By Siddharth Mathew Cherian

Copyright thehindubusinessline

Asus has been steadily carving out a niche for its Vivobook line-up—laptops that marry everyday usability with a splash of personality. The new Vivobook S16 takes that formula to a bigger canvas, quite literally, with a 16-inch OLED display, Snapdragon underpinnings, and a design clearly angled at millennials who want their tech to double up as a style statement. I spent some time with the S16 to see if it lives up to the promise of being an all-day performer that looks as good as it works.

The ASUS Vivobook S16 embodies the classic Vivobook aesthetic with a sleek, slim, and metallic chassis. Its 16-inch form factor is well-balanced, measuring 35.7 cm by 25 cm with a thickness of 1.79 cm. Weighing in at 1.74 kg, the laptop feels substantial without being bulky, with its weight evenly distributed across the chassis.

The review unit I tested was the BFF Peachy colour, a striking metallic peachy-pink shade. The laptop is also available in Salvia Green. Both colour options feature a matte metallic finish, giving the device a premium look and feel, aimed at millennials.

The S16 comes equipped with a 16-inch OLED display featuring a resolution of 1920 x 1200, a 16:10 aspect ratio, and a peak brightness of 300 nits. The display produces vibrant colours, making it an excellent screen for media consumption on the go.

While watching The Bads of Bollywood on Netflix, the screen beautifully rendered the golden hues of each scene and the fast-paced action sequences in the climax. Videos looked crisp, and despite its glossy finish, reflections were well-managed, providing a good viewing experience.

The audio from the downward-firing speakers is decent. The speakers are located on the left and right sides of the laptop’s front. When playing songs with complex arrangements such as Kadhalikkum from Kadhalan or Boney M’s Rasputin, the speakers deliver good detail in the drums, percussion, and other instruments. However, the vocals tend to sound less prominent and lack depth. Despite this, the laptop’s sound quality is good enough to serve as an occasional party jukebox.

The keyboard on the S16 is decent, and the large plastic keys make for a comfortable typing experience while typing long documents. However, the keys feel a bit soft and lack tactile key travel with each keystroke. The large trackpad is a definite highlight, offering good palm rejection and a natural feel that makes an external mouse unnecessary for most tasks. A glass trackpad would have made the experience even better, but the current one performs just as well.

Performance

The laptop is powered by a Snapdragon X X1 26 100 processor with 8 cores, 8 threads, a 30MB cache, and clock speeds up to 2.97GHz, complemented by a Qualcomm Hexagon NPU delivering up to 45 TOPS for advanced AI tasks.

In Cinebench R24, the laptop scored 92 points in the CPU (Single-Core) test, ranking 5th overall, just behind the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X. In the CPU (Multi-Core) test, it achieved 556 points, placing 7th, trailing the Apple M1 Max.

For a change, I tried solitaire on Windows, as this laptop’s platform is meant for more productivity and media consumption, and it topped this front as well.

The laptop features CoPilot support which can easily help generate a rough script on Trump’s H-1B fees in a jiffy. The webcam is a full HD-capable one and is decent enough for the occasional video call, and has a physical shutter for those who are conscious about privacy.

I was able to export a 1-minute 30-second video along with basic transitions on Premiere Pro in under 56 seconds, and I found it quite handy, nonetheless, despite not featuring the higher-end Snapdragon X elite processor.

The laptop features two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, two USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C with support for display/power delivery, and an HDMI port. The ports are quite well featured, though a spare USB-C for power could have been fitted on the right-hand side, which would have made it truly flexible while on a desk docked with HDMI cables and peripherals.

The battery on the laptop was quite good, with the laptop being able to survive close to 10-12 hours connected to the net, typing scripts and playing music, and the occasional video. With just documents and spreadsheets, it lasted longer, for close to 12 hours. With the occasional casual games, video editing, and podcast products, it was able to last close to 4 hours. Charging using the supplied 65-watt USB-C charger, it was able to charge in about 1 hour and 30 minutes.

The ASUS Vivobook S16 builds on the strengths of the S14, offering a larger, more vibrant display and excellent single-core performance. This makes it an ideal laptop for both professional tasks and home use, all packed in a stylish design.

While the S16 faces stiff competition from rivals like the Acer Swift 3 and Lenovo IdeaPad 5 in battery life and price, its overall feature set and value proposition make it a compelling choice.

Asus Vivobook S16

Price: ₹98,990.

Pros: Great display, long battery life, ideal for office and home productivity work, modern design

Cons: Soft keyboard, 60Hz display, average sound

Published on September 24, 2025