What I have today is a budget laptop. Technically, not that budget since it’s still priced at RM3,099. It does come with some pretty good specs though, an Intel Core i5-1335U, 8GB of RAM, and also 512GB of SSD. But, like what I always say, we need to look beyond the specs to know the full story.
So, let’s start with the review.
Now, this laptop is – from what I can tell – mostly plastic. By just tapping on the laptop’s body, you can hear from the sound that it makes.
That isn’t a bad thing, because there are good laptops that are made out of plastic anyway. This laptop very minimalist and is actually sturdy. There is barely any flex even when I deliberately try to twist it.
Opening the lid reveals a 15-inch screen. This is a 15-inch IPS LCD screen with FHD resolution and 60Hz refrest rate. That’s pretty standard but with my eyes that had stared at way too many screens in my lifetime, I can immediately tell that the colors of this screen is not accurate. It has a tint of yellow-green hue and true enough, our colorimeter reveals that it only covers around 60% of sRGB color gamut.
But, the maximum Delta E is only at around 1 – so that’s a redemption of some kind.
The brightness of this monitor is only around 280 nits – which is adequate enough for indoor usage, but barely. Once you go close to a window during a bright sunny day, you might encounter some problems.
Onward to the keyboard. The keycaps of each key is extremely rough. I have no idea why. It felt like there is a fine layer of sand just stuck on the keycaps. This is something that I thought I wouldn’t like at first, but eventually liked it.
The typing experience is bouncy and fun, so that’s a good thing. Many of you like number pads on your laptops so you can consider getting this one. Personally, I’m not a fan of the number pad since it offsets the typing zone to the left side.
Then, the trackpad. It’s a functional one and it gets the job done, though the palm rejection isn’t exactly the best as sometimes I can see my cursor dancing on the screen. It does have a fingerprint scanner at the top right corner – so you can use that to log in to Windows easily.
This laptop also has a rather good selection of ports but I really would’ve preferred the positions to be flipped between the two sides. Seriously, imagine having a USB stick or an external drive plugged into the right side and trying to use an external mouse at the same time. That’s an ergonomic nightmare.
Oh, we have to talk about the charger now. This laptop comes with a 65W charger that has a barrel jack – but I never used it because we can actually charge this laptop using the USB-C port! That’s convenient and it’s a feature we don’t usually see on a budget laptop.
Then comes the performance. This laptop has an Intel Core i5-1335U chip with 8GB RAM and from my previous experience with this chip, it should be able to play some games. So, I loaded up Genshin Impact and this happened.
Well, the frame rate is abysmal and I double-checked the graphical settings. Yes, it was on the lowest preset. Buy why is the FPS so low? Then I remembered – the Intel core i5-1335U is “Intel Iris Xe eligible”.
That means it is eligible to use the Intel Iris Xe graphics, but not compulsory. And for this laptop, it’s only using basic Intel UHD graphics. That explains why the FPS was so low.
But, according to certain Reddit threads that I found, you can upgrade it to the Intel Iris Xe graphics by just adding another stick of RAM to make it dual-channel. Then, it’ll become Iris Xe. You don’t even have to reinstall anything.
So, can we upgrade the RAM then? That’s a question that I want answers – and it seems like we can. There is an empty SO-DIMM slot. I mean, it’s pretty much necessary to upgrade this laptop’s RAM since it only comes with 8GB. We can’t do much with 8GB, honestly.
As for the battery life though, this Vivobook 15X K3504 comes with a 42Wh battery and it can last for about 4 hours if we’re only browsing the web, streaming music through Spotify, and some YouTube in the mix. Not bad, but I expected more.
Should you buy the ASUS Vivobook 15X K3504?
So, finally – for the price of RM3,099, I just think that this Vivobook 15X K3405 doesn’t offer good value to the customer. Personally, I would’ve opted for last year’s Vivobook 15X M1503 which is lower in price, has a better OLED screen that has higher resolution and higher refresh rate, and a more balanced performance thanks to its Radeon graphics.
To those who are worried – there is still a number pad on last year’s Vivobook 15X.
Where to buy? (Affiliate links)
- ASUS Vivobook 15X K3504 (the one in this review)
- ASUS Vivobook 15X M1503 (the one I recommend)
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