Snapdragon X Elite has had me nervously excited for the past few months. The promises were big and the benchmarks from Qualcomm’s own reference laptops were encouraging.
But these results were picked to put the company’s chip in the best light (this is marketing, after all) and we didn’t know anything about battery life other than some big numbers being thrown around Microsoft Build and Computex 2024.
And now that I’ve been using the Asus Vivobook S 15 with the new arm-based silicon for a while, I can say one thing for sure: Qualcomm wasn’t kidding. Microsoft is looking for the big moment to take over the M3 MacBook Air and all of Apple Silicon. Snapdragon X Elite laptops are ready to do just that.
From the impressively fast performance during my day-to-day work (including some prosumer tasks) to the massive 70Wh battery life, Arm is a complete turnaround from the x86 story we always see in the best Windows laptops from semi-decent performance and poor battery life.
There are a few reasons to be a little hesitant. The design is very ordinary, Copilot+ PC features take a while to launch due to security risks, and the wait time for native Arm versions of all your favorite apps can also be long.
But similar frustrations haven’t stopped me from loving my M1 MacBook Air in 2020. And thanks to that shocking endurance combined with highly competitive speeds, it hasn’t stopped me from ushering in the revolution that Windows has long wanted.
Asus Vivobook S 15: cheat sheet
- What is it? A super premium laptop – one of the first with the brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip!
- For who is it? For people looking for a large screen laptop that perfectly combines great performance with great battery life.
- How much is it? You can buy one for $1,299 / £1,299.
- What do we like? The OLED screen is mouth-watering (of course), and Snapdragon X Elite is a tectonic shift in the kind of endurance and speed you expect from a Windows laptop.
- What do we not like? The much-hyped Copilot+ PC features have been delayed, Arm versions of apps will also take a while (which means you’ll have to rely on a largely consistent translation layer). And while it certainly feels premium, this laptop looks a bit boring.
Asus Vivobook S 15: specifications
| Header cell – Column 0 | Asus Vivobook S 15 |
|---|---|
| Price | $1,299 (starting) |
| Display | 15.6-inch 3K OLED with 120Hz refresh rate |
| CPU | Qualcomm Snapdragon |
| GPU | Qualcomm Adreno GPU |
| RAM | 16GB LPDDR5X (up to 32GB) |
| Storage | 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD |
| Gates | 2x USB-4, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, MicroSD card reader, HDMI 2.1, 3.5mm audio jack |
| Connectivity | WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 |
| Dimensions | 13.9 x 8.9 x 0.6 inches |
| Weight | 3.1 pounds |
Asus Vivobook S 15: what I liked
This is our first foray into the world of Snapdragon X Elite – and the love affair with Qualcomm has already begun. But first, a quick warning: these test results are mine and not numbers from our testing lab. Rest assured, you’ll see our official numbers soon!
It’s (usually) faster than an M3 MacBook Air
Snapdragon X Elite has the MacBook Air M3 in its sights – something Qualcomm is reluctant to admit. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the Vivobook S 15 absolutely holds its own in terms of performance.
| Header cell – Column 0 | Asus Vivobook S 15 (Snapdragon X Elite) | MacBook Air (M3) |
|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 6 single core | 2418 | 3082 |
| Geekbench 6 multi-core | 14352 | 12087 |
| Handbrake (time to transcode a 4K movie to 1080p) | 6:50 | 7:19 |
It’s not the 28% performance boost the company touted, which may mean lowering the TDP (the total wattage powering the chip) of retail laptops to better balance performance and battery life, but multicore tasks and rendering processes rush by at a faster pace than you see on the MacBook Air M3.
What does that mean? Edits in Photoshop are faster, transcoding and exporting videos is quicker, and multitasking is handled much better than you’ll see elsewhere in the laptop space. All of this happens while your fans barely create a storm either. Thermal management is certainly a lot better here, with temperatures barely reaching the levels I felt on other Intel or AMD laptops.
Interestingly, some 3D Mark tests rely on x86 architecture, meaning the benchmark must go through Prism translation. For general use of apps that aren’t built for arm, this emulator works fine, but in the numbers shown you’ll notice that the emulation adds another layer of workload on top of X Elite.
| Header cell – Column 0 | Asus Vivobook S 15 (Snapdragon X Elite) | Huawei MateBook |
|---|---|---|
| 3DMark Time Spy | 2568 | 4048 |
| 3DMark fire attack | 5061 | 8708 |
| 3DMark Night Attack | 26284 | 29550 |
For games running on Windows on Arm, you’ll get a surprisingly good experience with Adreno’s integrated graphics. Baldur’s Gate 3 looks good and runs at a respectable 30 FPS, while Devil May Cry 5 (provided you reset some effects and texture details to a mix of Medium/Low) is able to chug along at a full 60 FPS.
