Verdict
The Asus Vivobook 16 might be the light-weight laptop computer you’ve been searching for in case you’re on a £600 finances. Expectedly, it sheds just a few of the fancier ultrabook options to maintain the associated fee low, however you get succesful productiveness efficiency and a sturdy construct.
Professionals
- Good battery life
- 16:10 facet ratio
- Massive trackpad
Cons
- 60Hz show
- Restricted capabilities
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16:10 facet ratioThought-about the candy spot for multitasking, the big 16:10 show is nice for getting stuff completed. -
Lay-flat hingeDesigned for collaboration, the display screen can go right down to 180-degrees, giving extra individuals room to see what’s happening. -
Stable batteryLasting round seven hours off heavy use, it’s good for a day within the workplace
Introduction
At between £600 and £750, the Asus Vivobook 16 (X1605Z) sits someplace between a mid-range workplace laptop computer and a flashy ultrabook when it comes to pricing. And that’s about the place it sits when it comes to efficiency, too. It’s simply not fairly constructed just like the top-end of the market’s choices with its plastic chassis and apparent seams.
When seen as the following in line of this 12 months’s Vivobook stack, the 16-inch model rectifies most of the shortcomings of its Asus Vivobook 15 sibling, whereas bringing just a few different bells and whistles alongside for the trip. When you view the dimensions enhance as a win, it’s straightforward to advocate. But when a 16-inch machine is just a little too large to your bag, you might need a tougher time weighing up the professionals and cons of its £100 uplift.
Being a mid-range machine, there’s little the Asus Vivobook 16 does exceptionally nicely past fundamental computing duties. That isn’t a criticism. It’s simply the shortcuts it takes to hit its worth level that maintain it again from interesting to different niches of the job market. The audio system aren’t nice, and the display screen might have been quicker, brighter, and extra correct. And if don’t thoughts purchasing round, you really can repair these issues on the similar worth.
Design and Keyboard
- Sturdy, all-plastic chassis
- Pretty skinny and light-weight
Faraway from its simply recycled and skinny sufficient cardboard packaging, the Asus Vivobook 16 will shock. The Cool Silver version we acquired in for testing catches and subtle the sunshine splendidly. There are not any shimmer or glittery coatings such as you’d discover in a lot of right this moment’s smartphones. As a substitute, it’s a easy design that may evoke photos of Apple’s iconic MacBook line. The all-plastic chassis gained’t.
Being a little bit of a fingerprint magnet, each the silver and black finishes look nice out of the field however will want frequent buffing to maintain clear. Personally talking, the silver lid isn’t my type. It’s just a little too brilliant. Though there’s little doubt that black would have been extra my type, I can’t assist however really feel it’s attempting just a little too exhausting to look premium when the supplies simply can’t carry it ahead.
Skinny and light-weight at 1.88 kilograms, it’s comfy sufficient for lengthy durations of use, and simply skinny sufficient to cram within the followers essential to preserve it cool beneath a light-weight workload. At a push, the keyboard will get simply heat sufficient to maintain your fingers from feeling the coolness on a crisp autumn night time. It’s backlit, too: one thing the 15-inch model skimps out on.
The precise aspect of the deck homes two USB-A ports, a USB-C port, and headphone jack, a full-sized HDMI port, and a barrel-style charging port. The left has little greater than a 3rd USB-A positioned on the very high, which works nicely for including ethernet again into the combo by means of a dongle. There’s additionally one other vent right here in case the underside is obstructed.
The complete-sized keyboard feels nice and it solely took a few hours to regulate from my smaller iPad keyboard. There’s minimal motion within the deck, the keys are correctly stabilized, they usually don’t sink too far right down to correct. Guides are current to maintain you in your home, and there’s even a tiny perform key row on the very high. With a numpad included for good measure, you realize Asus designed this with workplace use in thoughts.
I assumed the engorged 17.5 sq. inch trackpad was just a little too large for my liking, however that was not the case. It’s not needed in my opinion, however there would have been empty area in any other case. The palm rejection performs nicely sufficient to alleviate the priority of a touch-sensitive area sitting immediately beneath your arms.; which is nice given there’s little room to relaxation them as you kind in any other case.
