Asus Vivobook S16 OLED Review

This thing is a marvel of sleek design, packing a 16-inch display into a chassis just 13.9mm thin. And at only 1.5kg, it's light enough to take anywhere. But don’t be fooled by its slender profile—this machine is as tough as they come, boasting an aluminium unibody and military-grade MIL-STD 810H durability. It's not just a looker; it’s a solid, portable powerhouse.

The Vivobook S 16 OLED offers a choice between Mist Blue and Neutral Black colour options, both look amazing in our opinion. There’s a 180-degree hinge that allows the display to lie flat, thanks to Asus' ingenious “micro-hinge” design, which maximizes internal space while maintaining an ultra-slim profile when you shut the laptop.

Other clever features include downward-angled vents to enhance airflow and specialized dust filters over the fans to keep things running smoothly and clean as well. What really surprised us was a full array of ports! It gets a full HDMI 2., two Thunderbolt 4 type C ports and a microSD slot among other regulars.

The star of the show for the Asus Vivobook S 16 OLED is undoubtedly its 16-inch OLED display. The Vivobook uses the Asus Lumina display that goes upto 600nits peak HDR. With a 3.2K resolution (3200x2000) and a 16:10 aspect ratio, it not only gives you the impression that it’s bigger than the other laptops you’re used to, but also delivers perfect blacks, brilliant highlights, and vibrant, accurate colours in typical OLED fashion. 

It’s not the same display used in the higher end ROG series of laptops which use the Asus Nebula display rated at a cool 1100nits peak HDR but the Lumina on here covers 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut. The display also meets the latest HDR standards with its VESA DisplayHDR 600 True Black certification.

This panel offers a 120Hz refresh rate, 0.2ms response time, and AMD FreeSync Premium support which is a great feature to have in case you plan to play a few light games. All OLEDs face the dreaded burn-in issue and to tackle that Asus has incorporated an algorithm to adjust degraded pixels and a sort of live or semi-live screensaver that shifts pixels during static content or idle time. It’s almost similar to the OLED Care tech that LG uses on its OLED TVs. Pretty clever.

The Asus Vivobook S 16 doesn't just boast a keyboard — it's got a cockpit-sized typewriter designed for maximum comfort. With keys that sink just right at 1.7mm and a subtle 0.2mm dish keycap curve, typing feels like you're on a proper full size keyboard. There’s a dedicated Microsoft Copilot key to summon the oh so wise Microsoft AI Assistant. It’s a shortcut to all the productivity and content creation enhancing magic that you expect. How smart Copilot and Microsoft's AI Assistant are is a topic for another day though.

But that's not all. The touchpad? It's practically an aircraft carrier deck at 150x99mm, offering acres of silky-smooth glass for all your swiping and pointing needs. The large surface area does intrude sometimes with accidental wrist touches but you soon get used to it.

Under the hood, the Vivobook rocks the Intel Core 7 Ultra chip — a familiar face in the world of processing power. Teamed up with a cool 16 gigs of DDR5 RAM, it chews through everyday tasks like Gordon Ramsay dismissing undercooked risotto. Need to whip up a masterpiece in Photoshop or edit a slick reel in Premiere Pro? No sweat — though things can get a bit heated when the workload gets serious.

The NPU is put to use via Asus’ AI Sense Camera that blurs the background and uses noise-cancellation among other things. It comes in handy when editing videos and deeper functionality within Premiere Pro and Davinci, but that requires a beefier system to pull off. The Vivobook is better suited to the regular AI noise canceling functions that you would use while video conferencing and the chip does well here.

Another area that benefits a lot thanks to this chip is the battery life. The 75Whr battery is big enough to begin with, but paired with a bright OLED, it brings the total battery life down to about 8 hours, which is still great considering the performance as well. Push the Vivobook a bit more than what is intended and you will see it go down to 6 or sometimes even 5 hours if working on heavy apps like Davinci or Premiere Pro continuously.

The Vivobook has cleaned up its act and how! It now feels so posh it could serve martini at a fancy bar. Silly euphemisms aside, the Asus Vivobook sits pretty in its place with its minimalistic design and  bang for buck performance. If you want a work horse that won’t break your bank or your back, we highly recommend you have the new Vivobook at the top of your list.