COVID-19 complications and parts shortages have wreaked havoc on the availability and prices of budget laptops, so if you’re wearily sorting through the meager options for an inexpensive, big-screen notebook, the Asus VivoBook 17 M712 ($550 at Amazon.com) might be a sight for your sore eyes. Yes, it uses an older third-generation instead of new fifth-generation AMD Ryzen processor, but it ticks nearly every other box. A stylish silver chassis, a comfortable keyboard, and just enough power for everyday computing tasks make this 17.3-inch rig one of the best large laptops you can buy if you’re on a strict budget.
The Big Picture
This large Asus is a welcome reminder that a self-mandated price limit for your next laptop needn’t restrict your choices to a flimsy appliance that will struggle to get you through a night of homework or a day of answering emails. The VivoBook 17’s star attraction, of course, is a roomy 17.3-inch, full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) display. Most laptop shoppers aren’t looking for screens this big, which means they’re relatively scarce at pretty much every price point. So the fact that you can get one this cheap in a laptop that has few other compromises is a major win from the get-go.
Clad in a bright silver finish inside and out, the VivoBook 17 looks modern from every angle. The black screen bezels are an exception to the silver expanses, but are slim enough to look like they belong on a $1,000 laptop. If you’re hoping to score a jumbo screen without paying for it in weight and bulk, however, you’ll have to get realistic: The VivoBook weighs 5 pounds and measures 0.84 by 16 by 10.1 inches (HWD). Compare that with the slimmest 17-incher we’ve tested, the LG Gram 17, which is just 0.7 by 15 by 10.2 inches and 2.98 pounds.
Under the hood is a dual-core, 2.6GHz AMD Ryzen 3 3250U processor coupled to 8GB of RAM and a 256GB NVMe solid-state drive. It’s nothing lavish, but an impressive loadout for a large laptop that costs this little; in previous years, you would have been lucky to get an Intel Celeron or AMD Athlon teamed with an old-school spinning hard drive for this price in a desktop replacement. A more current comparison for budget laptop shoppers is the Asus VivoBook 11 (L203). Yes, it’s $250 cheaper than the VivoBook 17, but it has a lowly Celeron CPU, 4GB of memory, just 64GB of eMMC flash storage, and a low-quality, low-resolution 11-inch display.
The VivoBook 17’s screen is positively luxurious by comparison. I’m a fan of its matte finish, which lacks touch capability but does an excellent job of reducing glare from ambient light without dulling colors. The LED-backlit panel is rated for a lowish 250 nits of brightness; I mostly tested the M712 in my home office over the course of some gloomy, thunderstorm-filled summer days and found the maximum brightness more than adequate. If you’ll mostly use it in a fluorescent-lit classroom, you might wish for a brighter screen, however.
Well-Designed Chassis
Above the screen is a generic webcam that shoots 720p video with plenty of noise and not a lot of color fidelity. Your phone will almost certainly offer a better platform for WhatsApp or Zoom calls. But then again, many laptops twice as expensive have similar cameras, so the lackluster quality isn’t as large a mark against the VivoBook 17 as it otherwise might be.
Below the display, a tasteful Asus VivoBook logo nicely breaks up the bottom black bezel. Asus says the laptop has an 85% screen-to-body ratio, which confirms the modern aesthetic—even the sleekest, nearly borderless laptops like the Dell XPS 13, whose pixels practically drip off the screen, don’t range much higher than 90%.
The bottom portion of the VivoBook 17’s chassis is well-laid-out. A comfortable keyboard with sturdy key switches and a dedicated numeric pad takes up most of it. I appreciate the inverted-T arrangement for the cursor arrow keys, and the font Asus uses for the labels is simple enough to be clearly read through the keyboard’s backlight. I do wish that the number pad keys were the same size as the main keys, but a keypad is rare on laptops of all sizes these days, so it’s nice to see one included here.
Below the keyboard, there’s a buttonless trackpad with a satisfyingly sturdy hinge that doesn’t give away the VivoBook’s budget nature at all. Recent Asus touchpads we’ve tested have generally been high-quality; even the VivoBook 11’s pad glides and taps smoothly and clicks comfortably.
Plenty of Ports, But Mind the USB Speeds
Other than screen real estate, room for more input and output ports is a key reason to choose a larger laptop, and the VivoBook 17 has plenty. On the left edge are two USB Type-A ports and a security lock slot, while the right edge hosts the barrel-style power connector, a third USB-A port, a USB-C port, an HDMI video output, the 3.5mm headphone jack, and a microSD card slot.
While the quantity and diversity of ports is impressive, I note a few drawbacks that clearly identify this as a budget laptop. For one, we usually like to see more than one USB-C port on any laptop, since the oval-shaped connector is the future of the interface. USB-C ports can also double as connectors for AC adapters. The barrel-style power connector is likely a cost-saving measure that both takes up room that could otherwise house a second USB-C port and prevents you from charging the laptop with a backup USB-C adapter if you accidentally lose the proprietary adapter that comes in the box.
