ASUS Vivobook Touchscreen Ultrabook Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,757 words · ~8 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the ASUS Vivo book this particular one
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is the s400c which is I don't know something
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basically it's a VI book so the idea is
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that it's kind of like a lower cost version of a very slim and light
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notebook that is also from ASUS the Zen
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book and and uh yeah yeah just comes in at kind of a kind of a lower lower price
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point I mean this one's around 600 bucks comes with eco-friendly packaging which
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I do like to see remember guys foam
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there's pretty much no way to break it down so yeah it's it's a very very bad
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thing so it's not as thin as a Zenbook but it's still in a very sort of slim
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beautiful form factor with brushed metal on the top that looks absolutely
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gorgeous actually that that's fantastic it's considering the again the sort of
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the value price point of this model so we're going to put that down for now and
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we'll talk specs it's not an Ultra Book
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because it doesn't sort of fall inside Intel's um you know oh it is an
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Ultrabook my bad okay it is an Ultrabook which means it does fall within Intel
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specification meaning it has the anti- theft technology it has all the
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appropriate chipsets so it has to have an Intel Wireless chipset it has to meet
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a certain specification in terms of weight and thickness per size I think
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the reason that I thought it wasn't an Ultrabook was cuz it's a little thicker
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than most Ultrabooks but that is because the Ultrabook specification does allow
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notebooks that are larger so that is the diagonal uh the diagonal length across
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the screen to be thicker because they just have to be larger machines and you
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don't want to compromise the rigidity and the build quality of the machine
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just to get sort of you know a little bit of extra a little well okay you
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wouldn't call it extra thinness it's more like less thickness so we're going to go
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ahead and fire it up oo touchcreen too this is actually sort of an outstanding
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notebook uh it comes with Aus 360
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coverage so I just want you guys to check this out 2year international
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warranty that means even if you take it somewhere else you're not going to get any hassle if something goes wrong zero
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bright dot guarantee on the LCD so ASUS will replace it for you they cover
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two-way free standard shipping for warranty repairs and 24/7 technical
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support it looks like this particular one doesn't include The Accidental
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damage that they used to include you know what we should double check this
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and find out for you though it does not include accidental
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damage like some of the higher end models do but I okay it's a lower end
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model so I guess it is what it is at least you have the international warranty which I think is one of the
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biggest things and free two-way shipping actually is pretty good too because the
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industry standard is that the manufacturer will pay to ship it back to
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you but you pay to ship it to them in the first place so I haven't actually
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gone through specs so let's just have a quick quick look here so it runs a core
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i 53317 u although this particular the
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S400 shell is available in a variety of different CPU configs this particular
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one has a 500 gig SATA drive with a 24
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gig M SSD so I think they mean M SATA SSD that's being used as a cache which
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does actually make the device feel dramatically snappier in my experience
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um it's a 14inch screen it is a touchscreen screen which I think is
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pretty much a must on any notebook these days it comes with 6 gigs of RAM for
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this particular model although some of the different ones do not doesn't have
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fingerprint doesn't have uh TV it runs a
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1366 X 768 resolution and it runs
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Windows 864 bit I wish we'd been able to get rid of the whole 64-bit 32-bit thing
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earlier on but uh I didn't get my way
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with all of that so there you go they've gone with a different shape for their
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power brick for this generation here so we've got the same sort of cable running
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to a power brick running to another cable setup that we've seen before just
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like this but they've just changed the shape a little bit I mean this might
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make it a little bit easier to okay this doesn't come off for anything easier to
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like coil up or easier to tuck away in something but I don't see it making that
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much of a difference I no longer have an iPhone 4 so I'll be doing my HTC 8X size
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comparison uh for those of you who don't know how big an 8X is it's very similar
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in size to a Galaxy S3 so that should give you a better idea of how big the
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power power brick actually is now let's have a look at the notebook itself it
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actually reminds me a lot of um like in terms of just the overall the overall
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finish of it the overall look of the keyboard especially of something like uh
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like a Macbook where it has a very very solid feel it's not a unibody design by
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any stretch of the imagination but look at this you actually really can't see a
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lot of flex to the keyboard itself so you can see from the pressure on my
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fingers how much pressure I'm actually putting on the unit but there's really
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not a lot of flex to it so typing should be very comfortable on the chicklet
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keyboard that's included just because the thing that really bothers me with a
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lot of laptop keyboards is how mushy they can get when you're trying to type
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on them for long periods whereas this one doesn't have any wow it doesn't have
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any mush to it at all that's very comfortable build quality is
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surprisingly good again considering considering the price point normally
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when you get into those sort of6 700 notebooks um you end up with something
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that has a lot of uh like a lot of but
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here so I'll do my usual twist test where I'm seeing how much you can
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actually bend it which is one of the shest ways to know if a notebook is uh
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is well built or not so on this side we find USB 3 HDMI out VGA out which I
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still like to see included gigabit Ethernet using one of those little flap
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Ethernet Jacks power in on the back you
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find not a whole lot on the other side you find a Kensington lock two USB 2.0
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ports a headphone microphone Jack wouldn't have minded seeing discret
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Jacks for that uh an SD card reader and then on the front you've got not a whole
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lot of much of anything on the bottom you just find a Windows 8 sticker as
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well as some ventilation holes the CPU is clocked only at of around H I think
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it's under one gahz when you're idling anyway so I don't wouldn't worry too
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much about uh that fan being very loud at all this one's come with no charge
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unfortunately so I can't power it up right now but I can give you guys a
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better look at the back so uh it doesn't include a microfiber cloth unfortunately
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but I think I have one around here
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somewhere yeah we'll just go with that so I just want you guys to see sort of
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what the back of it looks like did you get any good footage of that
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diesel I'm sort of getting a I'm getting a quizzical look so there just that's
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what the back looks like again it looks very very premium considering the price
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points so the shiny ASUS logo the brush finish it's not quite black like it's
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almost like a very deep Brown so it it
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looks black at first glance but then once you look at it from sort of a
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different angle it has sort of like a very very dark wood finish sort of look
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to it I actually really really like it yeah diesel says classy thank you that's
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probably the word I was looking for actually um it should be noted right
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thickness I never showed you guys the overall thickness so here we're going to
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do the phone thickness comparison as well just to show you that while it is a
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little bit thicker than a smaller Ultrabook because it's it's a 14-in
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model you do get to get away with a little bit more thickness and still keep
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that Ultrabook title however it should
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be noted that the touchcreen itself adds a lot of weight and a lot of bulk to the
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screen typically because it's an entire extra layer in there that you have to
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add in order to get the touchscreen functionality so staying within that
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spec and adding a touch screen at this price point is very impressive it has
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Sonic Master audio so that should mean that in theory The Notebook has better
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audio than other comparable notebooks that don't have any kind of sort of
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attention paid to the audio so it's got stereo speakers here and here and
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according to sort of what I've seen anecdotally people have been saying that
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yes it does indeed sound better than sort of most notebooks that are this
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thin so it's good to know I think that pretty much wraps it up thank you for
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checking out my unboxing and first look at the S400 from ASUS don't forget to
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