ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA Review: Pricey But Adequate

ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA: At First Glance

The ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA is one of the best laptops ASUS has come up with in a while. This laptop comes as an upgrade to its predecessor – the ASUS Vivobook S15 S510.

As befitting an upgrade, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA features exciting features such as an Ergolift hinge and powerful hardware specifications.

However, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA is quite expensive compared to its predecessor. Nevertheless, the laptop’s expensive price tag shouldn’t discourage you considering its good qualities.

Speaking of its price, when I wrote this review in February 2022, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA starts at $1,399.00. Having talked about its price, read on to find out if this laptop will offer enough value for its price.

ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA: Design, Dimension, and Weight

ASUS has really done a remarkable job in the ASUS Vivobook S15’s design. To give more details, this laptop comes with an aluminum chassis and a look that will attract lots of attention.

Furthermore, the laptop is available in several distinctive and unique colors that you can choose from. These colors include forest green, star gray with yellow trim, silver blue, star grey with red trim, and gunmetal.

That said, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA features a lid that has a smooth surface. As expected, there is a shiny silver “ASUS” logo at the center of this lid.

Moreover, this lid is securely held in place by an Ergolift hinge. The Ergolift hinge helps to slightly push the keyboard forward to improve typing when the lid is opened.

Upon opening the lid, you will see a 15.6-inch display surrounded by thin plastic bezels that almost blend with the display. Impressively, there is an ”ASUS VivoBook” inscription boldly written at the center of the bottom bezel.

Moreover, despite being so thin, ASUS manage to create space at the top bezel to accommodate an HD webcam and microphone.

This HD webcam can be used for taking pictures as well as video conferencing calls. However, taking pictures often with this webcam isn’t advisable because it produces blurry images.

Back to the display, it has an FHD (1920 x 1080) resolution. Thankfully, this resolution makes display content colorful, sharp, and clear.

Furthermore, this laptop’s display offers a matte finish and excellent viewing angles. With its matte finish, the display is capable of handling reflection properly.

Also, thanks to the excellent viewing angles, the picture quality will not reduce when you view the display off-center.

Having talked about the display of this laptop, let’s proceed to its base. On the base of this laptop, you will find an island-style keyboard.

The keyboard offers a comfortable typing experience thanks to its responsive keys.

Impressively, this keyboard features a full number pad on the right side. This will be of benefit to users that work with numbers a lot.

That’s not all, the laptop’s island-style keyboard is also backlit. Therefore, typing in a dark room or dim area shouldn’t be an issue.

Moving on, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA features a spacious touchpad just below the keyboard. The integrated touchpad has a smooth surface and it is very responsive.

Another impressive feature of this laptop is its fingerprint sensor located at the top-right corner of this touchpad. This fingerprint sensor works well for securing the laptop from unauthorized access and allowing for biometric login via Windows Hello.

Despite being slim, the ASUS equipped the Vivobook S15 S530UA with a decent amount of ports. On the left side of the laptop, there are two USB 2.0 ports, LED indicators for charging, and a microSD card.

Meanwhile, on the right side, there is a USB 3.1 port, a USB Type-C port, an HDMI port, a charging port, and a headphone combo jack.

Moving on, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA measures 361.4 x 243.5 x 18 mm (W x D x H) and weighs 1800 g. Comparatively, this laptop is slimmer and less heavy than the Acer Aspire E 15.

To give more details, the Acer Aspire E 15 measures 381.0 x 259.1 x 30.5 mm (W x D x H) and weighs 2131g.

In summary, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA offers impressive design specs which include stunning color options and thin bezels. Furthermore, the laptop comes with a decent number of ports despite its slim build.

Considering all I have discussed in this section, I will rate the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA an eight out of ten.

ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA: Processor (CPU) Performance

The ability for any good laptop to perform efficiently lies majorly in its processor. This means that when the processor is powerful, the laptop will deliver effectively.

Thankfully, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA features a powerful quad-core Intel Core i7-8550U processor. This processor has a base frequency of 1.60 GHz and a maximum frequency of 3.30 GHz.

The processor also has a 6 MB cache memory. Furthermore, with this processor, be rest assured that the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA will deliver adequate performance for handling most computing tasks.

That said, let us discuss the Cinebench R15 test result of the laptop to further prove the performance of its processor. For clarity, Cinebench R15 is a benchmark tool for testing the proficiency of a computer’s CPU by evaluating its cores.

Hence, the results from this test are in two parts – single-core and multi-core.

For the single-core part of this test, only one of the processor cores is used in carrying out the task. Meanwhile, for the multi-core part of the test, all the processor cores are tasked.

As with every benchmark test discussed in this review, a high score on the Cinebench R15 test implies better CPU performance. So, according to the test result, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA scored 172 points in the single-core test and 729 points in the multi-core test.

Comparatively, the Vivobook S15’s score exceeds that of the Medion Akoya S6625 which uses the same Core i7-8550U processor. Specifically, the Medion Akoya S6625 scored 170 points in the single-core test and 627 points in the multi-core test.

Due to its outstanding performance in this processor review section, I will rate the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA an eight out of ten.

ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA: Memory (RAM) Performance

The ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA is equipped with a DDR4 2400MHz SDRAM on two slots. Furthermore, this laptop ships with a standard memory size of 8 GB.

Meanwhile, the memory capacity can be upgraded to a maximum of 16 GB RAM. Therefore, to upgrade the memory capacity from its standard 8 GB, you just need to add a second 8 GB RAM stick on the second slot.

However, with the standard 8 GB RAM, this laptop is quite proficient. Specifically, with this amount of memory, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA can handle most tasks including heavy multitasking.

Speaking of multitasking, this laptop can swiftly load 20 Chrome tabs without lagging or freezing. As a matter of fact, switching between these Chrome tabs will be very easy for the laptop.

To further evaluate the performance of the laptop with 8 GB RAM, let us now discuss its PCMark 8 result. The PCMark 8 is a benchmark tool that tests a laptop’s memory performance by simulating day-to-day tasks like web browsing.

Furthermore, the higher the score in this test, the better the memory performance of the laptop. In that regard, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA scored 3,711 points in the PCMark 8 test.

In comparison with the Lenovo Ideapad 530S, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA has a better memory performance. Specifically, on the same benchmark test, the Lenovo Ideapad 530S scored 3,643 points.

Hence, I will rate the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA an eight out of ten in this memory review section.

ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA: Storage Options and Performance

For storage, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA comes with 256 SSD storage. In my opinion, 256 GB of storage space might be insufficient for most people to save their files, documents, or applications.

Thankfully, this laptop comes with a media card reader for storage expansion.

That said, to test the storage performance of this ASUS laptop, let’s consider its CrystalDiskMark test result. However, for users who do not understand what CrystalDiskMark is, I will explain it in this next sentence.

CrystalDiskMark is a test tool that helps measure the performance of a computer’s storage drive. It does this by evaluating the read and write speeds of a storage drive.

For better understanding, read speed is how fast a storage drive opens a file. On the other hand, write speed is how fast the storage drive stores a file.

Moreover, on the CrystalDiskMark test, a high “MBps” value indicates a fast read and write speed. Thus, according to the test result, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA has a sequential read speed of 527.2 MBps.

In addition to that, this ASUS laptop also has a sequential write speed of 452.7 MBps.

Comparatively, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA performed better than the Dell Inspiron 13 7370 which also uses an SSD storage type. Specifically, on the CrystalDiskMark test, the Dell Inspiron 13 delivered a sequential read speed of 462.7 MBps and a sequential write speed of 439.9 MBps.

All things considered, I will rate the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA an eight out of ten in this storage review section.

ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA: Graphics Card Performance

The ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA is equipped with an integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620. This graphics card has a base frequency of 300 MHz and a maximum frequency of 1100 MHz.

However, as an integrated GPU, the GPU lacks a dedicated VRAM and shares the system memory with the processor. As a result, this GPU is not suitable for handling graphics-intensive tasks or playing high-end games.

Nevertheless, with this integrated GPU, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA is capable of running a few outdated games. For example, this laptop delivered a frame rate of 59 fps when playing Dirt 3.

To further evaluate the graphics performance of this laptop, let’s discuss its performance in a 3DMark test. Briefly, 3DMark is a benchmark tool that tests a computer’s graphics rendering performance.

Furthermore, a high score in this benchmark denotes better performance. Having said that, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA recorded 65,313 points in the test.

However, it fell short when compared with the Lenovo Ideapad 530S which scored 69,450 points on the same test. Therefore, I will rate the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA a seven out of ten in this graphics review section.

ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA: Battery Life and Performance

The ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA comes with a 3-cell 42 Wh Lithium-Polymer battery. According to ASUS, with this battery, this laptop can last about 8 hours.

However, to confirm this claim, let us now discuss the performance of the laptop on a battery rundown test. Moreover, this test involves continuous web surfing on the laptop via a WIFI connection till it runs low.

So, at the end of the test, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA delivered a battery life of 8 hours and 23 minutes. In comparison with the Lenovo Ideapad 530S, this ASUS laptop has longer battery life.

Specifically, the Lenovo Ideapad 530S delivered a battery life of 7 hours and 41 minutes, according to the same battery test.

All things considered, I will rate the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA an eight out of ten in this battery review section.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA comes with many exciting features which include a powerful processor and jaw-dropping color options. Moreover, this laptop is somewhat lightweight, which makes it easy to carry around.

Also, the laptop comes with a good number of ports and a fingerprint sensor. Besides, the laptop’s battery life is impressive and also longer than one of its closest competitors.

However, this ASUS laptop is quite pricey. Nevertheless, if you don’t mind its hefty price tag, the ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA is worth considering.

I hope you found this ASUS Vivobook S15 S530UA review helpful. If you found the review helpful, we would love to hear from you.

Kindly spare two minutes to share your thoughts with our community using the comments form below.

Alternatively, simply respond to the “Was this page helpful” question below and provide us with your feedback.

Finally, for more laptop reviews, visit our Laptop Reviews page. You may also find our Laptop Specs page very helpful.