Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED review - A new age of laptops with the new Snapdragon X Elite?

[Redaktion]

The Vivobook S 15 OLED was previously only available with AMD and Intel processors but now, the new ARM chip—the Snapdragon X Elite—makes its debut inside this large multimedia laptop. The result is a surprisingly normal laptop with an impressive OLED panel which, unfortunately, doesn't run all applications and games.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-Vivobook-S-15-OLED-review-A-new-age-of-laptops-with-the-new-Snapdragon-X-Elite.849575.0.html

[Neenyah]

Slightly worse battery life than Meteor Lake despite having larger battery and less performance.

Gets obliterated in every single regard at any power limit by all Ryzen 8000 CPUs, especially the 8840U.

Worse performance per Watt than both Meteor Lake and Ryzen 8000/7000.

GPU slower than Iris Xe 96 EU 🙇🙇🙇🙇🙇

And my favourite - 57.2 dB(A) fan noise is simply hilarious 😂😂 It gets louder (and hotter) than much more powerful gaming laptops.

Impressive feat by Qualcomm. "The PC reborn" as they said, lmao.

Edit: Recommended watch as he tested proper power limits with displays off, for actual total system usage: Impressive! But Also Not?! Snapdragon X Elite - Asus Vivobook S 15 Review (The Phawx on YT)

[RobinLight]

Slightly worse battery life than Meteor Lake despite having larger battery and less performance.

Gets obliterated in every single regard at any power limit by all Ryzen 8000 CPUs, especially the 8840U.

Worse performance per Watt than both Meteor Lake and Ryzen 8000/7000.

GPU slower than Iris Xe 96 EU 🙇🙇🙇🙇🙇

And my favourite - 57.2 dB(A) fan noise is simply hilarious 😂😂 It gets louder (and hotter) than much more powerful gaming laptops.

Impressive feat by Qualcomm. "The PC reborn" as they said, lmao.

Sorry, but what you are doing here is really painful, is it the American fake news style I've heard of?
You just picked some random facts without context or didn't you read the article?
The maximum noise level is only an issue when you pick the highest power setting for around 50 Watt. Here, it smashes the whole x86 competition!

In balanced mode at 35 Watt it's already beating the 8845HS at 54 Watt, so we don't even need to start talking about efficiency here. Your 8840U would not stand a chance even when putting the X Elite in silent mode.

And you may have heard, OLED display suck when it comes to power consumption and battery life time. Let's see further reviews before doing any conclusions.

Plus: Have a look on NBCs new efficiency article and see how wrong most of your statements are.

Furthermore the GPU is not slower than Iris. It's only an issue when Emulation is required. And of course there are tons of issues in games where Intel had years to optimize their drivers. Do you remember the disastrous performance when Intel's ARC got released?

[Neenyah]

In balanced mode at 35 Watt it's already beating the 8845HS at 54 Watt, so we don't even need to start talking about efficiency here. Your 8840U would not stand a chance even when putting the X Elite in silent mode.

The Phawx did a whole extensive video at different power limits. The X Elite beats nothing at any Watt-level: Impressive! But Also Not?! Snapdragon X Elite - Asus Vivobook S 15 Review
He literally shows in multiple measurements and benchmarks that performance per Watt is not better than on x86. The mentioned 8840U is demolishing it at any W you set - and it produces less heat.

Furthermore the GPU is not slower than Iris. It's only an issue when Emulation is required.

So it is not slower except it's slower always (because pretty much everything is emulated/translated)? Ok.

[1806X]

So it is not slower except it's slower always (because pretty much everything is emulated/translated)? Ok.

"Pretty much everything is emulated/translated"?

What a nonsense. First inform, then write.

[Neenyah]

So it is not slower except it's slower always (because pretty much everything is emulated/translated)? Ok.

"Pretty much everything is emulated/translated"?

What a nonsense. First inform, then write.

