What is the Asus VivoBook S410U?
The VivoBook S410U is one of Asus' thinnest, most portable laptops, offering a 14-inch screen with a rather narrow bezel, packaged in a lightweight chassis. Despite that thin structure, you still have Intel Core i7 intelligence and some solid and complete specifications to satisfy the most demanding users.
In fact, this machine is remarkably similar to the Asus VivoBook S510U, but it is even more compact. So, is the Asus VivoBook S410U an ideal travel companion for students, professionals and everyone in between?
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Asus VivoBook S410U – Design and build [19659002] If you're looking for a laptop to wear all day, every day, that's good news. The VivoBook S410U is quite thin and lightweight, making it ideal for life on the road.
That silver chassis weighs 1.43kg and is approximately 2cm at its thickest point. You will not have problems to fit it inside a backpack or briefcase of reasonable size, nor will you feel it on your shoulders. That said, we would not describe the device as "ultra-slim", as Asus does on its website.
Note that you can take the VivoBook in two different colors. Our model was & # 39; Star Gray & # 39 ;, in other words, & # 39; standard laptop color & # 39 ;, but is also available in & # 39; Icicle Gold & # 39 ;. No, we have not seen golden icicles either, but maybe we're just not drinking the right kind of tea.
The brushed metal lid of the VivoBook S410U looks quite elegant, suggesting a fairly premium device. Unfortunately, this effect does not extend to the interior of the laptop. Open the lid and you will get a boring and monotonous finish that looks quite plastic under certain lighting conditions.
The palm rest show a little flex, too, though nothing that suggests a poor build quality. In fact, in general, the laptop feels solidly built, until the hinge of the screen rigid enough.
Align the sides of the Asus laptop is the standard array of ports. You get four USB connections (two 2.0, one 3.0 and one super nippy Type-C 3.1), so there is enough space to connect peripherals. In addition to that, there is HDMI for screen output, and an SD card reader for copying files inside or outside the machine.
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Asus VivoBook S410U – Keyboard and touch screen
Overall I'm a fan of Asus keyboards and the VivoBook S410U once again does not disappoint in this regard . Although it feels a little spongy towards the middle when your typing gets furious, that did not affect my speed. Those isolated keys are perfectly sized and spaced, so I managed to destroy entire chapters of books or reviews in record time.
Although it is only a 14-inch machine, each key has enough space to reduce errors when writing touch. Only the cursor keys are slightly flattened, inhabiting only one row. Anyway, it never cost me to use them, even with my eyes glued to the screen.
Do you enjoy a rehearsal at 4 in the morning with the taste of stale alcohol persisting in your tongue? Well, that keyboard also has backlight, with three levels of brightness to choose from. So you can work until dawn without disturbing your dream partner.
Underneath the board is a fairly spacious touchpad for a 14-inch laptop. This really proved to be perfectly useful, responding precisely to our blows, no matter how gentle or violent. Multi-touch support means that you can scroll through web pages and documents with more than one finger, again with great responsiveness.
The pad is even well positioned in the center of the palm rest, instead of pushing it to the side. And, glory!, Clicking on the corners to simulate the clicks of the mouse buttons, the cursor did not slide across the screen. Surprisingly, a rather strange find, even in 2018.
Asus VivoBook S410U – Screen
That 14-inch screen & # 39; NanoEdge & # 39; It has a Full HD resolution, so you can expect videos, photos and everything else to look good and sharp. The visibility is strong, too. The images darken only slightly when moving the head from a central position, while the anti-reflective coating of the screen avoids reflections on sunny days. The brightness levels could be a bit stronger, however. The panel is finished at 250 nits, which means that watching dark movies outdoors is a thankless task.
Unfortunately, the screen does not fold back completely, stopping around the 135-degree mark. And if you expect to edit photos on this machine, then you may want to look elsewhere.
When I tested the color accuracy of the VivoBook S410U, the results were quite impressive. Only 63% of the sRGB range is covered, while the figure drops to a measly 49% for Adobe RGB. Do not get me wrong, the colors do not look fuzzy or distorted when you watch a movie. But do not expect the tones to reproduce naturally.
As always, Asus has included its application & # 39; Splendid & # 39; to configure the screen output. There is a Live mode, which seems to do little more than increase saturation levels. However, the Eye Comfort mode is good for the aforementioned night sessions. This produces warmer colors, which are less hard on your old eyes when you're hunched over the screen in a dark, silly room.
Asus VivoBook S410U – Audio
A pair of speakers sits under the Vivobook, which pumps reasonably powerful audio on demand. Of course, the fact that the sound is not directed to your face means that the audio is muffled a bit.
In terms of quality, it's perfectly fine to enjoy a movie or a bit of YouTube. However, if you want to listen to some tunes while you work, I recommend you plug in the headphones. The sound is a bit muddy through those speakers, while the bass songs do not shine exactly.
Asus VivoBook S410U – Performance
You can take the Vivobook S410U with a selection of different SKUs, depending on your budget and performance demands. The model I reviewed included an Intel Core i7-8550U chipset with 1.8GHz speed and backed by 8GB DDR4 SDRAM.
The results are absolutely perfect for daily use, while the most demanding applications also work without problems. Multitasking was not a problem either. It can transmit media, play with editing software that reduces memory and execute tasks in the background at the same time, without evidence of deceleration.
Of course, there are no dedicated graphics, with the VivoBook using the integrated Intel solution. This is fine for editing photos and playing older or simpler games. However, if you want to get more demanding titles on the fly, you will have to increase your budget and look for a laptop with a suitable dedicated GPU.
The Trusted Reference standard reference tests yielded the following scores:
PCMark: 3121
Geekbench single core: 4568
Geekbench multi -core: 8121
Regarding the 256GB SATA3 SSD, we saw read speeds of 526MB / sec and write speeds of 444MB / sec in our reference tests. That's what you'd expect from a laptop at this price, and it means there's no delay or buffering when you're playing HD movies or loading large applications.
Asus VivoBook S410U – Battery life
Battery performance is average on this laptop. If you perform basic daily tasks, such as working on Google Docs, you can wait between five and six hours of life with a full load. It's not enough to fill a working day, so you'll want to take the charger (fortunately, not too uncomfortable).
In the standard Trusted Reviews battery test, which runs a continuous cycle of videos and web browsing until the laptop dies, the VivoBook S410U achieved six and a half hours.
Why buy the Asus VivoBook S410U?
Anyone who wants to remain productive on the road should be more than happy with the Asus VivoBook S410U. While you do not want to play the latest games and the lack of color accuracy does not bother you, this 14-inch notebook is perfectly accessible. Writing is a joy in that backlit chiclet keyboard, while the reasonably thin and light finish means that portability is not a problem.
Of course, at £ 900 this is not an affordable device. By stretching to the price point of £ 1000, the VivoBook S410U is practically in the reach of some truly fantastic machines like the Dell XPS 13. Territory dangerous, especially considering some of the faults of this machine.
I would say buy, since you can get more for your money at this level.
Verdict
The VivoBook S410U is a perfectly good notebook companion, but it shows too many flaws considering its application price of almost £ 1000.