Asus VivobookS S14 S433 review: A mixed bag with a high premium for portability

Asus on Thursday launched a new series of Zenbooks and Vivobook laptops, aiming squarely at the portable mobile PC space with a family of laptops that weigh in at under 1.5 kg.
The Asus Vivobook S14 S433 is one of the four models launched by the company, which Asus says aims to present the intersection of power and personality. But is the target Asus aiming for really worth it? We put it through its paces to find out just that.

In the box: VivobookS S14 S433

The Vivbook ships in a fairy simple box, which seems standard for Asus' more mainstream products.

In the box itself, we have the laptop, a compact power adapter, a user manual with a warranty card, and a set of stickers for personalising the laptop if the user so wishes. All things considered, it's a pretty standard package.

VivobookS S14 S433 specfications:

The model we received had the following technical specifications -

VivoBookS S14 (S433) Detailed Specs:
Processor	Intel Core i7-10510U 1.8 GHz quad‑core with Turbo Boost (up to 4.9 GHz) and 8 MB cache
Operating system	Windows 10 Home Pre Loaded Microsoft Office Home and Student 2019
Display	14-inch LED‑backlit FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS panel with 16:9 aspect ratio Three‑sided NanoEdge display with 85% screen‑to‑body ratio 178° wide‑view technology
Graphics	NVIDIA GeForce MX250 with 2 GB GDDR5 VRAM
Memory	8 GB 2666MHz DDR4 RAM
Storage	512GB PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSD (Upgradable up to 1 TB)
Wireless	802.11ax Intel WiFi 6 (Gig+) Bluetooth 5.0
Connectivity	1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C™ 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A 1 x HDMI 1.4 1 x Combo audio jack 1 x SD card reader
Keyboard and touchpad	Full‑size backlit keyboard with 1.4 mm key travel Touchpad with fingerprint
Audio	Array microphone with Cortana voice recognition Certified by Harman Kardon
Software	ASUS Splendid ASUS Tru2Life Video ASUS AudioWizard
Battery	50 Wh 3-cell lithium-polymer battery
Colors	Gaia Green / Resolute Red / Dreamy White / Indie Black
Size	324.9 x 213.5 x 15.9 mm
Weight	1.4 kg

The CPU is the 14-nanometer Comet Lake variant, despite the 10th generation branding. The core is another refresh of the half-decade old Skylake core, much like Whiskey Lake before it. Intel could really do better with naming their processors, lest users get confused between this and the other 10th generation Core CPUs, which feature the newer 10 nanometer Ice Lake core.

The graphics card is the Nvidia GeForce MX250, based on the older Pascal core which is roughly equivalent to a GT 1030, but at least we got the full power 25-watt version of it.

VivobookS S14 S433 build quality and ergonomics:

The Vivobook's better capability is in the build quality. During our test, the keyboard and the palm rest felt reasonably firm to the touch and would not flex during long typing sessions. On the other hand, the screen did have more than a bit of flex to it, but the average user will probably not be bothered in a daily use scenario.

The keyboard felt smooth and responsive to type on, but the keys themselves felt like they were a little bigger than what one would usually get on a laptop of this size. The speakers are bottom-firing, but that doesn't necessarily muffle the quality of the output.

VivobookS S14 S433 performance, thermals, and battery life:

The Vivobook, as Asus claims, is aimed at being highly portable and stylish. Therefore, it would not be surprising if corners were cut when it came to where it mattered: The performance, and unfortunately, this is exactly the problem here.

The CPU on the laptop we received, the Intel Core i7-10510U, is functionally the same as the previous generation equivalents with marginal performance improvements at most. The CPU runs at a base clock of 1.8 GHz and claims to feature up to 4.9 GHz on turbo boost, but we rarely achieved that clock speed owing to the laptop throttling whenever any moderately stressing workload was thrown at it.

In this case, we didn't even have to try to fire up Blender, because the CPU throttled across half its cores on Cinebench R20 itself. It works fine as a daily use laptop where you just browse and watch some Netflix, but we would not suggest trying out anything that would feasibly stress the CPU or you'll end up with a toasty machine that doesn't work the way it should.

The GPU is decent enough for a laptop that is aimed at daily use, but like the CPU, don't expect to use it for stressful tasks like playing games (other than Counter-Strike or other eSports equivalents) on it, or to use the laptop for productivity tasks that involve the GPU.

The 8 GB of RAM is also likely to prove insufficient if you have a habit of letting your browser (Chrome is the usual culprit of this mess) open with a dozen tabs or more, even if the CPU is more than capable of handling the load.

The battery life, however, is pretty good for a laptop of its size. On idle at high brightness, we managed to keep the laptop going for about 10 hours; while browsing with about 6 tabs open on Brave, we registered about 4-4.5 hours of battery life. Your mileage may vary based on what you are doing with the laptop.

Price and conclusion:

The Vivobook S14 S433 is a mixed bag. A decent build quality, speakers, and battery life are marred by otherwise sub-par performance, thermal issues, and a much higher price tag than what would be considered reasonable for a daily use/Netflix device.

The portability of the laptop is not even questionable with its small form factor and lightweight at just 1.4 kg, but the compromises needed to achieve this feat, along with the price, make the laptop a hard sell.

The new Asus Vivobook series starts at Rs 39,990. The review laptop we received has a retail price of Rs 78,990.

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