New article: ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED (S5506M) laptop review: flagship CPU and excellent screen

Mobile Core Ultra processors with a powerful integrated Arc architecture GPU and NPU unit have launched the next wave of upgrades for thin laptops. However, thanks to the OLED screen and RGB backlit keys, the upgraded Vivobook S 15 OLED looks more like a gaming PC than a boring laptop for office applications and web browsing.

⇡#Technical characteristics, prices

The Vivobook S 15 OLED configuration does not provide a discrete GPU, but gives a choice between three central processors of the Meteor Lake family: the 14-core Core Ultra 5 125H chip, which is already familiar to us from reviews of other work laptops, as well as the 16-core Core Ultra 7 155H models and Core Ultra 9 185H. The latter differ from each other in clock speeds and basic TDP values. All three CPUs allow adjustment of sustained power in the range of up to 65 W, but, according to official specifications, ASUS engineers stopped at 50 W.

As for the integrated GPU, the youngest representative of the Meteor Lake line - Core Ultra 5 125H - contains seven Xe-cores of the Arc architecture. The rest come with a fully functional GPU with eight Xe cores, which means 1 standard-precision shader ALUs. The GPU has the same features as its discrete counterparts, including hardware ray tracing, but lacks the XMX tensor units. Instead, a separate NPU unit is provided in the Meteor Lake crystal to accelerate neural networks.

The laptop carries 16 or 32 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, which operates at a high speed of 7 MT/s. The volume of the solid-state drive is 467 GB or 512 TB.

The hero of the review is available in Russian retail at a price starting from RUB 101. for the minimum configuration with a Core Ultra 585 5H central processor. In turn, the intermediate model with Core Ultra 125 7H will cost at least 155, and the older one - 106 rubles. All offers noticed during the review period are equipped with 580 GB of RAM and a terabyte SSD.

⇡#Appearance and ergonomics

Among laptops with a screen diagonal of up to 16 inches, the Vivobook S 15 OLED stands out for its light weight - only 1,5 kg. The laptop body is made of metal panels, not counting the plastic edging of the screen, and has decent rigidity around the perimeter. The screen cover can be lifted with one hand without holding the top case. The device comes in black or “foggy blue” color.

The pride of the new product is an OLED screen with a resolution of 2 × 880 and a refresh rate of up to 1 Hz. Thanks to the proprietary MyASUS program, the frequency can be adjusted automatically depending on the power source - 620 Hz when operating from the network and 120 Hz in standalone mode. The screen surface is glossy, but not touch sensitive.

The Vivobook S 15 OLED has a keyboard with a numeric keypad and a separate key that launches the Microsoft Copilot intelligent assistant. The key mechanisms provide a crisp actuation, but can feel a bit stiff compared to many other laptop keyboards. Despite its light weight, the laptop has a fairly rigid working surface to minimize deflection during the printing process, but noticeable vibration is felt. Although the Vivobook S 15 OLED is not a gaming computer, the keyboard is equipped with single-zone RGB backlighting with support for various dynamic effects. The brightness of the backlight is adjusted by a three-stage switch.

The laptop does not have a fingerprint scanner, but does have an infrared camera with Windows Hello support. The lenses of both cameras (IR and regular) can be covered with a physical shutter.

The Vivobook S 15 OLED boasts a huge touchpad with a smooth glass surface. Although the manipulator operates on conventional physical switches rather than magnetic feedback, its mechanics do not raise the slightest complaints. The panel doesn't shake when touched lightly, and the switches click with a crisp but quiet click.

The cable interface ports are distributed along the side edges of the case. The user has access to two Thunderbolt 4 connectors and two USB Type-A standard 3.2 Gen 1. In addition, the Vivobook S 15 OLED has a full-size HDMI output, a 3,5 mm TRRS acoustic jack and a microSD memory card reader.

The laptop is charged from a proprietary power supply with a non-removable USB Type-C cable and an extension cord.

⇡#Internal arrangement and upgrade options

The Vivobook S 15 OLED cools itself by drawing in cool air through a grille at the bottom of the case, but, unlike most work laptops, it does not throw the heated air up between the screen and the topcase, but back, parallel to the table. The CPU cooler consists of two radial fans and two radiators connected to the SoC heat sink by two thermal pipes.

Among all the components of the machine, only the solid-state drive can be upgraded by the user.

⇡#Testing technique

In order to demonstrate maximum performance, we disable the VBS (Virtualisation-Based Security) and Memory Integrity (Hypervisor-protected Code Integrity) functions in Windows 11.

Screen testing is performed using the X-Rite i1Display Pro Plus colorimeter in the DisplayCAL 3 app.

Laptop battery life is measured at display brightness of 200 cd/m2 in the following usage scenarios:

• alternate opening and closing of websites with an interval of 25 seconds in the Google Chrome or Safari browser (cache disabled);
• continuous playback of 4K video in HEVC format.

