Asus VivoBook S14 S433FA, hands on: Stylish and affordable, with all-day battery life Review

The new £699 (inc. VAT)/$699.ninety nine Asus VivoBook S fourteen is a solidly developed fourteen-inch Windows 10 laptop computer running on a tenth era Intel Core processor. And if you happen to be looking for anything a bit far more hanging than normal, it can be offered with a environmentally friendly or pink lid in addition to black and white. That mentioned, I could only discover it on line in the United kingdom with the exact black lid I was despatched for evaluation.

The steel chassis provides great protection for the innards. I was in a position to bow the lid in my palms a small, but general this is a sturdy machine. You can expect to have to have 1.4kg (three.08lbs) about in your backpack or bag, although, and this laptop computer will occupy a room 32.49cm extensive by 21.35cm deep by 1.59cm thick (12.79in. x eight.4in. x .62in.). The base has ‘diamond cut’ edges to the higher of 3 sides, which even when the lid is closed provides visible desire.

When you open the lid the eye is drawn to the Enter vital, which has been given a marker-pen yellow surround. It actually does seem odd. The keyboard by itself is cozy to use, and personal keys are substantial and springy. Having said that, there is certainly a ton of flex — plenty of for even a light-fingered typist like me to see. This is actually the only create challenge of note, and it can be a bit of a disappointment.

The trackpad has a actually great sense to it, and is responsive. Asus provides second screens in the touchpad on some of its ZenBook laptops (the ZenBook Flip fifteen UX563FD and ZenBook fourteen UX434FL for illustration), but the trickery is far more muted in the VivoBook vary. There is certainly a compact icon in the prime suitable corner of the touchpad that, when tapped, provides up an embedded calculator that permits you to do some basic maths. I alternatively like this concept — it can be successful, straightforward, and won’t seem to be in excess of-specified. If my laptop computer had this function I am positive I’d use it. There is an alternative with no calculator and a fingerprint reader prime suitable of the touchpad rather.

The fourteen-inch display screen is what Asus calls ‘frameless NanoEdge’, while in point there is certainly a bit far more bezel in this article than on some other designs, and ‘frameless’ is a bit of a stretch. Asus won’t give us bezel dimensions but I measured the short edge bezels at 7mm and the prime edge at 11mm (a great deal of place for the webcam, while it does lack a sliding privateness protect). The recess of the display screen will make it seem a small old-fashioned, and it can be not contact sensitive. Nonetheless, it has great viewing angles, is rather vivid, and the matte complete will attraction to people who you should not like staring at their have reflection.

The Intel Core i5-10210U processor in the £699/$699 iteration of this laptop computer has 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. You also get a 12-thirty day period membership to Microsoft 365 Own and 1TB of cloud storage. There is also a Core i7-10510U variant, and possibilities for up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of on-board storage, but none of these are offered in the United kingdom.

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There are a great deal of ports and connectors on board. On the suitable edge are two USB two. ports and a MicroSD card slot, when the left edge houses the spherical-pin electric power jack, a full-size HDMI port, a USB three.two port and a USB-C port as very well as a three.5mm audio jack. It’s great to see Wi-Fi 6 rounding out the connectivity decisions. 

SEE: Microsoft 365: A cheat sheet (free PDF)

Battery lifestyle is pretty great. I invested 1 4-hour session producing into a net app when streaming new music about half the time and accomplishing some net browsing, through which time the battery went from one hundred percent to fifty five percent. All-working day battery lifestyle might be achievable with similarly undemanding workloads.

The Asus VivoBook S14 S443FA is a sturdy and successful Windows 10 Professional laptop computer with a nifty function in the touchpad-embedded calculator. All-working day battery lifestyle is another plus position, but beware the flexy keyboard.

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