Asus S14 (S406) laptop review: Mobility over performance

Asus has a variety of laptops targeting different types of customers. The VivoBook series concentrates on people looking for a laptop for school or work who need a portable laptop, which they can carry everywhere and get their work done. The Asus VivoBook S14 (S406) is not meant for everyone and here's why we think so.

Specifications

In terms of specifications, the review unit we got comes with a 14-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. It is powered by the Intel Core i5 8250U processor coupled with Intel’s integrated UHD Graphics 620. The device comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage.

Price: Rs. 44,990

Design

Asus S14 comes with a very minimalistic and sleek design that offers great portability. The laptop has a spun metal finish on the outside, which looks great and keeps fingerprints away. However, when you open the lid the plastic build might disappoint you a bit. The build has quite a bit of flex to it, especially at the palm rest area.

We were impressed to see Asus shrinking down the side bezels of the display to a minimum. This has allowed the company to put a 14-inch display in a chassis of a 13-inch laptop. The chicklet keyboard is backlit and the brightness level can be adjusted easily using a key combination. The laptop sports a fingerprint scanner which is a welcome feature as it makes unlocking the laptop very easy.

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The Asus S14 comes with two USB Type-A ports, a USB Type-C port, a micro HDMI port, a 3.5-mm headphone jack and a microSD card slot.

Display

The Asus S14 sports a 14-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels and has a refresh rate of 60Hz. It is an antiglare panel and offers a 172-degree wide-viewing angle. The display is great for media consumption for a long duration. The display gets bright enough and should be fine for most use case scenarios.

Performance

The Asus S14 comes with a U-series processor from Intel and lacks a dedicated GPU, which is acceptable considering the company is marketing this as a portable laptop for professionals. Performance from the i5 CPU coupled with 8GB of RAM should be sufficient for most day-to-day tasks.

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The laptop remained cool most of the times during our review process. However, when using the laptop extensively on an uneven surface, the thermals reach a level where it gets quite uncomfortable to use.

Keyboard and Mouse

One of the best things I liked about this laptop is its backlit keyboard. The lighting makes the laptop comfortable to use during night time and the trackpad is quite good just like most other Asus laptops. The trackpad comes integrated with a fingerprint sensor, which when combined with Windows Hello, works very well.

Similar to Apple's MacBook Air, the power button is included within the keyboard area. The button is quite close to the backspace key which means you might accidentally hit the power key instead of hitting the backspace key on most occasions.

Battery

One of the key highlights of the Asus S14 is its long battery life. During the review period, we were able to use the laptop continuously for around 7-8 hours before it required to be plugged in. You can suck some more juice from the laptop by turning off the keyboard backlight and turning down the Windows performance settings. Also, if you do drain the battery, the included charger can charge it back quite rapidly.

Verdict

Asus S14 (S406) is a great choice for people who prefer mobility over performance. The laptop is lightweight meaning you can carry it around with you most of the times. The battery life is good enough to make you forget where you kept your charger. These perks do come with a tradeoff, which in this case is performance. The lack of a dedicated graphics card means that you cannot edit your videos or play games on the go. However, considering the market Asus is targetting with this device, it isn't a huge deal.

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To conclude, if you need a laptop for work and you travel a lot, this is probably your best bet.