The ASUS Vivobook Pro 15 OLED Review: For The Creator In All Of Us
by Brett Howse on March 7, 2022 8:30 AM ESTBattery Life
ASUS outfits the Vivobook Pro 15 with a 63 Wh battery, which is perhaps on the small size for a 15-inch notebook, but with the light weight of this design it makes more sense. OLED displays can be very efficient on darker content, but one of the bigger problems in the PC space is that so much content is bright so that will certainly impact the results as well.
Web Battery Life
As expected, the OLED display is somewhat of a burden on the web test, where most of the websites have a light theme. Battery life is still good, but not spectacular.
Looking at the normalized results where the battery size is removed from the equation further confirms this. Platform efficiency is not fantastic especially compared to the Surface Laptop Studio which has a 35-Watt CPU and larger GPU. This is the biggest drawback for OLED on a notebook computer, even with the operating system supporting dark mode. Until all of the applications support dark mode, and especially web, OLED is definitely going to impact battery life in a negative way.
PCMark 10 Modern Office Battery
UL’s PCMark 10 battery life test does fare better than our web browsing test. The test does not always run full-screen with light-colored applications so the OLED display does not cause as large of an impact to the battery life results.
Movie Playback
Media playback is often one of the least demanding tasks thanks to the video decode being offloaded to fixed function hardware that is very efficient, and OLED does well here with the dark scenes allowing the power advantages of OLED to be shown.
The Tesseract score divides the movie playback time at 200 nits by the length of The Avengers to give an idea of how many movies can be watched on a single charge. With five movies plus, the Vivobook Pro 15 OLED can definitely do well as a media playback device.
Charge Time
The other side of the equation for mobility is charge time. The Vivobook Pro 15 ships with a 120-Watt AC Adapter to power it during high-demand loads, so the charge rate certainly won’t be held back by the power input. Manufacturers still limit the charge rate though to protect the battery longevity.
To refill the 63 Wh battery takes just 145 minutes, which is quite good. To get to 50% charge took just 38 minutes, so a quick fill-up on the go is in the cards.
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reuthermonkey1 - Monday, March 7, 2022 - link
I do appreciate that they denoted it does not use a USB-C charger, for example.philehidiot - Monday, March 7, 2022 - link
The Linux point is definitely a good one. I am very tempted to put Linux on my next laptop as my old one uses OSX, which I really like over Windows, but hate what Apple do to customers.If a laptop can run a specific Linux distro without excessive hassle, that would be a superb test for me. It has the potential to be a rabbit hole, so I'd suggest something like "n hour Linux install and config test" - set a specific time limit for a competent Linux user and see if they can install a popular distro, and have it configured to run all the hardware properly, within that timeframe.
I also like the proprietary charger idea. That stuff boils my piss.
brucethemoose - Monday, March 7, 2022 - link
Sometimes there's a huge difference between popular distros, usually because they run a really old kernel (Ubuntu/Debian/Mint) and/or don't support proprietary drivers (Nvidia, wifi) ootb (Fedora).And sometimes there are specific community fixes that take seconds to install, but that you might not otherwise know to look for.
Basically, I'm saying this is a tough ask for a reviewer, and such a linux "test" could be very misleading. You are better off diving into the online communities for a particular line/brand yourself.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, March 8, 2022 - link
Basic things, like if it instlals, and if the dual graphics work without hassle, are simple for a reviewer to check with a couple different distros.jospoortvliet - Saturday, March 12, 2022 - link
Just test Ubuntu. Sure there are lots of distros and I personally am not an Ubuntu fan at all but reality is that it just makes sense with its user base and with the aim of keeping it simple.Oxford Guy - Sunday, March 13, 2022 - link
It really is unfortunate how Apple has not chosen to take the high road when it comes to respecting the agency of individual consumers. That is both about its high level of spying and its incessant changing of UI. It’s also about force-feeding people what certain developers there want them to eat — like relentless punishment for using low power mode in iOS.Unfortunate but not at all surprising, since these companies don’t work for ordinary individuals at all. On the contrary…
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, March 8, 2022 - link
It's a pain, but barrel chazrgers have two notable advantages: more resistance to force damaging the connector and port, and (IDK if its true on this machine) they can be mounted seperate fromt he botherboard, allowing easy replacement. USB C cant do this.phoenix_rizzen - Monday, March 7, 2022 - link
Would it be possible to run the graphics tests again using the integrated GPU? Would be interesting to see just what the difference is between the iGPU and dGPU. Or is that even possible on AMD-based laptops (I have no experience with laptops that include dGPU)?Could also be interesting to see what (if any) impact switching between the GPUs makes for battery life.
Alistair - Monday, March 7, 2022 - link
no point with ryzen 5000 though, you want ryzen 6000 for thatbrucethemoose - Monday, March 7, 2022 - link
Most laptops are basically unusable on battery with a loaded dGPU, unless its something barely better than an IGP.As for IGP perf, you have to stick to low intensity games on the IGP. Vega 8 is nearly an order of magnitude slower than my 2060, which is somewhat comparable to this 3050.
This is kinda why Ryzen 6000/Van Gogh are so exciting. For the first time ever, gaming on battery may actually be practical.