Finally, while it’s nice to have so many rectangular USB Type-A ports, the two at left are limited to the painfully slow USB 2.0 spec, which makes them useful only for plugging in keyboards, mice, and printers. They’re too slow for transferring large amounts of data to and from an external drive. (The right-side Type-A and Type-C ports meet the USB 3.2 standard.)
The VivoBook 17’s wireless connections include Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and Bluetooth 4.2. We don’t expect the latest Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) or Wi-Fi 6E capabilities on budget laptops, and I experienced no issues staying connected to my home network over several days of testing.
Output from the VivoBook 17’s speakers is startlingly loud. The maximum volume is overkill for watching a movie or videoconferencing at home. With plenty of room for substantial speakers, this result isn’t surprising, although the output is quite tinny and has hardly a hint of bass.
Older Ryzen Still Gets Work Done
I experienced no lags or sluggishness while installing apps and browsing the internet during my time testing the VivoBook 17 M712, even though it’s equipped with an older Ryzen 3 processor from AMD’s third generation. The 8GB of memory and speedy SSD likely help this laptop pick up the pace; a paltry 4GB of RAM and slower eMMC storage are not uncommon on Windows laptops priced below $500.
See How We Test LaptopsSee How We Test LaptopsTo see how the VivoBook 17’s performance stacks up against a few similarly priced competitors, we’ll take a look at benchmark results. In the table below, you can see the basic specs of the comparison systems, which are all priced in the $500 to $1,000 range. There are two 15-inch models (the Dell Inspiron 15 3000 and HP Pavilion x360 15) in addition to the smaller Asus VivoBook S14 and Microsoft Surface Laptop Go.
UL’s PCMark 10 suite simulates real-world office apps and content-creation workflows; a score of 4,000 points or more indicates excellent productivity, so you can see the VivoBook 17’s 3,200-odd points are pretty good, well above the Inspiron with its humble AMD Athlon CPU and 4GB of RAM though not in the same league as the Pavilion and its latest-generation Intel Core i3. PCMark 8’s storage subtest can often reflect poorly on economy models with spinning hard drives or eMMC flash storage, but these systems’ speedy SSDs ace the test.
The VivoBook 17 isn’t designed for processing-intensive workflows like image editing or video conversion. It took 33 minutes to transcode a 12-minute clip of 4K video to 1080p resolution using the Handbrake app, a painfully long wait.
While the Asus avoided a last-place finish in the Cinebench rendering test, it couldn’t match the superior score of the Pavilion x360 15. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image, so it’s a good illustration of the difference newer-generation silicon can make in CPUs that are otherwise equally matched.
The VivoBook 17 also dodged a fifth-place finish in our Adobe Photoshop imaging benchmark, but only because the Inspiron 15 3000 doesn’t have enough memory to run Photoshop at all (the app requires a minimum of 8GB of RAM). Our Photoshop test involves applying a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a JPG image, timing each operation and adding up the total.
Light Gaming Only, Please
The VivoBook’s AMD Radeon Vega integrated graphics are more capable than you might expect from an inexpensive laptop. In our 3DMark and Superposition gaming simulations, the big Asus held its own with the Surface Laptop Go, which is equipped with Intel’s UHD integrated graphics.
Still, Intel’s newer Iris Xe graphics, as seen in the VivoBook S14, will certainly be better at playing graphics-intensive titles.
While the VivoBook 17’s middling scores in our productivity and gaming benchmarks don’t detract too much from its appeal, its relatively short battery life does. Likely hampered by a puny 32-watt-hour battery, the plus-size Asus managed just over 7 hours of unplugged video playback, a few hours less than all of its competitors. With ostensibly plenty of room for a larger battery in the roomy chassis, it’s a shame that the M712 doesn’t include one, although it’s understandable from a production-cost standpoint.
What Most People Want in a Budget Laptop
The VivoBook 17 delivers what most entry-level laptop buyers are looking for, especially if screen size and quality are top of mind. For $550, you get a capable 17.3-inch screen with 1080p resolution and a matte finish that does an excellent job of filtering out ambient light without excessively degrading color brilliance. You’ll also find plenty of input and output ports along with a stylish silver chassis and a speedy solid-state drive.
As with any budget laptop, there are some tradeoffs, including a previous-generation Ryzen processor and Wi-Fi 5 instead of 6. The only unequivocal negative is the system’s disappointing battery life, but it’s not enough to hold the Asus back from earning an Editors’ Choice award.
If cost is no object, the LG Gram 17 is the cream of the 17-inch laptop crop. Otherwise, the VivoBook 17 is the obvious choice for anyone who wants the largest screen available for the least amount of money.
