The ASUS Vivobook S16 OLED Is Spacious and Easy on the Eyes

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Credit: Joshua Hawkins

Everyday laptops are everywhere, all at once. No, really. If you’re looking for a laptop that can tackle your everyday tasks—whether that’s work or personal business—then you have a lot of options to pick from. But not all of them are good or even really worth it, so it can be hard to find the best one for your needs. Enter the new Asus Vivobook S16 OLED, a 16-inch laptop designed to be your everyday device, whether you’re a student, businessperson, or just looking for a solid all-around machine to browse the web and take care of your daily projects.

I’ve been using the Asus Vivobook S16 OLED as my daily driver for the past two weeks, and like most of Asus’ newer laptops, I’ve been really impressed with what it can do. It’s sleek, weighs in at just over 3 pounds (roughly the same weight as my normal daily driver, a MacBook Air 15-inch), and it offers a ton of performance, not to mention that brilliant 3.2K, 120Hz OLED display, which really just makes things pop.

Specs and performance

There are a few different variations of the Asus Vivobook S16 OLED, including Intel models, but the version that Asus sent me included an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS chip (which includes Radeon 780M Graphics), 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and a 1 TB SSD. It’s a solid configuration that didn’t leave me wanting for more. the Ryzen 9 8945HS is a fantastic processor, especially for everyday tasks, and the integrated graphics are more than enough for basic work and personal usage, plus some light gaming on the side.

Anecdotally, performance as a whole was always snappy, and I never felt like the laptop was being bogged down, even when I had multiple Chrome tabs open, as well as the different Office applications needed to do my daily work. I even tried running a few games (Hades and other lightweight indies) on the system and found that they played fairly well, considering the lack of a discreet graphics card. Of course, if you really want to play games on your laptop, I recommend picking up a gaming laptop — perhaps the Asus Zephyrus G16, which I previously reviewed. I had to make a lot of sacrifices to get Red Dead Redemption 2 to run, and even then it frequently dipped below 30 fps.

I didn’t put the laptop through the normal slew of benchmarks that I’d use for a high-end gaming laptop, but I did try to bog it down with different apps like Photoshop, Premiere, and even After Effects running simultaneously. The Vivobook S16 OLED handled it all like a champ without any major slowdowns, and it was even able to export a 3-minute test video at 4K in just over an hour and twenty minutes. Depending on the video you’re exporting, of course, that rendering and exporting time may differ.

Here’s a look at the different ports the Vivobook S16 OLED offers:

1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C for display / power delivery

2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A

1x USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C for display / power delivery

1x HDMI 2.1 TMDS

1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack

Micro SD card reader

The Vivobook S16 OLED is also one of the first Asus laptops to include the Copilot button, which you can mostly ignore if you don’t care about using Microsoft’s entry-level AI features. If you do use it, there aren’t any of the nifty AI additions that Microsoft showed off for its Copilot+ PCs, but the Vivobook S16 OLED doesn’t need AI to make it stand out from other competitors. It’s just a solid laptop through and through, but more importantly, it's sleek.

Looks and feel

Perhaps one of my favorite things about the Vivobook S16 OLED is the fact that Asus hasn’t gone out of its way to make this device stand out. It’s pretty simple as far as laptops go, with a slick all-metal body and a simple logo printed across the lid.

It’s a very understated design compared to the other Asus offerings I’ve checked out this year, and that really called to my love for minimalism and simplicity. That all-metal body also means an extremely lightweight and thin design, which feels great to carry around despite the laptop sporting a large, 16-inch display.

The trackpad and keyboard are solid, too, with the trackpad expanding up a good bit of the actual body of the laptop, giving you plenty of room to work. The keyboard and trackpad are both Ergosense, which means they’re designed to give you optimal ergonomics without sacrificing any of the benefits you’d get from a high-end typing and trackpad experience.

The backlit chiclet keyboard feels good to type on — almost as good as my MacBook Air's — and the addition of the numpad is handy, though it does feel a bit cramped. Using the laptop on your lap, a countertop, or anywhere you might need to take your work from is easy thanks to the lighter weight of the laptop (3.31 pounds), too.

Fitting so many keys onto the laptop without taking up an enormous amount of room is no easy feat, but Asus has put together a decent combination of keys to give you all the necessities.

Display and battery life

If you’re working on a laptop, then you want to have plenty of room to do everything you need to do on it. The Asus Vivobook S16 OLED doesn’t want for screen space, as its large, 16-inch, 3.2K (3,200 x 2,000) Lumina OLED display provides a striking color balance with a beautifully large canvas that gives you plenty of room for juggling apps. The peak brightness of 600 nits is also enough for multiple types of work environments, and I never found myself worrying too much about glare.

The addition, the side-mounted HDMI connector and display capable USB-C ports mean you can also expand your display if needed, giving you even more room to be productive. I found that this display is easily one of the best I’ve seen on a laptop this year, and it made working and watching movies very enjoyable. The colors in movies like Dune: Part Two popped, from the bright sandy desert vistas to the darker cavern scenes. I also tried playing a few lower-end games on the machine, and it did a surprisingly good job of handling itself, so long as I was willing to go to a much lower resolution than the native 3,200 x 2,000.

With such a beautiful display attached and a powerful chip like the Ryzen 9 8945HS, you might not expect more than a few hours of battery life from the Vivobook S16 OLED. During my testing, I was often able to go the entire workday—and some into the evening—without having to plug in the laptop. That's roughly eight to nine hours, depending on the day. It also comes equipped with various Asus software to help manage the battery and keep it at peak health, so you won’t have to worry about overcharging it if you follow the instructions on the notifications that pop up.

The bottom line

The Asus Vivobook S16 OLED is a great all-around laptop for work, personal projects, and school. It’s lightweight design makes it a great option for people who travel a lot, or if you just have to commute to work every day and want an easy-to-carry laptop.

The powerful AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS and integrated graphics in the model I got were more than enough for anything you might throw at it during your normal day-to-day (but don’t expect it to hold up to high-end gaming). The configuration of the Asus Vivobook S16 OLED I tested is available now on Asus' website for $999.