Asus VivoBook Flip 14 (TM420IA-DB71T) – Review 2020

The Asus VivoBook Flip 14 (starts at $599; $699 for our TM420IA-DB71T test model) is an all-around capable convertible laptop powered by AMD. The Ryzen 7 processor in our test model is the laptop’s best feature, delivering better performance than its competitors. The VivoBook Flip 14’s build is adequate (though not a standout like some alternatives), it includes useful ports, and the battery life is in the ballpark of 10 hours. There are no major flaws here, but the Flip doesn’t quite reach the heights of the simply better Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 14. While the Asus does come out on top in performance, there’s a good bit of flex in the keyboard deck, its battery doesn’t last as long, and it costs $100 more. The latter retains its Editors’ Choice, but if you’re a performance-first budget shopper, consider the VivoBook Flip 14 too.

A Slick, Compact Convertible 

The construction and design of this laptop’s exterior are pleasing enough. The chassis is made of plastic, but it does not feel cheap, while remaining lightweight at 3.31 pounds. The paint is a nice black color with a hue that looks a bit dark-blue in a certain light; officially, it’s “Bespoke Black.” Black is, as always, slimming. 

The lightweight design is underpinned by a compact footprint, measuring 0.72 by 12.8 by 8.7 inches (HWD). This combination makes the Flip plenty portable, easy to slip in a bag or carry under your arm to a meeting or between classes. Fitting a 14-inch screen into this size makes it a useful productivity machine once you get where you’re going. When you remember how inexpensive the laptop is, it’s a nice package overall. The IdeaPad Flex 5 14 is the same weight and a touch thicker, while the HP Envy x360 13 is a tad lighter at 2.9 pounds.

The physical shape is supported by some important design features, as well. One of these is the hinges, which allow you to fold this laptop’s screen all the way back into tablet mode, or stop at any point in between. It folds easily, and the hinges are secure. They may be a bit too tight, in fact, as this laptop does not pass the one-finger screen-lift test. You’ll have to hold the body down as you pull open the screen from the closed clamshell position, lest you lift the system off the desk.

The hybrid design adds a lot of versatility for different use cases, whether used as a tablet to draw or write more easily, held as a tablet in one hand as you move around, or set up with the keyboard facing down and screen pointed toward you for an airplane tray table or a demonstration. 

The other feature is also related to the hinge, but not the convertibility. Asus’ ErgoLift hinge is deployed here, which means the bottom of the lid lifts the keyboard deck off the desk as you open the screen. This creates a slight incline for the keyboard, resulting in a more comfortable typing angle and allowing air to flow better. The latter is more useful in heat-throwing gaming laptops, but the tilt does make typing feel a bit more natural.

The Keyboard, the Display, and the Rest

On that front, the keyboard itself offers a so-so typing experience. The angle certainly helps, but the keys are a touch on the loose side. They lack satisfying feedback, and there’s a bit of wiggle room, as well as some flex in the center of the keyboard where it appears to sag slightly when typing. 

Indeed, unlike the exterior or lid, the keyboard deck as a whole shows some flex with a little pressure, especially above the keyboard. You can tell, in that regard, that this is a less expensive laptop, and it’s exaggerated by the fact that the deck is lifted off the desk in that area by the hinge. At least the exterior, where pressure is more likely, is more sturdy. For its part, the touchpad is a bit small, but smooth and responsive. It includes a fingerprint reader in its top right corner for secure sign-in, as well.

I mentioned the display’s size, but let’s back up for its specs and features. The 14-inch screen bears a full HD resolution and, naturally given that it can be rotated and used as a tablet, touch capability. The bezels are pretty slim, particularly on the sides, which is key in reducing the laptop’s footprint. The screen looks pretty sleek, blending into the design, and is one of the system’s best features. It appears big, looks sharp, and gets plenty bright. For the centerpiece of a hybrid laptop, it does its job well.

Rounding out the physical build, we come to the ports. While this is a pretty thin and compact laptop, it offers all the ports you’ll likely need, so kudos to Asus on that front. The left side holds just one USB 2.0 port, while the right flank offers a USB 3.0 Type-A port, a USB Type-C port, a full-size HDMI output, and a microSD card slot. There is no Thunderbolt 3 support here, but that is forgivable at the price. The laptop also includes a 720p webcam at the center of the top bezel (it delivers decent video quality), as well as support for Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth wireless connections.

