Asus VivoBook review – Hands on – S200 and S400

It remains to be seen if laptop users will reach over their keyboards often enough to justify the addition of the extra interface, but given the reasonable pricing of the Vivobooks such screens may become a standard feature soon enough. We were a little disappointed that the hinge didn’t allow you to fold the screen back flat, as we’ve found this a fine way to use such devices when curled up on the sofa, or sitting up in bed.

The hinge doesn’t allow you to fold the display flat, not a big problem on a normal laptop, but we’d like to see it on touchscreen models that double up as tablets

Whether you choose the larger or smaller device, you get an LED backlit display with a 1,366×768 resolution. The smaller model therefore looks sharper, thanks to a higher number of pixels-per-inch. These aren’t IPS displays unfortunately, but they looked to be of a good quality at the event, with reasonable viewing angles, though they certainly lack the really vibrant colours we’re now used to from endless Ultrabook reviews.

As we mentioned above the specifications are pretty straightforward, The S200 comes with either an Intel Core i3 or Intel Pentium ULV 987 processor (the latter being a Sandy Bridge-based low-cost CPU), and the S400 has Core i3, i5 and i7 options (no specific processor models yet). Both come with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard disk, and the usual range of ports (VGA, HDMI, LAN, card reader, 3x USB – one of which is USB3).

Below are more specs and pricing details of the range, we hope to have review models very shortly:

S200E-CT157H 11.6″ Touch / B980 / UMA / 4GB / 500GB / Win 8 / 6 cell £399.99
S200E-CT158H 11.6″ Touch / i3 / UMA / 4GB / 500GB / Win 8 / 6 cell £449.99
S400CA-CA038H 14.1″ Touch / i3 / UMA / 4GB / 500GB / Win 8 / 6 cell £499.99
S400CA-CA039H 14.1″ Touch / i5 / UMA / 4GB / 500GB / Win 8 / 6 cell £599.99
S400CA-CA040H 14.1″ Touch / i7 / UMA / 4GB / 500GB / Win 8 / 6 cell £699.99