Asus Vivobook S 14 Flip review: a value-first laptop

I know of two configurations of the Vivobook S 14 Flip that are available. There’s the $690 review unit configuration that I tested, which comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600H CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 14-inch WUXGA IPS display.

Then you’ll spend $1,100 to bump to an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. That places the laptop either in budget or mid-range territory, depending on the configuration.

Let’s get this one out of the way: The Vivobook S 14 Flip is constructed in part of plastic, specifically the chassis, while the lid is metal. While plastic is sometimes associated with cheap, that’s an unfair characterization. The Vivbook S 14 Flip is solid enough for a budget laptop, with just the slightest bending of the lid and flexing in the keyboard deck. If this were a $1,500 laptop, then I’d have more of an issue with the build quality.

But, it’s not. Note that I’d feel a little less confident about the $1,000 configuration. In addition, the hinge is too tight to open with one hand, but it does hold the display firmly in place in clamshell, tent, media, and tablet modes. Most truly premium laptops have smoother hinges.

The overall aesthetic is minimalist, but that’s not an attribute of budget laptops. In fact, in previous years, budget machines were often kitted out with tons of plastic “chrome” that made them garish and cheap looking. The Vivobook S 14 Flip is a uniform blue color with the line’s new logo on the lid and no embellishments other than chrome hinges. The single, slightly weird standout feature is a striped pattern running along the bottom of the Enter key.

My review unit was equipped with the AMD Ryzen 5 5600H, a six-core/12-thread CPU running at up to 4.2GHz with a default 45-watt TDP that’s configurable between 35 and 54 watts. On paper, the CPU should provide solid productivity performance.

In our benchmarks, the Vivobook S 14 Flip does well against the slower Vivobook Flip 14 AMD and the VAIO Fe 14.1 with a 15-watt Core i7-1255U. It can’t keep up with the 28-watt Core i7-1260P. Interestingly, the Ryzen 5 5600H was fast in Cinebench R23 multi-core while slower in Geekbench 5 and our Handbrake test that encodes a 420MB video as H.265. It also did well in the PCMark 10 Completely benchmark that tests a variety of productivity, multimedia, and creative tasks.

Overall, as expected, the Vivobook S 14 Flip was a solid productivity performer but isn’t going to be very well-suited for more than lightweight creative tasks. Its Radeon graphics scored unusually low in the 3DMark Time Spy graphics test, at just 727 and about half of what Intel’s Iris Xe graphics achieve. The laptop hit just seven frames per second (fps) in Fortnite at 1200p and epic graphics — poor by any standard.

Battery life is important here, too, as it’s a characteristic that old-school budget machines once compromised. The Vivobook S 14 Flip does well enough, though.

With its 50 watt-hour battery (a 70 watt-hour version comes with the OLED display configuration), the Vivobook S 14 Flip did well in our web browsing test, leading our comparison group. It fell behind in our video test but still managed an average score. Overall, the Vivobook S 14 Flip can likely manage a full day’s work with a light enough productivity workload. Like some other AMD systems I’ve reviewed, it was unable to complete the PCMark 10 Applications battery test that’s the best indication of productivity battery life.

So, where did Asus cut a corner to slip into such a low price? Arguably, the display qualifies. While it was bright enough at 321 nits, exceeding our 300-nit standard, and its contrast was good at 1,230:1, its colors were narrow and not terribly accurate.

At a price of $690, the Asus Vivobook S 14 Flip is an attractive laptop with solid if not spectacular performance, good battery life, and a solid enough build. Its display lacks colors, which is the laptop’s primary weakness. That’s not unusual at these prices, though — even today.