Verdict
The Asus Vivobook 16 could be the lightweight laptop computer you ’ve been looking for if you ’re on a £ 600 budget . Expectedly , it disgorge a few of the fancier ultrabook features to keep the cost low-down , but you get capable productivity performance and a sturdy build .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
At between £ 600 and £ 750 , the Asus Vivobook 16 ( X1605Z ) sits somewhere between a mid - range office laptop computer and a flashy ultrabook in footing of pricing . And that ’s about where it sits in terms of public presentation , too . It ’s just not quite build up like the top - ending of the market ’s offerings with its plastic chassis and obvious seams .
When viewed as the next in business of this year ’s Vivobook stack , the 16 - column inch edition rectifies many of the shortcoming of itsAsus Vivobook 15sibling , while bringing a few other bells and whistle along for the drive . If you view the size increase as a win , it ’s light to recommend . But if a 16 - inch machine is a small too big for your pocketbook , you might have a hard time weighing up the pros and con of its £ 100 upheaval .
Being a mid - range machine , there ’s little the Asus Vivobook 16 does exceptionally well beyond basic computing undertaking . That is n’t a complaint . It ’s just the shortcuts it takes to hit its toll point that hold it back from appealing to other niche of the job market . The speakers are n’t great , and the blind could have been faster , brighter , and more precise . And if do n’t mind shopping around , you in reality can fix those problem at the same price .
Design and Keyboard
Removed from its easily recycled and flimsy enough cardboard packaging , the Asus Vivobook 16 will shock . The Cool Silver edition we come in for test catches and diffused the illumination wonderfully . There are no play or glittery coatings like you ’d discover in many of today ’s smartphones . alternatively , it ’s a simple-minded invention that will evoke images of Apple ’s iconic MacBook line . The all - charge card chassis wo n’t .
Being a bit of a fingerprint attractor , both the silvery and opprobrious conclusion look great out of the boxful but will demand frequent buffing to keep clear . in person utter , the silvern lid is n’t my style . It ’s a little too bright . Although there ’s little doubt that black would have been more my style , I ca n’t help but feel it ’s trying a picayune too voiceless to look premium when the materials just ca n’t carry it forth .
sparse and spark at 1.88 kilogram , it ’s comfortable enough for farseeing periods of use , and just thin enough to bone in the fans necessary to keep it cool under a tripping workload . At a push , the keyboard induce just tender enough to keep your fingers from feeling the shivering on a curt fall dark . It ’s backlit , too : something the 15 - inch variant skimps out on .
The veracious side of the deck of cards domiciliate two USB - A ports , a USB - coulomb port , and headphone jack , a full - sized HDMI porthole , and a barrel - style charge interface . The left wing has little more than a third USB - A positioned at the very top , which works well for tote up ethernet back into the mix by room of a dongle . There ’s also another vent here in case the bottom is obstructed .
The full - sized keyboard feels nifty and it only took a couplet of hr to set from my small iPad keyboard . There ’s minimal campaign in the deck , the keys are properly stabilized , and they do n’t sink too far down to exact . Guides are present to keep you in your place , and there ’s even a lilliputian function key row at the very top . With a numpad included for good measure , you know Asus designed this with office usance in judgement .
I think the engorged 17.5 square in trackpad was a little too big for my liking , but that was not the casing . It ’s not necessary in my view , but there would have been empty space otherwise . The thenar rejection do well enough to alleviate the worry of a touch - sensitive space sitting directly beneath your hand . ; which is great given there ’s short room to remain them as you type otherwise .
Display and Sound
The good news is that the Asus Vivobook 16 does better on one major issue of the marginally cheaper and smaller Asus Vivobook 15 – the screen . The IPS board do its plane flexible joint gimmick middling available for sharing information on a meeting room table . A tent flexible joint would have been decent , though .
Colour truth jumps to around 69 % of thesRGBcolour space , batter the 52 % evaluation of the smaller , less open machine . You also get 51%Adobe RGBand 51%DCI - P3 . It gets brighter , too , but not enough to make outdoor visibility much comfortably . If you do n’t mind the extra size , the 20 % price upthrow is a no - brainer . It ’s still not recommended for colour - accurate work , but it ’s fine for casual enjoyment , and much better for movies with a massively meliorate 1440:1 contrast ratio .
What you will need to think about here is how the speakers are set on the underside of the chassis . Not only will they not fire directly at your face , but they ’ll trust on sit on a flat surface to superintend any sort of meaningful bass . Even in sodding conditions , these are n’t big . They ’re loud enough , but they ’re empty , with fuzzy lows and rough high . earpiece are recommended , and the 3.5 mm headphone / microphone diddly-shit is there to accommodate .
Performance
So long as you ’re not expecting this to be some pixel - pushing powerhouse , the Asus Vivobook 16 will serve you well . The bold number of tabs I regularly have open for research , eminence , cross - referencing , image sourcing , and issue crunching can range in the two - dozen mark . And these days , a single online mag can sap a big per centum of your machine ’s retention . The eleventh Gen Intel Core i7CPU , 16GBRAMand 512GBSSDmemory constellation here did n’t break a sweat .
Even with YouTube Music in the background , Photoshop open with multiple images , a Steam game downloading , Slack and Discord pinging away , and numerous benchmarking retinue I forgot to conclude , I had no issue getting this compose up on the couch with a grandiloquent coffee tree nearby .
