ASUSVivobook 15 X1504VA 15.6" Full HD Laptop (Intel i5-1335U, 16GB RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD, Windows 11 Home)

I bought this at £499, in a few days the price has increased by £80! ( tariff knock on maybe). Even so this is an excellent spec for the price, super sharp oled screen, i5 processor, 16gb ram, 1tb ssd drive. I knew it was a bargain when I saw it for a local committee i am part of, and now kicking myself I didn’t buy one for myself as well. Out of the box it needed the usual time wasting windows updates so spent about an hour doing that, then discovered that the trackpad was not working. Did some online research and found it needed an Asus firmware update which fixed the problem. I still give it 5 stars because this was a steal at the price and out of the box updates are a necessity. The oled screen is just beautiful, its fast and im sure for the general day to day use it will receive it will be perfect. Not bought as a gaming machine so not sure of the graphics capabilities.

This was to replace a laptop I bought second hand several years ago but have spent multiple times a day cursing as it was sooooo slow. I don’t game but I do use a lot of fairly sizeable spreadsheets to organise my life. It was painful! This ASUS is so fast I rarely have time to blink. The keyboard and mouse are good too but I use separate ones for 99% of the time. This item was the spec I didn’t think I could afford.I would say that some may find the screen a bit small but this is set up on a desk and is the same screen size as the previous one which was ideal for me. It looks a lot smaller as the ‘frame’ is much narrower and it’s so thin. Weighs very little.Windows 11 takes a bit of getting used to but then so did the system on the previous one. The set up was easy but a friend did help copying all my ‘stuff’ over. Like moving home it’s time to clear the attic out. Painful to see how much rubbish and duplication I have on there.This is WiFi only and we set the printer option to WiFi which means a lot less cabling. There seems to be a lot more ports too so I can probably get rid of of the multi socket thing I’ve got for the separate keyboard and mouse. Hopefully this will outlast me!The colours are amazing so this may become my device of choice for tv catch up and not my mini iPad or my aging tv.

This is for the X1504ZA model which is i5 12th gen and 16gb ram.I snatched this for under 400 as a warehouse deal - at this price this laptop can be really great value because it's so hard to find many affordable options with 16gb ram. However, you need to be aware there's no magic pricing here - significant corners were cut which may or not matter to you.1. Screen: the specs say "IPS-level" but I wonder if this is actually a glorified TN panel? The viewing angles are incredibly poor, using this laptop on the couch is very complicated since you have to be facing the screen at a perfect angle. The colours are mediocre as with most budget laptops but OK but surfing the web etc. The brightness is quite low, lower than the MSI Modern 15 and an HP 14s-dq2502na, probably very difficult to use on a sunny day (but those don't come all that often eh?)2. Battery life: appalling. You can get 4.5hs of light use if you're lucky. (I profiled it extensively) This was the same as the 1 year old HP 14, and 1-1.5 hours less than the MSI Modern 15 with Ryzen 7730U with a marginally smaller battery (39Wh vs 41Wh). The vivobook draws on average on idle 1.5W more than the MSI Modern which is almost to be expected as the i5 can't beat the ryzen in power consumption. This, paired with a small battery and probably low quality components that are very power inefficient (and a larger screen) means you just can't get much battery life. People claiming it's great are likely coming from ancient dusty laptops that can barely hold a charge.3. Ports: so outdated. The USB-C port does not support charging nor video out. The poor battery life could be compensated by easy charging via USB-C but no, you have to carry the (albeit small) proprietary barrel charger everywhere which is highly impractical if you move around the house or generally use this on your lap... Also because of this, you can only ever support 1 external monitor so OK but not ideal for say, working.If you don't care about any of the above then the laptop is actually very good value depending on the price you get it for. The build is really good for the price, I really enjoyed the keyboard (minus the unusual bottom row of the numpad). The touchpad was very good even if the mouse did skip a few times. The bezels are small and the whole unit feels solid for a plastic build and actually looks sleek if you don't look too hard at it. As a last negative, I'm personally not a fan of the 16:9 aspect ratio, the 15.6" screen seems too wide and short - I find the newer 16:10 to be far more practical and enjoyable but you can't have it all at a budget level, just consider this as well. Lastly, as you'd expect the performance with the recent 12th gen i5 and 16gb of ram (and a decent NVMe SSD) is actually excellent for a budget laptop, super speedy.

As one would expect from Asus this is a capable, well designed machine. An aluminium cased option would be even better and worth paying more for, my previous Asus is aluminium cased and has stood the test of time, the only reason I have upgraded at all is that recent software updates have rendered it obsolete for the purposes I require it for.Upgrading the RAM is simple, it will support 40gb easily enough after a straightforward BIOS update, I swapped the 8gb stick for a 32gb by Crucial (make sure to get the correct spec, it's important) and it improved its performance dramatically. It will also be receiving a storage capacity upgrade once I work out the best option, the 500gb provided is adequate for most users I would imagine but I would be happier with a minimum of 1tb onboard storage, like most modern laptops there aren't many ports available so external drives aren't ideal (I use it for live music performance and DJing which requires wired connections to controllers and professional sound card modules).