There’s something comforting in having a laptop at your fingertips that packs more power than many full-sized computing towers out there, like the powerhouse Asus Vivobook Pro OLED.
At first glance, the unit is a fairly nondescript black slab, with an embossed logo and a bit of sloganeering. It’s quite subtle, and that’s not a bad thing. Power by stealth! The bezels are small, so the premium-feeling unit isn’t huge considering its sizeable screen, and at 1.95kg it isn’t the lightest, but considering its chunktastic battery it isn’t too heavy, either.
Upon opening we’re presented with a neat keyboard with a pattern on the ‘Enter’ key – you won’t be stumbling around for this one, even with the efficient keyboard backlighting turned off. Then it dawns – this Vivobook boats a full keyboard, numeric keypad and all. Sure, the keys are smooshed up a bit and will take a little adjusting for those used to full-sized keys, but they’re there and very handy for those who don’t wish to faff about with function keys to get fully numeric like most laptops require
The keys themselves are clearly marked with a reasonably funky, quite large and friendly typeface, with all secondary functions quite clearly marked. The large touchpad, meanwhile, is pleasingly tactile, and packs the handy DialPad functionality, which emulates a physical dial, at least after a little adapting time.
Right, it’s turn on time! The top, rightmost key is the power button. We’d prefer it separated, but you would have to be a tad clumsy to go accidentally turning the Vivobook off while in full flight. Once the screen bursts to life, whoa! We love OLED screens – we have a 65-inch one taking up a wall of our apartment – but seeing them in a laptop isn’t a common occurrence. What does this technology mean? Pure black when pure black is called upon – there’s no backlighting to bleed through or give uneven color coverage, as every pixel is individually able to be turned off or on. It’s a bit bright on first setup, but there’s a button for that. Once adjusted, this is easily one of the best screens that we’ve ever seen on a laptop.
Out of the box set up of Windows 11 (Home in this instance) is a breeze, and once entering the usual info and hooking into your Microsoft account things settle down to usability. With gamers one of the target audiences, this Vivobook installs the likes of the Xbox app, but obviously you can tailor it precisely to your needs.
“Once adjusted, this is easily one of the best screens that we’ve ever seen on a laptop.”
However, we’d be very surprised if the eyes of graphic designers and content creators aren’t the ones that will embiggen the most at the sight of this baby, and it just so happens that it’s Pantone validated, which is basically the seal of approval from the venerable color folk as to a computer’s color capability.
Speaking of eyes, with a 4K display in a 16-inch laptop, it’s fair to say that most will use magnification settings for apps and general usage. While initially you may think that this kind of defies the point, upon laying eyes on games that supports that resolution in action, or getting busy in something like Photoshop, you’ll get it. Plus, you can always output to a 4K monitor and get pure 4K resolution. Sweet!
And… speaking of outputs, let’s take a look at the ports on this Vivobook, shall we? The left side features two USB-A ports, while the right side delivers another (in all, two USB 2.0 and one USB 3.2 Gen1), plus one Type-C USB 3.2 Gen1 port (with no Thunderbolt though), a full-size HDMI output, 3.5mm jack and MicroSD card reader (don’t underestimate how handy it is not having to have a separate one hanging off the side hogging a port). Naturally there’s an inbuilt webcam, although it’s only 720p, but it comes complete with a very welcome privacy shutter.
Sound is often an afterthought on laptops, so it’s a delight to hear decent sonics emanating from this Vivobook with its Harmon Kardon certification and powerful speakers.
Inside this beastie, a high-speed SSD whirs away, in this instance one packing 512GB total of storage. RAM-wise, we’re talking a hefty 16GB, while an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H mobile processor whirs away at a decent clip of 3.2 to 4.4GHz with eight ultra-speedy cores. But that’s not the end of the speediness. While many laptops feature integrated graphics, this particular Vivobook packs an Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti graphics chip. If that means nothing to you, it’s easily explained away by saying that it’s capable of pumping out some of the higher settings in whatever game you happen to throw at it. Also onboard you’ll find up-to-the-minute Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth v5.0 support, so your connectivity is sorted.
“With great power comes great need for cooling, and the Vivobook delivers via Asus’s IceCool Plus tech.”
With great power comes great need for cooling, and the Vivobook delivers via Asus’s IceCool Plus tech. In English, this involves a bunch of internal hardware – including dual fans and two heat pipes – that works away at dissipating heat that, combined with software trickery, means you won’t be facing any meltdowns, even in extended sessions.
This Asus Vivobook is very easy to live with, aided by decent battery life for a unit with such capabilities. It’s a 96WHr, six-cell powerhouse, which can keep on delivering for up to around ten hours before requiring charging (dependent upon what you’re doing, of course). When it does need more juice, fast charging tech lets you get around 60 per cent of juice happening in just 49 minutes (that’s Asus’s very specific claim).
If you’re a creator who likes a post of gaming on the side, with decent specs and a screen to die for, you may find it hard to look past the Asus Vivobook Pro OLED when on a new laptop hunt.
The Asus Vivobook Pro OLED laptop is available now at JB Hi-Fi.
Buy now at JB Hi-Fi