Outstanding productivity performanceMostly attractive sầu aestheticAffordableActive pen is bundledUpgradable RAM and storage
Everyone likes a good budget máy tính. They might not seem as exciting as the lachạy thử & greachạy thử, but budget-oriented laptops have sầu their place. Not everyone has the resources or need for a laptop that costs well over $1,000, but everyone deserves something great. Locating a diamond in the rough can be a lot of fun.
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Most manufacturers have a distinct budget lineup, and in the case of Asus, that’s the VivoBook. Recently, the company released the updated VivoBook Flip 14, an AMD-powered 360-degree convertible 2-in-1 that’s meant to offer solid performance and an exciting experience at a budget máy tính price.
I reviewed the $629 VivoBook Flip 14 configuration (when Asus offers it on their site, it will retail for $600) that includes an AMD Ryzen 5 5500U CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB PCIe SSD, & a 14-inch IPS Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) display in the increasingly old-school 16:9 aspect ratio. You can also get a version with a 256GB SSD for just $529. That’s an attractive phối of components for the price, but does the VivoBook Flip 14 live up to lớn its value promise?
Design
The VivoBook Flip 14 is mostly plastic, with aluminum alloy lining the lid. You don’t have sầu to get plastic at this price, but it’s not uncomtháng. Unfortunately, the build chất lượng wasn’t up khổng lồ the usual Asus standard, with a lid that bends with too little force & can cause LCD distortion, quite a bit of flex in the keyboard deông chồng, and a chassis bottom that gives in to pressure. The similarly priced Acer Swift 3 is more solidly built, & for $300 more or so, you can grab the HP Envy x360 13 that’s also far better built — unsurprisingly, both machines are on our list of best budget laptops. You don’t find many 14-inch 2-in-1s at this price màn chơi, và so I can’t think of a direct comparison that we’ve reviewed.
Aesthetically, the VivoBook Flip 14 is a little more impressive sầu, if a bit odd at the same time. It comes in a “Bespoke Black” color scheme that covers 99% of the chassis. There’s a bright silver biểu tượng logo on the lid và some chrome trim around the touchpad, but that’s mostly it. What’s odd is that the Enter key is lined & lettered in lime-green, standing out quite boldly — but I’d say garishly at the same time. And it’s the only element on the máy tính xách tay lớn sport that color, so it’s not part of a theme.
If you typically have sầu difficulty finding the Enter key, then the bold coloring will help, but I usually don’t run inlớn that predicament, so the coloring detracts from the aesthetic for me. Even so, I find the VivoBook Flip 14 lớn be better looking than the Swift 3 and on par with the Envy x360 13. It’s even as attractive sầu as a more expensing máy tính xách tay lượt thích the MSI Prestige 14 Evo & has a more distinctive sầu look than the Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 2-in-1, which is also about $300 more expensive sầu.
The bezels are a little large, with a screen-to-body toàn thân ratio of 82%. More premium laptops tend toward a 90% ratio or better, but the VivoBook Flip 14 isn’t bad for a budget machine. That does make the chassis a little larger, và it’s not the thinnest or lighthử nghiệm 14-inch máy tính xách tay at 0.72 inches & 3.31 pounds. The Yoga 7i comes in at 0.69 inches và 3.09 pounds, while the MSI Prestige 14 is 0.63 inches thick & weighs 2.85 pounds.
The Acer Swift 5, another 14-inch clamshell, is a mere 0.59 inches thichồng & quite light at 2.31 pounds — it’s also twice as expensive sầu. Looking at our budget competition, the Acer Swift 3 is 0.63 inches thiông xã và weighs 2.65 pounds, và the HP Envy x360 13 is 0.65 inches thiông xã & weighs 2.92 pounds. Clearly, the VivoBook Flip 14 doesn’t win the thin-and-light battle.
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Hãng Asus incorporated its ErgoLift hinge into lớn the VivoBook Flip 14, which is a nice touch given the general complexity of the 360-degree hinge. It works well, lifting the keyboard dechồng lớn a more comfortable typing angle & theoretically giving additional room underneath for airflow — except there aren’t any vents on the laptop’s bottom. Rather, air is drawn in via the keyboard, and so there aren’t the usual thermal benefits. Anyway, the hinge is a bit stiff, & the lid requires two hands lớn open, but it does a respectable job of holding the display in place in clamshell, tent, truyền thông, & tablet modes.
Hãng Asus also built in some upgradability. The SSD slot is readily accessible if you want lớn upgrade storage at some point, và of the review unit’s 8GB of RAM, 4GB is soldered on the motherboard, và the other 4GB plugs in. So, you can swap that out for an 8GB chip if needed & increase your RAM to 12GB. The maximum available is 16GB, which of course must be configured when ordering the máy tính.
Connectivity is good, with one USB-A 2.0 port, a USB-A 3.2 port, a USB-C Gen 2 port, a full-kích cỡ HDXiaoMi MI 1.4 connection, a 3.5milimet audio jaông chồng, và a microSD card reader. A proprietary connector provides power, and given the AMD chipphối, there’s no Thunderbolt support. Wireless connectivity is a bit behind the times, with Wi-Fi 5 và Bluetooth không dây 4.2.
Performance
The VivoBook Flip 14 equipped the first six-core Ryzen 5 5500U CPU that we’ve sầu tested, and I was looking forward to lớn seeing how it compares to lớn Intel’s various Tiger Lake variants và the Ryzen 7 line. I came away impressed.
It didn’t dominate in Geekbench 5, with the lower single-core score and more competitive multi-core result typical of AMD chips. It came in third in the comparison group, behind the Asus ZenBook 13 UM325UA with an eight-core Ryzen 7 5800U that dominated và the MSI Prestige 14 Evo with its quad-core Intel Core i7-1185G7. In PCMark 10, the VivoBook Flip 14 came in second behind the ZenBook 13, & it scored particularly well in the Content Creation portion of that test. According to lớn these results, the Ryzen 5 5500U is competitive sầu with Intel’s Core i7 and much faster than the Core i5.
In two particularly CPU-intensive sầu apps, Handbrake & Cinebench R23, the VivoBook Flip 14 was particularly impressive sầu. In the Handbrake chạy thử that encodes a 420MB đoạn phim as H.265, the Asus was 31 seconds faster than the Prestige 14 Evo & only seven seconds behind the ZenBook 13. The results were similar in the demanding Cinebench R23 thử nghiệm where, at least in multicore mode, the VivoBook Flip 14 came in a close second to the ZenBook 13 và was significantly faster than the Prestige 14 Evo. And the Ryzen 5 5500U is a real step up from the previous generation, making the VivoBook Flip 14 an impressive sầu budget performer.
As with all the recent Ryzen laptops we’ve reviewed, the VivoBook Flip 14 excels at CPU-intensive tasks và will churn through the typical productivity workflow. It can tackle creative sầu applications as well, although its Radeon Graphics won’t offer much in the way of boosting applications that can utilize the GPU. That’s also true of Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics, of course. In this comparison group, only the HPhường Envy 14 with its Nvidia GeForce GTX-1650 Ti will bring real value lớn those applications. Everywhere else, the VivoBook Flip 14 will perform exceptionally well, especially given its $630 price.
