Asus Vivobook S 15 (S5507) Copilot+ PC review: A solid contender to MacBook Air

Circling back to the laptop, the Vivobook S15 is one of the most powerful Copilot+ PCs out there. On paper it has 16GB of DDR5 RAM, 1TB SSD storage and is powered by Snapdragon X Elite processor that is also the most powerful ARM chipset designed to run Windows 11 operating system.

The deal here is simple – Vivobook S15 is supposed to deliver optimised performance, improved AI features and battery life that can last for the entire day, at least.

To find an answer to these questions, I switched to it full time and used it as my daily driver – took it to the office, watched some movies and shows and even tried playing some games on it. And this is what I think about the Vivobook S15 laptop that costs Rs 1,24,990.

Asus Vivobook S15 performance: Fast, but not furious

You may be expecting crazy fast speed from this laptop. Well, it is certainly fast. Gets the job done in seconds. App loading speeds, multitasking and even switching between different apps – all works flawlessly. But, it is not furious, when it comes to performance, and I realised that as soon as I started pushing the laptop with intensive apps and software.

Vivobook S15 sides

Before moving ahead, let’s take a look at what Qualcomm X Elite processor offers. The Snapdragon X Elite features Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU with 12 cores clocked up to 3.8GHz and a dual-core boost of 4.3GHz, delivering 2x faster CPU performance and one-third the power consumption of a 10-core laptop CPU. It includes an Adreno GPU for high-performance graphics processing. AI capabilities are enhanced by the Qualcomm AI Engine with Hexagon NPU, supporting on-device generative AI models with over 12 billion parameters. It also integrates a micro NPU in the Qualcomm Sensing Hub for improved security and privacy. The processor supports Windows Studio Effects and other AI-accelerated applications.

Moving back to the performance, I don’t intend to tell you that the laptop struggles or it can’t do heavy duty stuff. What I want to explain is that the entire setup – Copilot+ PCs, the ARM chip – are aimed at offering the performance that’s best suited for daily usages and productivity tasks.

Coming back to the performance, Now, the reduced performance with some apps could also be due to the lack of native ARM version of these apps and they are running through an emulator that Microsoft has added to ensure maximum compatibility.

Let’s understand what works and what doesn’t here.

I have already mentioned that the Copilot+PCs are mostly designed to offer best experience as a productivity machine and this is where Microsoft has ensured that most apps are compatible. And they are. Almost all the web browser – Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Brave, etc works on Vivobook S15 without any issues.

I also connected a printer from HP and Canon, both worked without any issues. In fact, the laptop detected the network printer easily. Moreover, most apps or software that you use on a daily basis like Slack, Word, Excel, PowerPoint are also compatible and works without any glitches or running into a problem. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet also worked without a problem.

Display

If you are wondering about editing photos and videos, the Photoshop – the ARM version – works and handles layers, effects with ease. However, I did noticed some slowdown when using Premiere Pro with the laptop when rendering high resolution videos. In fact, at times, the Elite X processor struggles a bit with graphics intensive tasks. I think a driver update can fix something like this easily.

So, when it comes to productivity software and apps, there’s no denying that most of things works without much issues. While there are apps and software that don’t work, but it isn’t a deal breaker.

Moving on to the entertainment part. First, the speakers are decent, the laptop has dual speaker setup tuned by Harman Kardon and backed by Dolby ATMOS. They sound alright nothing extraordinary here. I recommend using an external speaker or headphones if you want to enjoy watching movies and shows on Vivobook S15.

Asus Vivobook S15: Microsoft has gone all-in here

Microsoft has sung a nice and beautiful song about all the AI features that its Copilot+ PCs will comes equipped with. And, the company is not wrong, at least when it comes to the on-device AI processing, thanks to the Snapdragon X Elite’s 45 TOPs Neural Processing Engine (NPU).

Let’s address them one-by-one. First up is the built-in Copilot. The Copilot’s performance here is fast and fluid and it delivers results faster than you can expect. Also, the dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard makes it easier to access the tool. I loved using it. However, the addition of an extra button that is aimed at just doing one thing – triggering the Copilot – feels like overkills and also, I had to retune my muscle memory to not hit the button accidentally. It does take a little getting used to.

Keyboard

Next up is the Studio effects. The features aren’t new, but they work a lot better then the previous-generation Windows PCs that runs on ARM chips. Apart from that, the feature works across all the applications that we tried. This includes Teams, Zoom, WhatsApp video calls, etc. The features offered are background blur, portrait lighting and eye contact correction along with auto framing, voice focus and eye contact teleprompter. All these features are powered by AI.

I tried them all over a video calls and most them surprisingly works well on Vivobook S15. But the best part is that it works with most video calling or conferencing apps and for that we will have to give some credit to Microsoft.

In addition to these, the Copilot+ PC also includes a feature called Live Captions. The feature is aimed at offering real-time captions, translation while watching a video or calling. The feature, once again, is compatible with most services and does a good job.

