ASUS - Vivobook 16 16" FHD+ Laptop - AMD Ryzen 7 7730U with 16GB Memory - 1TB SSD - Indie Black

I have posted a video review on Youtube under the same title as this written review. Please head over there to see this awesome laptop in action, otherwise continue reading for the written review and thank you! Asus launched the Vivobook line in 2012 and they’ve been a reliable staple in the laptop industry for the past twelve years. I’ve always been a fan of what they bring to the market as they’re decently-built laptops with competitive specs at a lower economic range, making them excellent values for the average consumer. The 2024 Vivobook 16 is no different! It has impressive specs for the price point at $599. I was able to snag one at the end of the year on sale at $449, which is absurd! If you can find one on sale, I wouldn’t blink. I would simply buy. Let’s discuss why. The processor is the star of the show here. It’s AMD’s latest Ryzen 7 7730u processor and it has 8 cores of processing with a clock speed of 2.0ghz! I remember back in college (nearly two decades ago…ouch!) when I dreamt of owning an 8-core Mac Pro. That was the pinnacle of my idea of a computer back then. The fact that we’re at the point where a laptop, under $600 has an 8-core processor is bonkers. And it’s a good one at that! It’s capable of punching mountains above it’s weight and can handle Photoshop editing and 4k editing on Premiere with zero lagging or chugging. The VivoBook 16 doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card so it relies on the integrated graphics of the Ryzen 7 7730u processor. When editing photos or videos, it handles these tasks well and doesn’t falter or struggle until you begin exporting a video. A sixteen-minute video took an hour and forty-two minutes to complete rendering on the VivoBook 16 and the fans kicked on full blast at 41dB’s. In comparison, a desktop or laptop possessing a dedicated gpu would complete this task in five to thirty minutes. It’s still an impressive feat that this laptop, at $599 is capable of editing and exporting 4k videos. We’re not too far removed when laptops with dedicated graphics cards struggled to export 4k videos on premiere, so it’s quite the testament to AMD for creating such a powerful chip, especially at this price point. The Ryzen 7 7730u is also capable of gaming…well, light gaming, that is. I tested 5 games at 1080p (medium setting) resolution. Frame rates are below: Bioshock infinite: 64fps Oxenfree: 39fps Rise of the Tomb Raider: 22fps Unchartred 4: 12fps Ori and the Will of Wisps: 73FPS I was able to play indie and older titles such as Oxenfree, Ori and the Will of Wisps and Bioshock infinite with ease. When things got chaotic in Bioshock infinite, there was some minor screen-tearing but overall it was fluid and I had an absolute blast revisiting Columbia! With a more-demanding game, such as Uncharted 4: A Thiefs End, the radeon graphics struggled (unsurprisingly) to keep up with the demand of the complex environments and effects. The game was barely playable and at one point, stopped altogether to load environments. The integrated graphics definitely has it’s limits and if you stay within those boundaries (with older titles and indie games) you should have a blast gaming on the VivoBook 16. Not once did the lack of a dedicated graphics card pull me out of my gaming experience and I think that is the greatest compliment I can give this processor. You’re not going to sniff anything close to crazy-high frame rates, but you’ll be able to game at the low price point of $599 (or in my case: $449) which is phenomenal! The processor is also extremely efficient and provides the VivoBook 16 with great battery life. With my screen at the lowest brightness setting, I was able to achieve 9 hours and 40 minutes of battery life when streaming youtube at a 1440p resolution setting. When completely stressing the VivoBook out at maximum brightness and gaming, I got a measly 1 hour and 2 minutes. Let’s dig into the rest of the good stuff, because there’s plenty of it. Firstly, the screen is a positive. The panel isn’t color-accurate screen (sRGB – 54%, AdobeRGB – 49%, P3 – 48%) by any means but it has a nice resolution at 1920x1200. Most laptops in this range come with a 1920x1080 resolution screen and the increase in resolution makes a big difference. The screen has an impressive 86-percent screen to body ratio, meaning it is surrounded by a thin, texturized bezel and the rest of the space is your screen. This is excellent as the bezels are unobtrusive and barely noticeable. You’ll never once look at the screen and think: OMG, Bezels!!! Unfortunately, the panel doesn’t have HDR-capability nor is the refresh rate higher than 60hz, which is a shame. HDR-capable and 90hz refresh rate would have made it a stellar display. The keyboard on the Vivobook is another win. Asus is no strangers to making an excellent keyboard and this one is no different. It’s a full-size keyboard with a number-pad. Each key is tactile and has deep travel (1.4mm, to be precise), providing a satisfying typing experience. The keys are backlit as well with three levels of brightness. The included number-pad is a bit cramped for my liking but over time you get used to the closeness of the layout and wasn’t an issue after a few days of use. One last positive on the keyboard is a dedicated row of function keys! Typically, these are integrated into the number row and you have to hold down FN with a number to activate a function, such as volume up or brightness up, but the VivoBook 16’s top row of keys is dedicated to functions which is more than welcome! The trackpad is extremely large as it makes up nearly 33-percent of the palm rest. It has a glass surface and feels buttery smooth when gliding across it. It’s ultra-responsive and palm-rejection was great as well as my cursor never jumped while typing. The trackpad has a nice, deep and satisfying click to it as well. It’s reminiscent of the hinge-style trackpads on older MacBooks. You can feel movement when you press down. Some may find it obnoxious, but I found it wonderful. There’s a fingerprint reader built into the top-right corner of the trackpad as well. This is for Windows hello sign-in. It allows you to sign in to your laptop via your fingerprint instead of typing a password and it’s accuracy is excellent. Honestly, it’s the best fingerprint reader I’ve ever used! Not once did I get an error while using it. It can also be used for utilizing saved passwords on websites or making purchases on Windows store. Normally I prefer facial recognition for Windows Hello, which the VivoBook is missing, but this fingerprint sensor was so accurate, I never found myself longing for it. One last positive I wanted to mention with the VivoBook 16 is the RAM. It starts out at 16gb’s which is awesome! There is an 8gb model available, but I would skip that since the memory is soldered onto the motherboard and cannot be upgraded after the fact. Another positive is the Solid-state drive is an m.2 drive and can easily be upgraded in the future, so there is room for expansion. Let’s dig into the few negatives… The VivoBook’s construction, while solid, is from a polymer plastic. This gives it a cheap overall feel and makes the VivoBook extremely light. Being light as a feather is a positive for lugging around in your backpack from class to class but it does have a major negative. It makes for a poor counterweight to the hinge of the display. The display takes two hands to open and requires two hands at any angle of adjustment. If the screen of the VivoBook is perpendicular to the keyboard (at 90 degrees) and you want to tilt it away from you, say at 135 degrees, you must place one hand on the palm rest while adjusting the screen. Otherwise, the base of the laptop will kick upward, off the surface of your desk like it’s trying to perform a backflip! Another negative on the plastic construction is it makes the VivoBook flimsy and feel delicate. I can literally bend the base of the laptop with the slightest of torque between my two hands. Now, no one in their right mind would bend a laptop in such a fashion, but with a premium build, you get a more-stable structure and no bending, which the VivoBook does not possess. This concerns me of the VivoBook’s chances of surviving a drop. A part of me thinks the bendiness of the construction will dampen the impact of the drop, but the other part thinks it’s going to burst into a million pieces! The VivoBook 16 comes with a propietary charger and it’s SLOW. While in use, recharging from 0% to 100% took 2 hours and 53 minutes! Charging is available via USB type-c as well, but that is also putrid at 2 hours and 47 minutes total recharge. The usb type-c is data transfer only and cannot passthrough video, unfortunately. Maybe the worst offender of the VivoBook 16 is the Web-camera. It is a 720p web-camera and it looks like a camera from a Nokia phone in the early 2000’s. It’s terrible and in poor light, it’s downright unusable. It does have a privacy shutter, however which is always welcome! You can simply keep it shut, and never acknowledge it’s existence, which is what I did. A few last things to mention, which aren’t positive or negative, but they bear mentioning. And this is the speakers and the overall design. The speakers on the bottom of the laptop and are downward firing speakers. They fire downward and depend on the surface the laptop is resting on to propagate the sound toward you. It’s effective when sitting stationary at a desk but not ideal when on your lap. The overall sound is nothing to write home about, as it’s tinny and lacks any real depth. They do get ear-rattling loud though, so if you want to disrupt your neighbors at night, you have that option. The overall design of the laptop is just okay. It comes in what Asus terms as “indie black” whatever that means. Why can’t I get “progressive black” or “heavy-metal black” or “alternative black?” Nomenclature aside, the design is fairly blasé in flavor and minimal at best. The

