When news of Snapdragon powered PCs came about, I was definitely excited for the prospect of using one. Imagine this scenario – doing desktop things with the endurance of a mobile phone – I’d wager you can already think of scenarios where that would be advantageous right? If you’ve ever been in that situation where you were in the flow state, working away on your notebook when you suddenly get notified that your battery is running low – this is the sort of interruption that is extremely unpleasant. You wouldn’t wish for it to happen to anybody.
For my very first taste of this possibility, our friends at Asus Philippines let us take their latest Vivobook S16, the one with the Snapdragon X for a spin. And just to spoil you a little bit, what I have in my hands is easily THE recommendation to a question that was just posed to me by a few students just a week prior – “What would be a good choice for a computer for them to get at this time?“. The unit on loan has the Snapdragon X126100 8-core 3.0GHz as its processor with Adreno X1-45 8GB GPU, Hexagon NPU 45TOPS, 16GB DDR5 RAM, 512GB SSD and comes in a Matte Gray finish.
There’s far too many factors to consider when selecting a companion for architecture school (to be quite specific) – and you wouldn’t think that I’d tell them to go with a Snapdragon powered computer at that – being practically brand new users and all that; but the potential of having access to computing for the better part of the school day – and not having to compete for a socket within school grounds is a far greater plus – in my professional opinion, as opposed to having access to rendering power – which you don’t necessarily lose with this one. It’s actually quite funny how the processor is interpreted by the benchmarking tool, but a result of 6553 (CPU) / 344 (CUDA) is nothing to sneeze at – definitely not the fastest by today’s standard but a workable experience that would give anyone a competent tool for any practical activity.
The Vivobook S16 also comes with a Microsoft Office Home 2024 out the gate so you’re covered in that front for your desktop publishing needs.
Fun fact, there was a power interruption while I was writing this piece and just imagine the same thing happening during crunch time… right?!? right?!! You get the drift I’m sure.
I cannot tell you just how freeing it is to just snap the lid shut in the middle of a referencing instance, stuffing it in the bag, walking around a fair bit, and opening it back up instantly back to where you were as if no time has passed at all – especially in terms of battery power. Doze is something that Windows had before, it supposedly still has it now but the implementation is far from “reliable”… but with a Snapdragon chip inside – it’s practically guaranteed!
Industry adoption for Qualcomm and software developers seem to happen (or have happened) much faster than it did with Apple Silicon and this is a very welcome occurrence. It allows for potential Copilot+ users to enjoy near seamless integration with existing systems and workflows… schoolwork notwithstanding. Don’t get me wrong, on occasion, you get quirky goings-on such as screen freeze, unhandled exceptions and the like but that is more because of programming than anything else – this too will be addressed in time and would be nothing but a memory.
I’ve had instances with a streaming service that jumps the screen up and down when on full screen mode but functions perfectly fine when simply maximized.
Previous versions of the Vivobook I have handled lean heavily into the “Life” aspect and often featured a vibrant color and highlights on areas of the keyboard and throughout the perimeter of the device. This year, or at least with this version, there’s much less of that – the Vivobook S16 I have with me would compete with the Business line of notebooks if it had wanted to.
Leave for the much nicer subtle branding on the lid, one wouldn’t be faulted of thinking this one came from the other device categorization of the brand. Here’s a tour around the device in photos:
AI features are to be expected with a Copilot+ PC and this one has very practical ones in tow. Copilot is always ready to answer with the push of the Copilot button, Paint is supercharged with Cocreator, there’s contextual AI through Click-To-Do, Windows Studio Effects got your back for video conferencing, Noise Reduction remains top notch, there’s even Recall which is a super powered history of your activity on the computer and for the more photo inclined, there’s Story Cube which allows for AI assisted content curation letting you be more creative by taking care of the organization for you.
One thing you can expect when going for a 16″ device is the existence of a number pad – this is logical because of the space afforded by the expansive 16:10 screen ratio. On the same vein, the trackpad for the Vivobook S16 is massive and can help with mouseless operation tremendously – so much so that clicking on the corner to execute a click drag feels so foreign especially when the item is along the upper half of the screen. You also have gestures here for quick changes like FF/Rewind, Volume, and Brightness
And with that comes probably the only negative you might identify with the Vivobook S16 – its size. The weight is a given (quite light actually at just 1.74kg) but the size, it requires something more robust to keep it with you – I had ended up with a backpack for ease of handling as most of my messengers were lacking in width to accommodate the device. It helps that the power brick is not that large – its just a squarish 65W adapter with a long-ish cable that’s quite thick so you know its going to hold up to daily activity… not that you’d need to charge that much with the Snapdragon Chip at this Vivobook S16’s core.
Retailing for just Php 50,995, this Snapdragon powered Copilot+ Vivobook S16 is sure to deliver uninterrupted performance for whatever task you might think to throw at it with very little compromise for a significant jump to production time.
