ASUS Vivobook S 14 OLED: Intel Core Ultra 9, 16GB, 1TB SSD, Fast Charge

73 reviews for ASUS Vivobook S 14 OLED: Intel Core Ultra 9, 16GB, 1TB SSD, Fast Charge

1. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   The Pool Man – January 16, 2025

   I used Macs exclusively for 29 years until I felt Tim Cook wasn’t innovating enough to warrant the big prices. So I switched to Windows 10 PCs and Android and — have never looked back.

   Well… until 6 years later when Apple released their own silicon M series chips in 2021. I’m often asked to recommend equipment and I had to confess — if you need an all day battery — you have to get a Mac. No contest. Less expensive PCs managed 4 hours at best OR REALLY needed to plugged in a lot.

   So the PC world has been waiting for laptops that can do the same and they’re phasing in now. They’re not identical (yet?) but you get an all day battery — which is all the matters to college students or people who travel A LOT. (One way these new PCs cheat is by simply making the battery bigger by a third, lol.)

   This Asus was a Black Friday steal at $765. It was a little more PC than I wanted but the cheaper versions of this unit aren’t here yet. And with tariff fears I decided to nab it now.

   I didn’t need an Ultra Core 9 series Intel Chip. An Ultra Core 5 would have been fine. I’d also have been fine with 500GBs of storage instead of twice that. But to get both for this price is a WOW.

   Also a WOW —

   1. The OLED screen is gorgeous. Bright enough for outside work too.
   2. The RGB keyboard is thrilling my daughter (on her way to college soon)
   3. The keyboard itself is silent clicking awesome
   4. Trackpad is fine
   5. Build quality is amazing. Very sturdy but very light. If you threw this hard at someone they’d need to go to an ER
   6. Super thin and small, feels like a 13 inch somehow
   7. It’s so silent a laptop you’ll be stunned to learn it has TWO fans when they rarely complain. WARNING: don’t use this on blanket, or warm lap, because the bottom vents need to vent. Testing this unit I spread my legs a little to allow airflow and yet type on my lap. Desktop/table top is a better idea.
   8. Speakers are okay but I got my daughter a tiny Bluetooth speaker for better sound as well as inexpensive earbuds
   9. Everyone says it and its so true: fingerprint magnet. If you glance at this thing from behind a couch… it will leave fingerprints somehow. Wow. I know, that doesn’t seem possible, but it’s true. The one plus here is that the PC may end up looking ‘dirty’ and discourage thieves from thinking it’s awesome.

   Drum roll please —

   10. Here’s the best feature. If you desire a screen bigger than 13 inches and want a four year warranty, Amazon makes that happen for under $1000. The MacBook Air equivalent is a 15 inch non-OLED screen and costs twice that Applecare. SPOILER: and you only get 3 years.

   My Advice — if you want to save money, wait for the Ultra Core 5s to show up on Amazon. (If they ever do.) Best Buy offered such a model but their warranty schemes are so pricey that — this was cheaper. So if the current asking price doesn’t bother you, get it. If you wanted to spend more like $600 before tax and warranty… wait.

2. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Hilco – February 11, 2025

   I am choosy about devices and I am comfortable in both Windows and Mac ecosystems. I work in education the organization uses Windows so it made sense to choose a Windows computer. (Not to mention that I bought my own because ours are old and the organization can’t purchase everyone new ones quite yet.)

   Enter this Asus. My work machine didn’t give me more than an hour off the charger and was a beast to carry so I was anxious for something light and stable to carry. This Asus Vivobook is fantastic on both counts. The Ultra 9 processor is very fast and spends very little time “grindining” or humming. You know the sound I am talking about. The keyboard is quick and responsive. And the OLED screen? Gorgeous! If you have never had an OLED it gives the screen a gloss-matte appearance that is virtually free of glare. this computer is a lot easier on my eyes than the other. It’s just smooth.

   The first couple of days I was mildly concerned when the laptop generated some heat on the charger. I waited it out, and glad I did, because that has resolved. Most computers will do that as they enter the heavy workload of downloading and installing updates.

   Anyway, I am glad I made this purchase. It’s light, quick, sleek and basic, easy to hold and easy to look at. The battery life too… Didn’t even mention that. I can literally work all day before needing to charge it. And it sleeps reliably without continuing to bring up processes when shut.

3. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   The Pool Man – March 18, 2025

   I like this laptop. For an OEM laptop, it is a good deal. It’s hard to find laptops at this price point with similar specs and build that are not modified. Amazon is rife with many modified laptops (often with better specs than this for less money, which I find a bit suspicious), but this inherently voids your warranty from the manufacturer so I did not feel comfortable getting one.