Yes, yes, everything is full of ARM-native Windows apps. Keep coping that Qualcomm's bs. Like this: https://imgur.com/a/rfJrfTY

Or this whole presentation from June 3, 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R3QpKMciEw

Some parts from it, right from the beginning:

"It is great, it is great, it is actually flattering to Qualcomm to come to this new space and prove ourselves as a leader in compute, and see all the competitors now benchmarking themselves against Qualcomm"

"The PC is truly reborn. It's the new era for PC and that is happening with a combination of Snapdragon X Elite and Copilot+. We are really making history together and the industry is actually taking notice."

"The personal computing experience is being redefined."

"It is all about delivering this whole new experience, with multiple days of battery life, unparalleled performance, and the efficiency to accelerate productivity and creativity"

Lol.

Real fun starts at 25:00: https://youtu.be/5R3QpKMciEw?t=1499

[Neenyah]

Using the new Snapdragon PCs for Productivity! Featuring Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 (Mash IT, YouTube)

There, terrible in everything but light usage such as surfing the web, watching movies etc. (any phone or tablet is equally good for that purpose for much lower price).

iGPU is useless, even DaVinci Resolve ARM version is struggling with how bad the iGPU is. But I need to inform myself before writing nonsense, okkkk...

[NikoB]

There, terrible in everything but light usage such as surfing the web, watching movies etc. (any phone or tablet is equally good for that purpose for much lower price

No. Screen size is critical in such tasks. On a smartphone, you can only watch simple sites based on the amount of information simultaneously visible on the screen. Just like on tablets, even 13". Real comfort starts at 16" 16:10. No. Screen size is critical in such tasks. On a smartphone, you can only watch simple sites based on the amount of information simultaneously visible on the screen. Just like on tablets, even 13". Real comfort starts at 16" 16:10.  Nothing can replace a 15.6"+ screen and a full keyboard.

[Rrussell263]

Slightly worse battery life than Meteor Lake despite having larger battery and less performance.

Gets obliterated in every single regard at any power limit by all Ryzen 8000 CPUs, especially the 8840U.

Worse performance per Watt than both Meteor Lake and Ryzen 8000/7000.

GPU slower than Iris Xe 96 EU 🙇🙇🙇🙇🙇

And my favourite - 57.2 dB(A) fan noise is simply hilarious 😂😂 It gets louder (and hotter) than much more powerful gaming laptops.

Impressive feat by Qualcomm. "The PC reborn" as they said, lmao.

Sorry, but what you are doing here is really painful, is it the American fake news style I've heard of?
You just picked some random facts without context or didn't you read the article?
The maximum noise level is only an issue when you pick the highest power setting for around 50 Watt. Here, it smashes the whole x86 competition!

In balanced mode at 35 Watt it's already beating the 8845HS at 54 Watt, so we don't even need to start talking about efficiency here. Your 8840U would not stand a chance even when putting the X Elite in silent mode.

And you may have heard, OLED display suck when it comes to power consumption and battery life time. Let's see further reviews before doing any conclusions.

Plus: Have a look on NBCs new efficiency article and see how wrong most of your statements are.

Furthermore the GPU is not slower than Iris. It's only an issue when Emulation is required. And of course there are tons of issues in games where Intel had years to optimize their drivers. Do you remember the disastrous performance when Intel's ARC got released?

When i had an asus laptop with the 7845HX, i set the power limit to 50 watts and reduced voltage by .3 points, whereupon it was able to hit 22000 multicore and 1.6k single core in R23. That's a good chunk faster than this CPU despite it being 3 years older, alongside lower thermals due to the better heatsink design. The funny part? It cost me 1000$ vs the asking price of this laptop at 1270$. I also had a 20W limited preset- that still wiped the floor with the Snapdragon. 16000MC 1300SC.

[RobinLight]

The Phawx did a whole extensive video at different power limits. The X Elite beats nothing at any Watt-level
He literally shows in multiple measurements and benchmarks that performance per Watt is not better than on x86. The mentioned 8840U is demolishing it at any W you set - and it produces less heat.

This has been one of the first reviews of the Asus notebook and his results are weired, I guess he had no time to do the important Windows update. His Cinebench 2024 results in MT are much lower when using 20 Watt Energy Saving profile: 541 vs 786 in NBC. The NBC measurements are very similar to other tests at this level... so the whole conclusion of the video is wrong. 😂

So you should never trust a single source.

