Review on 💻 ASUS VivoBook S13 Thin and Light Laptop, 13.3” FHD Display, Intel Core i5-1135G7 CPU, 8GB LPDDR4X RAM, 512GB PCIe SSD, Windows 10 Home, Fingerprint Reader, Dreamy White by Aaron Ali

I bought this machine as a portable home server. Its whole function is to run my automation programs 24/7. So how I use it is probably very different from how the average consumer uses it. That being said, as mentioned, here are the pros and cons I've come across so far. Pros: - Thunderbolt 4 - Compact and lightweight - 11th gen Intel i5 - New Iris Pro graphics - Slight beveling of the screen - Fast charging - Upgradeable RAM and M.2 - Loads insanely fast (1.8 seconds) - Very fast Trackpad, durable and beautiful Cons: - Weak keyboard backlight - Sound isn't very good (come on, it's a tiny laptop) - Slight bleed on the top corners of the screen - Exhaust vents are right behind the kbd - not on the bottom of the laptop - McAffee A/V integrates with the OS in a number of ways (more on that below) - Softkeys Verdict: At $665, this is a decent laptop for my needs. It sits on my desk with the screen closed and I access it remotely. I put a $35 laptop cooling pad underneath, which proves useless since there are no exhaust fans on the bottom of the unit. The keys are softer than expected and the keyboard backlight is very dim. On the other hand, the trackpad is actually very good. It has an in-display fingerprint scanner and so far it's pretty accurate. When the background is all black there are a lot of highlights and I was really shocked that it was actually that bad. Luckily I won't be using the screen that much. I could still return it because of that, I doubt it. McAffee A/V is embedded fairly deeply into the operating system. I had to use Revo Pro to get rid of all traces of him and he struggled to fight back. There are audio/video folders on C drive that can't be deleted even as an administrator and it's not bueno. But is it fast? Yes. It loads in 1.8 seconds, runs my Photoshop with no problems, as well as my automation programs (which are pretty CPU/RAM intensive). I haven't tried playing any games with it as it's more of a creative and business machine. I'm sure it will work for some simple games. My final score: 3/5.