If you are looking for a new laptop for your work purpose then I am sure you would be looking for a light weight laptop which you can carry around without having any back pain, and if you can get elegant design in the same machine then it will be icing on the cake, and Asus VivoBook S15 S530U is the right example of the same.
We have got Asus VivoBook S15 S530U couple of weeks back, and from then I am using it as my main machine and I had traveled with it around couple of cities and I really enjoyed taking it as it has no weight which I can feel on my back.
Build And Design Of Asus VivoBook S15 S530U –
Design of Asus VivoBook S15 S530U is one of the best thing which catches your eyes at the first, just like earlier VivoBooks, this one too comes with thin profile language with lightweight which we have praised in all VivoBooks.
One thing which we have noticed in this variant and liked very much is ErgoLift hinge display kickstand which raise your keyboard and it not only provide nice angle for typing, but it also make some space for air flow.
But this also comes with its caveat, if you use laptop most of the time on your lap, then you might feel it digging into your lap.
Most of the chasing is made up of plastic, and lid has aluminum finish which makes it somewhat premium in terms of looks. This laptop comes with full sized keyboard, which has nice key travel and nice feedback.
When it comes to connectivity and ports, then on the right side you will find a DC jack, a USB 3.1 port, an HDMI port, a USB Type-C port and a headphone/mic combo jack.
While on the left side you have two USB 2.0 ports, a microSD card slot and LED indicators for charging and battery status.
Going out of traditional color schemes, Asus here has opted for vibrant colors like Gun Metal, Star Grey, Icicle Gold, Silver Blue and most praised Firmament Green.
The overall design of Asus VivoBook S15 S530U is good and balance, we never had any issue in terms of its look or design, even most of the time it catches eyes of nearby peoples.
Hardware And Specs Of Asus VivoBook S15 S530U –
When it comes to under the hood features, Asus VivoBook S15 S530U is powered by Intel Core i5-8250U, along with 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and has 256GB of SSD for your Windows drive which results in faster boot and quick launch of apps. There is a secondary drive as well of 1TB in which you can store your docs.
Graphics are being handle by NVIDIA GeForce MX150 GPU with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM, it flaunts a 15.6-inch NanoEdge display with Full HD resolution and has thin bezels of 6.3mm on all sides.
Software On Asus VivoBook S15 S530U –
Asus VivoBook S15 S530U runs on Windows 10 Home right out of the box, and before running this machine for the first time, I was expecting hell lots of bloatwares on this machine, and that was true.
It comes with Asus Hello app which is a cloud file storage app, very much like to Dropbox, ZenAnywhere which lets you share files between your laptop and mobile.
Apart from this, there other apps like Driver Boast, Asus Giftbox, and not only this, you will also find apps, all thanks to Microsoft, like Candy Crush Saga, Hidden City and Minecraft. LinkedIn, Netflix and McAfee Security.
One thing which we faced is that this machine ends up on BSOD most of the time, it had some video driver issues, and we tried updating drivers and Windows but nothing helped, but completely uninstalling and re-installing drivers worked here.
Keyboard And Trackpad Of Asus VivoBook S15 S530U –
Asus VivoBook S15 S530U comes with island-style keyboard which is very comfortable to type and work on, all thanks to the tactile keyboard and elevated hinge which raises keyboard around 3.5 degree.
This Keyboard has 1 millimeter key travel, which is less, we personally prefer at least 1.5 mm travel, but it has nice spacing between keys which makes your typing experience more pleasant, however the numpad has under sized keys, yes under size and sometimes you might accidentally end up pressing power key.
There is top row for all function keys, and what I liked here is you can set your priority keys and choose between Funtion Key or Hot Keys.
It has well-sized trackpad which perform really well, with Windows Precision Driver, you will enjoy working on it, I never had any issue while browsing web, or working any other app and using trackpad.
This trackpad supports all Windows gestures, a fingerprint sensor is embedded inside trackpad which I kinda never liked as it comes in your way while using trackpad, apart from this I had no issue with trackpad.
Display Of Asus VivoBook S15 S530U –
Display is one department which disappointed me, when I was using this laptop, everything was going well, it checks all boxes, but then I decided to watch some movies and then only I noticed it has dull color reproductions, mostly of red and blues.
Asus VivoBook S15 S530U has 15.6 inch Full HD display which is sharp and very bright, and viewing angles are also very nice and sun light visibility is also quiet well.
This machine can only reproduce only 68 percent of the sRGB color spectrum, which is below what we were expecting from this machine.
Noise, Heating, Speakers, and Battery On Asus VivoBook S15 S530U –
In term of noise, we can say it is a very quite machine, even under heavy usage, you wont find any noise from the machine.
ErgoLift design makes airflow much better and keeps this laptop heat under the limits, we played a full 1.5 hrs movie online and even after that center of keyboard has some heat but that was also under the limits.
Speakers of this laptop are mid sized and can fill a small room, again due to ErgoLift design, bottom placed speakers can reproduce sound in better way and audio is not going to be muffled.
Battery life of this machine is very good, I got around 5 hrs of web surfing while WiFi was on, and brightness was set to full.
Performance Of Asus VivoBook S15 S530U –
In terms of performance, we never faced any major issue with this machine, you have to keep in mind that this is not a gaming laptop, it comes with a low end GPU, MX150 which can handle some games in low or mid settings only.
But if remove gaming, then this machine perform really well, we had around 30 tabs opened in Google Chrome, and machine was performing all good, too push little further, I watched FHD video on YouTube, and again, no lag or freeze was there.
The SSD do reduces your boot time, but its speed is somewhat below competitors, to copy 5GB files, it took around 45 seconds, means speed of around 120MBps.
We tried to convert a 4K footage to 1080p using Handbrake, and it performed really well, beating its competitors. We also edited RAW image on Lightroom, while Premiere Pro and Photoshop running in the background, and all went fine.
If you love numbers, then here are some benchmark test results for you –
- Geekbench 4 – 12,356
- PCMark 10 – 3189
- Cinebench R15 – OpenGL 75.71 fps, CPU 600cb
- CPU-Z – 386.5 on Single Thread & 735.1 on Multi Thread
- Fire Strike – 3176
- CrystalDisk Mark – Read – 528MBps, Write – 505 MBps
Final Verdict On Asus VivoBook S15 S530U –
Asus VivoBook S15 S530U is surely one of the best machine you can get in this price range, the vibrant colors are surely going attract nearby peoples, and clever design is also what you will love here.
ErgoLift mechanism is what you will praise which makes your typing more comfortable, audio will be more clear and air flow will also increase which keeps this VivoBook cool.
The under the hood specs of this machine will make sure it can handle all task which you play on it.Yes you cant play games on this machine as it has low end GPU, but if you are not a gamer or rarely play games, then you will enjoy this VivoBook.
Keyboard is also nice for long typing and trackpad also gets its job done in almost all areas. Bloatwares surely a pain with this machine, but you can get rid of them.
If you are looking for a laptop which stands out in crown and has looks to beat the competition, then you should look this laptop.
