With Shiir Manz, Test Lab Specialist
During the times of the pandemic, the laptop emerged as a valuable tool for workers in the digital economy. When the work from home scheme became pervasive, there is no doubt people have to do their respective tasks right in the privacy of their homes. Thus, workers have to start using their personal computers and laptops.
The introduction of the ASUS Vivobook Pro 15 OLED (M3500) was a welcome development especially for people belonging to the 18 to 30-year old bracket who are either students or professionals looking for an affordable, great value-for-money laptop with powerful CPU and GPU to handle content creation works.
The biggest takeaway for the Vivobook Pro 15 is the 15-inch OLED screen displaying improved brightness balancing and sharpness that can get through easier tasks and last through the day. It has a 16:9 aspect ratio, as well as True Black HDR 500 capability. You can also enjoy vivid color as well as a 1 million to 1 contrast ratio for extreme details. Moreover, there is 70% low blue light certified eye care from TUV Rheinland and Harman Kardon-certified for audio for health and listening purposes, respectively.
As for colors, the Vivobook Pro 15 has a professional-grade -true-to-life colors with 100% DCI-P3 color gamut as cinema-grade standard for image quality; 133% SRGB gamut as well as Pantone validated for color matching work.
Being a mean computing machine, the Vivobook Pro 15 is powered by an AMD Ryzen 5900HX Processor, which provides a 23% improvement over the older Ryzen 4000-H, as well as 16GB DDR4 3200MHz memory. It is also equipped with the NVIDIA RTX 3050 graphics for heavy creator tasks like photo and video editing.
Moreover, the Vivobook Pro 15 has been equipped with the IceCool Plus dual fan cooling technology. With a new thermal design boosted by powerful two heat pipes and two fans, the user, especially the content creator, is guaranteed to deliver high-performance content creation workloads.
It delivers a 0.2ms instant response for smooth actions. ASUS claimed it is 50X faster than the average laptop LCD. This guarantees the user easier fast-paced action scenes, and fewer hang times in game play. Along with the high-performing processor, the Vivobook Pro 15 gives a very fast response time that produces blur-free speedy action scenes, low latency gameplay, and smooth visuals for gamers and movie buffs, as well as deliver butter-smooth animations, text scrolling, and other screen movements.
The Vivobook Pro 15 also has TUV Rheinland certification to provide the additional eye comfort of the user. The anti-flicker feature has managed to eliminate flickering screens that can cause eye strain and discomfort. Moreover, it has also managed to eliminate the blue light which causes damage to the retina that can result in wrong sleeping patterns. Through the ASUS software solution, the blue light is filtered and ensures your eyes are healthy.
Interestingly, the Vivobook was able to maintain the quality of the blue color even though it has shifted the spectrum to avoid displaying the harmful wavelength of blue light. Since children’s eyes are not yet fully developed, the Vivobook designed a blue-light pass-through for five-year old children, quite lower than the 20% for 60-year old adults.
Even with lower brightness settings, you can still see more clearly without the need turning the brightness, therefore maintaining your eyes’ health. This means better eye care, particularly for children as it prevents visual discomfort and disruption to sleep quality. Moreover, it avoids premature aging of the retina in children.
To attract the Gen Z market, Vivobook Pro 15 features a new Gen Z chassis design, new enter button design, new power key with fingerprint and a physical webcam shield. For content creators, ASUS also included a free 3-month subscription of Adobe Creative Cloud, as well as a lifetime license of Office Home & Student 2021 for everyday productivity.
On the downside, you reckon with the absence of an Ethernet port and non-upgradable RAM.
Furthermore, it would be nice if ASUS could provide a laptop bag for the Vivobook. If you’re looking for an affordable, great value-for-money laptop that offers first-rate CPU and GPU performance in handling content creation works and gaming, the ASUS Vivobook Pro 15 is worth buying. The device is also equipped with features users are looking for in a laptop. One of these is the anti-flicker feature which managed to eliminate flickering screens that can cause eye strain and discomfort. It also sports a new chassis design, new enter button design, new power key with fingerprint and a physical webcam shield.
The device has downsides, too, but if you can work with those drawbacks and is looking for a powerful laptop, the Vivobook Pro 15 will definitely deliver.
