Asus Launches the Vivobook S500
The VivoBook S500 is designed to offer a "uniquely intuitive Windows 8 touch experience along with enhanced computing and multimedia capabilities at a very affordable price".
The VivoBook S500 is the latest release in Asus' line of Ultraportable laptops and features a 15.6" LED backlit capacitive touch display (1366 x 768), 3rd Generation Intel Core Processors (starting with the 1.7 GHz i5-3317U) and an advertised 2-second instant resume from sleep mode and standby battery life of up to two weeks.
The laptop is also equipped with 6 GB of DDR3 RAM, Intel GMA HD graphics, a 500 GB hard drive paired with a 24 GB caching SSD, and an "oversized touchpad incorporating Asus' Smart Gesture technology." The latter feature is advertised by the company as providing "instinctive touch capabilities" when combined with the aforementioned multi-point touchscreen display.
The VivoBook S500 is currently for sale in North America with a starting price of $699, a reasonable price given its features, slim profile and attractive design.
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Tarun Iyer was a contributor for Tom's Hardware who wrote news covering a wide range of technology topics, including processors, graphics cards, cooling systems, and computer peripherals. He also covered tech trends such as the development of adaptive all-in-one PCs.
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DRosencraft I personally find the specs up and down for a laptop at that price (decent memory, decent CPU, would like dedicated graphics). In general I would like it if these 15" laptops had better resolutions around this price-point.Reply -
shadowfamicom livebriand1366x768 in a 15" laptop? Is this a joke?Reply
Yeah isn't it odd that a 5 inch screen on a phone these days has 1080p and this 15.6 inch screen only has that resolution? -
bystander livebriand1366x768 in a 15" laptop? Is this a joke?And PC desktop's don't hit 1080p until about 23". For a laptop, that is perfectly good. If you go to a higher resolution, it become problematic for normal Windows tasks. Windows is not designed around ultra resolutions yet.Reply -
sykozis 1.7ghz??? That's a bit weak for $699....Reply
bystanderAnd PC desktop's don't hit 1080p until about 23". For a laptop, that is perfectly good. If you go to a higher resolution, it become problematic for normal Windows tasks. Windows is not designed around ultra resolutions yet.You can get a 21" desktop monitor that will do 1080.... -
bystander sykozis1.7ghz??? That's a bit weak for $699....You can get a 21" desktop monitor that will do 1080....Remember this is a touch screen. That adds to the cost.Reply
Yes, I suppose you "can" get 1080p at 21", but many aren't. -
sna livebriand1366x768 in a 15" laptop? Is this a joke?Reply
full HD of the same specs will be $200 more .
so for 699$ it is not a joke no. -
Shankovich Don't see why they couldn't have put in an APU from AMD. It would have eased loads and added much more general performance (due to the graphics cores) for the same price.Reply -
pacomac bystanderAnd PC desktop's don't hit 1080p until about 23". For a laptop, that is perfectly good. If you go to a higher resolution, it become problematic for normal Windows tasks. Windows is not designed around ultra resolutions yet.Reply
Yes, you can thank Apple for pushing the boundaries of what resolutions are acceptable on a smaller screen. I guess it will actually be Apple that push the boundaries with the desktop too as I don't see any monitor manufacturers trying to step up to the mark!