However , the Vivobook 16 and its Core i7 did n’t astound in our benchmark examination , give out to glitter up against cheaper Core i5 - wielding rivals like theHP Pavilion SE 14and Asus Vivobook 15 . You certainly get extra headroom with the 16 GB RAM onboard but do n’t expect immense power from this equipment .
I would have preferred a completely understood automobile on my lap , but mightiness come at a ( heat ) cost . Thankfully , a plastic chassis works wonder here . The rooter dissonance was n’t loud at all : it just strike that point where when it stops , you realise it actually was n’t as quiet as you call back . In a more perfunctory scenario , it ’s as quiet as a black eye .
The freehanded display on this simple machine could make it a double-dyed play companion if not for the lack of a consecrated GPU . Integrated graphics have come a farsighted fashion in late age , and Cloud Gaming selection have made it better still . But the Iris Xe applied science in the Intel i7 ca n’t do any serious New gaming here .
Our common bench mark like Returnal would n’t set up , and cyber-terrorist 2077 benchmarking in the low teens means you ’re looking at older titles from five or six years ago , nostalgic emulation , and maybe light esports title of respect like League of Legends and Valorant . Just do n’t expect to go pro .
A 25fps average in Overwatch on the lowest background wo n’t see you through to the big leagues , and even a switch to 720p resolution could n’t help it hit a stable 60fps . Counter - Strike 2 – another esports title that tends to prefer Intel CPUs – fare no well .
The SSD speeds are in the solid camp but are verging on being unpleasantly deadening . The final result add up in at 3046Mb / s read and 1654Mb / s write . execution was unaffected by the fairly unimpressive speeds and file transferral should still be quite speedy .
Software
A sliver of silver grey facing here is that the Asus Vivobook 16 does n’t behave much software program bloat . Beyond a written matter of McAfee that ’s easy enough to scour from its systems , it ’s primarily first - political party companion apps you ’ll need to try , avert , or delete . Being proudly powered and branded by Amazon ’s Alexa assistant , it ’s at least more useful than Microsoft ’s outgoing Cortana .
MyAsus , the computer hardware manufacturer ’s backing portal , includes a cluster of toggles for various features of middling caliber like AI noise cancellation for calls . This is one you may get wind in action on the laptop computer ’s spec website that ’ll certainly have your gaffer questioning if you ’re even existent .
At a energy , there are a couple of deal shroud forth there : like a free month of Adobe ’s Creative Cloud suite , or a year ’s accession to an Asus - branded app design to twist your other machine into secondary exhibit for your laptop .
Battery Life
Where the Asus Vivobook 16 finger more akin to an ultrabook is in the battery department . you may through most of your shift without being tether to the remarkably small 45w power provision .
It ’s a ignominy to see it send without a USB - C charging option here . But if you ’ve been using a dedicated might supply for your portable PC all this time , you ’ll no doubt be overjoyed with the switch to at least a tiny source of juicing your work political machine up .
To put thing into linear perspective , our battery benchmarks showed the Asus Vivobook 16 lasting just unsure of seven hour on a single rush when apportion with cosmopolitan office workloads like video calls , spreadsheet , and parole processing .
crank up the brightness level to max will , as always , drastically reduce this and cause buck to slow to a crawl . But out of direct sunlight in the medium office environment , you wo n’t want to panic should you forget your adapter at home . So long as you charged it up the night before , that is . That ’s why optional USB - C charging is always deserving aiming for – you may arrest just about anyone ’s tab or ultrabook power brick to burden up over tiffin .
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Should you buy it?
The Asus Vivobook 16 is a portable workhorse you wo n’t struggle to use when not tethered to a might socket .
For the money , the Asus Vivobook 16 is well usurped by slightly older models with more generalized specs .
Final Thoughts
At £ 700 , the 16 - inch Asus Vivobook is no slouch in the most average position a laptop can detect itself in . It ’s light enough to transmit around , with a power brick to couple . It wo n’t heave under the virtual weight of too much admin work . This laptop does take off at £ 600 for the Intel Core i5 version , and it might be a desirable via media for those looking for straight productiveness employment .
With lusterless speakers and a flexible joint that stop short of helping it become a honorable amusement companion , however , there are just a few too many compromises here to genuinely recommend it at this Mary Leontyne Price item . The 16 GB RAM is this model ’s biggest strength in condition of raw power but contend gimmick are hard to disregard with theHP Pavilion SE 14providing a more modernistic processor for less money as well as a dependable utterer system .
For budget to mid - range Windows laptops , there ’s also intriguing contender in the build of Chromebook Plus twist now too , offering similar productivity capabilities for under £ 500 , like with theAsus Chromebook Plus CX34 . Ourbest budget laptopsguide also offers a wider option of sub-£600 picks .
If you jazz you ’ll take full advantage of the 16 GB RAM and the Intel Core i7 crisp , that does enable you to squeeze in a small amount of gambling and editing , then the Asus Vivobook 16 could accommodate you . But , there are batch of hangups to put you off .
Trusted Score
How we test
Every laptop computer we review goes through a series of uniform checks design to gauge fundamental thing , let in build lineament , performance , screen lineament and battery sprightliness .
These include formal semisynthetic benchmark and written tests , plus a serial publication of literal - world checks .
FAQs
The Vivobook 16 and 16X are very dissimilar devices , with the former costing less and focused on productivity functioning . The latter can be equipped with a distinct artwork card and offers a higher quality OLED show .
Like many devices in the sub-£800 bracket , the Asus Vivobook 16 does not declare oneself a touchscreen .
Test Data
Full Specs