Show and Sound
- Pleasing IPS panel
- Poor audio system
The excellent news is that the Asus Vivobook 16 does enhance on one main problem of the marginally cheaper and smaller Asus Vivobook 15 – the display screen. The IPS panel makes its flat hinge gimmick considerably useable for sharing info on a gathering room desk. A tent hinge would have been good, although.
Color accuracy jumps to round 69% of the sRGB color area, battering the 52% ranking of the smaller, much less succesful machine. You additionally get 51% Adobe RGB and 51% DCI-P3. It will get brighter, too, however not sufficient to make outside visibility a lot better. When you don’t thoughts the additional dimension, the 20% worth uplift is a no brainer. It’s nonetheless not really useful for colour-accurate work, however it’s wonderful for informal use, and a lot better for motion pictures with a massively improved 1440:1 distinction ratio.
What you’ll need to consider right here is how the audio system are positioned on the underside of the chassis. Not solely will they not fireplace immediately at your face, however they’ll depend on sitting on a flat floor to handle any kind of significant bass. Even in excellent circumstances, these aren’t nice. They’re loud sufficient, however they’re empty, with fuzzy lows and harsh highs. Headphones are really useful, and the three.5mm headphone/microphone jack is there to accommodate.
Efficiency
- Baggage of productiveness functionality
- Quiet followers
As long as you’re not anticipating this to be some pixel-pushing powerhouse, the Asus Vivobook 16 will serve you nicely. The sheer variety of tabs I usually have open for analysis, notes, cross-referencing, picture sourcing, and quantity crunching can vary within the two-dozen mark. And as of late, a single on-line journal can sap a big proportion of your machine’s reminiscence. The eleventh Gen Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD reminiscence configuration right here didn’t break a sweat.
Even with YouTube Music within the background, Photoshop open with a number of photos, a Steam recreation downloading, Slack and Discord pinging away, and quite a few benchmarking suites I forgot to shut, I had no problem getting this written up on the sofa with a tall espresso close by.
Nevertheless, the Vivobook 16 and its Core i7 didn’t astound in our benchmark testing, failing to shine up in opposition to cheaper Core i5-wielding rivals just like the HP Pavilion SE 14 and Asus Vivobook 15. You definitely get further headroom with the 16GB RAM onboard however don’t anticipate immense energy from this machine.
I’d have most well-liked a totally silent machine on my lap, however energy comes at a (warmth) value. Fortunately, a plastic chassis works wonders right here. The fan noise wasn’t loud in any respect: it simply hit that time the place when it stops, you realise it really wasn’t as quiet as you thought. In a extra informal situation, it’s as quiet as a mouse.
The large show on this machine might make it an ideal gaming companion if not for the shortage of a devoted GPU. Built-in graphics have come a good distance in recent times, and Cloud Gaming choices have made it higher nonetheless. However the Iris Xe know-how within the Intel i7 can’t do any critical fashionable gaming right here.
Our regular benchmarks like Returnal wouldn’t launch, and Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarking within the low teenagers means you’re older titles from 5 or 6 years in the past, nostalgic emulation, and possibly gentle esports titles like League of Legends and Valorant. Simply don’t anticipate to go professional.
A 25fps common in Overwatch on the bottom settings gained’t see you thru to the massive leagues, and even a swap to 720p decision couldn’t assist it hit a steady 60fps. Counter-Strike 2 – one other esports title that tends to choose Intel CPUs – fared no higher.
The SSD speeds are within the stable camp however are verging on being unpleasantly sluggish. The outcomes are available at 3046Mb/s learn and 1654Mb/s write. Efficiency was unaffected by the pretty unimpressive speeds and file switch ought to nonetheless be fairly speedy.
Software program
- Not a lot bloatware
- Helpful MyAsus software program
A sliver of silver lining right here is that the Asus Vivobook 16 doesn’t carry a lot software program bloat. Past a duplicate of McAfee that’s straightforward sufficient to clean from its methods, it’s primarily first-party companion apps you’ll need to attempt, keep away from, or delete. Being proudly powered and branded by Amazon’s Alexa assistant, it’s at the least extra helpful than Microsoft’s outgoing Cortana.
