The Asus VivoBook S451LA is a relatively affordable machine that comes with a touchscreen, but not much else. Some machines try to have the best of both worlds, forgoing the keyboard dock or going to great lengths for our comfort.
Others, like the $700 Asus VivoBook S451, graft a touchscreen onto a regular laptop chassis and that’s it. While that’s a relatively affordable price, it doesn’t justify the compromises you’ll have to make to make this machine worth your money. Note that, like many Asus laptops , our exact version of the VivoBook S451 may be out of stock at online retailers, and you may find slightly different components and different prices depending on when and where you buy it.
Our review unit came with a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 6GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. The low native screen resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels puts it firmly in the budget range. PC Geekbox Let’s take a step back and look at it: It’s already beautiful, right? It’s a deceptive design, and the brushed metal lid makes it look like a more expensive device. And its height — just 0.97 inches thick — makes it look very portable, the kind of slim device you can throw in your bag. But at 4.8 pounds, the VivoBook S451LA is pretty heavy. This laptop has a 14-inch touchscreen, which looks cool. But when you open it up, you’ll find that it only has 1,366 x 768 pixels of screen real estate, and it’s not very good: Viewing angles are very limited, and colors are inverted and appear washed out with just the slightest change of angle.
I found myself constantly adjusting the hinge, searching for that mythical perfect angle that would allow me to sit comfortably while still seeing clearly — which becomes a problem if you like to move around. It is, however, a touchscreen. It’s responsive and handles gestures confidently, but its hinge isn’t very sturdy, and it would wobble rather annoyingly when I clicked through menus. I’m used to glass or matte touchpads , so the overly glossy touchpad on this VivoBook was a little too slippery for my taste.
Gestures were problematic, and the touchpad was sometimes inaccurate. This problem is exacerbated by the extra finesse required to emulate Windows 8’s touch gestures: Swipe inward from the right edge of the touchpad and you’ll bring up the Charms menu; swipe inward from the left to quickly switch between running apps, and swipe down from the top of the touchpad brings up Windows 8’s context-sensitive menu bar. The speakers can sound a little hollow, despite Asus’s SonicMaster branding and a few equalizer presets. Ports and connections Connectivity, performance, and the Asus VivoBook S451LA battery
The VivoBook’s Core i5-4200U processor falls into the famous “good enough” category. While it lagged behind the competition in every one of CNET’s performance tests, I didn’t have too many troubles with it in day-to-day use. It’s still very fast, with apps loading in reasonable times and running at a steady pace throughout. Booting the machine takes about 12 seconds, which feels a little long, but isn’t exactly a deal breaker — that’s more a credit to the OS than the hardware, as an SSD would certainly improve things. Unfortunately, you can’t do much better: The S451LA can be configured with up to a Core i7-4500U, but there’s no SSD option.
The fastest storage option is a 750GB 7,200rpm hard drive, while the largest is a 1TB 5,400rpm drive. You’ll also find eye-watering prices on the model we tested, though Amazon currently sells it for $669.69 (as of the date of this post). The VivoBook on Intel’s integrated graphics, which means any kind of high-end or midrange gaming is out of the question. Fortunately, there are plenty of games in the Windows 8 store and on the web that run smoothly on this hardware. As for battery life, Asus estimates that the VivoBook will last about five hours on a single charge. We saw 6 hours and 13 minutes on our video playback rundown test. While that’s in line with the performance you can expect at this price point, it’s still not that great if you plan on using it all day.
This Asus VivoBook’s display, keyboard, and touchpad are basically phonebooks, and it’s (relatively) heavy, but it’ll get you around the Internet, play HD movies (though not at full HD resolution), and help you get work done — thanks to a fairly responsive touch screen — for just $700. You’d be hard-pressed to find a true gem at that price. But if you’re willing to spend a little more, you can do better. The larger, nearly identical 15.6-inch Asus VivoBook V551LB weighs a pound and costs about a hundred bucks more, but offers twice the storage, more RAM, a faster CPU, and a discrete Nvidia GPU. You’ll run into many of the same shortcomings, but at least you can get some gaming done, and some photo editing, too.
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