   Battery/performance: The laptop is quick and usable in all modes (efficiency, balanced, performance). This is great because I was looking to replace a laptop which was only usable in performance mode (stuttered unbearably doing regular browsing or similar in balanced and efficiency) and, even on efficiency mode, only lasted a couple hours on battery. On this new laptop, I use balanced or efficiency on battery, performance on charger. It lasts several hours on balanced or efficiency, even when I have it set to smart charge (limits charging to 80% battery for battery health). I won’t speak much in the way of performance since I don’t throw terribly much at it, but it can easily handle having a couple applications open including several browser tabs. You charge this laptop off USB-C using any 90w charger, which is great. There are two thunderbolt ports you can choose from, on the left side of the device. The only way this could be any better for me is if the I/O was set up so there would be a third potential charge port (or just move one of the existing ones) on the right side of the laptop so you could always pick the more convenient side depending on your setting. I love USB-C because you are no longer burdened with having to find some particular DC barrel plug which is usually not particularly affordable when from a trustworthy source. A 90watt adapter isn’t the cheapest thing ever, but it’s far less likely to break than a cable is. And you can buy a much nicer cable at a wider variety of lengths for much less than the barrel chargers; I have a green braided ANKER cable, one of the nicer ones actually ($20 is pricey for a single USB-C but it is SUCH a nice cable) and I foresee it lasting far longer than any barrel charger I’ve ever had.

   Display: Pretty display, gets plenty bright. I don’t personally care that it is OLED, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find laptops in this specific niche that aren’t (similar specs, similar build quality, and so forth). But at least it is not a touchscreen OLED, as those, especially at 60hz, are prone to having a sort of grainy display with most manufacturers (I think Samsung is the exception). I generally prefer LCD non-touchscreen because you don’t have to really think about burn-in (and I hate touchscreen laptops anyway). To accommodate the OLED, I keep the brightness where the laptop says is ideal, leave all of ASUS’ OLED protection features on (pixel-shift and whatnot), have the screen automatically turn off after 30sec of inactivity, set my laptop to dark mode, my desktop background to pure black, auto-hide the taskbar, and have AutoHideDesktopIcons (3rd party application) to hide my icons when inactive. My understanding is that modern features are quite good at preventing burn-in without doing all this, but it doesn’t hurt to be proactive and extend the life even further. The display is glossy (which I have never liked) but this isn’t a deal-breaker for me as you can easily buy 3rd-party screen protectors with different finishes. I purchased a matte one. Without it, the display is EXTREMELY reflective and probably quite difficult to use outdoors even with max brightness. The screen is also 16:10 instead of 16:9. I know some people like this for productivity. I don’t have any strong opinion on this, I would’ve been fine either way. I suppose the way it affects me the most is forcing the bottom of the laptop to be larger to match the screen, which in turn provides more space to make a larger trackpad (which is nice). The display is 60hz (I don’t know why, but there’s a different review that says it’s 120hz on here — doesn’t make sense, the listing says 60hz and I confirmed it in display settings).

   Webcam: My first con. Actually, this laptop was a gift to me which I am very grateful for. Unfortunately, the first laptop’s webcam was dysfunctional. I tried everything — open/close privacy shutter (love that this is a feature), update/reinstall drivers, update Windows, update BIOS, factory reset the device and re-attempt updating/reinstalling drivers, run the Windows and MyASUS troubleshooting software. None of it worked. It appeared as though the IR camera worked (Windows Hello was able to set up), but the regular webcam displayed a gray screen (this laptop doesn’t have a keybind to disable the camera — which would’ve displayed a camera icon with a slash through it, not just the gray screen — so that wasn’t the issue either). Ultimately, I had two options — return to Amazon via gift receipt and repurchase, or deal with ASUS customer support. ASUS customer support has been notoriously difficult in the past. The only option they were willing to offer me is repairing the webcam, which would take 7-10 days. When I tried to ask if they would at least cover the shipping since it is literally a brand-new device, they ignored me. I supposed I may have convinced them if I pushed further, but “repairing” a brand-new device that should’ve worked fine out-of-box did not sit right with me. Unfortunately, with the Amazon route, you cannot elect to exchange a gift item, you MUST return and then repurchase it. That means Amazon will not honor whatever sale price the person got you the gift at. As a result, I ended up spending around an extra $50 (on something that was gifted, not supposed to cost me anything) to get a replacement out of Amazon. I really wish there was a policy in place for situations like this as it feels a bit unfair and definitely like something that can be abused. Even so, it was better than dealing with ASUS and an RMA of a brand-new device that might’ve cost more anyway, and the replacement laptop’s webcam works. It’s decent enough, not spectacular or anything.

