Review: Asus Vivobook S 14 OLED

It's easy to get caught up in the flashiness of laptop specs and designs in the high-end segment, but sometimes you just want a smooth experience without much flair. That’s exactly what the Asus Vivobook S 14 OLED delivers, offering some great hardware in a rather unassuming shell. It’s also priced reasonably well at $900, which is out of the budget laptop range but strikes a nice balance between performance and not hurting your wallet.

The model Asus sent me for review is the Vivobook S 14 OLED (S5406MA-AS96), which includes an Intel Core Ultra 9 Series 1 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and 1 TB of solid-state drive storage. Another version trades the processor out for a Core Ultra 7 Series 2 processor and 32 GB of RAM for $1,200. If that isn't confusing enough, yet another model foregoes Intel altogether for an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processor at $1,200.

Simple Powerhouse

The base model reviewed here is likely more than enough horsepower for most people. The Core 9 processor handled nearly all my daily tasks without breaking a sweat. You’ll want to look elsewhere if you do any graphically intense work (like video editing or gaming). We aren’t yet at a point where 16 GB of RAM is restrictive, and the amount of storage on board leaves plenty of breathing room for the long haul.

Photograph: Dan Thorp-Lancaster

I really like the screen, though it isn’t the brightest display I’ve used on a laptop. The crisp OLED panel gives you vibrant colors and infinite contrast, making it great for kicking back and watching a movie or YouTube marathon. The 16:10 aspect ratio also offers more vertical screen space at the cost of width, which makes it great for documents but means you’ll see horizontal bars with fullscreen video.

The camera setup is another bright spot that, frankly, surprised me at this price. You get an HD webcam that looks clear on video calls and does well in low-light situations. It also has face recognition you can use with Windows Hello to speedily log in to your PC, while an easily accessible privacy shutter ensures you can cover the camera quickly when it’s not in use.

The Vivobook has a nice selection of ports, with nearly everything you could want from a modern laptop. There are two USB-A ports for legacy accessories, two Thunderbolt 4-capable USB-C ports, one HDMI 2.1 for external monitors, and a microSD card reader. There’s also a 3.5-mm headphone jack if you haven’t jumped on the wireless headphone bandwagon yet.

Photograph: Dan Thorp-Lancaster

I haven’t always been a fan of Asus keyboards, but the company did well with this Vivobook. The chiclet-style keys have nice travel and bounce that keeps typing feeling good for hours. You also get RGB backlighting, so you can tweak the color to add flair to an otherwise staid design.

Battery life was excellent throughout all of my testing. I regularly hit between 10 and 12 hours through the normal shuffle of work and play, shifting between writing and video streaming. When you’re ready to charge back up, the laptop can fast-charge up to 80 percent in a little over an hour.

Fingerprint Magnet

Photograph: Dan Thorp-Lancaster

The one major downside to the Vivobook S 14 OLED is that it’s a massive fingerprint magnet. That's a shame, because the black chassis looks sleek and stealthy when it’s free from the plague of fingerprints, but they’re a permanent feature the second you start handling it. I’d recommend carrying a good microfiber cloth and a cleaning spray if this is the type of thing that bothers you.

Aside from that, the laptop's exterior is well built, with metal making up the bulk of the machine. The rear vents look particularly nice and do a good job directing heat, though the laptop got a little warmer than I was comfortable with on my lap while under load. It wasn’t much of a problem when I was lightly browsing the web and writing, but the temperature shift was noticeable while streaming video.

Photograph: Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Overall, the Asus Vivobook S 14 OLED is a great middle-of-the-road laptop that doesn’t go out of its way to awe you with a flashy design or the most hardcore specs. Instead, it’s a rather unassuming computer that does its job well at a good price. If you want a laptop that doesn’t compromise much, then the Vivobook is a good buy.