Asus Vivobook 16X Review

The Asus Vivobook 16X gets the job done with the bare minimum of hardware that should keep workers and creatives happy.

It features a respectable 1200p display with its pleasing 16:10 aspect ratio alongside a solid suite of connectivity options and a battery life which doesn’t disappoint. However, the same cannot be said for the ageing CPU and GPU inside our specific review unit which leaves a lot to be desired, especially in the face of the ongoing AI laptop revolution.

Introduction

• Aggressive pricing
• Really old CPU and GPU combo
• Replaced by far more capable models

The Asus Vivobook 16X has a lot going for it on paper with a solid display and respectable battery life. However, at around the $799 / £799 mark this machine simply doesn’t have what it takes to offer much of a reason to pick it over a sea of alternatives rocking vastly improved silicon inside.

While the Asus Vivobook 16X strikes a couple of right notes with its 120Hz refresh rate for smooth browsing and a lovely WUXGA 16:10 screen, it’s hampered at every turn by baffling hardware inclusions, including a low amount of slower LPDDR4 RAM, a weak CPU and poor GPU, and a slow NVMe SSD inside.

It looks pretty, but scratch under the surface and you’re ultimately left with a disappointing model that’s nowhere near close to what the best laptops can offer in terms of performance for the money.

Design

• Lightweight at just 1.80 kg
• Excellent ergonomic keyboard
• Just 18mm thick

The Asus Vivobook 16X certainly looks the part with its metallic lid and silver plastic chassis hybrid. It fits right in with more expensive ultrabooks from a distance even if it doesn’t benefit from an entirely aluminium build quality as with some of its contemporaries.

This design language is consistent with the “ErgoSense” keyboard as Asus calls it, featuring an actuation of 19.05mm which aids in replicating the desktop keyboard experience. In my testing, I can largely attest to this; it’s one of the better keyboards I have used on a laptop in recent memory, even though it doesn’t give the best gaming keyboards much to feel frightened about.

There’s a good level of flexibility in the way the laptop’s hinge is designed as well. The screen goes back a full 180 degrees to lay completely flat, which is neat if not exactly useful. Other cool touches include a dedicated privacy filter for the webcam, which happens to be a fine-but-not-great 720p shooter, and built-in AI-powered noise cancelling for when video conferencing which aims to eliminate background noise. When testing with Google Meet hangouts, I can say it works well enough, but dedicated AI laptops running NPUs will have its more rudimentary solution beat in this regard.

Connectivity options are solid across the board. There’s your standard power connector on the right-hand side accompanied by a 3.5mm jack, a full-size HDMI port, and a USB 3.2 port. On the left-hand side, you’ve got a USB 2.0 port and an SD card reader, so you should be catered to when plugging in your peripherals of choice as well as any external hard drives and SD cards you may need for your everyday workflow.

Screen

• WUXGA resolution and 16:10 aspect ratio
• 120Hz refresh rate for smooth browsing and working
• Good 86% screen-to-body ratio

One of the saving graces of the Asus Vivobook 16X is its display which is pleasant to the eye on first impression and continues to be solid after many hours of use.

You aren’t getting HDR support here, nor the more advanced panel tech types such as Mini LED or OLED, however, the peak SDR brightness of 300 nits is more than serviceable for indoor and outdoor use in my testing. Things are smooth with the utilization of a 120Hz refresh rate, a good bump up from the standard 60Hz many productivity machines run with.

Specifically, I measured 316.67 cd/m² (which works out to 316 nits) which, while not the brightest display, gets the job done.

In my testing, I observed a gamut coverage of 89.9 sRGB with a gamut volume of 92.1% sRGB which is good to see. There are equal parts 63.4% Adobe RGB and 65.2% DCI P3 gamut and volume respectively, too. It’s a solid figure given the LED backlit panel hides no fancy gimmicks or tricks, but is unlikely to blow you away like how the company’s newer productivity machines running OLED displays will.

For media playback and work tasks, it’s absolutely fine.

Performance

• Years behind the competition
• Respectable, if dated, CPU and GPU performance
• Battery life is as advertised for the most part

The Asus Vivobook 16X loses major favour in its performance as our particular review unit features old and outdated hardware that’s since been innovated time and time again.

That’s because this productivity laptop features an ageing Intel Core i5-12450H CPU, which while solid enough has been usurped by not only the 13th and 14th Gen equivalents (Raptor Lake) but also Meteor Lake which has been custom-built for the AI laptop revolution – it makes this chipset feel positively ancient.

