ASUS VivoBook S14 S433: A complete review

Asus officially launched the VovoBook S14 model numbered S433FL on 30 July 2020, which is the latest model from its S series. Now, this is interesting. We have been using this laptop for the past two weeks. We are here before you dear readers to present a complete review of Asus VovoBook S14 S433.

The first look of this laptop is impressive and worth looking into. So let’s dive deep into the review world to rig it hard and go beyond the spec sheet.

Table of Contents

1 Design
2 Display
3 Performance
- 3.1 Graphics
- 3.2 Productivity
4 Keyboard
5 Battery Life
6 Audio
7 Operating System
8 Benchmarks
9 Pricing and Release Date
10 Conclusion
- 10.1 Share this:
- 10.2 Related

Design

The chassis of Asus VivoBook S is made entirely of Aluminium alloy, which in my view is the great heroic entry onto the stage, the first impressions are pretty good. The metal body looks premium and is smooth or what they say “diamond-cut design” is true bliss. The shiny chamfered edge is like icing on the cake. There is no way to dislike this premium looking Notebook.

Asus VivoBook S14 S433 comes in four stupefying colors that are: Gaia Green, Resolute Red, Dreamy White, and Indie Black. Currently, I am using the Black one and the top really feels so smooth on figures, it is soothing, oh really!

The enter key is colored somewhat greenish-yellow and they define this as “The yellow Gen Z Enter key represents an impression of overthrowing the old system and creating substantial change”. Hmm… this sounds energetic.

The laptop weighs 1.4 kg and is 15.9 mm thick. The laptop does not feel light in hand but it is similar to what we get with other laptops in a similar category. You cannot expect it to be lighter than this.

At the back, it has cooling fan vents and speakers on both sides. It also has cooling vents on the side (see the image below).

Talking about the ports on this device, on the right side, it has two USB 2.0 slots, a MicroSD card reader slot, and charging and battery indicators. On the left side, it has DC charging port, HDMI port, USB 3.2 Gen1, one USB-C Gen1, and a 3.5 mm combo audio jack.

Display

ASUS VivoBook S14 S433 has a 14-inch Full HD IPS display, which makes the device compact and easy to carry and for someone who needs to travel with his laptop on a daily basis.

The bezels on the sides are pretty thin and measure 5.7mm. On the top and bottom side of the screen, the bezels are not that thin but are ok. Asus describes this display as “NanoEdge Display” due to 85% screen to body ratio.

The top bezel houses a web camera, which is just ok. We expected a better web camera when nowadays we are focusing more on work and also study from home.

Viewing angles on this S433 is simply amazing. With 178 degrees of viewing angles, it offers exceptional color reproduction to deliver stunning visuals. Really this time they hit the ball high into the air and straight to the boundary. The viewing angles including the overall display quality is great and not only embellishes the spec sheet.

The VivoBook S14 features Asus’s Tru2Life Video technology that enhances clarity, color, and contrast in a video. It’s like a professional video editor that tweaks every video frame in real-time before you see it!

Performance

The version I am currently using sheathe quad-core 10th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-10510U processor and comes with up to 2GB NVIDIA® MX250 graphics. The other version comes with Intel Core i5-10210U that is 4 core 8 thread processor.

This laptop comes with up to 8 GB dual-channel memory, that is enough for me but the sad thing is that this is non-upgradable. This means that the ram is soldered to the motherboard. Though, in regular uses, I did not find any problem.

The boot time is splendid. In my tests, the boot time was about 7 sec. And all this is possible due to its 512GB of SSD. S433 has up to 512GB of PCIe® 3.0 M.2 SSD which really makes the application loading time minimum. There’s no delay, you just go straight to work. The storage is expandable up to 1Tb. S433 carries an additional slot so that the storage can be expanded to 2 Tb.

Graphics

NVidia GeForce MX250 Graphics accelerates the performance and is 3.5 times better than the integrated graphics. Though this is not a gaming laptop, that doesn’t stop us from gaming on our device. We ran 3 games to test the gaming handling capability of this device.

