Editor’s rating: 3.4/5 Asus Vivobook Pro 14 OLED is the latest in line by Asus in its high-end Vivobook Series of laptops. As the name suggests, its highlight is its beautiful OLED display and enjoyable speakers by Harman and Kardon to enhance your favorite shows and movies. Gaming is possible with this laptop and it claims a decent battery life too. My review unit was in Quiet Blue color with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage, MRP of which is 1,09,000. Is the laptop worth your money? Let’s find out. Display Battery Life Gaming Performance Unboxing| Specs| Connectivity and Ports| Design|Display| Performance| Audio| Battery life & charging| Verdict| Pros and Cons|
Vivobook Pro 14 OLED Unboxing
It comes in a strong cardboard box with a plastic handle for carrying it around. The box along with the laptop inside feels heavy although the laptop weighs just 1.4 kgs. This is because the box is in solid cardboard material, which combines its weight with the laptop to make the packaging feel heavy. The best part is that the box gets locked due to its plastic handle and the packaging feels secure to carry around. Inside the box is-
Vivobook Pro 14 OLEDPower Adapter & CordWarranty CardUser Guide
Vivobook Pro 14 Specs
Screen size– 14 inches| Processor– Intel Core i5|RAM– 16GB|Storage capacity-512GB|Video Card-Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650| Operating System– Windows 11 Pro| Refresh Rate 90Hz|Panel type– OLED| Cache memory– 8MB| Storage type-SSD| Color– Quiet Blue| Dimensions– 31.75×22.86×1.93cm| Weight– 1.4kg | Battery– 63 Watt-hours| Asus Vivobook Pro 14 doesn’t have a dearth of connectivity features. There are many ports on either side of the device. On the left side, there are 2 USB Type-A ports and this side looks a little less attractive as compared to the opposite side. This is because the right side has all sorts of ports including a headphone jack, a MicroSD slot, a USB Type-C slot, an HDMI port, another USB Type-A port, and a charging jack. The only problem is that the USB Type-C port does not include power delivery, so you will have to use the bundled power brick. It has WiFi 6 connectivity with assistance from the Asus WiFi SmartConnect which can select the perfect WiFi source automatically and immediately. SO I did not have to search for connections in a new area, as the Vivobook itself searched for a new network available and connected to it. ALSO READ: Infinix Note 11 Quick Review: First Impression Design is one of the highlights of the laptop for me. It has a sleek design with a navy metal chassis that’s nearly grey but still stands out from the other Vivobooks by Asus. The branding logo on the top is slightly different too and the device bulges outwards in a silver hue and appeared to have a barcode-looking design. The size of the keyboard is perfect for my palms and the marking is white and big which makes the numbers, alphabets, and symbols visible. The layout of the keypad is spacious with plenty of space in between keys to reduce typing mistakes. I could achieve a typing speed of about 48 words per minute which is almost the same as my original speed of 50 words per minute. The keyboard is backlit which made it easy to work in darkness, while the only issue with it was that as soon as there was even slight light in my room, the backlight ceased being effective. The reflection of the backlight combined with slight light in my room caused the markings to be less visible. The touchpad is awfully large, and I felt that it took way more space than it needed to but this was made up by the touch-sensitive Numpad that is bundled into the touchpad. It could be activated by pressing the Numpad icon on the touchpad itself and tasks like using a calculator are made easy by this. This was a new feature for me and I fell in love with it. The only issue was that enabling this Numpad disables the touchpad, so I had to switch between the 2 frequently. As the name of the device itself reveals, it has a 14-inch OLED display with very few bezels on the sides and top. There are bezels at the bottom of the screen where “Asus Vivobook” is written in silver font and I found the overall look nice. It weighs around 1.4kg which is on the bulkier side but its dimensions make it neither large nor small (12.5x9x0.7 inches). Although it is not the smallest laptop around, I found its size to be perfect for my use as I am not fond of laptops that are too small. I just wanted it to weigh a little less than it is. Overall, the design of the Vivobook Pro 14 is basic but adequate. The OLED display of the Vivobook Pro 14 is one of the major highlights of this device. It has OLED in its name, which shows how much emphasis the company has given to the display panel. I earlier felt the 4K display was great, but this takes it a notch higher. The display of Vivobook Pro 14 gives vivid color, dazzling HDR, and a peak brightness of up to 365.6 nits. I watched the trailer of the upcoming movie Jersey (in Hindi) and I