Asus Vivobook S 15: A game-changer with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip

The Asus Vivobook S 15 Copilot+ PC may look like your average laptop but under the hood, there’s a new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip that goes toe to toe with Apple’s M series chips, both in terms of performance and energy efficiency. After years of almost-there misstarts, Windows thin-and-light laptops are finally doing Windows on arm architecture chips right and I, for one, am hyped. Here’s why. 

 Qualcomm has made some big claims about big gains in performance at a third of the power draw, but the Vivobook S15 is the first laptop (more are on the way) where we’ve seen the chip in a consumer offering. And it’s fast, breezing through everyday tasks – browsing across multiple tabs, jumping across to the Xbox app to download a game, and copying a bunch of files over – with a sense of immediacy and snappiness. Push it on heavier tasks, particularly those that leverage all the chip cores, and it edges ahead of Apple’s M3 chip on the MacBook Air, not to mention Core Ultra 7 chips on some recent laptops I tested. Stuff like video editing and exports, applying filters on photos are noticeably faster that what you’ll see on competing Intel-based laptops in this price range, and all without the fans spinning up to cool things down. 

 The clincher is that it does all this without sacrificing battery life. This is the first Windows laptop where I could confidently leave the charger behind for a day of work, with the 70WHrs battery on the S 15 lasting well past 13-14 hours of mixed use – browsing, Excel, Outlook, and catching up on YouTube at lunchtime. Performance gains are one thing, but being rid of battery anxiety? Priceless.

You may have to contend with app compatibility, as some apps designed for Windows on Intel will initially be running on Microsoft's Prism translation layer until they are converted to work natively for the Arm architecture. Popular apps are already there – browsers, Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, Zoom/Teams – and while more are on the way, everything runs swimmingly even under emulation. You can even do some light gaming on this laptop in a pinch. 

Asus does it bit, kitting the S15 with a sleek and light (1.6cm, 1.46kg) magnesium alloy chassis and a gorgeous 120Hz, 2880x1620 pixel resolution OLED panel (non-touch) and four harman/Kardon speakers. There’s a full-sized RGB-backlit keyboard with a small number pad on the right, and enough ports to never have to know what the word ‘dongle’ means. It’s also designated as a Copilot+ PC, which gives it early access to AI-driven live caption translations and on-device image generation, other useful webcam filters and effects. In all, the S15 is a great showcase for the new platform, and I can’t wait to see what others bring to the party.

Rating: 9/10

Price: Rs. 1,24,990