ASUS Vivobook S16 (S3607QA) Quick Review — OLED goodness, Snapdragon endurance

ASUS Vivobook S16 (S3607QA)

8.5

The ASUS Vivobook S16 (S3607QA) is a well-balanced ultraportable that manages to deliver on style, portability, performance, and endurance without tipping the scales — literally or figuratively.

What's Good?

• Sleek design
• More than a day's worth of battery life
• Decent performance for the price segment
• Nifty Copilot+ PC features and more
• Complete port selection

What's Not?

• Lackluster GPU that hampers content creation and gaming

The ASUS Vivobook S16 (S3607QA) is a set to be quite a crowd pleaser. Looking for a laptop that powers through your daily productivity, frees you from wall plugs, and delivers a stunning screen that makes every video pop? All that, without burning a hole in your wallet? Well, this might just be it.

ASUS Vivobook S16 (S3607QA) — What’s Good?

The ASUS Vivobook S16 (S3607QA) gets a lot right from the moment you pick it up. The slim and lightweight aluminum chassis weighs only 1.74kg and measures around 16mm thick, making it an easy laptop to slip into just about any laptop bag and carry throughout the day. Its clean lines, CNC-engraved branding, and neutral tones give it a modern premium look that doesn’t try too hard to stand out, which is exactly what you want from a daily driver that blends into work and lifestyle settings.

Battery life is another highlight. With its 70 Wh cell, ASUS claims up to 32 hours of video playback. Real-world figures are naturally lower, but we found that it consistently lasted well beyond a full day of typical use, which is impressive for a 16-inch machine. Fast charging brings it back up to 60% in under an hour, making it dependable for those constantly moving between home, office, or campus. Heck, it even outlasts its more premium brethren, the ASUS Zenbook A14.

The display is equally impressive. The FHD+ resolution for a 16-inch panel might make some balk, but it more than makes up for it with its vivid colors, deep blacks and smooth 0.2ms response times. It covers nearly 100% DCI-P3, making it vibrant enough for you to really take in all the colors as the creators intended. The glossy coating may be another point of contention, but I would say that the 300 nits max brightness helps prevent visibility issues in brighter environments.

Performance, meanwhile, is competitive in this price segment. When compared to its brethren like the Vivobook S16 (S3607VA), we get better CPU performance and similar graphics performance, before simply leaving the Intel-based model in the dust when both laptops are unplugged. Packing the Snapdragon X1-26-100 chip, 16GB of LPDDR5x memory, and 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, the ASUS Vivobook S16 (S3607QA) makes quick work of day-to-day computing tasks. The dedicated NPU brings 45 TOPS of AI acceleration, which positions it well for Microsoft’s Copilot+ features and other on-device AI tools that can take advantage of the efficient yet powerful built-in NPU.

On that note, features like Click-to-Do and Recall are already out, as are the fancy AI-based features in Microsoft Paint. We also have more practical stuff like AI noise cancellation for the audio as well as the webcam baked into the laptop, and we can also look forward to cool apps like Moises Live which will leverage on the capable NPU’s 45TOPS. Will it end up being a huge gamechanger for your computing experience? Well, at the moment, I don’t really see myself using most of the features regularly, but I can foresee integrating it into my workflow if I can somehow get my antiquated desktop PC to also support these new Copilot+ features.

Last but not least, add to that a good port selection—two USB 4.0 ports that can handle 40Gbps speeds, two USB-A 3.0, full-sized HDMI, and a headphone jack—and you have a laptop that doesn’t force you into living the dongle life. While it might be a small thing to most, I really appreciate the fact that there are two USB-A ports as it means that I can plug in my external hard drive along with my mouse dongle at the same time, without resorting to adapters.

ASUS Vivobook S16 (S3607QA) — What’s Not?

While I did like the ASUS Vivobook S16 overall, the Snapdragon X chipset might both be a highlight as well as its Achilles’ heel. It may technically be able to handle some light casual gaming just fine, but driver support and the inability to support anti-cheat software will limit practical gaming applications. Similarly, the cut-down GPU will hamper the overall experience when it comes to content creation with a choppy scrubbing experience and slow exports. For everyday computing and content consumption, the Snapdragon X is quite practically a godsend at this moment with its efficient performance, but creators and gamers will have to look elsewhere.

ASUS Vivobook S16 (S3607QA) Specifications

ASUS Vivobook S16 (S3607QA) — should you buy this?

The ASUS Vivobook S16 (S3607QA) is a well-balanced ultraportable that manages to deliver on style, portability, performance, and endurance without tipping the scales — literally or figuratively. For a very reasonable RM3,699, you get a laptop that’s stylish, dependable, and ready for long days away from an outlet. It may not be as powerful as the Arrow Lake-powered ASUS Vivobook S14 (S3407CA), or as affordable as the ASUS Vivobook S14/16 (S3407/3607VA) we checked out previously, but it makes a case for itself with its stunning OLED display, long battery life and capable AI prowess. I would say it makes an excellent fit for just about anyone who is looking for a lightweight yet capable daily driver, that also looks good while keeping up with modern productivity demands. With Windows on Arm beginning to mature, the Vivobook S16 strikes the right balance for most users, and is thus deserving of our Silver Award.

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• ASUS Vivobook S16 (Shopee): https://s.shopee.com.my/40WcCT6IPH
• ASUS Vivobook S14 (Shopee): https://s.shopee.com.my/3ftlnvAYTN