Performance Testing: A Ryzen 7 Edge

Now, on to the components and performance. There are two models of this laptop, one at $599 and one at $699. Ours is the more expensive TM420IA-DB71T model, and it includes an AMD Ryzen 7 4700U processor with AMD Radeon Graphics, 8GB of memory, and a 512GB solid-state drive. The $599 version (model TM420IA-DB51T) drops the processor down to the Ryzen 5 4500U and the storage to a 256GB SSD, while all else remains the same. (See how we test laptops.)

To judge the benchmark results of this machine, I’ve gathered a group of competitor laptops to compare against. These are all inexpensive convertibles, priced right around the cost of the VivoBook Flip 14. You can see their names and specs in the table below.

Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests

PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system’s boot drive. Both tests yield proprietary numeric scores; higher numbers are better.

AMD’s 4000-series Ryzen processors have impressed us so far, and this one is no different. While PCMark 10 is not the test that will push a processor to its limit, the VivoBook Flip 14 still came out on top here. While an inexpensive system, it’s still capable (even a touch more so than the others) of multitasking and efficiently running your everyday programs. The storage is also speedy, though all of these SSDs will boot and load about equally quickly.

Next is Maxon’s CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads.

Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that’s highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video (the open-source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file. It’s a timed test, and lower results are better.

We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and add up the total. As with Handbrake, lower times are better here.

The Ryzen 7 chip flexes its muscles here, its eight cores and eight threads powering through these tasks relative to the others. Not all of these benchmarks show big leads over the next-best laptop, but most are pretty comfortable, and some of the competitors are way behind in some results. The sustained Handbrake test and somewhat sustained Cinebench test especially show the efficiency of the processor compared to others.

That doesn’t make this a specialized media workstation, granted, but you shouldn’t expect as much in this price range anyway. Those who need such a laptop for work or school will need to spend more, but for this category, you can perform some editing and encoding without painful wait times.

Graphics Tests

3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks. Sky Diver is more suited to midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores.

Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this case, it’s rendered in the eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario for a second opinion on each laptop’s graphical prowess.

Then we come to the 3D performance, which isn’t great on any of these laptops. Currently, integrated graphics don’t offer much power (this may change soon with Intel Iris Xe!) for gaming or any 3D task. The VivoBook Flip 14 is among the better options here, but not by much, and they’re still all in the low tier. This means you can do some simple and low-settings gaming, but mainstream and hardcore fans will want to look into a gaming laptop with a discrete GPU.

Battery Rundown Test

After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop in airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the same Tears of Steel short we use in our Handbrake test—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system quits.

The Flip’s battery life is good, but certainly not elite. Ten and a half hours is, on its own, a pretty good result. You’ll get a full day of classes or a commute off of that amount, so it’s not a weakness. If you’re a true road warrior and spend a very long time off the charger, though, you may want to consider one of the more enduring alternatives. The IdeaPad Flex 5 14 is the only option that is in a different tier of battery life altogether, though, while the others represent a modest improvement.

A Solid All-Rounder for Convertible Fans

The Asus VivoBook Flip is a good budget convertible with no major weak points. The build is compact and lightweight, it has a healthy selection of ports and a nice screen, and battery life is decent. The performance, in particular, is a strong suit, thanks to the Ryzen 7 chip, which tops the Ryzen 5 and Intel alternatives in machines around the same price. 

That said, those things don’t make it a great budget convertible. The build is solid enough on the exterior, but a little too flexible around the keyboard deck, and the keyboard is so-so. The battery life is merely okay, as well. These are the aspects that remind you this is an inexpensive laptop, but the same doesn’t apply to all machines in this tier. Compared to the designs of the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 14 and the HP Envy x360 13 (2020), the Asus is not as impressive. It does get extra points for performance, but at the end of the day, the IdeaPad Flex 5 14 is a superior laptop overall for $100 less and retains its Editors’ Choice. Still, if you’re concerned with raw CPU performance above all, the VivoBook Flip 14 has plenty of charm inside its shell.

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