⇡#Test participants

The following devices took part in testing:

⇡#Screen quality

The Vivobook S 15 OLED screen has a brightness of up to 386 cd/m2 in SDR mode, which does not depend on the size of the white spot. In HDR mode, brightness reaches 575 cd/m2, but drops to 475 cd/m2 when the screen is completely filled with white. Contrast, like all OLED panels, tends to infinity.

The MyASUS program installed on the laptop offers you to choose one of four color correction modes: original, sRGB, Display P3 and DCI-P3. Each option not only changes the picture, but also registers an ICC profile in the operating system that describes the screen parameters.

The sRGB and Display P3 modes are of greatest interest to most users. Both modes provide precise white point adjustment to the D65 reference value and 99% coverage of the corresponding color gamut.

Color temperature demonstrated impeccable stability throughout almost the entire brightness scale.

The gamma correction curves are approximated to a power function with an exponent of 2,2.

The color of the gray scale deviates from the standard by no more than 5% in the brightness range from 10% to maximum.

As a result of fine-tuning the basic parameters, the Vivobook S 15 OLED screen showed an average Delta E value within unity, which satisfies professional color reproduction requirements.

⇡#Clock speeds, temperatures and noise levels

MyASUS software adjusts the CPU's sustained power from 17W in Whisper mode to 54W in Full-Speed ​​mode. Maximum power consumption ensures that the E-cores of the CPU operate at an average clock frequency of 2,8 GHz under long-term multi-threaded load, and the P-cores support a frequency of about 3,4 GHz. Intel Arc graphics run at 2,2 GHz under isolated load. When the CPU and GPU are fully loaded at the same time, the high-performance x86 cores drop to 3 GHz and the GPU to 1,5 GHz.

In turn, the “Standard” mode fixes the stable power of the chip at 35 W. This is enough for the E- and P-cores of the processor to operate at an average frequency of 2,3 and 2,7 GHz, respectively. The stable frequency of the built-in GPU is 2,1 GHz. With a combined load, the x86 core frequency drops to 2/2,3, and the integrated graphics frequency drops to 1,2 GHz.

Finally, in Whisper mode, the Core Ultra 9 185H chip is content with 17 W of power. As a result, the frequency of x86 cores in long multi-threaded tasks is only 1/1,8 GHz, and the GPU frequency, even with an isolated load, is 1,4 GHz. In a situation where the CPU and GPU are loaded simultaneously, the clock frequencies of the components drop to 1/1,6 and 0,5 GHz, respectively.

The sustained frequency of the ultra-low power (LP-E) cores in all tests does not exceed 1,1 GHz, since they do not serve user tasks.

Note. The measurement is performed after the device has warmed up and all parameters have stabilized.

At maximum power consumption, the Core Ultra 9 185H crystal heats up to a predictably high temperature of 101 ° C. In the “Standard” mode, the chip temperature does not go beyond 90, and in the Whisper mode – 70 °C.

The highest performance that the Vivobook S 15 OLED is capable of comes at the cost of high noise levels - up to 54 dBA at a distance of 30 cm from the screen. The “Standard” mode brings the noise level to a value more typical for machines of this form factor: 39 dBA, and in Whisper mode the laptop operates almost silently.

At maximum SoC power consumption, the top case of the laptop heats up to 48 ° C, but most of the working surface remains cold.

⇡#Synthetic performance tests

The Vivobook S 15 OLED gave us the opportunity to compare the senior solution of the Core Ultra line (albeit not at the maximum TDP allowed by Intel specifications) with the powerful 13th generation Intel CPU, the vice-flagship Ryzen 8000 series chip, as well as the mid-range 11-generation nuclear modification of the Apple M3.

In the long-term multi-threaded benchmark Cinebench R23, the new Intel processor took the lead with a confident lead over the Ryzen 7 8845HS and is far superior to the Apple M3 Pro. At the same time, it is noticeable that single-threaded performance not only did not increase in Meteor Lake crystals, but also became less compared to the 13th generation Core.

A series of short-term Geekbench 6 tests put the Core Ultra 9 185H chip on par with the older Core i9-13900H and just above the Ryzen 7 8845HS. All these devices are noticeably inferior to the Apple M3 Pro in multi-threaded and, even more so, single-threaded mode.

Geekbench 6's GP-GPU task test gave Apple products twice the score of fully functional Arc graphics. On the other hand, the latter is the undisputed leader among embedded solutions from Intel and AMD.

According to 3DMark results, the speed of integrated Intel graphics has doubled compared to the previous generation architecture. The 8-core Arc configuration confidently outperforms the “red” GPU on the Ryzen 7 8845HS chip.

