Asus Vivobook Flip 14: An Honest Review

The inexpensive 2-in-1 hybrid laptop, the Asus Vivobook Flip 14, is back with a new chassis and Ryzen CPUs instead of Intel ones. The elegant and powerful 2-in-1 is hard to beat for the price. The Flip 14’s AMD Ryzen CPU provides more power than most Intel PCs on most benchmarks. The integrated Radeon graphics also outperform Intel’s. On the flipside, the Flip 14’s battery life is worse than that of its competitors. Still, six to seven hours of charge will get you through most of the day.

Asus Vivobook Flip 14 Specification

Pros:

1. Nice lightweight design
2. Fair performance
3. Touchscreen modality

Cons:

1. Display might be better
2. Battery life is poor.
3. Fingerprint scanner doubt

Design

The cover of the Asus Vivobook Flip 14 is aluminium alloy and largely plastic. Plastic isn’t required at this price, although it’s typical. Asus’s customary build quality was lacking, with a lid that bends too easily and distorts LCDs, a keyboard deck that flexes, and a chassis bottom that gives in. The Acer Swift 3 and HP Envy x360 13, both on our list of the best budget laptops, are better made. I can’t think of a straight comparison because 14-inch 2-in-1s at this price are rare.

The Asus Vivobook Flip 14 looks better but is odder. A 99% “Bespoke Black” colour scheme covers the chassis. Besides a prominent silver lid logo and chrome touchpad trim, there’s little else. Strangely, the Enter key is lined and lettered in lime green, making it bright and obnoxious. It’s the only laptop part that’s that colour, therefore it’s not a theme. If you have trouble finding the Enter key, the bold colouring will help, but I rarely do, so it detracts from the design. The VivoBook Flip 14 looks better than the Swift 3 and is comparable to the Envy x360 13. It looks better than the Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 2-in-1, which costs $300 more, and is as beautiful as the MSI Prestige 14 Evo.

Performance

We evaluated the first six-core Ryzen 5 5500U CPU in the Asus Vivobook Flip 14, and I was excited to compare it to Intel’s Tiger Lake and Ryzen 7 CPUs. I was impressed. The lower single-core score and more competitive multi-core result characteristic of AMD CPUs didn’t dominate Geekbench 5. In the comparison group, the Asus ZenBook 13 UM325UA with an eight-core Ryzen 7 5800U led, and the MSI Prestige 14 Evo with a quad-core Intel Core i7-1185G7 placed third. PCMark 10 placed the VivoBook Flip 14 second behind the ZenBook 13, and it did well in Content Creation. These results show that the Ryzen 5 5500U is quicker than the Core i5 and competitive with Intel’s Core i7.

The VivoBook Flip 14 excelled in CPU-intensive Handbrake and Cinebench R23. In the Handbrake test that encodes a 420MB film as H.265, the Asus was 31 seconds faster than the Prestige 14 Evo and seven seconds behind the ZenBook 13. In multicore mode, the VivoBook Flip 14 finished second to the ZenBook 13 and was quicker than the Prestige 14 Evo in Cinebench R23. Compared to the previous generation, the Ryzen 5 5500U makes the VivoBook Flip 14 a great, cheap option. All recent Ryzen laptops we’ve evaluated, including the VivoBook Flip 14, excel at CPU-intensive workloads and will power through productivity workflows. It can handle creative applications; however, Radeon Graphics won’t increase GPU-using apps. Of course, Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics do too. Only the HP Envy 14 with Nvidia GeForce GTX-1650 Ti will benefit those apps in this comparison group. The VivoBook Flip 14 will perform well elsewhere, especially at $630.

Display

Spend $630 on a laptop and sacrifice. Display quality is usually a major compromise on the VivoBook Flip 14. First, it’s dim at 230 nits (we prefer 300). This is roughly identical to the Acer Swift 3’s 233 nits; therefore, the VivoBook Flip 14’s display is dim like other budget laptops. The contrast is mediocre at 720:1, below the Swift 3’s 770:1 and our desired 1000:1. The Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 had even poorer contrast at 690:1, showing that not just inexpensive laptops have poor contrast. Next were the VivoBook Flip 14’s thin colours. The Adobe RGB gamut was 50% covered, and the sRGB gamut was 66%. The HP Envy x360 13, on our best budget list, hit 71% and 96%, which is substantially higher than the 70% and 95% we generally find with midrange and premium laptops. Again, the Swift 3 was 48% and the Asus was 64%. The VivoBook Flip 14 had a Delta E of 2.62 (1.0 or less is outstanding), better than the Swift 3’s 4.76 and the Envy x360 13’s 2.26.

Its display was neither fantastic nor bad on the VivoBook Flip 14. It works for web browsing and productivity apps, but nothing else. Despite weak colours and contrast, the 2-in-1 was good for media viewing. Two Harman Kardon-tuned speakers project sound downward. Speakers get loud and distorted, crackling above 80%. Highs were blasted and mids were muted, creating a tinny sound. Of course, there was no bass. System sounds and YouTube videos are fine, but for everything else, you’ll need headphones or Bluetooth speakers.

A keyboard and touchpad

Asus Vivobook Flip 14’s keyboard resembles HP’s Spectre keyboard, which is good if purposeful. It has decent spacing, large keys with legible text, and a row of Home, PgUp, PgDn, End, and Fn keys on the right. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like a Spectre keyboard, despite looking like one. There is plenty of movement and a pleasant click to the switches; however, the bottoming action is too abrupt. There’s no sharp bounce like HP, and typing isn’t as comfy. A few steps behind the Spectre and Dell XPS keyboards and much behind Apple’s Magic Keyboard on the latest MacBooks. The three-step backlighting is even and useful. Simply put, the touchpad is too small. The fingerprint reader in the right corner makes the keyboard deck even smaller, but there’s plenty of room for a larger version. The Microsoft Precision touchpad supports Windows 10 multitouch gestures but is undersized. The 2-in-1 display is touch-enabled, and an Asus active pen is included. Smooth strokes and accurate reactions enhance Windows 10 inking. The fingerprint reader supports Windows 10 Hello passwordless login. It was speedy and accurate during my testing, which was nice on an affordable laptop.

Battery life

Asus only included 42 watt-hours of battery life in the VivoBook Flip 14, which is low for a 14-inch Full HD display and strong CPU. Not anticipating good battery life. The VivoBook Flip 14 lasted nine hours, starting with our online browsing test that loops through prominent websites. That’s slightly below average for this machine, but not bad. The Acer Swift 3 lasted eight hours, and the HP Envy x360 13 lasted nine. The VivoBook Flip 14 lasted 12 hours in our video test that played a Full HD Avengers trailer until the battery died, somewhat less than average but better than the Swift 3’s 10 hours. The Envy X360 13 outlasted both at 13 hours. Overall, the VivoBook Flip 14 had a somewhat inferior battery life. The little battery will last a whole day of work provided you don’t overuse the CPU, but it suffers. This is a budget laptop; therefore, the results are good for the money.

Conclusion

Asus Vivobook Flip 14 is fast for a $630 laptop. Its design, battery life, and keyboard aren’t great. But a laptop like this for so little money shouldn’t be ignored. The VivoBook Flip 14 performs well for demanding productivity workflows and occasional creative applications. No other issue with the laptop should deter you from buying it.