Asus VivoBook K15 OLED Review: Fantastic display, decent performance

The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED comes with a good display, but what about performance and battery life? Here’s what you need to know if you’re looking for an all-around performer.

The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED is the company's latest slim Ryzen 5500U powered laptop, which boasts a high-quality OLED display.  (David Delima/ HT Tech)

Rating

3.5 out of 5

Price

INR 78,990/-

Product Name

VivoBook K15 OLED

Brand Name

Asus

Pros

• Excellent display
• General performance
• Fast storage
• Windows Hello support
• Backlit keyboard + Num keypad

Cons

• Struggles with heavy duty tasks
• Below average battery life
• Small trackpad

Specifications

• Display
  15.6-inch FHD OLED panel
• Processor
  AMD Ryzen 5500U 2.1 GHz (up to 4 GHz)
• Memory
  8GB DDR4
• Storage
  256GB SSD + 1TB HDD
• Battery and charging
  42Whr @ 65W
• Weight
  1.8 kgs

Asus has been launching thin and light laptops with its VivoBook series in India and the company is now bringing OLED displays to the range with the recently launched Asus VivoBook K15 OLED laptop. This laptop features a good quality display with decent hardware specifications which are light to hold — the company says these laptops are aimed at a younger demographic. Is the Asus VivoBook K15 OLED worth the ₹78,990 asking price? We've spent a week with the device and here's what we think.

Asus VivoBook K15 OLED review: Display and Design

Asus says that the VivoBook K15 OLED is made out of aluminium alloy and plastic — this is a light laptop at 1.8 kgs and it has a slim profile making it easy to carry around. The sides of the device are smooth and you can open the lid with one hand. The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED is sold in three colours Black, Silver and Gold — we received the former for review.

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The 15.6-inch FHD OLED display on the Asus VivoBook K15 OLED is easily the best hardware feature on this device. It supports a 100 percent DCI-P3 colour gamut and colours are displayed accurately on this device. Asus says the display is also DisplayHDR 600 certified and can show up to 1.07 billion colours, and almost any sort of content looks great on this screen. Re-watching Stranger Things on the bright OLED display looks great, and the moments when the background goes truly black looks great on this display.

The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED has one of the best panels we've seen this year in terms of brightness, clarity and colour reproduction. This image was clicked with ample daylight, yet most of the screen was clearly visible.  (David Delima/ HT Tech)

The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED has one of the best panels we've seen this year in terms of brightness, clarity and colour reproduction. This image was clicked with ample daylight, yet most of the screen was clearly visible.  (David Delima/ HT Tech)

Another thing that is immediately noticeable is how bright the display on the VivoBook K15 OLED can get, especially when you are using the laptop outdoors. The display is crisp and clear even under bright sunlight, even if it's a little too reflective. Sitting at an outdoor cafe with this laptop means you will be able to see what you're typing without having to constantly adjust the display, and good viewing angles mean you'll have no issues watching a movie with a friend or two sitting nearby.

Asus has provided a full chiclet keyboard layout which offers a comfortable 1.4mm travel which takes a little getting used to — if you've been using a laptop without a numeric keypad. The Enter key has a bright border around it, but it appears to be mostly cosmetic and Asus could have probably skipped this for aesthetic purposes. The touchpad isn't the largest we've seen at this price point, but it gets the job done. The VivoBook K15 OLED also comes with a small fingerprint scanner but it is quite unreliable - a better location might have been the power button instead.

Asus VivoBook K15 OLED review: Performance

The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED is equipped with the AMD Ryzen 5500U chipset with integrated Radeon Graphics, along with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a solid-state drive for the system. The VivoBook K15 OLED can handle most day-to-day tasks with ease. We ran a few synthetic benchmarks on the device and here's what we found.

On PCMark 10, the Asus VivoBook K15 OLED performed well on all tests except rendering and visualisation and for video editing. Pinch to zoom image or open in new tab for more details.  (David Delima/ HT Tech)

On PCMark 10, the Asus VivoBook K15 OLED performed well on all tests except rendering and visualisation and for video editing. Pinch to zoom image or open in new tab for more details.  (David Delima/ HT Tech)

The VivoBook K15 OLED scored 5,000 on PCMark 10, with an Essentials score of 8,487, a Productivity score of 7,689, and a Digital Content Creation score of 5,200. The lowest scores were for rendering and visualisation and for video editing with 4,946 and 3,691 respectively. On 3DMark, the VivoBook K15 OLED scored 10,832 and a combined score of 9,820 while the Physics score was 12,700. Meanwhile, on Geekbench, the VivoBook K15 OLED got 514 and 3147 in single and multi-core tests, while on Novabench, the device scored 1,465 with a CPU score of 764 and a GPU score of 347.

In real-world usage, the Asus VivoBook K15 OLED performed well while testing video meeting apps like Microsoft Teams, Skype and Messenger for Desktop. Browsing the web with around 40 or so tabs open didn't slow down the laptop - at one point, it was juggling the Spotify app, with several tabs open on Microsoft Edge, along with Microsoft Word and other productivity apps running in the background.

The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED comes with a chiclet keyboard with a numeric keypad. The trackpad rather small, and houses the fingerprint sensor with Windows Hello integration on Windows 10.  (David Delima/ HT Tech)

The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED comes with a chiclet keyboard with a numeric keypad. The trackpad rather small, and houses the fingerprint sensor with Windows Hello integration on Windows 10.  (David Delima/ HT Tech)

Thanks to the built-in SSD, apps are very quick to open and copying files across the system is not an issue. This laptop is not the best choice if you're editing photos or videos - rendering a 4K video shot on an iPhone took very long and crashed more than once, while editing photos resulted in the desktop freezing up completely for over five seconds. However, when it comes to day to day tasks, the VivoBook K15 OLED is able to handle nearly anything you throw at it.

Asus VivoBook K15 OLED review: Battery life

When it comes to battery life, the Asus VivoBook K15 OLED had us a little worried on the first run, where it only lasted 2.5 hours, but successive charge cycles took the battery life up to around 4 hours, with brightness set to half and mixed usage — social media, a few short video calls, streaming some video, some Spotify and typing on Word. Asus says the laptop has a 42Wh battery, and while this might be enough for light usage, you might find yourself reaching for your charger more than once during the day. You get a 65W charger in the box, which takes around two hours to go from 20 percent to full.

Final thoughts

The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED offers a large display that is sharp, bright and offers good colour accuracy. We would have liked to see slightly better performance in order to recommend this laptop for content creators, especially those working with video — especially considering how good the screen is to look at. It is worth noting that the Asus VivoBook K15 OLED is available in Intel and AMD variants. While the entry-level models that come with the Core i3 processors technically offer lower performance, they are also cost less than this model with the AMD Ryzen 5500U chipset, which is worth keeping in mind. However, we found that barring the slightly underwhelming battery life, the Asus VivoBook K15 OLED laptop offers a good balance between performance and design. As an entertainment device, this is one of the best displays that has come our way this year, and the overall performance in day to day tasks is more than adequate — if that is what you are looking for.