In the GFXBench test, the Intel GPU again doesn't compare to the integrated graphics of the Apple M1 Pro and M3 Pro, but provides an impressive performance boost when migrating from the 13th generation Intel platform or Ryzen 8000.

⇡# Productivity in production applications

In the Blender benchmark, the Core Ultra 9 185H processor took third place after the Ryzen 7 8845HS and M3 Pro, but the gap from the leaders is minimal.

In contrast, the integrated Intel Arc graphics with 8 Xe cores outperformed the Apple M1 Pro GPU, not to mention the Radeon 780M, but was half as fast as the M3 Pro.

In the Lightroom Classic test, the Core Ultra 9 185H received the highest score among test participants. The older model in the series has a slight advantage over the Core Ultra 5 125H, but both chips are confidently superior to the Ryzen 7 8845HS.

Note. Scores are calculated as a percentage of the performance of a reference workstation with an Intel Core i9-9900K, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 and 64 GB RAM, multiplied by 10.

Note. Scores are calculated as a percentage of the performance of a reference workstation with an Intel Core i9-9900K, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 and 64 GB of RAM.

The Vivobook S 15 OLED was ahead of one of the machines based on the Core Ultra 5 125H in the Photoshop benchmark - apparently due to the difference in RAM capacity, since the test sample of the new ASUS product has only 16 GB of RAM. The laptop with Ryzen 7 8845HS is the leader among representatives of the x86 architecture, and the undisputed leaders of the test are Apple computers.

The Premiere Pro benchmark is once again dominated by Apple's ARM processors, thanks to its powerful GPU and ProRes hardware video encoding. The Core Ultra 9 185H took first place in the group of x86 architecture chips with a slight lead over the Core Ultra 5 125H and a noticeable advantage over the Ryzen 7 8845HS.

16 GB of RAM was enough for the Vivobook S 15 OLED to perform all the tasks of the After Effects test suite, which could have affected the final rating. Be that as it may, the flagship chip of the Core Ultra line achieved noticeably better results than the Core Ultra 5 125H in combination with 24 GB of RAM, but is only slightly superior to the Core i9-13900H and inferior to the laptop based on the Ryzen 7 8845HS with 32 GB of RAM. Apple silicon once again delivers performance unmatched by Intel and AMD solutions without a discrete graphics processor.

Note. Scores are calculated as a percentage of the performance of a reference workstation with an Intel Core i9-11900K, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and 64 GB RAM, multiplied by 10.

Note. Scores are calculated as a percentage of the performance of a reference workstation with an Intel Core i9-11900K, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and 64 GB of RAM.

⇡#SSD performance

The Vivobook S 15 OLED test unit has a PC SN560 solid-state drive from Western Digital, which is a mid-range SSD for the PCI Express 4.0 bus. ROM develops good linear and random block writing speeds, but has a low random reading speed compared to common analogues.

⇡# Battery life

In terms of operating time on a single battery charge, the Vivobook S 15 OLED generally does not stand out from a number of laptops with similar characteristics based on Intel's 13th generation Core processors and the new Core Ultra, but is still inferior to its competitors. With a screen brightness of 200 cd/m2, the ASUS laptop withstood almost 7 hours of work in a web browser and 10 hours of video playback.

Conclusions

The updated Vivobook S 15 OLED demonstrated everything that the flagship processor of the Core Ultra family is capable of. The sustained power consumption of the Core Ultra 9 185H in this case is below the maximum provided by Intel (54 out of 65 W), but work laptops, as a rule, are not designed for high TDP values. In the bulk of synthetic tests and real applications, the Core Ultra 9 185H provides a noticeable increase in performance compared to older 13th generation Core models, but it should be noted that Meteor Lake silicon owes its victories in benchmarks, not least of all, to the increased power. In a number of tasks, the Core Ultra 9 185H is inferior not only to the “red” Ryzen 7 8845HS, but also to its predecessor, the Core i3-13900H, although both rivals are content with lower power consumption.

The key innovation of Core Ultra silicon is the integrated Arc architecture GPU. In this discipline, the Intel product still cannot compete on equal terms with Apple chips, but is noticeably ahead of the old Iris Xe video core and AMD offerings. Meteor Lake silicon contains a dedicated NPU to accelerate neural networks, and also supports LPDDR5X RAM with a bandwidth of 7 MT/s, which is installed in the Vivobook S 467 OLED.

Be that as it may, the advantages of the Vivobook S 15 OLED do not come down to the hardware platform. The main one is reflected in the name of the laptop: its screen not only has high brightness for OLED panels and a refresh rate of 120 Hz, but also boasts extremely accurate calibration. Other features of the new product are an RGB-backlit keyboard and a huge touchpad that works great despite the physical switches. Finally, although the Vivobook S 15 OLED is a very light computer for its size, the light weight does not affect the rigidity of the body.

Source: 3dnews.ru