[RobinLight]

When i had an asus laptop with the 7845HX, i set the power limit to 50 watts and reduced voltage by .3 points, whereupon it was able to hit 22000 multicore and 1.6k single core in R23. That's a good chunk faster than this CPU despite it being 3 years older, alongside lower thermals due to the better heatsink design. The funny part? It cost me 1000$ vs the asking price of this laptop at 1270$. I also had a 20W limited preset- that still wiped the floor with the Snapdragon. 16000MC 1300SC.

😂😂😂😂
That's a lot of nonsense. First, the 12-core 7845HX has been introduced in 1/2023 while the first devices were available in March... so it's barely more than a year old rather than 3.

Second, you have no idea how TDP settings work. This is a Dragon Range desktop CPU in a notebook! You should measure the full system power drain from the socket like NBC does it to see what's really going on. Little hint: Under multi-core load like Cinebench this CPU easily sucks 200 Watts energy (no graphics, just CPU and system)!
Even my more modern 4nm 7840HS Phoenix with 8 cores having a TDP of 35W sucks up to 100W from the socket.

So until Zen 5 there is no competition in true mobile notebooks for X-Elite.

[Rrussell263]

When i had an asus laptop with the 7845HX, i set the power limit to 50 watts and reduced voltage by .3 points, whereupon it was able to hit 22000 multicore and 1.6k single core in R23. That's a good chunk faster than this CPU despite it being 3 years older, alongside lower thermals due to the better heatsink design. The funny part? It cost me 1000$ vs the asking price of this laptop at 1270$. I also had a 20W limited preset- that still wiped the floor with the Snapdragon. 16000MC 1300SC.

😂😂😂😂
That's a lot of nonsense. First, the 12-core 7845HX has been introduced in 1/2023 while the first devices were available in March... so it's barely more than a year old rather than 3.

Second, you have no idea how TDP settings work. This is a Dragon Range desktop CPU in a notebook! You should measure the full system power drain from the socket like NBC does it to see what's really going on. Little hint: Under multi-core load like Cinebench this CPU easily sucks 200 Watts energy (no graphics, just CPU and system)!
Even my more modern 4nm 7840HS Phoenix with 8 cores having a TDP of 35W sucks up to 100W from the socket.

So until Zen 5 there is no competition in true mobile notebooks for X-Elite.

What sounds like a lot of nonsense is this defense- I don't know how TDP settings work? I hold the world record in 11800H performance in XTU.
I would post the link to it, but the site is refusing to allow me to post links.
The name is The_crusher on HWBOT.
I probably have one of the most intimate understandings of laptop power limits and undervoltage in the world.

As for your assertions of my understanding of TDP- I used a 90W power supply for the Dragon Range during the time i underclocked my computer- hence the underclock. My power brick for the laptop died and i was forced to use a severely underpowered laptop power supply. You know what's really funny is the assertion that the chip can pull more than 90W. Despite trying even shunt mods on the power input, it never pulled more than 90W, even with the core at full bore. The laptop required a charge to boot, but after it entered windows it was possible to use it without the battery dying/the power brick pulling more than rated caps.

If what you say is true about them pulling 200W, that would leave literally nothing for any of the other components on the board in a modern laptop. Still you have configurations with 230W power bricks and that's powering both a 4080 AND a 7845hx. Max TDP is 87W, even during multithreaded applications as evidenced by the multitude of reviews on the CPU.

200W from the wall is possible but the core itself is NOT hitting anything above 87W. Otherwise cooling it would be impossible in the majority of laptops. 

Either you're being flagrantly misunderstanding for trolling effect, or you're simply just uneducated in the space. Whatever it is, doesn't matter, I still pity you.

[RobertJasiek]

I would post the link to it, but the site is refusing to allow me to post links.

Anybody can post links by omitting the protocol, e.g., I as a guest:

www.google.com

[edram]

Hhhhmm... this Snap Dragon whatever is very expensive. correct me if I'm wrong but one can buy a MacBook Air 15 for almost the same money right?

[Vegas Boy]

I was hoping that all this would be passive and silent just like Air from Apple. No, I don't want it like that (and for that kind of money).