Monday, 23 Dec 2024

Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ PC review: Elegant design meets powerful performance

Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ PC is the first Snapdragon X Elite chipset powered laptop in India. The flagship laptop from Asus is designed to deliver unmatches performance and huge gains in battery life due to the new ARM based processor underneath.

Microsoft made a lot of noise about finally giving Apple’s MacBook a run for its money when it launched the CoPilot+ PCs earlier this year. Based on the new Snapdragon X series processor, the new laptops promised a major AI upgrade and a boost in battery life to rival Apple’s offerings.

To put this in context, Apple and Microsoft used to be neck-and-neck in the laptop market until around 2020. Things changed this year, however, when Apple ditched Intel processors for its own M1 chip based on ARM architecture, resulting in massive performance and battery life gains, along with a better user experience due to software and hardware integration.

With the new Snapdragon X series processors, Microsoft and its OEM partners such as Asus are looking to replicate some of these gains, while also trying to jump on the AI bandwagon that has been the talk of the town for the better part of two years.

Asus S15 Copilot+ PC:

As for the star of the show, Asus’ revamped S series laptops were already pretty impressive, as evidenced by the S16 OLED I reviewed earlier this year. Asus has now given the S15 a big boost with the addition of the Snapdragon X Elite chipset, in a bid to take on not only other Windows OEMs, but also the MacBook’s of the world.

Also Read | CMF Phone 1 review: Look beyond the screwsBut does the first Snapdragon X Elite powered laptop in India really live up to the promise of powerful performance and long battery life, or are there still a few kinks to be ironed out? Well, I used the S15 Copilot+ PC for about 15 days and below is my detailed analysis of how the laptop fared in real-world use.

Design:

One of the pain points for me with the S16 OLED was its massive 16 inch display which despite being lightweight was a bit too much to carry for me. However, I had no such complaints with the new S15 Copilot+ PC. With a weight of around 1.42kg and a thickness of just 14.7mm, the new S15 laptop is definitely easy to carry for long periods of time.

Like its siblings, the S15 comes in a metal body design which gives the laptop a very premium touch and for its worth, it has also received the US MIL-STD 810H military-grade standard which does ensure a certain peace of mind in the long run. In terms of real world usage, the laptop easily opens with one finger and there is very little keyboard or display flex when typing.