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ASUS VivoBook Flip 14 Thin and Light 2-in-1 Laptop, 14” FHD Touch, 11th Gen Intel Core i3-1115G4, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Thunderbolt 4, Fingerprint,…
$374.25
Last updated on September 2, 2024 12:50 am Details
$374.25
Matthew T. Weflen –
I am reviewing this laptop primarily from the perspective of a creative home user. I like drawing on computers quite a bit at this point, coming from my Surface Book 2. So I was very curious how much laptop one could get for about a quarter of the price (sans Asus Pen 2, which ran me an extra hundo).
BUILD QUALITY and FEATURES
Build quality is where the budget nature of the device shows. The body is black brushed aluminum and picks up finger smudges pretty easily. The power button is a tiny little nub on the side of the body which is impossible to locate by feel. The barrel plug feels very 2012. On the sides we find a mere 2 full size USB ports, but interestingly, a full sized HDMI port, USB-C port, and micro-SD expansion port. This last comes in quite handy if you want to store files locally, as the included SSD is a mere 128gb, with less than 100gb free.
Windows 10 is in S mode, which can easily be circumvented if you want to run non-Windows Store programs. Windows Hello is not available via webcam, but a fingerprint sensor is included on the track pad. It works, but is a bit finicky. The trackpad is rather small, but it is reasonably accurate and navigating the device by that means is not laborious.
The hinge itself is pretty solid and there is minimal wobble in the screen when in laptop mode. The hinge spins all the way around to put the laptop into “Tablet” mode. Now, this is a far cry from a Surface Book detachable tablet, since the keyboard stays attached, but it’s not half bad. There are small rubber feet on the keyboard tray that allow you to place the device quite sturdily onto a tabletop in drawing mode. The screen also settles into the tablet orientation with a satisfying solidity, and does not wobble when drawn upon. You’re not going to use this like a true tablet, but it’s more than acceptable for drawing on.
SCREEN and AUDIO
The screen is a 1920 by 1080 16:9 display, which does feel rather dated after coming from a 2:3 display. It gets reasonably bright, but not bright enough for sunny outdoor use in my opinion. Off angle viewing is pretty good. It’s not premium, and is nowhere near as impressive as the panels on a Surface Book or MacBook laptop. But it’s a far cry from the budget laptops of ten years ago.
I was very impressed by the audio, however. This laptop gets loud, the sound is pretty rich for a laptop, and it doesn’t distort at high volumes. This is an ideal device if you want to stream video or watch YouTube.
DRAWING
I have previously used two different screen drawing setups – Surface Book and Surface Pen, and Acer Switch with Acer Stylus (from 2016). The latter was pretty wretched by comparison, so I was very curious about the VivoBook. I am happy to report that in the last 5 years, “budget” Windows inking devices have come a very long way. The Asus Pen 2 is quite responsive and the VivoBook was swift enough to register real-time strokes in Sketchbook, Zenbrush, and Spirality. Diagonal lines did not suffer from much jitter at all. The Surface Book still takes the prize for accuracy and responsiveness, but if you’re looking for a drawing laptop on the cheap, the VivoBook is no slouch and comes quite close!
CONCLUSION
I don’t have a hard time recommending this to the right user. It would be a terrific school laptop for a young student who needs Zoom, word processing, web browsing, and inking. It is more than enough laptop to do light office duties, but it’s not going to blow through the Adobe suite or do heavy video editing with only a Core i3 and Intel integrated GPU. I do think this is a very compelling budget option for an artist who wants to do drawing in a Windows environment, as long as they don’t want to do it with PhotoShop, which is too much for these internals. But it handles Autodesk Sketchbook and similar applications with aplomb. Yes, you’ll have to plump for an extra pen, but t he same is true of Microsoft’s Surface line.
Josh L McCullough –
First off: the RAM in this model is *not* upgradeable, but the SSD is. I just upgraded it the other night myself and checked with ASUS; the RAM is soldered to the motherboard.
That aside, it still runs plenty fine and I haven’t experienced any problems. Getting the back off to get into the guts was a PITA, but just take your time and be patient.
I turned off Windows S to get the full experience, and upgraded to Windows 11 within a couple of weeks of having it. I also dual-booted a Linux build with Fedora 34 and Cinnamon desktop/Wayland, and the screen rotation works like a champ.
It’s not feather-weight, but it’s plenty light enough for casual use, surfing on the couch, etc. without noticing it. The ports are good, especially the Thunderbolt USB-C. It’s great to have a single cable and charger for all our needs (2 Pixel 4a 5Gs, MacBook Pro, 2 Fire tablets), and the battery life is good. I don’t game so I can’t speak to that, but I’m also guessing that this laptop isn’t intended for gamers.
The 14″ form is perfect: not too small or cramped, not too big.
I’m really enjoying this laptop, and it you’re looking for a good general use laptop, I recommend it.
Matthew T. Weflen –
I love the look and feel of this laptop. Corners are a little sharp which I don’t mind so much. Coming from a 2012 Toshiba laptop, this thing is light, its fast and it gets the job done. Touch screen is very receptive and the colors are bright. I’m very pleased with this purchase.
Jerry Palmerino –
This laptop is a 2-in-1 style. It has a metal top and a plastic bottom (although underneath/inside the bottom cover it is lined with a thin sheet of metal) for heat dissipation.
It arrives in Windows S mode. I upgraded to Windows 10 Home.
There are only two stickers on the laptop, but I was surprised to see fun laptop stickers in the box!
It comes with a barrel style charger, but it can be charged by usb-c also.
The resolution is 1920×1080 out of the box, set to 150% scaling. On-screen icons were too big for me, so I reduced the scaling to 100%.
I benchmarked it in Geekbench under Windows 10. I ran it three times and got these scores.
1227 single core and 2763 multicore.
1325 single core and 2801 multicore.
1319 single core and 2756 multicore.
You can switch between Performance Mode, Standard Mode, and Whisper Mode by pressing Fn + F. I saw marginal gains in Performance Mode: 1334 single core, and 2823 multicore.
OpenCL scored 9542 and Vulkan scored 8493.
I took the bottom off to confirm my fears. This pc is running a single channel of 4gb of ram. It is not user upgradable. It does have a removable 128GB eMMC drive from Foresee though. Removing the bottom cover is not difficult, but there are lots of different sized screws, including two hidden under the feet.
Despite only having 4gb of ram, it is surprisingly useful. I even upgraded it to the Beta Channel of Windows 11 after benchmarking it.
Overall, this is a nice laptop, with a premium slim look, that only falls short on its internal specs. If you can find this laptop with better specs, it would be worth buying the upgraded model in my opinion. At this time, I don’t know if there is an upgraded model. Otherwise, don’t plan on gaming or multitasking much with this laptop.