If you’re not willing to pay more for fancy design or ultra portability, and just want a laptop with specs that matters then the ASUS VivoBook S14 (Z403) is a laptop that you should consider.
Why? It offers up to “24 hours battery life” and weighs just “1.3kg”! Furthermore, it also has NanoEdge display (ie. thin bezels) which makes your screen nicer to look at.
The VivoBook S14 (Z403) retails for S$1,598. Is it suited for you? Let’s get into details.
Unboxing
Out of the box, you are greeted with the following items:
- VivoBook S14 (Z403)
- Laptop bag
- USB Mouse
- DC power adapter
It’s a nice touch to see ASUS giving a USB mouse. Even if you don’t need it, at least there is one to standby if your wireless mouse ever goes out of battery.
Build quality and design
The VivoBook rocks a clean and smooth back unlike the concentric-circle design on its ZenBook line. But honestly, I prefer this smooth-to-touch aluminium chassis. This model comes in a light silver color, which and modern and minimal.
On the inside, you get a nice looking keyboard, also silver in color.
Like the ZenBook UX433, the VivoBook S14 has also met the ultra-demanding MIL-STD-810G military standard for reliability and durability. Based on ASUS’ tests, these are the tests that the VivoBook S14 has passed:
As follows is a quick snapshot of the VivoBook S14 (Z403) specs:
Display
Having a 14-inch screen is always great when the body of the laptop remains compact and portable. The VivoBook S14 (Z403) has a matte FHD (1920×1080) 60Hz screen. Colors are decent, not the most color accurate, but if you’re not doing any color intensive work like photo or video editing, this should not be an issue. It does not get as bright as I would have hoped, but it is probably for battery life. Do note that this is not a touch enabled display.
With up to 87% screen-to-body ratio, the screen is a great to look at. Finally you can say goodbye to those outdated bezels. The webcam at the top is a 720p one, but does not support Windows Hello.
Keyboard and trackpad
Keyboard layout is nice, with convenient hotkeys and the ability to lock your Fn keys easily. The key travel of about 1.4mm is great, which makes typing comfortable and accurate.
The trackpad is just decent, sufficient for casual use (which is expected). Two-thirds of the trackpad can be used to click which is a good thing! That way, you won’t be forced to perform clicks only at the bottom of the trackpad. But if you are into heavy work that requires quite a bit of mouse usage, you might wish to use the provided USB mouse. On the trackpad, you will also find a built-in fingerprint sensor. It’s pretty fast and accurate.
Ports selection
On the left, you get a DC power-in, a full size HDMI, USB 3.0 Type-A, USB-C 3.1 Gen 1.
And on the right, you have a USB 2.0 Type-A, full size SD card slot, and the trusty headphone jack. Since the USB-A port on the right is USB 2.0, you might want to use your USB mouse there.
Battery and speakers
Battery on the VivoBook S14 (Z403) is this laptop’s biggest strength. Its 72Wh battery is rated to last up to 24 hours, it will certainly be an asset if you spend long hours in front of a laptop. But can it really last that long?
I used the laptop from a full charge, doing regular things like surfing the net and writing some drafts online. But I’m idling with the laptop, I will play a YouTube video. Brightness and volume were set at 50%. All that took me almost 17 hours to get the battery to 5% – that is pretty darn impressive.
But when it comes to the speakers, the VivoBook won’t be your top choice to blast music. As the speakers are located under the laptop, sound is blasted downwards and often causes the audio to sound “hollow”.
Performance
The VivoBook S14 (Z403) has a quad core i7-8565U processor, with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of PCle SSD. Regular workflows as such research on the web, typing in Google docs or Word is fast and snappy. But if you’re opening many many apps and tabs on the laptop, the 8GB of RAM may start to show signs of bottlenecks.
As there is no discrete GPU on this laptop, graphics intensive projects relying merely on the Integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 isn’t really ideal.
The VivoBook S14 generally handled by day-to-day work with little to no issues.
Conclusion
The VivoBook is meant for people who spend a large amounts of time in front of their laptop performing work like research, typing, analysis, etc. The 72Wh battery will provide a long lasting battery and the keyboard is comfortable to type on as well.
It is really your ‘no-frills’ laptop, where it packs all the essential specs which is important for work use. If you’re going to be watch videos heavily on this laptop, perhaps this screen might not be the best choice. You can consider the ZenBook UX433 for example.