Then comes the Microsoft Paint’s new Cocreate feature. Logically, it is an AI art generator. All you have to do is draw an art work in Paint or use the text prompt describing the image you want it to generate and Paint will turn it into a more sophisticated version using AI. Now, I am no artist and considering my poor drawing skills, Paint does a good job at recreating it into something usable. However, it has that AI-like feel to it and does not feel human-made at times. But, I think that’s fine because, most people would use to make things appear more sophisticated than going all natural.

With everything here. I wondered about the “Recall” feature that Microsoft hyped so much during the announcement. Well, it’s not there on Vivobook S15 or any other Copilot+ PCs for that matter. The feature is set to arrive later.

But, for what it’s worth, the feature seems promising and if you’ve used the Windows 10’s Timeline feature than it’s just like that, but with the power of AI and it will be interesting to see how effective it is real world.

That’s not it. Asus has also included some of its own AI features to the Vivobook S15. The StoryCube feature that helps manage photos and videos comes in handy. Then there’s AiSense camera with adaptive dimming and lock functions. I specially liked the Adaptive lock feature as it locks the PC automatically as soon as I walk away from it.

I like when companies experiment with AI to come with different tools and features to include in their devices. On Vivobook S15 with Copilot+PC, there are tons of features that are practical. However, there are some that most people will find gimmicky or not as useful as other. However, they are there and I appreciate it.

But, it would have been better with Microsoft somehow finds a way to streamline these AI features for Copilot+PC in order to offer better experience and less confusion.

Moving on to the software experience – well, it’s basic Windows 11 if you’ll look beyond all the AI features.

Asus Vivobook S15 design: Solid and practical

Vivobook S15 is meant for a purpose – to offer productivity – in a thin and light form factor and in my perception, the S15 does an impressive job here. From the looks of it, you won’t find any major shift in terms of design, compared to other Asus laptops. In fact, the fit and finish is on point. There’s no new taste to acquire here. What I want to say is that if you’ve seen other Vivobooks from Asus, then you are familiar with S15’s design.

But, for what it’s worth, the laptop weighs 1.5Kg which is pretty good for a 15.6-inch laptop. Also, the chassis is all metal and has some sort of matte finish to it which feels smooth to touch. There’s no flex either on the display panel or the keyboard deck.

The hinge mechanism is smooth and opens 18-degree that enables multiple use case scenarios. For instance, you want to use a stand, you can move the hinge as per your liking, there’s no limitation here. However, this also makes collaborating with other in the office easier.

Moving to the keyboard and trackpad. The keyboard is also finished with the same silver finish (slightly darker tone). While, the key press feel is brilliant and the feedback is also on point, the similar colour design language has always been a little hard to see when backlight is turned on. There’s a number pad too, if you are wondering. And, the backlit is RGB, but its single zone.

Coming to the trackpad, it’s decently sized and supports multi-finger gestures too. The best way to talk about the trackpad is that I never felt the need to add a mouse while using the laptop. It’s smooth, traction is good and gestures work without any lag or delay.

In terms of ports, the laptop offers a comprehensive I/O. There are two USB-C ports with support for external display, two 3.2 Gen 1 ports and an HDMI port along with a 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card reader.

The laptop also comes with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support.

Asus Vivobook S15 display: OLED panel shines

It has been a while since Asus started offering OLED displays in its laptops. The Vivobook S15 also comes with a 15.6-inch OLED display with 2.8K (2880 x 1620 pixels) resolution. The panel is eye pleasing in all aspects whether is the brightness, viewing angles, colours or contrast. The colours are punchy and vibrant here. Also, the panel supports HDR.

The display brightness peaks at 600 nits with HDR content and 400 in SDR which is more than enough in most use case scenarios. Also, the adaptive 120Hz refresh rate makes things feel smooth overall.

Asus Vivobook S15 battery: Can give MacBooks run for its money

I started this review with wondering about a Windows laptop that offers battery life as good as Apple MacBooks and I think we finally have a strong contender, at least in this aspect. I used the laptop as my daily driver and took it to office and also used it as my personal laptop to get things done at home.

Speaker

I my testing, the laptop delivers somewhere around 14 to 15 hours of battery life with adaptive display brightness feature is turned on. Even without that and display brightness set to 50%, the laptop offers similar battery life.

And, if you can go more conservative by putting it into the Power Saving mode, you can make this laptop last for around 17 hours. Which is insane considering it’s a Windows laptop.

Charging isn’t a problem either. When the laptop ran out of battery, I plugged in the included charger and it charged the laptop to 55% in around 45 minutes and a full charge took around 130 minutes.

Asus Vivobook S15: My thoughts

The Asus Vivobook S 15 (S5507) Copilot+ PC is a solid Windows alternative to the MacBook Air, offering impressive performance and AI features powered by the Snapdragon X Elite processor. While it excels in everyday productivity and delivers exceptional battery life of up to 17 hours, it struggles with some heavy-duty tasks due to app compatibility issues. Its sleek design, OLED display, and extensive AI features make it a strong contender for Rs 1,24,990, but it's not without its limitations.

Overall rating: 9/10