Thursday, November 14, 2024

The Vivobook S 15 is Asus’ first Copilot Plus PC

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Following Microsoft’s Windows event, Asus announced its first Copilot Plus PC laptop, the Vivobook S 15 (S5507), driven by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X-series processors. Asus says the Arm-based chip will not only improve a few current Vivobook features but also make new AI-driven programs and workloads fly with 45 TOPS of neural processing power.

The new Vivobook S 15 will have the same OLED display as the previous Intel generation (15.6-inch, 16:9, 2880 x 1620, 120Hz refresh rate, and 600 nits peak HDR brightness), but this specific version will have a thinner chassis and display bezels. The S 15 is configurable with either a 12-core Snapdragon X Elite or 10-core X Plus processor, although the Elite chip will be the base version — the one with a slower integrated GPU and no dual core boost.

Both S 15 configurations can handle up to 32GB onboard memory and 1TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage and have two USB-A ports, two USB 4.0 Type-C ports, one HDMI 2.1, an audio / mic combo jack, and a microSD card reader. There’s also Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

The Vivobook S 15 is Asus’ first device to come with its proprietary StoryCube app, which uses AI to sort, edit, manage, and export RAW photos and video files. Asus also claims the Snapdragon’s NPU power will speed up other AI workloads in applications like Windows Studio Effects and Cocreator.

Asus gears its Vivobooks toward digital artists, graphic designers, and other visual creatives as a budget-friendly alternative to its ProArt series. Some Vivobook Pros have standalone GPUs like ProArt laptops do, but the majority of Vivobook laptops use integrated graphics. The Snapdragon X series is Qualcomm’s rebuttal to Apple’s M-series chips, but we won’t know the true performance of the series until laptops ship. Starting its rollout with a Vivobook could be Asus flexing the new chip’s chops — or it could be the company hedging its bets.

The Asus Vivobook S 15 with a Snapdragon X Elite is available to preorder from select retailers right now but won’t ship until June 18th. The $1,399 version with 32GB of memory and 1TB of storage will be available only from Costco, but the $1,299 16GB / 1TB version will be available from multiple retailers. A Snapdragon X Plus model will arrive later this year, but there’s no word on how much that one will cost.

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