   Software/bloatware: After confirming everything on the new laptop was fully functional, I did a fresh install of Windows to get rid of some bloat and just to be safe. There’s a whole rigmarole to doing this because of the SSD, if you’re reinstalling from a USB (I was) you’ll also need some Intel driver on another USB or the media creation tool will not detect the laptop’s SSD as a place to install Windows. Also be warned, default drivers on a fresh install are largely incompatible. You WILL need to manually install stuff like the trackpad driver, network driver, and more. I found it easiest to just install the network driver and then re-download MyASUS to automatically reinstall all other necessary drivers. MyASUS handles other important things on the device such as the OLED care and enabling smart charging, so I think it is worth having beyond grabbing drivers anyway. I then went through the list of applications and uninstalled everything not applicable to me, including the 365 Suite so I could install a paid version I already had (Microsoft Office 2016).

   CoPilot: I think this is so stupid. I can appreciate some features like AI noise cancellation for your microphone (which is, by the way, pretty decent on this laptop and offers different recording modes!) which don’t require direct interaction, but I never use CoPilot actively and I want nothing to do with it. I turned it off in the taskbar and used Windows Powertoys to rebind the CoPilot key back to CTRL. Some people disable CoPilot entirely via the registry but for now, just removing it in the taskbar and rebinding the key is good enough for me and doesn’t potentially mess with other system features.

   Build: Nice metal chassis. Not a whole lot of flex and screen doesn’t really wobble when typing. Feels sturdy. Dual hinges; this format used to scare me as they were always SO prone to either breaking or detaching from the bottom or top of the laptop (far more than a single, very long hinge) but I’ve found that this no longer happens in laptops with a metal chassis. I do kind of wish these specs were offered in the mist blue chassis though, the black is nice but it is such an unbelievable fingerprint magnet. This laptop is not a super popular one so if you want any sort of skin to try and cover it up, you will probably have to DIY it. I think I’ll try to just get accustomed to the fingerprint spots all over, it isn’t that big of a deal. The same review that claimed this was a 60hz laptop said the branding was “too much” or something like that. Not really sure what they mean, it says “ASUS VIVOBOOK S” on the bottom bezel of the screen, and “ASUS VIVOBOOK” on the laptop lid, all in relatively plain text. No crazy designs, the text isn’t huge or anything. There’s the typical stickers you get (Intel Evo, a sticker on the lid about the screen, a sticker on the inside with a summary of laptop features) but stickers are removable. SOMETIMES there is a little bit of coil whine, but I notice it’s usually only if I leave my laptop on and sitting at an odd angle (like if I left it on my bed lying partway on top of a pillow or blanket). Readjusting the laptop to be flat makes it go away. If this S14 is anything like previous versions, opening the device shouldn’t be terribly difficult. That means it may be relatively easy to do simple things like swap out the SSD or even replace the battery once it gets worn over time. (Unfortunately RAM is soldered, but that’s usually how it goes in these devices now). Plus, being a non-touchscreen, replacing the screen (if something should ever happen) should be a bit easier and thus cheaper. The dual fans can be VERY strong and loud (but not in an annoying whiney way), although I have only ever heard them max out when running a full system check which included testing the fans.

   Given my experience with the webcam, I want to remind everyone to always thoroughly inspect their new laptop before proceeding with extensive personal setup. Unfortunately, I dismissed the webcam issue as “probably a driver thing” and forgot, getting too excited and immediately starting to set up all my personal preferences. All that just to end up needing to reset the device (both to try and fix it, and ultimately to return it), wasting so much time. Here’s the list of things I look out for when I get a new device (in no particular order):
   physical deformity inspection
   confirm specs match (in BIOS/task manager/msinfo32)
   memory test
   check for dead pixels
   test brightness controls
   test keyboard backlight (if applicable)
   test all port functionality
   test wifi functionality
   test bluetooth functionality
   test speakers
   check close/open lid events
   check battery info/health
   test f keys special functions
   test all keys
   run stress test(s)
   test webcam
   test mic
   test trackpad

   TL;DR: Does what it’s supposed to do, good build, good value. Mishap with first unit which was a bit burdensome to accommodate.