Review: Asus Vivobook S 15 Copilot+ PC (2024)

The arrival of Microsoft’s AI-soaked Copilot+ PC has somewhat overshadowed the simultaneous launch of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X CPU, an upgraded, ARM-based alternative to Intel and AMD processors that have long dominated the laptop world.

Qualcomm has made some incredible claims about what the Snapdragon X would be able to do since its announcement last fall, the most notable being a promise of double the performance over competing CPUs at one-third the power draw. Those competing CPUs have all been upgraded since that announcement, so examining the situation with the current environment fully accounted for is crucial. The catch is that Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs are only certified to run on Snapdragon X CPUs—for now, at least—so if you want the Copilot+ experience with all the new artificial intelligence features baked into Windows, a Snapdragon is the only way to fly.

Before we get to the CPU, let’s look at the laptop containing it more broadly. The Asus Vivobook S 15 (now featuring a space in the name, but sometimes not) dates back to 2017, when it began as an Intel-based product. Intel-powered Vivobooks are still around, mind you. The Qualcomm-based version reviewed here is model number S5507Q.

The silver laptop features a spacious 15.6-inch (non-touch) display running at 2,880 X 1,620 pixels of resolution. It’s plenty bright without being eye-searing, backing up its screen with a beefy Harman Kardon sound system. In addition to the Snapdragon X Elite X1E7810 CPU, the unit features 16 GB of RAM and a 1-terabyte solid-state drive, both standard on a modern laptop. The keyboard is roomy and responsive, even squeezing a tiny numeric keypad to the right.

Photograph: Chris Null

An intriguing addition is the inclusion of color LED backlighting for the keyboard—something you don’t often see outside the world of gaming laptops. The single-zone lighting effects can be tweaked in the preloaded MyAsus app, which controls a range of functions ranging from fan speed to audio effects. The backlighting is understated in large part because it is hard to see, due to the silver color of the keys. Whether the backlighting was on or off, I struggled to read the letters and symbols on the tops of the keys; there just wasn’t enough contrast.

Note that the unit does not include Asus’ new Ceraluminum shell—the S 15 has an all-metal chassis—nor does it include the older ScreenPad feature (where the touchpad doubles as a small display), which is present on some other Vivobook offerings.

Port selection is good and befitting of a 15.6-inch laptop, with two USB-C ports supporting USB4, two USB-A 3.2 ports, a full-size HDMI port, and a microSD card reader. All ports are side-mounted. The Vivobook weighs 3 pounds and is 20 millimeters thick, acceptable stats for a machine of this size.

Photograph: Chris Null

With that preface complete, let’s turn to the big mystery: performance. I’ll hedge right away by saying performance is mixed. It doesn’t remotely live up to any “double the power” claims over any laptop I’ve seen in the last year or more—but that has to be qualified too. On general performance tests like Geekbench, the CPU is indeed a dazzler—about 15 percent faster than most Intel Core Ultra 7-based machines, against which this laptop will inevitably compete.

The catch arrives when you involve graphics in the mix. Intel’s integrated GPU has improved in recent years, but Qualcomm is well behind. Across the board, I saw frame rates and processing time lagging by at least 10 to 20 percent against those same Core Ultra 7 machines. Gamers will not likely find this experience to be usable.

Compatibility is another concern. Not every app runs on ARM-based machines yet, including the standard PCMark 10 benchmark. Numerous tests I ran unceremoniously crashed midway through, though casual users running a web browser and Office apps won’t likely encounter such obstacles. Microsoft's Prism translation layer should allow you to install and run more popular apps on ARM (albeit slowly), even if they were designed for the x86 architecture, like Apple's Rosetta 2 layer for MacBooks after it ditched Intel. However, in my testing, I found there were still plenty of benchmark apps that won’t work, even with the emulator.

Photograph: Chris Null

Asus and Qualcomm, however, redeem themselves when it comes to battery life. I scored over 13 hours of YouTube playback at full brightness, which handily trounced most of the current competition. In a world where many laptops fail to even hit the seven-hour mark these days, Asus’ longevity is impressive. Equally impressive is the laptop’s ability to keep cool: I threw everything I had at the machine and never once got the fan to kick in.

Naturally, I tried out all the new Copilot+ features on the device (save for the now-delayed Recall) and found they worked moderately well for the most part. Windows Studio Effects were impressive and quick to respond when applied to a webcam stream, accurately applying auto-framing and various filters on demand. While the Cocreator feature in Microsoft Paint—where you draw a sketch and provide a prompt, and the Copilot AI finishes it up for you—works well enough, it would be a lot simpler to engage with if this laptop had a touchscreen.

Finally, the Live Captions feature, which can overlay translated English subtitles for 44 languages, from any source, on the fly, worked better than I expected, but only if the audio source was moving slowly enough. A fast-talking Swede quickly left the Asus in the dust.

On the whole, the experience is good enough for me to cautiously recommend the Vivobook, provided you aren’t looking for killer graphics performance and you don’t require access to any apps that aren’t well in the mainstream. Those items are enough to keep me from personally jumping to a Snapdragon system anytime soon, but it’s worth keeping a close eye on to see where things go from here.