M. Bernson
Im not sure what laptops other buyers were upgrading from but all the glowing reviews tell me that they must have been really low budget ones. Im not saying that this Vivobook is necessarily bad, but it has plenty of shortcomings. Too many to give it more then 3 stars unfortunately. With the Intel N5000 CPU and built in Intel 605 onboard graphics, paired with only 4Gb of Non-upgradable memory this is a very barebones 2in1. It can have a handful of tabs open for basic web browsing and some Spotify running in the background no problem but beyond that, it becomes sluggish. I always find the best way to test the limits of performance is to install a well optimized game like CSGO or Overwatch just to see what the CPU/GPU/RAM can actually handle. Of course this isnt a gaming laptop. But its a great way to stress all components to the max. Takaway is it heats up quickly and the CPU throttles down to continue working at a noticable performance hit. The 4Gb or RAM really holds back performance as well. These results with also translate to heavy multi-tasking. So be aware of this before buying. Get this for very basic low volume workloads, watching Youtube and listening to Spotify or you my be disappointed. You might be surprised when I say that NOTHING I just wrote would I consider a shortcoming. Its sub $400 so you shouldnt expect excellence but ASUS in my opinion cut corners in some of the wrong places. Read CONs below.. PROS: -Slim bezels -Strong hinge -Good trackpad -Fanless runs silent -Minimal keyboard flex -Decent speakers CONS: -Low quality IPS display very washed out colors -Poor viewing angles for IPS -Display does not get very bright -touchscreen is laggy -Short battery life only about 4 hours -Very short key travel -Keys themselves are about 25% smaller then standard -Short Wi-Fi range -No standard USB 3.0 port (micro usb) -No standard HDMI port (micro hdmi) -Only the display casing is aluminum everything else is silver plastic. Yes there are a lot of cons in my experience. Some I can live with like the below average keyboard and using a USB or HDMI adaptor if need be. But the display is very poor. Its dull, washed out with a below average viewing angle and does not get nearly bright enough. I have to constantly be aware of how bright my workspace is when using it which is far from ideal. Dont even think about using this outside, wont do it. Its probably getting sent back for these reasons.