After the launch of Windows 8, every manufacturer has rushed in to manufacture Ultrabooks with touchscreens, to provide the best possible user experience with the new OS. Unfortunately, most of these slim Ultrabooks tend to be very expensive, usually upwards of Rs 85,000, which is more than your regular MacBook Air.
There are, of course, notebooks available in the Rs 40K to 60K price bracket, but not many of them bear the Ultrabook tag or have a touch-screen interface for use with Windows 8. But now that touch has become the norm for not just Windows 8 but all new devices, some manufacturers have taken upon themselves the task of making Windows 8 Ultrabooks a bit more affordable.
One of the manufacturers to come out with a reasonably priced Ultrabook recently is the king of convertibles – Asus. Apart from its performance packing hybrids and tablets, we at Smartbuy have seen some time back that the Zenbook was also a good Ultrabook. This time, for nearly a week, we’ve been checking out the VivoBook S400CA to see if it matches the value for money proposition its older siblings have offered.
Well, it’s big. It really is! With most Ultrabooks, we’ve come to expect 11 or 13-inch screens and it’s been quite some time since we’ve seen a 14-inch notebook. Plus, if we expect the Ultrabook, we also expect a certain amount of slimness to be associated with the device. This, sadly, isn’t exactly very thin – 0.8-inches at the thickest point. At nearly 2 kgs, it’s not light either.
However, this mid-size notebook isn’t quite the porker that you might think it to be. The 2 kilos of machinery are distributed across the device in such a way that it doesn’t feel heavy while using it. Also, the base is proportionally heavier than the touch-screen (touch-screens are usually very heavy) hence making sure that the laptop doesn’t topple over backwards while using it (yes, we’ve met such devices in the past). It’s also designed in such a way that the thickest points do not meet the eye directly as it has a base that tapers towards the user.
The build quality is quite tough, with aluminium being the choice of construction material here. The top cover comes in a black, brushed-metal finish, which looks quite good. Being a mid-size laptop, the chiclet keys are very well laid-out and are extremely comfortable to type on. The trackpad too is quite wide enough and recognises multi-touch gestures, but after a while one mainly uses the touch interface on a Windows 8 device.
Tech onboard
The S400CA packs quite the punch, in terms of processing numbers at least. The processor is a third-generation Intel Core-i7 3517U chip that clocks at 1.9GHz and overclocks up to 2.4 GHz. For memory, it gets a 4GB DDR3 RAM. The hard drive on this one is a 500GB SATA one, but as Windows 8 itself is a fast OS, a solid state drive isn’t missed much.
The VivoBook has quite a few ports that are common with all the Ultrabooks – two USB 2.0s, one USB 3.0, a full size Ethernet port, HDMI, VGA, a 3.5mm headset port, a full-size SD card reader and a Kensington lock. Having said that, I feel that this Ultrabook could’ve had more port options as the size of the body allows it to have them. There could’ve been one more USB 3.0 or a USB sleep-and-charge port. Further, the size also allows the VivoBook to have an optical drive, which however, it doesn’t have.
Performance
For its price, the VivoBook performs just as it should – nothing more, nothing less. Watching 720p videos was quite a breeze, though I wish that the screen supported resolutions higher than the native 1366x768 pixels. With most of today’s notebooks, Full HD resolution has become quite common, and we’re all accustomed to working and viewing media on screens that have good pixel density. If the S400CA had been a sub-45k laptop, I would’ve thought that the resolution is justified. At nearly Rs 60,000, higher resolution is quite the expected norm.
The notebook contains two speakers nestled below the base, which, with the proprietary SonicMaster technology, make all audio sound good. The heat outlet, however, is not too well thought-out. When the lid is open the back heat vents direct the airflow on to the hinge, and the vents at the bottom start expelling really hot air after long, continuous usage.
During the tests, we got a battery life of nearly 4 to 4.5 hours, depending on different kinds of media that we played on it. Working with documents and presentations only can make the VivoBook run for nearly 5.5 hours.
On our standard NovaBench benchmark tests, we got an average score of 305 which is quite low as opposed to the new Samsung Series 5 and much low than the Lenovo U410’s 601 points. Both the Samsung and the Lenovo cost only Rs 2,000-5,000 more.
We say
The VivoBook S400CA is a good option for those who want the processing power of an Ultrabook, but aren’t in the dire need for a super-slim machine. The low resolution on a big screen is a bit of a turn-off, but only if the user watches 1080p videos. For Office apps, college-work and even basic professional work on the move, the VivoBook can handle all that.
Rs 59,000
Love – Good specs, strong build
Hate – Bulky, average graphics