In 2020, when Apple released the first Apple Silicon computer, the M1 Macbook Air, it upended the personal computing industry in fundamental ways. Apple’s chips were not only powerful but provided unprecedented efficiency. Suddenly, laptops could easily have 12-15 hours of battery life. This meant that just like your phone, you could charge your laptop overnight and then not plug it in during the work day.
Windows laptops still labouring with Intel or AMD chipsets simply couldn’t compete. When Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon X Elite platform, they promised to take the fight to Apple. And the first Snapdragon X Elite laptop to launch in India was the Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+.
I’ve had the Asus Vivobook 15 Copilot+ with me for a few weeks now and I have been using it regularly. And I really think Qualcomm may be on to something here. Read on to find out the details.
The models
Asus sells two variants of the Snapdragon Vivobook S15 Copilot+. The cheaper one runs the Snapdragon X Plus processor with an MRP of Rs 1,24,990 (but selling for Rs 94,990), and the one that I have with me runs the Snapdragon X Elite X1E 78 100 processor with an MRP of Rs 1,46,990 (but selling for Rs 1,14,990).
Apart from the chipset, they have virtually identical configurations, with both offering 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 1 TB of PCIe 4.0 storage. You can buy them in any colour you want as long as it’s “Cool Silver”.
The hardware
Asus’s Vivobooks have a familiar, if somewhat anonymous, design language, and this Vivobook S15 Copilot+ is no different. Made of aluminium, it is well-built and at 1.42 kg fairly light for a 15.6” laptop. The chassis is MIL-STD 810H certified and that’s borne out by how solid the machine feels in the hand, passing the one-hand lid opening test with flying colours.
The screen is a 15.6” 3K OLED panel rated at 600 nits. It’s every bit as good as the terrific Asus OLEDs we’ve seen and reviewed before. Inky blacks, vivid colours, sharp details - what more could you ask for? The 15.6” size means that the 16:9 ratio doesn’t feel too constricting, and Windows’s easy window-snapping means I was happily using my browser and WhatsApp side by side.
The backlit keyboard is fantastic to type on. Possibly the best laptop keyboard I have used this side of a ThinkPad. I even managed my fastest ever score of 115 words per minute on the 10fastfingers test. The main downside is the backlight. Silver keys with a blue backlight means the backlight actually renders the keys unreadable. So I was forced to keep it off.
The speakers are where you’re reminded this is a Vivobook, Asus’s middle-tier offering. While they are reasonably loud, they are a bit lacking in the bass department. It’s good enough to watch talking videos or vlogs, but you’re going to reach for your headphones when you crank up your Netflix.
The touchpad is spacious and precise. Zero complaints in that department. The port selection is also reasonably generous offering two USB-A ports, two USB-C ports, an HDMI port, a headphone jack and micro-SD slot. I do wish they’d gone with a full-size SD card slot though. Charging is via USB-C and a 90W fast charger is bundled. The battery is rated at 70Wh, which is par for the course spec-wise, but a game changer in use, as you’ll see later.
In use, and comparison with the M3 Macbook Air
I live in a Mac household. I have both an M1 Mac Mini and an M3 Macbook Air at home, the latter belonging to my partner. The M3 Air was my primary computer for two months earlier this year, so I am intimately familiar with it. It is a terrific laptop with tremendous performance.
The M3 Air is also the computer against which the new line of Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptops including this Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ are compared and benchmarked. In use, both are very much comparable but I have one clear favourite.
Let me get the two main downsides of the Asus out of the way. The keyboard backlight is a travesty. To have a backlight that renders keys unreadable is a silly choice. I learnt to adjust, but I shouldn’t have to. The other is the sound. The speakers on the Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ are reasonably loud, but have none of the bass and heft of the M3 Macbook Air. I rarely end up watching stuff on a laptop without earphones so in practice it doesn’t affect me too much, but at this price, Asus should have done better.
In virtually every other department, the Asus is a joy to use. From the incredibly satisfying keyboard to the glorious screen and the vast touchpad, the hardware is top class. In all these departments I prefer the Asus to the Mac. Yes, the haptic touchpad on the Mac is better to click on, but the beauty of Windows is that you never need to click at all, and touchpad gestures are more intuitive and efficient than on the Mac. If you are committed to clicking, then you’re likely to prefer the Mac. The screen on the Asus has better blacks and the colours pop more but it’s also more reflective, so if you’re likely to use your laptop outdoors or in bright spaces, the Mac will be better suited .