So far the laptop has performed fairly well. The battery life is less than expected but it’s not the worst. I wouldn’t recommend it for any heavy duty long work days, it won’t last. The speed has been good but I haven’t used it with a lot of applications open yet. The display is decent, could be better but again it isn’t the worst. Overall, the laptop is fairly average but it gets the job done depending on what you need it for.

The ASUS is a compact verstile machine with plenty of storage, a sharp image and good speed. It is lightweight hence easily trasported. I typically have 2 external drives attached and there are no problems with it handling them. Nor have there been any problems when i attach an external DVD drive. In all, a great compact machine with speed and storage at a good price.

I recently upgraded from my older VivoBook to this new ASUS VivoBook 16, and I’m very happy with the purchase. It’s clear that ASUS continues to improve its products with each generation. The first thing I noticed was how responsive and comfortable the touchpad feels. The click action is solid and satisfying, and the overall performance is fast and smooth for everyday work, multitasking, web browsing, and office applications. In my experience, ASUS makes some of the best Windows laptops available today in terms of quality, usability, and value. Compared to many competitors, ASUS consistently offers excellent hardware, practical design, and reliable performance at a competitive price. I have been using ASUS laptops for years and have never regretted choosing this brand. This VivoBook continues that positive experience. The combination of performance, features, storage, and price is outstanding. Highly recommended! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The laptop is awesome! I've gone through many laptops over the years from HP's to Alienware but this laptop is so far great.....except! My main issue with this lappy is the darn finger prints and marks it leaves. I'm not a messy person in fact I would say i may suffer with a mild OCD (reason I'm trying to find skins for the laptop (tired of cleaning it)). The smudges and marks are terrible, it's gross and extremely off putting. The performance, speed, storage and everything it advertises itself as, is true to form, but those darn marks are a nightmare. I've owned the laptop for about 3 weeks now and cleaning it every use or every other use is crazy annoying.