Asus laptop worth buying?

[RaiderX]

I'm looking at a new laptop for when I'm not gaming. I was looking at the following but it seems too good a price for the specs so wondering if anyone had any experience with these and if they were worth buying.

ASUS Vivobook 16 M1603QA​

16" 1920x1200 display
Ryzen 5 5600H
16GB 3200MHz DDR4 RAM
512GB Gen3 SSD
Price: £499

 

[[HB]Rugrat]

I think they've got the price down by using a fairly average IPS screen running at 60hz, where a lot of the rest of the Vivobook range use lovely, lovely OLED screens. It's using last-gen CPU, RAM and SSD (relatively speaking) but still very capable for most things you'd typically want a laptop for. It's good but I don't look at it and wonder if it's a misprice.

I went with a Zenbook when I was buying just because I caught a deal on a refurb, but I had been looking at a Vivobook just for the OLED screen at the price. The Vivobook obviously isn't as premium feeling as a Zenbook but, again, they're alright: it's not like it's creaking and flexing every time you touch it.

You can get Vivobooks with a slightly smaller 15.6" OLED screen and a newer generation Intel core I5 CPU (that I believe is still slightly outperformed in multi-threaded applications by the ryzen 5 5800H?) with 16gb RAM and 512gb SSD for a little bit more if you shop around and I guess there might be some decent deals around black Friday?

 

[jaybee]

Can highly recommend the Asus stuff with OLED screens. I recently got a 14 inch Zenbook with OLED screen for my son. Lovely machine, but can't comment for reliability yet. I've had a lot of laptops over the years, and the worst so far has unfortunately been the recent Lenovo cheaper stuff, as they have a major hinge failure epidemic. Otherwise HP, Dell, Toshiba, Acer have all been good for me.

 

[Firegod]

I've been looking at laptops around that price bracket but have been put off because of the cripplingly poor batteries in that range. All very low 3 cell jobbies - I think I may have even seen a 2 cell battery. You'd be lucky to get 2 hours before having to plug it in. Now Dell seem to be the only one that offer a nice 16" laptop with a very tasty 6 cell 86Wh battery (Lenovo come close with an optional upgrade to one of their IdeaPad laptops). I was monitoring the Dell price before black friday, waiting for a nice deal to appear and I swear the price went up then they've discounted it to what it was before! So I've never pulled the trigger but it is ~£800 and has no num pad, which is a shame. Looking at the run of the mill Acer and Asus offerings just seem underwhelming in the mid to lower price bracket.

 

[[HB]Rugrat]

FYI Costco are selling the 14" Vivobook with OLED screen (with 2.8k resolution and 90hz refresh rate), core i5 12500, 16gb ram and 512 SSD for £499.

 

[Mesai]

Usually when the specs are good and the price is low, the screen is terrible. The vivobooks are usually good value though but check the screen specs.

 

[roge8014]

I've had an ASUS TUF A15 for a couple of years now, my lad has his A17 for a bit longer. I had to replace the fans this year on both after they started making horrible grinding noises (almost started at the same time too) new fans cost roughly £40 for each machine. My A15 screen is now on its way out I can't use it with 144hz refresh I have to tweak it down so another £100 to replace the screen. To be fair both machine have been put through their paces over the few years. Build quality is much to be desired but I can't really grumble for the initial outlay.

 

[Firegod]

FYI Costco are selling the 14" Vivobook with OLED screen (with 2.8k resolution and 90hz refresh rate), core i5 12500, 16gb ram and 512 SSD for £499.

Wow you'd need eyes of an eagle. 14" at 2.8k res.

 

[Rotty]

I've had an ASUS TUF A15 for a couple of years now, my lad has his A17 for a bit longer. I had to replace the fans this year on both after they started making horrible grinding noises (almost started at the same time too) new fans cost roughly £40 for each machine. My A15 screen is now on its way out I can't use it with 144hz refresh I have to tweak it down so another £100 to replace the screen. To be fair both machine have been put through their paces over the few years. Build quality is much to be desired but I can't really grumble for the initial outlay.

yes build quality has always been poor compared to most, they are cheap so you have to decide if i's worth the trade off

 

[RaiderX]

My main use is going to be coding in VS so I wanted to avoid the OLED due to burn-in risk and the 16" has the 16:10 instead of the 16:9 of the oled. The display does seem to be the weak link as it's only 300nits and 49.6% NTSC instead of sRGB or DCI P3

 

[PishY]

Can recommend asus laptops too! Had a couple over the years, gaming ones, and normal everyday use ones, back to an asus eepc!

Never let me down!