Apart from being an OLED, the screen on the Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ is a 120Hz display (unlike the Mac’s 60Hz). While it doesn’t make as much of a difference as on a touchscreen device like a phone, you still get a little more smoothness in operation, and that makes it just that little bit nicer to use.
In terms of speed and performance, the machines are evenly matched. Both are extremely fast and impossible to faze with any day to day tasks. I am personally agnostic between Windows and MacOS (both have their pros and cons), so here your personal preference is likely to be a bigger factor than any particular advantage the machines themselves offer. When it comes to performance benchmarks, the M3 Macbook Air is superior to the Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ in single-core, but slightly behind in multi-core. For most users, these differences will not matter a great deal.
One major advantage with Windows for me is that the file manager is able to display RAW images instantly, just like jpegs, while MacOS takes a couple of seconds or more to display each file. As a photographer, I find the latter behaviour so frustrating that I use a paid app (FastRawViewer) to overcome this drawback.
The Mac also has an annoying bug where it occasionally reverses the direction of typing text (only when you’re using the touchpad) and this is something I’ve not been able to find a fix for. No such issues with the Asus.
With battery life also, the Asus offers stiff competition to the Mac. In my usage, the Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ would offer anywhere between 12 and 14 hours of battery life in real-world usage (using the balanced power profile), and this is roughly the same as what I would get from the Mac. This is the first time I have gotten anywhere close to this kind of battery life from a Windows PC and once you experience this level of battery life it’s hard to go back to machines that offer 5-6 hours.
The Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ also exhibits exceptional sleep behaviour, which is never a given with Windows laptops. Closing the lid and reopening it wakes it up pretty much instantly, consistently.
Thermal performance is excellent. I can’t recollect any instances where the chassis got noticeably warm. I also like that the Asus has plenty of ports, unlike the stingy Mac with its two thunderbolt ports. I do like the MagSafe charging on the Mac though.
Using Lightroom Classic, the performance is roughly comparable to the Mac. But it’s a bit premature to compare because Adobe still hasn’t released a native version of LrC for Windows on ARM, and therefore it has to use emulation. The good news is that despite this, it is plenty fast and responsive. So we can perhaps look forward to even better performance once the native version is released.
Here I must also add that there are still many apps, including games, that are not offered in native versions or simply not at all when it comes to the Snapdragon X Elite laptops. You must check your own requirements specifically before making a purchase decision.
The webcam on the Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ is serviceable but noticeably inferior to the excellent unit on the M3 Macbook Air. For random work meetings this is good enough, but once you see the webcam on the Mac, you feel a bit sad using the Asus one. Once again, at this price point, Asus should have done better.
One of the great selling points of the Copilot+ PCs is that they are AI-ready. That said, Windows’s AI offerings at this point are half-baked, at best, and this should not be a factor in deciding whether or not to buy the Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+.
Should I buy it?
Now that Apple has upped the base RAM for the M3 Macbook Air to 16 GB, they start at Rs 1,14,990 for the 13” and Rs 1,34,990 for the 15”, both offering 256 GB of storage. Considering the Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ with the Snapdragon X Elite sells for Rs 1,14,990 offering 1 TB of storage and a 15.6” screen, straight off the bat it is a compelling value proposition. Add to the fact that extended warranties from Asus cost a fraction of that from Apple, and the value proposition improves even further.
The Mac offers better speakers, a better webcam, and a more usable keyboard backlight, not to mention the absence of any of the compatibility issues the Asus still suffers from. But personally I would pick the Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ over the Mac, because it just feels nicer to use. There is a satisfaction while using the Asus, especially because of its keyboard, screen and touchpad (and some of the little Windows wins).
It’s important to mention here that the software that I need works well on it, so this is something you should specifically check before deciding to buy because it’s not a given yet with these Snapdragon laptops.
It is also intriguing to consider the cheaper versions of both machines. The cheaper Asus comes with the Snapdragon X Plus processor and costs a good Rs 20,000 less and is likely to offer all the performance that most people need, with equally good battery life. On the other hand, the older M2 (and even M1) Macbook Airs are available even cheaper and offer excellent performance and battery life as well.
Bottomline, it’s complicated. In a straight up comparison, I prefer this Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ laptop to the M3 Macbook Air. But if your budget is smaller, then some of the alternatives may appear more compelling.
This Asus Vivobook S15 Copilot+ was sent to the reviewer as a loaner unit for review purposes. The unit will be returned on completion of the review. Asus has been given no advance information about the content of this review and exercises no copy approval.
Contact the author on X @vinayaravind.
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