Okay, we’ve been reviewing a lot of higher-end laptops for the past few months. Let’s go back to something affordable. The laptop we’re showing here is the ASUS Vivobook 15X OLED M1503QA and it is only priced at RM3,299. Incredible value, right? Yes, but why? Let’s go through this laptop and see why.
First of all, this laptop comes in a straightforward plastic chassis. That’s not a problem since this laptop is supremely light in terms of its weight relative to its size. Our unit has the Quiet Blue color and looks more like a dark blue color, creating a stealthy aesthetic.
Now, opening up the lid reveals a 15.6-inch OLED screen – hence the name Vivobook 15X OLED. Now, this display… I don’t know why ASUS gave this laptop a supremely high-def screen with a high refresh rate. It has a resolution of 2880×1620 and 120Hz refresh rate!
When we used our colorimeter to try it out, this screen can cover virtually 100% of sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts, but the Delta-E is slightly high at 2.811.
As for the maximum brightness, it’s about 410 nits of brightness. Pretty good but not good enough to be used outdoors on a sunny day.
By the way, this laptop’s screen also has the same behavior of switching between PWM dimming and DC dimming depending on what level of brightness, and the true DC-dimming slider is inside the MyASUS app. Like what we mentioned earlier, ASUS did a good job in being inclusive of all the features available – but the integration with Microsoft Windows is a problem.
I just gotta say, this screen is supremely amazing, especially for a laptop of this price. Literally, no other laptops that I’ve tested at this price range have such a good screen.
The keyboard is something that I actually don’t particularly like. If I am to nitpick, then I’ll say that the keyboard feels a bit mushy. The travel distance is not that good and the keys do not bounce back up as quickly as I’ve hoped. But again, this is because I have used so many other laptops and keyboards in the past. I’m sure that for most general consumers, this keyboard is fine.
And hey – it also comes with the number pad. You guys were angry that I said the number pad should be removed but you guys win, I guess. The number pad stays.
Then the trackpad is where things get a bit funky. The trackpad, in itself, works fine. Pretty standard in terms of tracking and the texture feels okay. The problem is that I always accidentally trigger the pinch to zoom gesture. Not sure if it’s due to the trackpad’s palm rejection or the multitouch detection problem.
I usually type and leave my left hand on the WASD key area so part of my wrist is hovering above the trackpad. Then, when I want to use the trackpad with my right hand, I will always accidentally zoom.
The performance is also something that I want to quickly highlight. The version that we have is powered by the AMD Ryzen 5 5600H, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and 512GB of NVMe SSD.
I tried playing Genshin Impact at the lowest settings at its native 2880×1620 resolution but just as I suspected – the integrated Radeon GPU just can’t even maintain 30fps consistently.
Then, I lowered the resolution to 1080p – which unfortunately means I have to play the game in windowed mode – and it can run above 30fps.
A few more things I want to highlight – the ports of this laptop is actually fairly decent. We have a USB 2.0 port at the right side though, which I have no idea why. Please, it wouldn’t hurt to give us USB 3.0, right?
And that USB-C port is also a disappointing one. It only works as a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port and that’s it. That means my portable monitors won’t work when connected to this port and we cannot charge this laptop using USB-C chargers.
Opening up the laptop is fairly simple. We have to remove a few screws behind and the back plate pops off – and we can do a few things here. First, the 8GB RAM that we mentioned earlier is already soldered onto the motherboard. However, we have yet another SO-DIMM RAM slot here so we can add another 8GB or 16GB RAM if we want to.
Then, the M.2 SSD slot is also accessible but it is already in use. And the WiFi card. This is something that we can upgrade if we want to.
Should you buy the ASUS Vivobook 15X OLED M1503QA?
So, in conclusion – should you buy the ASUS Vivobook 15X OLED M1503QA? Let’s take a look at the prices again. This laptop comes in two variants – either the Ryzen 5 5600H or the Ryzen 7 5800H – and both of them are with the prices listed here.
I gotta say, both of them are fantastic in terms of value – but an especially better value on the Ryzen 5 model.
Let’s face it – no one is buying this laptop to play games and that is why the Ryzen 5 variant is already enough for most people.
However, if you want to use this laptop to deal with things like a large Excel sheet with lots of complicated formulae, then yes – that Ryzen 7 5800H will definitely be a great boon. And for that, I think it’s also worth spending another RM400 for that chipset – but only if you can make use of the extra performance.
To learn more about this laptop – then click here. I’d say they’re worth checking out (even though we are unsponsored) because I just love this laptop a lot. Truly incredible value for its price.
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