Asus has just announced its first Snapdragon X Elite laptop: the Asus Vivobook S 15. The announcement comes on the heels of Microsoft’s announcement ahead of its BUILD conference kicking off today. The announcement underscores a shift in Microsoft’s strategy for Windows to focus on Copilot integration but more significantly to adopt the ARM-based x64 architecture which could impact both AMD and Intel.
The new laptop complements ASUS’s current Vivobook lineup which champions both performance and affordability. The ASUS Vivobook S 15 is also the first laptop from ASUS to run Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite. The new System on a Chip (SoC) brings a brand new paradigm to Windows unlocking performance a lot of us have been looking for from a thin and light laptop. The new Snapdragon X Elite is the first made-for-PC chipset from Qualcomm to be widely adopted in the new Copilot+ PC label from Microsoft. The SoC is optimised for performance and battery life which includes heavy graphics work and even some gaming.
Qualcomm’s SoC comes with its Oryon CPU and Adreno GPU. More significantly it comes with the company’s Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU) that will enable a number of AI features from both Microsoft’s Copilot and ASUS. The SoC will be complemented by up to 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD Memory.
The Vivobook S 15 is replacing the previous model that ran on Intel’s Core processors. The new laptop will be equipped with a 15.6-inch, 3K ASUS Lumina OLED display with a resolution of 2880×1620 pixels. The display is also colour-calibrated to cover 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut and is certified with DisplayHDR True Black600 with an average Delta-E of less than 1 and 600 nits peak brightness.
It will also come with an FHD IR camera for Windows Hello. This camera will also come with ASUS AiSense with Windows Studio Effect, ASUS Adaptive dimming and ASUS Adaptive lock. The Viviobook S 15 is also equipped with WiFi 7 paired with Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity. Like all ASUS laptops, it will also have the ASUS ErgoSense touchpad that comes with smart gestures and silent touchpad technology. The ErgoSense keyboard also comes with single-zone RGB backlighting.
The Vivobook S 15 is also coming with a full array of ports including an Audio jack and HDMI 2.1 port and a microSD card reader. It will also have two USB 4.0 ports and two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports. All of these will be powered by a 70wH battery that is touted to deliver 18 hours of battery life. It will charge with a 90W AC adapter.
Together with all this hardware, the ASUS Vivobook S 15 will also feature a lot of Copilot integration including a dedicated Copilot key. Features like Co-Create and Recall will be available on the laptop together with either Microsoft Windows 11 Home or Pro.
Pricing & Availability
The ASUS Vivobook S 15 will be available soon worldwide. Pre-orders were announced for the US during the live stream. The retail pricing will start at USD$1,299 (RM6,096.40).
ASUS Malaysia indicates that the Vivobook S 15 will be available in Malaysia starting Q3 2024. That would mean sometime between July to September 2024.