When it comes to integrated graphics, Qualcomm is head and shoulders above the rest for a fast gaming outing without the horsepower of a discrete GPU. Intel Lunar Lake and AMD Ryzen AI 300 chipsets have a mountain to climb to get anywhere near energy efficiency here.
It lasts longer than a MacBook
In reality, the MacBook Air has been defeated before. Some Intel Core Ultra 9 setups, like the one in the Huawei MateBook X Pro, have achieved a faster multi-core score, but at the expense of battery life.
Here, however, with a mobile-first chip setup, the Vivobook S 15 had to go up against the might of the MacBook (in my own experience). Again, this is of course just a reflection of my own usage.
I’ll go into more detail soon, but to summarize: a full day of work with a lot of Photoshop use, more than twenty Chrome tabs, music in the background and followed by an evening of binge-watching Bridgerton with the lady on While Netflix in the background sneaked a look at the euro (don’t tell her I’m doing this) saw the battery percentage drop from 100 to 47 in the space of 12 hours.
This is a worry-free area for battery life for me. It’s a rare feat that only Apple laptops have enjoyed. But now Asus is also joining the party.
Let’s not forget everything else
Of course, there’s a whole laptop in here too, and the rest of the package is pretty nice too. That 16:9 OLED panel is super vibrant with nice 3K sharpness and a smooth frame rate. Combine that with the Harman/Kardon four-speaker array and Dolby Atmos – with a nicely detailed soundstage with a sneaky hint of bassy warmth – and you’ve got a lovely notebook for working on during the day and binge-watching at night.
The keyboard feels nice, meaning you can type to your heart’s content without any of the discomfort you’d expect from flat laptop keyboards, and the touchpad is huge, responsive and quick to click.
And some of the additional AI-driven features available here make for a really nice user-friendliness. Presence monitoring goes beyond just falling asleep when you walk away, as it can even dim the screen to extend battery life when you make eye contact with it.
Windows studio effects feel much more precise to use and start up a lot faster, and that NPU is used in more places in third-party apps than you might think – offloading intensive processes and easing CPU load to get that long lifespan to keep.
It’s not just a new chip for the sake of a new chip. Microsoft has put a lot of thought into where it applies.
Asus Vivobook S 15: what I didn’t like
There are a number of frustrations with the S 15 specifically, along with a bugbear that will fade into the background as you use it.
It’s a bit pedestrian, isn’t it?
Let me be clear. This isn’t about build quality. This aluminum construction feels nice and premium, while keeping things light and thin. But this is almost aesthetically utilitarian to a fault. What I mean by that is that there are no unique features to the frame or design details that suit the Snapdragon X Elite occasion here.
I’m not looking for over-the-top RGB flashes or bold styles that might end up embarrassing you when you show this notebook off in public. But when you look at this machine, you get more “family laptop” vibes than something that can actually get things done. Some people will find this understated design cool, but I wanted something more individual for this first foray into Arm.
Can we please stop using MicroSD? This is a *checks notes* 15-inch laptop – you’ll have room for a full-size SD card reader!
You’ll have to wait a while before you get everything
This covers two different areas. First, as you’ve probably read, Recall – the core Copilot+ PC feature – is being postponed due to major security concerns. This means a more gradual rollout of things that will really take this category of laptops into their own space.
And second, while the Prism emulation layer is largely reliable, there is some hokeyness with certain apps built for Intel or AMD chips. Given the vast and diverse ecosystem, this transition period will likely last longer than during Cupertino’s move from Intel to Apple Silicon. But fortunately, the most used apps are already Arm-enabled.
There will simply be some moments of frustration during this teething period.
Asus Vivobook S 15: Early verdict
And that’s the story of the Asus Vivobook S 15: a quiet, legendary laptop that puts Microsoft on a new path to truly tackle the mighty MacBook line.
Even without every feature promised for these Windows 11 machines touting a large enough NPU, you can feel a distinct difference in performance and longevity. So much so that you will feel the worries about battery life disappear.
Naturally, we’ll wait for the official benchmark results from our lab and the full suite of Copilot+ PC features to give it a score. But all signs point to this being a milestone. This is the start of something big.