must say it looked gorgeous on the screen. The visuals were sharp and I wished I could watch the movie on this laptop rather than watching it anywhere else. The crystal motion speed was good and the scenes with cricketing shots looked alive. In the darker light scenes, there weren’t any hazy bright spots across the corner of the display. The Vivobook Pro 14 comes with some of the normal Windows 10 apps like Microsoft office apps, Microsoft store, Spotify, Weather, McAfee, Skype, ProArt Creator Hub pre-installed which can be removed easily if you don’t want them. One of the most useful apps is MyAsus which helped me set user account and security settings. DTS Audio Processing helps enhance speakers and sound quality. I ran several benchmark tests on Vivobook Pro 14 OLED and here are their results. The laptop achieved a score of 5251 in the multi-core test of Cinebench R23. While in the CPUZ test, it got a score of 2263.5 for Multi-thread. Crystal Mark Disk score was decent too with 2967.50 while the Geekbench 5 score was 1031 for single-core and 4254 for Multi-core tests. Overall Vivobook Pro 14 OLED achieved decent scores on the benchmark tests thus matching up to its good performance otherwise. It has a good dark mode which is energy efficient as well as promised low blue light to give my stressed eyes a break. The display has a refresh rate of 90Hz with a pixel resolution of 243 per inch which gives better motion visuals. The display has a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is taller than the normal 16:9 ratio and thus visuals appear bigger. This helped when I was multitasking with 2 windows side by side. Vivo has packed a Nvidia’s RTX 3050 graphics that uses a maximum of 50 watts of power and delivered ok results. It could not achieve 60fps at 1080p in games like Far Cry 5 and Total War. The higher the graphics of games were, the lower the performance went. Running a game at the High detail preset with ray tracing turned on and set to high tanked the framerate to an average of 14fps. This can be digested if you are not a very voracious gamer.
Heat
The Vivobook does stay cool under pressure. Even after playing nonstop HD videos and playing heavy graphic games, the laptop did not heat up from the top. The underside became slightly hot, which is expected in such a situation. ALSO READ: Realme TechLife Air Purifier Review
Webcam
Webcam is one of the weakest sections of this laptop. On opening, the webcam cloudiness can be seen on your images. The photos clicked looked dull and clouded, so much so that I could not even identify the exact color of my hair. Light exposure isn’t controlled well and attending/holding zoom meetings using this webcam might not be such a good idea.
Audio
The sound quality is equally good along with the visuals which makes any video watching experience better than normal. The sound device is by Harman and Kardon and they did not disappoint me. Every nuance of the songs like Arcade and Night Changes was crystal clear. The voice of the singer in Ranjha from Shershaah sounded soothing while the guitar portion of the song Challa from Jab Tak Hai Jaan sounded vibrant. The most disappointing thing was that the audio was no longer good when maxed out. Once I increased the volume to 95 while playing a party number and the song started sounding shaky from the vibrations. However, this can be ignored if you are not someone who hosts parties and want laptops to play songs at maximum volume.
Battery life & Charging
Vivobook Pro 14 could stay powered for around 10 hours with moderate usage which is decent enough. If you switch on the battery saver mode, you might get half an extra. It has a 63-watt-hour battery which is not much of an upgrade from others in this price range, but it is still ok. The charging speed is above average and that made up for the battery being moderately powerful It comes with a brick charger in the box, but my concern with that charger is that it’s very bulky. So, if I have to carry the laptop with me, carrying the charger will be a real pain.
Verdict
The Vivobook Pro 14 OLED is a good option if you want to use your laptop for both works as well as entertainment because not only does it perform well in day-to-day official work, but its battery lasts long and gets you through an entire day without charging. The OLED display is beautiful but the design is basic. Sound quality compliments video quality and makes your viewing experience even more immersive. Though the quality of the webcam could have been better and there is too much bloatware, but if you can overlook that then it is a value for money device in this price range. ALSO READ: DIZO Watch Pro Review: An affordable wearable for everyday needs
Reasons to buy & not buy
Reasons to buy
Beautiful OLED displayGood audio qualityLong battery lifeComfortable keypad and trackpad
Reasons to not buy
Mediocre WebcamThe charger is too bulkyAverage Gaming performanceBasic Design
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