sides. Moreover, users also have two regular USB-A ports at their disposal, so you likely won't have to reach for an adapter during everyday use. You can connect up to three external displays with a 4K resolution (60 Hz) or two panels with a 5K resolution (60 Hz). 

The microSD card reader on the left (spring mechanism) takes in cards fully, but its speeds are low. In combination with our reference router (Angelbird AV Pro V60), we measured maximum transfer rates of only ~38 MB/s, and ~28 MB/s when copying image files.

The Qualcomm chip has an integrated Wi-Fi 7 module (Fast Connect 7800), so it is very well-equipped for the coming years. In our standardized test using the reference router from Asus, the test device delivered stable and high transfer rates. During practical use, we also never had any issues surrounding signal quality. The Qualcomm chip additionally supports a 5G modem, but our test device isn't fitted with one.

A 1080p webcam including a mechanical shutter is installed into the upper display frame—it takes decent photos in good lighting conditions. Similar to the current AMD/Intel laptops, this model also supports Studio Effects (background soft focus, head tracking etc) directly as part of its operating system. Furthermore, it can access an IR camera for facial recognition via Windows Hello.

The new Qualcomm laptops are marketed as being Copilot+ devices and of course the Vivobook S 15 is no exception to this. Aside from the previous Copilot functions and the familiar Studio Effects, it now supports additional features. Included in this, for example, are live subtitling, Automatic Super Resolution when playing games and Cocreator, with which you can transform sketches into complete pictures. The advertized—but controversial—Recall feature, on the other hand, is not yet available. Microsoft is set to release a large update when the new Copilot+ devices are released, so we haven't yet been able to test the functions in detail.

In addition, Asus offers its own advanced AI functions such as StoryCube for AI-supported organisation of media files or advanced facial detection which dims the screen when you aren't looking at it.

The additional Copilot+ functions are also set to be available on future Intel and AMD models—they just require an NPU with 40 TOPS.

In the past, there were already Windows devices featuring ARM processors, however, their user experience was generally not the best and subjectively, their performance was considerably worse than on AMD/Intel laptops with Windows. This isn't the case with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and subjectively, its speed is very high and can absolutely be compared with current Windows laptops that rely on AMD or Intel CPUs. We tried to run our regular benchmark course and many programs did in fact work, but not all of them did—gaming caused limitations in particular. Although there are native ARM versions of lots of apps (such as the entire Office suite or Adobe apps), it isn't always clear which apps are emulated or run natively. We will state in individual sections if we faced problems with specific test programs.

The Vivobook features four different energy profiles and we have summarized each of their performance values in the following table. Beware: The TDP value specifications come directly from the manufacturer and also include the RAM and microcontroller's consumption. Therefore, these values are not comparable with the TDP specifications of AMD/Intel chips. There is also currently no way to read out the TDP values for Snapdragon CPUs. The information in the table comes from Asus, but we assume that these are only long-term values and that the short-term consumption is higher. At least that's what our consumption measurements suggest.

The mode Standard comes preset and this is what we used for our benchmarks and measurements. Although the CPU's performance can be increased a little by using both of the faster modes, this comes at the unjust cost of considerably louder fans.

Qualcomm currently has four different variants of the Snapdragon X Elite on offer, whereby the X1E-78-100 in our test device is the slowest of all of them, and it also can't make use of a boost. Its 12 cores (without hyper-threading) can achieve a maximum clock rate of 3.4 GHz. The faster models can reach up to 4.3 GHz with two cores loaded and 3.8 GHz with all cores in use, which suggests considerable performance differences. As previously mentioned, neither the total TDP nor the pure CPU consumption can be read out. However, based on our own consumption measurements, we would estimate that the pure CPU consumption is around 45-50 watts for a short time and then 30-35 watts permanently. For more technical information, you can also read our analysis article of the new Snapdragon X Elite, where we took a detailed look at the efficiency of the new ARM chip. 

When it comes to the benchmarks, we have to mention that several tests were emulated and not run natively. The most meaningful results are Cinebench 2024 and Geekbench 6.2, both of which run as native apps. Qualcomm has always referred to the results of the Apple M3 and since the Vivobook is supposed to be a competitor to the MacBook Air 15, we have naturally taken a closer look at this comparison. In the multi-core tests, the new Snapdragon X Elite beat the Apple M3 considerably—especially during Cinebench 2024 and Geekbench 6.2. In turn, the passively cooled M3 was a lot better when it came to single-core performance. Apple's latest M4 chip, which has only been installed into the new iPad Pro as of yet, was a little faster in the multi-core test from Geekbench; during the single-core tests, the new M4 even came as far as 50 % ahead—and all this without any active cooling.

Its performance is comparable to the latest Intel Meteor Lake CPUs, which is already a respectable result. However, it is difficult to make direct comparisons due to the vague TDP specifications. In any case, the Snapdragon chip offers more than enough performance (which remains stable) for everyday tasks. Moreover, its performance isn't reduced in battery mode.

As already mentioned, its subjective performance is impressive and the native apps (browser, Office, etc) all boot up extremely fast, making the Vivobook a generally super fast-reacting system. Its results were a bit of a mixed bag in the benchmarks, as our test device delivered relatively weak results in the cross-platform CrossMark test. In the browser tests, on the other hand, its results were great and almost on par with Apple.

We noted absolutely no problems surrounding the system's stability during normal use, however, the device continuously crashed during the stress test with Prime95. There were also no limitations or stability issues when using the laptop connected to an external monitor.

In principle, the native Adobe apps work very well but in turn, when running DaVinci Resolve, the Qualcomm chip didn't manage to play back our review footage in full resolution without suffering some dropped frames. Other current iGPUs from Intel and AMD manage to do this, as do Apple's ARM chips.

We were unable to carry out our standardized latency test as the LatencyMon application didn't work. However, we can at least say that there were no dropped frames when playing a 4K YouTube video.

Our test device is fitted with the Micron 2400 M.2 2280 SSD with a capacity of 1 TB. After first starting up the device, users have 899 GB free to use. It is a PCIe 4.0 SSD and its transfer rates are up to 5 GB/s, which is of course totally sufficient for everyday use. Moreover, its performance remains completely stable even under continuous load. Further SSD benchmarks can be found here.