Asus VivoBook S200E review

Intel’s Ultrabook concept has seen all manner of gorgeous, slim-and-light laptops make their way through the PC Pro office, but one thing they’ve never been is cheap. Now Asus is attempting to right that wrong with its VivoBook S200E, a compact little laptop which crams in a Core i3 processor alongside Windows 8 and an 11.6in touchscreen.

As the VivoBook S200E measures a relatively chunky 22mm thick, Asus isn’t officially allowed to call it an Ultrabook. Regardless, we doubt anyone would describe this laptop as overweight. At 1.41kg, this 11.6in machine is a little heavier than most 13in Ultrabooks, though not by much, and thanks to the tiny, lightweight 148g wall wart power supply, you can pop both in a bag without too much shoulder strain.

While it lacks the razor-edge slenderness of pricier peers, this little laptop is still good-looking and solidly built. Sheets of alloy stretch across the lid and around the Scrabble-tile keyboard, making the S200E look like a chubby cousin to Asus’s 11.6in Ultrabook, the Zenbook UX21. The metal and plastic construction feels bombproof, and the whole chassis is stiff and flex-free. It’s outlandishly refined for a £450 laptop.

The modest hardware within does a good job of keeping Windows 8 feeling fluid and responsive, too. There are two VivoBook S200E models in the range, with the entry-level model featuring a basic Pentium CPU for £400, while the model we’re reviewing here has a dual-core 1.8GHz Core i3. Whichever you choose, there’s 4GB of memory and a 500GB hard disk. It isn’t a lightning-quick combination by any means, but the result of 0.48 in our Real World Benchmarks compares very favourably to even full-sized budget laptops. The only annoyance is the quiet whir of the cooling fan, although this is audible only in quiet surroundings.

In some ways, however, the VivoBook S200E is quite out of the ordinary. It does everything you’d expect of a standard laptop, but the 11.6in touchscreen and Windows 8 make a fine pairing. We quickly found ourselves instinctively flitting between tapping at the keyboard and touchpad to prodding the screen directly. Here, the extra weight in the VivoBook’s base proves a real boon, preventing the laptop from tilting backwards too easily as you tap. It still doesn’t take much force to set the Asus rocking back on its hinge, but as the touchscreen responds to even the lightest of touches, it’s easy to adapt to it.