Asus Vivobook A510U: A for Affordable – Full Review

We are no strangers when it comes to Asus products. They focus on various consumer segment but there’s one category they are good at. It’s making computers. In fact, Asus is one of the leading company when it comes to consumer laptops. Last year, we reviewed one of their affordable range laptop that got our attention for being a bang for the buck. We are talking about the Asus VivoBook S15.

Earlier this month, we saw another Vivobook from the company and they’ve took the affordability to the next level. The Vivobook A510U is their entree to the Vivobook lineup and we used it for a while. Is this the ultimate affordable laptop that anyone can buy or is it a bust? Time to find out in this Full Review.

Design & Build Quality

As for the design counterpart, the Asus Vivobook A510 resembles the Vivobook S15 in so many ways. But when you look closely, the design is actually different. On the shell where the brand logo is located is actually constructed in plastic with a ripple design. As for the rest of the body it’s the same. The palm rest on the Vivobook is one of my personal favorite because of its huge area, compared to most of the other devices in the market.

Moving on to the build quality, it doesn’t feel cheap in anyway but if someone who used the Vivobook S15 will definitely be able to find out what exactly changed. For instance, the brushed material back is gone and has been replaced with a plastic shell. It’ll be fine right now but as time goes by, there’s definitely going to be some sort of wear and tear. As for the rest of the body, I am impressed that the chassis is exactly the same as their S15 and I personally have no complains about it.

I’d give a B- for the Design and Build Quality

Keyboard & Trackpad

One thing about the Vivobook is the keyboard is a chic let style keyboard and it works like a charm. Even for a device that’s sold at a price tag like this, other manufacturers would just remove features like the back lit keyboard. But Asus didn’t, so you’ll still be able to type in the dark just like batman does. It’s decent.

The trackpad on the A510 has no issues as well unlike the Vivobook S15 where when you left click the trackpad, it tends to sink in and gets stuck. It looks like that problem is gone for good. The trackpad is huge and using Windows Gestures has never been better. Even performing a 4 finger tap to show/hide the notification bar is a lot easier. On the top right corner of the trackpad, you’ll find the Fingerprint sensor which let’s you secure your laptop and unlock in an instant, which is a nice touch.

Ports

Just like the S15, the Vivobook A510 has adequate ports for normal usage. On the right side, you’ll find the AC Port for charging, a USB 3.1, HDMI, USB-C and a headphone jack. Whereas on the other side, you’ll find the SD Card reader, along with 2 USB 2.0 and the Laptop indicator.

Display

The major compromise on the Vivobook A15 is definitely the display. Let’s start off with some good things about the laptop. The Vivobook A15 features a 15.6″ NanoEdge display. The bezels on the laptop is super thin and they’ve fitted a 15.6″ display into a 14″ laptop. The bezel on this laptop is about 7.8mm thin, giving it an 80% screen-to-body ratio.

The major letdown about this laptop is the fact that it uses an Anti-Glare TN Panel. The thing with TN panel is, it has a very poor viewing angle. If you’re using to type some word document, watch movies but don’t really plan to use the laptop display for anything else, then yeah go ahead. But if you’re planning to edit with this laptop, boy you are in a big trouble because the colors isn’t as accurate as you think. Using it for light gaming should be okay but don’t expect a gaming laptop grade experience.

For us, we give a C- for the display.

Speakers

The Vivobook A510 is tuned with SonicMaster for the speakers. Listening to the speakers by placing in an inclined position will give you a decent listening experience but if you were to place it on a flat surface, the sound is sharp and loses a lot of details. It’s loud but isn’t clear. But if you are planning to watch a movie and you don’t have an external speaker, the Vivobook speaker will still do some justice.

Specification & Performance

Under the hood, the Asus Vivobook A15 packs an Intel Core-i5 8th Generation with 4GB of RAM. As for the GPU counterpart, the laptop runs Intel UHD Graphics 620 and NVIDIA GeForce MX130. The Vivobook A15 has an 1TB HDD with 5400 RPM and this is where the battle for power begins. With an Intel Core i5 8th  Generation processor and 4GB RAM, the laptop should have the power to deliver decent task.

On top of that, having a dedicated graphics card, MX130 should allow you to play decent titles. May be not AAA Game titles but games like Cuphead. But the thing is, the Vivobook A series is unable to do that because the Hard drive is bottlenecking the device itself.

After checking the disk speed through CrystalDiskMark 5.2.1, the scores isn’t the greatest and running our editing software like Photoshop Lightroom was a challenge. Even opening up Google Chrome took a while. Running applications one at a time is alright, but when you launch more than 3 applications, that’s when the whole thing struggles a lot.

It’s definitely a huge bummer if you ask me. But, don’t worry because there’s one solution for this, I’ll tell you in abit. Other than the performance, it has support for 802.11ac WiFi which is really good. So is the bluetooth.

Battery Life

The Battery life on the Vivobook A is impressive. Most of the time, I found myself leaving my charger at home and using the laptop on and off the whole day with no problem. It lasts for 5 hours plus under normal usage. But if I were to toggle battery saving mode, the laptop lasts for 6 hours tops. This good battery life is achieved thanks to the 42 Watt Hour 3-cell Lithium Ion found under the laptop.

It’s a pretty decent battery life and I still managed to get all my things done on time.

Upgradability

Just like the Vivobook S15, the A comes with 4GB RAM. Worry not because there’s an extra slot for adding one more RAM. As for the storage solution, you can hot swap the existing HDD with a bigger storage and it also has an SSD Slot.

Here’s the solution we were talking about, it’s better if you were to get a 128GB SSD and improve your device speed. Honestly, that’s going to help you a lot.

Conclusion

It’s time for our final verdict. We loved the Vivobook S15, it was the Mid-range laptop that stole our attention in so many ways. The A series, does have the looks and feels of the S15 but it kinda left a hole in our heart. For the price, the Vivobook A510U is a steal. We can even forgive about the display but with that performance, we were confused whether to recommend or not to initially.

Honestly, for RM 2,599 it’s a really good deal. You get a huge laptop with bigger display, a decent keyboard/trackpad, Windows Hello Fingerprint support, essential I/Os and a good battery life. But the storage is a huge disappointment. Still, if you’re planning pick the Vivobook A510U, we highly recommend you to get atleast an 128GB M.2 SSD on your way out because trust me. You’ll thank us later.