MyAsus, the {hardware} producer’s assist portal, features a bunch of toggles for numerous options of middling high quality like AI noise cancellation for calls. That is one you’ll be able to hear in motion on the laptop computer’s spec website that’ll definitely have your boss questioning in case you’re even actual.
At a push, there are a few offers hidden away there: like a free month of Adobe’s Inventive Cloud suite, or a 12 months’s entry to an Asus-branded app designed to show your different units into secondary shows to your laptop computer.
Battery Life
- Lower than 7 hours of battery life
- 45W charger
The place the Asus Vivobook 16 feels extra akin to an ultrabook is within the battery division. You’ll be able to by means of most of your shift with out being tethered to the remarkably small 45w energy provide.
It’s a disgrace to see it ship with out a USB-C charging possibility right here. However in case you’ve been utilizing a devoted energy provide to your moveable PCs all this time, you’ll little question be overjoyed with the swap to at the least a tiny supply of juicing your work machine up.
To place issues into perspective, our battery benchmarks confirmed the Asus Vivobook 16 lasting simply shy of seven hours on a single cost when coping with normal workplace workloads like video calls, spreadsheets, and phrase processing.
Cranking up the brightness to max will, as at all times, drastically cut back this and trigger charging to sluggish to a crawl. However out of direct daylight within the common workplace surroundings, you gained’t have to panic do you have to neglect your adapter at house. As long as you charged it up the night time earlier than, that’s. That’s why elective USB-C charging is at all times price aiming for – you’ll be able to nab nearly anybody’s pill or ultrabook energy brick to cost up over lunch.
Newest offers
Do you have to purchase it?
You desire a easy, no-frills workplace machine
The Asus Vivobook 16 is a conveyable workhorse you gained’t wrestle to make use of when not tethered to an influence socket.
You desire a extra premium expertise
For the cash, the Asus Vivobook 16 is definitely usurped by barely older fashions with extra generalized specs.
Last Ideas
At £700, the 16-inch Asus Vivobook is not any slouch in essentially the most common conditions a laptop computer can discover itself in. It’s gentle sufficient to hold round, with an influence brick to match. It gained’t buckle beneath the digital weight of an excessive amount of admin work. This laptop computer does begin at £600 for the Intel Core i5 model, and it may be a worthy compromise for these searching for simple productiveness use.
With lacklustre audio system and a hinge that stops wanting serving to it turn out to be leisure companion, nevertheless, there are only a few too many compromises right here to actually advocate it at this worth level. The 16GB RAM is that this mannequin’s largest energy when it comes to uncooked energy however competing units are exhausting to disregard with the HP Pavilion SE 14 offering a extra fashionable processor for much less cash in addition to a greater speaker system.
For finances to mid-range Home windows laptops, there’s additionally intriguing competitors within the type of Chromebook Plus units now too, providing comparable productiveness capabilities for beneath £500, like with the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34. Our greatest finances laptops information additionally gives a wider number of sub-£600 picks.
If you realize you’ll take full benefit of the 16GB RAM and the Intel Core i7 chip, that does allow you to squeeze in a small quantity of gaming and modifying, then the Asus Vivobook 16 might go well with you. However, there are many hangups to place you off.
How we check
Each laptop computer we evaluate goes by means of a sequence of uniform checks designed to gauge key issues, together with construct high quality, efficiency, display screen high quality and battery life.
These embrace formal artificial benchmarks and scripted checks, plus a sequence of real-world checks.
We used as our predominant laptop computer for at the least every week.
Examined the efficiency through each benchmark checks and real-world use.
We examined the display screen with a colorimeter and real-world use.
We examined the battery with a benchmark check and real-world use.
FAQs
The Vivobook 16 and 16X are very completely different units, with the previous costing much less and targeted on productiveness efficiency. The latter could be geared up with a discrete graphics card and gives the next high quality OLED show.
Like many units within the sub-£800 bracket, the Asus Vivobook 16 doesn’t provide a touchscreen.
