Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED review: affordable creator laptop

Asus has one version of the Vivobook Pro 15 OLED available, with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, a 1TB SSD, an Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU, and a 15.6-inch 16:9 FHD OLED display. Right now, it’s on sale for $1,050, down from $1,300. As long as it stays there, it’s an interesting large-screen laptop for creators on a very tight budget.

There’s a 75 watt-hour battery packed inside, and the relatively low resolution of the otherwise power-hungry OLED display helped the Vivobook Pro 15 OLED turn in some mixed battery life results.

In our web browsing test that runs through a series of complex web pages, the Vivobook managed 10.25 hours, which is above average and very good for the Core Ultra 7 155H chipset. It made it to 10.75 hours in our video looping test, which is a little less than average. The XPS 14 hit 8.25 and 10.25 hours with its OLED display and 11.75 and 15 hours with its IPS panel, while the XPS 16’s 4K+ OLED display came in at 5.5 hours for both tests. Asus seems to have threaded a needle with the Vivobook Pro 15 OLED, which might last close to a full day with mixed usage but not much more.

The Vivobook’s keyboard is very good, with large keycaps and plenty of spacing even with the anachronistic numeric keypad. That’s another nod to old-school computing when laptops like the XPS 16 and Envy 16 gave them up. Both of those laptops have speakers to each side of their keyboards while Asus placed them to the sides of the chassis, so that’s one difference.

Another way that the Vivobook Pro 15 OLED is stuck in the past is in its use of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050, which is a generation old. Asus used a current-gen Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, so the RTX 3050 was an odd choice (more cost-cutting?). The Core Ultra 7 155H is a 28-watt Meteor Lake chipset with 16 cores (six Performance, eight Efficient, and two Low Power Efficient) and 22 threads, and it features the NPU mentioned above. Right now, the NPU doesn’t affect performance, but we’ll see how that changes over the next year or two.

One thing I’ll note is that although the chassis didn’t get hot, the fans were very loud in performance mode. They were louder than the fans on the XPS 16 and XPS 14 by a significant margin. So, if you need to work in a quiet environment, that’s something to keep in mind.

Nevertheless, the Vivobook did a lot with its components. It’s one of the faster laptops we’ve reviewed with the Core Ultra 7 155H. Its RTX 3050 was, unsurprisingly, slower than the RTX 4050 in the XPS 14 in synthetic benchmarks, but it was still reasonably faster than integrated graphics. In our CPU-intensive benchmarks, the Vivobook was at least as fast as more expensive machines. In a couple of tests, it was a bit faster. It fell behind the XPS 14 in the GPU portion of Cinebench R24, but interestingly, it was faster in the 3DMark Time Spy test.

Given that last result, I’m not surprised at the Vivobook’s performance in the Pugetbench Premiere Pro benchmark that runs in a live version of Adobe’s Premiere Pro. On Windows laptops, the benchmark can use a discrete GPU for speeding up various tasks, and that has a significant impact on scores. The Vivobook Pro 15 OLED was 11% faster than the XPS 14, and that showed up in the individual elements of the benchmark.

That makes the Vivobook a good choice for less-demanding creators who want an affordable laptop that provides usable performance. It won’t knock anyone’s socks off but it’ll be faster than laptops without a discrete GPU, and its older GPU doesn’t hold it back. It will also meet very demanding productivity needs. What it won’t do is serve as a gaming laptop for more than esports titles and older games running at 1080p and with reduced graphics.

As mentioned earlier, the Vivobook’s OLED display is in the old-school 16:9 aspect ratio that’s not as comfortable for productivity work. And, at just Full HD (1920 x 1080) and 15.6 inches, it’s not sharp enough. But it’s an OLED display, making it a sort of an odd duck among competing laptops.

It’s a very good display even given its limitations. Its colors are wide (100% sRGB, 98% AdobeRGB, 100% DCI-P3) and accurate with a DeltaE of 1.19 (less than 1.0 is considered excellent). It’s also bright at 398 nits and it has OLED’s usual perfect blacks and near-infinite contrast. So, it’s a great display for productivity users and creators alike, as long as they don’t mind a lower-resolution display. Many users might not, given the positive impact on battery life.

Two side-firing speakers provide plenty of volume and clear mids and highs. There was a touch of distortion when turned all the way up, and I had to turn things down to about 50% to tame it. Bass wasn’t very present, so you’ll want to keep a pair of headphones handy, especially when the fans are their loudest. The XPS 14 and XPS 16 both have better sound systems.

The Vivobook Pro 15 OLED Q533 isn’t the most exciting 15-inch or larger laptop I’ve reviewed. It’s not the most modern, it’s not the fastest, and it doesn’t have a single standout feature that made writing this review a lot of fun.

What it does have, though, is a very attractive price and enough performance and display quality for anyone who wants to do some lightweight creative work on the go. You could spend a lot more and get a much better laptop. But, you don’t have to when you can spend a lot less for more than good enough.

Editors’ Recommendations