Sometimes, cheaper laptops have a lot more advantages over their more expensive counterparts. This Vivobook 15 OLED is one of them – and honestly, I really do like some parts of this laptop. And the parts that I don’t really like – most of it can be fixed. So, let’s begin.
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Oftentimes, the cheapness of a laptop does show – and some people merely buy a laptop and gauge its performance or “premiumness” based on the price tag. If you’re watching this video, I think all of you are smarter than that.
This ASUS Vivobook 15 OLED M513U is made entirely out of plastic. This isn’t the best type of hard shell plastic either – the plastic is a bit soft and knocking on it sounds hollow. But, a plastic body means the laptop is really lightweight.
But, its weightlessness is to its detriment too. Trying to open the lid with one hand is very difficult. When I tried to do that, I basically am going to flip the entire laptop instead of opening the lid. The hinge is just too stiff.
Once we got the lid opened though, it reveals a magnificent 15-inch OLED screen. This OLED screen is practically the exact same screen on the ASUS Vivobook Pro 15 OLED that we reviewed earlier. It’s bright, beautiful, has vivid colors, but I did realize the flickering caused by PWM dimming at lower brightness levels to be much more apparent on this laptop.
Your mileage may vary on this issue since it could be an OLED manufacturing tolerance issue, maybe my eyes are just more sensitive to it – I can’t tell for sure. Either way, this laptop screen is unbeatable – especially at this price point and it still offers fantastic colors as it covers 100% of both sRGB and DCI-P3 with a small average of delta E.
The keyboard though, is something that I don’t really like. Its key travel distance is short and fatiguing to type on, but its springiness makes it somewhat bearable. However, the trackpad positioning is much better than the Vivobook Pro 15 OLED since it’s centered on the typing area, not centered on the laptop. This makes sense and it’s much more comfortable to use because it’s practical. Also, I don’t mind having a number pad on this laptop because of the position of the trackpad – even though I personally don’t use the number pad.
Speaking of the trackpad, it’s fine. I mean, it uses the precision touchpad drivers and the palm rejection is fine since the trackpad is centered on the typing area and I don’t have to put my right hand on trackpad when I’m typing.
There is also a fingerprint scanner at the top right corner of the trackpad if you want to use that.
And of course – what I really like about this laptop is the performance. You see, this laptop comes with some relatively high-powered hardware:
- AMD Ryzen 7 5700U
- 8GB RAM 3200MHz in dual channel (we’ll get into this later)
- 512GB SSD
What truly surprised me is that this laptop comes with a Ryzen 7 5700U chip. We’ve tested this chip before for a brief moment of time and I was thoroughly surprised by its performance. This chip behaves the same regardless of whether it’s plugged in or on battery. I tested a few games using this laptop and you can watch our full analysis at the top right corner there or in the description down below.
What’s interesting is that we can actually open up the back panel and do some upgrades on our own. I mean, ASUS encourages us to upgrade the laptop ourselves since they also included a storage upgrade kit. Inside it we have some mounting kits and a cable to get a 2.5-inch HDD or SSD inside the laptop.
Though, you’ll have to take out this bracket too, since the ribbon cable connector is under this metal bracket.
And that’s not all. Do you remember when we said the RAM of this laptop is at 8GB at 3200MHz dual-channel? That is because one stick of 4GB RAM is soldered on the motherboard and another 4GB RAM is user-serviceable. I can go out and buy a single 16GB RAM stick and upgrade it to 20GB RAM!
Of course, the included SSD is still here for the operating system – and that’s about it. In terms of user-upgradability or just the option to upgrade it, the Vivobook 15 OLED is better than the Vivobook Pro 15 OLED, honestly.
However, the ports are identical – even the placement of these ports is identical. But, because this laptop isn’t aimed towards content creators and the likes, I can forgive the placement of those high-speed ports. By the way, this laptop cannot be charged with that USB-C port – bummer.
Speaking of charging, let’s talk about the battery life! This laptop comes with a rather tiny 42Wh battery but it actually performs very well. I manage to get about 6-8 hours of battery life at 60% brightness but that mostly depends on what I’m doing. If it’s mostly darker colors then the battery will perform better – because that’s how OLED screens work.
Should you buy the ASUS Vivobook 15 OLED M513 (AMD Ryzen 7 5700U)?
And for my absolutely most favorite part of this laptop – the price. For RM3,499, you get this laptop. I actually think it’s quite an okay price considering that you are getting the powerful AMD Ryzen 7 5700U chip with a beautiful OLED screen. However, the shortcoming – at least for me – is the keyboard. I can live with everything else about this laptop – especially the price.
But, maybe you don’t want that much performance on your laptop. Maybe you just want to do some simpler work. Then there’s also another AMD Ryzen 5 5500U version for a lower price of RM3,199 with the same 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD. That is just unbeatable.
Just in case you found out about the Intel variant of the Vivobook 15 OLED with the codename K513EA with the enticing price of RM2,799 – I suggest you to proceed with caution. While the Core i3 should be sufficient for most basic tasks, that K513EA version comes with only 4GB RAM. I’m not sure about upgradability but you’ll need to add some ka-ching to make it at least 8GB to be usable. That drives the cost up to about RM3,000 easily.
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