The first was VALORANT. Valorant is a free-to-play multiplayer tactical first-person shooter developed and published by Riot Games. The gameplay gave us around 60 fps. Another is Fortnight by Epic Games. We got around 30 fps throughout the gameplay. What excites us more is that the cooling fan was quite a throughout time. Absolutely, no fan noise was audible.

We went ahead to push its boundaries. We ran Forza, a very high graphic intensive game. To our surprise, it ran at 30 fps, but after 15 minutes of play, the fan noise was audible. It is really applaudable to see a light-gaming laptop even to run this game.

To see the gameplay test, watch our video on a full review of Asus Vivobook S14 S433 on our youtube channel Stuffbox.

New Asus Vivobook S14 S433 Unboxing & Review!

Productivity

We also tested VivoBook S14 S433 for editing stuff. The software used were Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro. We edited a 4K video and the laptop was pretty good at handling the workflow and the rendering.

VivoBook S14 has built-in dual-band Intel WiFi 6 with Gig+ (802.11ax) wireless network card which offers speeds of up to 2.4 Gbps and provides up to 3X-higher throughput and 4X network capacity of WiFi 5 (802.11ac). The network card incorporates Bluetooth® 5.0 for connection to Bluetooth-enabled devices.

Keyboard

The keys are well spaced and the key width is also good. Keys has 1.4 mm of travel. The keyboard is backlit (can be turned on by pressing the F7 button), which makes typing possible in dark. Asus claims that the keyboard is spill-proof, but we haven’t tested it.

The fingerprint scanner is pretty fast and definitely adds to the pros of this laptop.

The overall look of the keyboard is good but it lacks a bit on the felt side. The keyboard is flexing a little and in my case, the shift key feels a little annoying. Occasionally it makes a noise, but that’s not a case with other keys. We would rate the keyboard 8/10.

Battery Life

After the performance segment, this is the second feature to fall in love with if I recommend this laptop. Asus claims 15 hours of battery life. In our review, this lasted around 10 hrs when fully charged, with normal uses. Asus VovoBook S14 S433 lasted a whole day with a single charge. The fast boot time, single time charge made the user experience smooth and hassle-free.

Asus also incorporates different charging modes to maximize the life of its Lithium-ion batteries.

Audio

The audio quality on this laptop is very good. The audio system is certified by Harman/Kardon. I would not say that this laptop has the best speakers talking about loudness, but it is good.

To listen to the audio test, watch our review video on Stuffbox.

Operating System

Asus VovoBook S14 S433 comes pre-loaded with Windows 10 Home and Office Home and Student 2019.

Benchmarks

We ran different benchmarks on this laptop to test the performance. Remember that these benchmarks are for the test specification:

CPU: Intel Core i7-10510U GPU: NVIDIA GeForce MX250 RAM: 8GB 2666MHz Storage: 512GB PCIe Gen3 x2 SSD

Here are the results for the same.

Cinebench: Stands at 1128 point
Geekbench: Single-core score: 1212 Multi-core score: 3607 PCMark 10 Score: 3709 3DMark Score (Time Spy): 1259 Userbenchmark: This laptop stands at 83% in the desktop segment, which is pretty good. Passmark: Asus VovoBook S14 S433 scored 2694.6. Disk performed very well in this rating. Novabench: This laptop scored 1784 in this test.

Pricing and Release Date

In my opinion, pricing has always been the deciding factor in the majority of the cases. Asus VovoBook S14 S433 starts at the price of 67990 Rupees for the i5 variant and 78990 for the i7 variant. Asus launched this VovoBook S14 S433 on 30^th July 2020. Check the detailed price and best buy link at the end of this article.

Conclusion

The metal built looks premium and the viewing angles are great with great quality of display. The boot time and the pretty fast fingerprint scanner makes the startup bliss. The battery backup is great and the laptop does not heat-up. In my review, this laptop really stands out with overall performance in this price range. Go for this laptop, Asus VivoBook S14 S433 will not disappoint your perfect laptop dreams.