This extends to the choice of discrete graphics as well. While it’s commendable to feature the RTX 2050 for GPU-accelerated tasks, this graphics card is equally long in the tooth, having been replaced by the far more capable RTX 30 and RTX 40 series and being nearly four years old.

Armed with just 4GB GDDR6 gaming is simply out of the question as the mobile GA107 silicon is forged on a 64-bit memory bus. Even the latest Nvidia Studio drivers can’t give it much boost either. Team Green has pivoted towards AI-accelerated DLSS 3.0 Frame Generation for its low-end hardware, which this GPU cannot do.

In equal measure, it’s disappointing to see just 8GB LPDDR4 RAM installed in this productivity laptop which will seriously hamper any multitasking potential.

Not only is this the lowest capacity you can get, but it’s especially poor considering the much faster LPDDR5 memory has been around for nearly five years. Asus does offer newer versions of this laptop with far newer graphics power, a more modern CPU, and greatly improved RAM, however, I can only review the hardware put in front of us. It’s not exactly a show of power given the leading ultrabook it presents itself as.

The benchmarks reveal just how behind the time the hardware inside of the Asus Vivobook 16X is. Starting with a fairly middle-of-the-road PCMark 10 score of 5762, things don’t show much signs of improvement with CPU benchmarks such as Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23. In the former, you’re looking at 2107 for single-core and 7098 for multi-core respectively. In the latter, that’s 1658 and 5724. While far from poor, it’s not exactly blowing the similarly priced competition away, especially if you’re comparing against machines running newer, faster processors.

The GPU is a major bottleneck for anything too intensive as the benchmarks in 3DMark TimeSpy indicate with a score of just 3309. While an improvement over integrated Iris Xe and Arc 370M, there’s not much in the difference. That’s because the Arc chip also features 4GB GDDR6 VRAM on its DG2-128 processor, showing how far integrated graphics have come since the RTX 20 series debuted back in 2018.

The RTX 2050 should be able to handle things such as photo and video editing just fine with hardware acceleration, but some tasks, like 3D modelling, may prove too much.

Not helping the Asus Vivobook 16X’s case is the choice of Gen 3.0 NVMe SSD inside. We’re at a point now where some even mid-range laptops are running high-speed Gen 4.0 drives, and high-end rigs are even running Gen 5.0 NVMe SSDs. That makes the rather poor sequential figures on offer here really stand out sorely. I measured a read speed of just 2807.96 MB/s with average write figures of only 1516.31 MB/s.

While much faster than an older SATA SSD, you aren’t exactly going to experience blazing-fast speeds here. Equally wounding is the mere capacity of 512GB; given how affordable Gen 3.0 has become (as it’s been around since 2017 or so). It doesn’t reach the meagre 3500 MB/s cap either.

The battery life of the Asus Vivobook 16X appears to be consistent with the company’s claims of nine hours of use, but this will vary with video playback.

I had videos running for an hour at half brightness (150 nits) and noted the battery had diminished by just under 30%. When unplugged after charging to 100%, the Windows battery report claims the rig will last around six hours with the moderate use I was doing (including having multiple Google Chrome tabs open). You may not need to carry the charger at all times, but if you do, the rig can juice up to full in around 60 minutes, which is solid.

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Final Thoughts

While our specific Asus Vivobook 16X review unit doesn’t make the best impression for the company’s line of mid-ranged ultrabooks, that shouldn’t necessarily sway you from purchasing one.

Newer variants of the Asus Vivobook 16X feature far more competent graphics cards such as the RTX 4050 and RTX 4060 for a similar price as this version, not to mention vastly faster processors such as 13th Gen i5 CPUs or AMD equivalents.

The core design is solid and the display is far from the worst that I’ve ever seen. Not to mention, the keyboard is very comfortable and satisfying to use for many hours at a time – so there’s a host of redeeming qualities for sure. With that said it’s very difficult to recommend this specific variant running just 8GB RAM, an old 12th Gen i5 CPU, and an ancient RTX 2050 when there are so many better options available for around the same price point.

If you’re in the market for a sensibly priced ultrabook that won’t break the bank then I recommend keeping things close to home with the Asus Vivobook 16 which features an improved CPU at a cheaper price tag. For something more upmarket, yet comparable, there’s also the Apple MacBook Air M2 which is available around the £999/$999 mark for the 13-inch model and offers a superior battery, display, and performance in a more compact package. It’s no longer the newest in the lineup, that would be the Apple MacBook Air M3, but it should still blow this PC out of the water.

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