Review: ASUS VivoBook 15 Thin and Light Laptop with AMD Ryzen 5 3500u & 8GB RAM (2020) (F512DA-EB51)

Asus VivoBook 15 laptop has been around for a while. But what makes it interesting this year is the AMD Ryzen 5 processor. Today we are looking at ASUS VivoBook 15 Thin and Light Laptop with AMD Ryzen 5 3500u

Screen Quality:

This is a stylish thin-n-light laptop sporting a large 15.6 inch screen. The screen is full HD at 1920X1080 resolution. It is LED-backlit IPS panel with really good viewing angle of 178 degrees

This screen has Anti-Glare coating. It significantly cuts down on reflections from bright lights and windows. But the anti-glare coating also degrades color saturation. As a result, the colors don't pop as much in videos and photos. I personally prefer anti-glare coating over the super glossy screens.
It allows me to use laptop at anytime of the day, even in bright lit rooms

Ultra-Thin Bezels:

Even though Vivobook has a large 15.6 inch screen, it doesn't feel bulky. This is because Asus has managed to trim the bezels to only 5.7 mm. This gives it an impressive 88% screen-to-body ratio

But even with these thin bezels, Asus has put an HD webcam on the top. This is the ideal placement for a webcam. Other Slim laptop makers put the webcam near the keyboard which creates awkward video angles. Trust me, no one appreciates your nose hair during video chat.

Weight & battery life:

The laptop weighs about 3.8 pounds with the battery. This isn't bad for a laptop with large 15.6 inch screen. The battery capacity is Watt Hour and it has 2 Cells. Asus claims all day battery life.

In my testing, I managed to get about 8 hours of battery life with brightness set to 75% and average workload. Your mileage may vary but overall I think this laptop offers pretty decent battery life. BTW the battery supports fast charging. You can juice up the battery from 0 to 60% in under 50 mins.

Built Quality:

The chassis is made of poly-carbonate or plastic in simple English. It feels pretty robust in hands with no perceptible flex. Vivobook has a very unique hinge which Asus calls Ergo lift. When the laptop is fully opened, the keyboard gets slightly raised.

Ergo Hinge:

The lift is about 5mm and it creates a 2 degree angle. This creates a far better typing experience compared to flat keyboard. After a long typing session with this laptop, your wrist and fingers will thank you.

Keyboard:

The keyboard on Vivobook is really nice. It's a full size keyboard with numerical pads for data entry. It's also a backlit keyboard which is perfect for working in dim lit environments. The key travel is 1.5 mm and this provides for a very comfortable typing experience.

Touchpad:

It also comes with a large touchpad which has a fingerprint sensor built in. This is really handy for password-less logins. I wish more laptop manufactures include a fingerprint sensor especially because windows 10 supports it. The touchpad is very responsive and comes with windows precision drivers. It supports multi-touch gestures including scrolling.

CPU:

This version of Vivobook is sporting an AMD Ryzen 3500u processor. Its a 4-core 8-thread processor with base clock speed of 2.1 Ghz and Turbo Clock Speed of 3.7 GHz

GPU:

Laptop is good for casual gaming at HD resolution. You get decent frame rates, but don't expect insane gaming performance. This is not a gaming laptop

RAM:

This laptop comes with 8 Gig RAM which is enough for:

internet surfing
watching videos on youtube & netflix
social media stuff
and playing casual games.

But if you intend to do series work like video editing, Photoshop, software development then I recommend upgrading the RAM

RAM upgrade:

The existing 8 GIG RAM is split into two equal parts. The first half is 4 Gig non-removable RAM which is soldered to the motherboard. The second half is removable 4 GIG RAM stick on DIMM slot. So in order to upgrade RAM, you will have to replace this 4GB RAM with either 8GB or 16GB memory stick. If you do so, you will end up with either 12GB or 20GB RAM.

👉 Buy 8GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM
👉 Buy 16GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM

SSD Upgrade:

Vivobook comes with 256GB of SSD Storage. This is of type PCIe Nvme and uses M.2 slot. Unfortunately there are no empty M.2 Slots available for SSD upgrade. So if you are interested in bumping up the storage, your only option is to replace the existing 256GB SSD. Both 512GB or a 1TB replacement SSD are excellent choice for upgrade. Remember that you will have to clone the existing SSD to newer SSD so that your windows OS and all files are copied over.

👉 Buy 500 MB M.2 SSD
👉 Buy 1 TB M.2 SSD
👉 Buy 2 TB M.2 SSD

Ports:

This laptop has 1 USB Type C port, but it's only for data transfer. You cannot charge the laptop with this port. There are also old-school USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports. In addition there is an HDMI port, a micro-SD card reader and a 3.5mm headphone jack with mic support.

Conclusion:

Overall this is a great laptop for most of the folks. For Power users I recommend upgrading the RAM and storage.

Purchase links:

Buy Gaming Laptops reviewed by Techno Panda:

👉 Buy MSI GF63
👉 Buy HP Pavilion Gaming 15
👉 Buy Lenovo Ideapad L340
👉 Buy Asus TUF FX505DT
👉 Buy Acer Helios 300
👉 Buy Acer Predator Triton 500

Disclosure: Some links may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases