List Price: $699.00
Sale Price: $596.95
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I have been using this laptop for the last few days and my initial impressions are highly positive. I bought it as a gift for my wife but I had to take some time with it before giving it up. She was using an older 17" Dell and was tired of carrying around an 8 pound laptop so I started my search. With Windows 8 coming out I knew I wanted a touch screen and the only model in my price range was this Asus. I have had plenty of experience with Asus motherboards and video cards and they have always been great products so I decided to take the plunge. So far it has been a wise decision.
When I opened the box I was impressed with how thin and light the laptop is. Compared to my Dell XPS 15 this thing is tiny but packs a screen just 1.3" smaller. While it is light weight it still feels very solid in your hands. The laptop weighs about 4.0lbs by my scale. Surprisingly the power brick is tiny as well, measuring about 3"x3"x1" and weighing 1.2lbs. My wife wanted something smaller to carry around and this fits the bill perfectly.
Opening the lid reveals a 14" touch screen with 1366x768 resolution and the keyboard/touchpad combination. The screen is bright and clear and the viewing angles are very good. Love it or hate it Windows 8 is included and having a touchscreen makes it even better. The screen responds well to your touch and the only time I see fingerprints on it is when the screen is off. The top of the laptop however shows more fingerprints than the screen. I was initially concerned with the lower resolution but on this size of screen it works well and my wife actually prefers it over the HD resolution of my Dell as it makes text easier to read.
The laptop has a Chiclet style keyboard that is not backlit. I have read about people having issues with the space bar on other Asus models but it appears to have been resolved because every key has been very responsive. The touchpad works well and supports multi-touch gestures such as pinch to zoom and two finger scrolling. After some use I like the touchpad and buttons. The touchpad and buttons are all one piece with the buttons slightly elevated to provide a click when you press them. You do not have to press very hard on the buttons and they do not feel stiff or mushy. In the center of the buttons is a line to show you left and right. I prefer the touchpad on the Asus over my XPS.
On the left side of the laptop are two USB 2.0 ports, a memory card reader and the microphone/headset jack. On the right side there is 1 USB 3.0 port, a full size HDMI port, a VGA port, an Ethernet jack and the AC jack. There is no optical drive but with high speed memory sticks and the internet I don't see this as a problem. If you really need it there are plenty of small, cheap external drives available.
We have had the laptop for a few days day now and the battery life is very good. Over the first few days we used it quite a bit and only charged it once a day. Tonight I unplugged the laptop from the charger (it was at 93%) and watched Netflix for the next 3 and a half hours and the battery meter says it still has 1 hour or 21% of the battery left. The brightness was set to about 30% for my test. I would guess 4 to 5 hours of battery life will be average.
Sound on this laptop is good but not to the level of my XPS 15. There are two speakers on the bottom of the laptop to the left and right sides, angled to bounce the sound off whatever surface the laptop is sitting on. I cranked up some music and the sound is clear at any volume with no distortion but lacked a little fullness in the low and mid-end. I listen to a lot of music while at work and I certainly would not complain if I had to use this laptop to do it.
The included wireless N adapter has good performance with speeds up to 7 MB/s when transferring files to and from my HTPC in the living room over 40 feet away. It connected to my wireless network right away and reconnects almost instantly when resuming from sleep. The wireless radio only operates on the 2.4mhz band and while Asus' webpage says that Bluetooth is included, I don't believe it is. I can't find anything in Device Manager for Bluetooth Devices.
Performance has been very snappy thanks to the dual core I5 processor and 24gb SSD caching drive. Applications launch quickly and boot times are minimal. Even my wife has noticed how much speedier the computer is than her old one. I have not done any gaming on it yet but will amend my review when I get a chance. I will note that there is some bloatware installed on the machine such as McAfee that you should get rid of as soon as you can. Windows 8 includes Defender by default so why Asus loads McAfee is beyond me. Asus Updater was also showing an error in the desktop when I booted but that cleared up after Windows 8 installed some updates.
Overall this is a fun little computer and using the touchscreen with Windows 8 has proved to be a great experience. This review has been my opinion so far but after finally giving the computer to my wife it doesn't look like I will get it back any time soon. Now that she can play Bingo Blitz with the touchscreen it looks like I will have to get one of my own! She summed it up to me in two enthusiastic words, "It's Fun!" And here I thought this was a work PC...
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I'll keep this short, and just put what I consider relevant. My first computer had a cassette drive, and my first laptop wasn't much more advanced, so I've had a lot of experience with this type of technology.My opinion of this product is that it's the finest built laptop I've ever handled, with one exception the wi-fi. To be fair, it might be a Windows 8 thing, a driver thing, or a hardware thing, but the wi-fi goes out randomly every hour or two. Disabling the wireless and re-enabling brings it back.
Other than this, and again I don't know it's the laptops fault this is perfect. If you like the feel of a Macbook, but not the price, this will make your day. Aluminum chassis, excellent touchscreen (which brings Windows 8 to life, without it, Windows 8 is garbage), the weight, and the thickness (under an inch) are matched only by the quality feel and operation of the product as a whole.
In short this thing rocks, buy it.
UPDATE: I contacted Asus, and although I can't explain why, their fix worked. Uninstall the wireless adapter from device manager, restart, reinstall, and bam I no longer randomly disconnect. 5/5 now
Update #2: Asus website, and support, insist this product is not sold without bluetooth. The amazon page does not list yes or no for bluetooth. Long and short somehow the system I received from Amazon has no bluetooth. Asus support insists that's defective hardware, as they only sell it with the Qualcomm Atheros Bluetooth. They (Asus) gave me an RMA number to ship it back, and they will send me one with Bluetooth correctly functioning. Big hassle and for this I took off a star.
Update #3: So I got my Vivobook back, after only 6 days, which was impressive, with a note which read "This product does not come with Bluetooth"...
That after 2 techs told me (pre-rma) that it did, the specifications page on their website still says it has Integrated Bluetooth 4.0. Removing a star.
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