8.4 Score
Pros
- OLED Display is now on the Vivobook
- Overkill Specification, making it the powerful Vivobook to exist as of now
- Solid Performance for days with proper GPU albeit a lower wattage variant
- Impressive experience, can even game on it as well
- Possibly a good value Vivobook
Cons
- The not-so-pro USB 2.0 and Micro SD card slot has to go
- USB-C Charging would have been a nicer touch
ASUS very own Vivobook has been a fan favorite for good reason: it’s well spec-ed, performs alright and hits the right spot both pricewise and need-wise. It has always been a “just enough” kind of laptop. But that changes with the new Vivobooks because they didn’t get just any kind of usual specification upgrades but the kind that drops one’s jaws. This is the ASUS Vivobook Pro 15 OLED M3500Q Review and it’s one of the most powerful Vivobook Ever Made.
Look and Feel
For the most part, not much has changed with the Vivobook series, you can notice some of the design that’s technically a “signature” thing for this particular series. But there are some intricate details that’s noticeable which you would either love it or hate it and that starts off with that weird looking bumpy “ASUS Vivobook” Logo on the body which I don’t fancy. It’s supposed to give off an edgy feel, but it fails to do so. But if it does and you like it, then that’s alright. The color of the Vivobook Pro M3500Q we received comes in this nice Gunmetal color, but it still carries forward those funky colors we have seen in the part. The bottom of the laptop follows a similar design as the Zenbook laptops we have seen recently.
Feel-wise, the laptop is constructed in a mixture of polycarbonate and aluminum. It’s built well enough to satisfy most users with no issue really. There isn’t much to say about the laptop as it has not changed drastically as compared to their other series like the Zenbook with a revamped design.
It’s also nice to see that there’s a Privacy Camera shutter on top to hide the camera away when it is not in use.
Display
As the name suggests, the Vivobook Pro 15 M3500Q houses a 15.6” display and not just any kind of display but an amazing OLED Display in the 16:9 aspect ratio. Recently, if you notice, ASUS has been stepping up the display in every laptop they are releasing, and I mean every laptop. This is in a good direction because the days where TN and VA panel existing in laptop needs to be over because a good display makes up for the 50% of the experience in a laptop. The Vivobook Pro 15 does a fantastic job in the display – I don’t want to preach the key points ASUS talks about their OLED display but to keep it short it covers the following:
- Less Blue Light Emissions
- Delta < 2 Color Coverage
- DCI-P3 Color Gamut Coverage
- Faster response time
I/O and Input
As for the I/Os on the laptop, it covers a fair ground for you to no carry a dongle at all. So, on one side, you have 2x Full Size USB 2.0 Ports and on the other side, you’ll find the following: 1x DC IN Charging Port, 1x Full Size USB 3.2 Gen 1, 1x HDMI 1.4, 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 1, 1x Micro-SD card Slot and a Headphone/Microphone Combo Jack. ASUS should consider ditching USB 2.0 ports entirely – probably the least pro thing about this Vivobook Pro 15.
Now moving on to the inputs: the laptop, technically has a full-size keyboard which includes number pad as well. For the most part, I have no issues with ASUS choice of keyboard on the Vivobook Pro 15 OLED has it has nice typing experience with a 1.35mm key-travel. Unlike their previous laptops, where we have seen odd size keys like shorter Right Shift and so on, I am glad it doesn’t exist here, and most keys are of the same size we’d see on a traditional keyboard. Arrow keys are compact which I understand as it might not have been easy to cram a bigger key but its usable.
The number pad it decently sized and might seem a bit narrow, but it isn’t too bad. Some of the dedicated function keys have been integrated with the numbers like Insert, delete – which isn’t a huge deal breaker.
Oh, and if you notice, this laptop may not have Windows Hello IR for security, but it has a Fingerprint sensor hiding under the power button which is pretty cool.
The trackpad on the Vivobook Pro 15 OLED is humongous – it’s quite literally the first time we have seen a trackpad this big on a Vivobook. It has more room to move the cursor corner to corner and allows you to perform gestures very well. Since its covered in glass on top, it’s extremely nice to glide the finger to move the cursor. It’s like touching silk to an extent. Palm rejection is good but since the left and right click is literally below the trackpad, it’s possible to apply slight force and click somewhere and the buttons are easy to trigger. Few times writing this review, I have accidentally triggered a click and I’d be typing what I am supposed to type here, somewhere else.
Specification and Performance
I don’t think I have ever used the word overkill to describe a Vivobook until today because this one really is powerful. Thanks to the world that we are living in now where AMD is making strides with good processors, this laptop is finally being blessed with AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processor coupled with NVIDIA’s GPU and not just any GPU but an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 in such a thin chassis. As for the remaining specification, here’s what it has:
- AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX Processor
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 with 4GB GDDR6
- 16GB DDR4 RAM
- 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
Let’s get the synthetic benchmark out of the way and to benchmark, we used the following: PCMARK, 3DMARK, Blender, Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 5.
We will start off with Cinebench R23 to tell you what kind of an overkill processor we have here: The AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX has no business being in a laptop like this but it manages to whip it out and kill it dead with its extremely powerful multicore performance at 11.4k points and single core at 1467 points which is good. To be very honest, if this was a Blue Processor’s version of R9 which is the i9, it would have needed a pretty strong thermal system but during the Cinebench we can tell that the Vivobook Pro 15 barely throttled and handled the render like a charm. Same applies in Blender, where it did the BMW render in just about 4 minutes + approx.
During some of those tests where we ran the 3DMARK to see how the thermals would be like – the CPU touched a peak approx. 80 degrees Celsius which is expected for a Ryzen 9 processor because I do expect it to still get warmer. But it’s the GPU that I am concerned about – The Vivobook no longer has a Discrete GPU – well it kind of does but now we get to see a proper GPU, one of those RTX counterparts in a machine like this – and we have a RTX 3050 with 4GB GDDR6. It touches about close to 97 degrees Celsius which is concerning but for the most part, people who do get laptops like this will be spending less on GPU intensive tasks and the closest thing I can see it being used as a good portable secondary editing machine on the go and come back to their home or workspace to take advantage of their full-fledged power PC.
Check out the other benchmark scores below from Geekbench and more.
Can You Game on it though?
One of the obvious questions we are definitely going to get with this laptop is that “If you can game on it?”. Rather than trying all the games and get the FPS scores, we chose to try one title and it’s the choke slamming Doom Eternal. To my surprise, this laptop can give you a good gaming experience. More than what I expected. Now, Doom Eternal is a pretty intense game, especially with its recent Update 6.66 – things got even more intense. But that said, we configured the laptop to suit the specification because with a limited 4GB of VRAM, it’s not possible to crank it up to max.
So, we set to 1080p resolution with medium settings and turned off Ray Tracing, DLSS 2.0 and hey, it was playable. Way better than I expected. So, yes you could game on it – I managed to play that whole level again with no issue whatsoever. Obviously, I could feel a bit of the warmth kicking in but otherwise the laptop is definitely capable to play some titles. Just make sure to toggle it down to a bare minimum.
Conclusion
Now after reading all that, you can understand why we say this to be one of the most powerful Vivobook to have been ever made and yes, in no way its comparable to something like a Gaming laptop but if you do think about this laptops position in the market, it’s not about having the most power but it’s about having the needed power on the move to help you out with every little tasks. As someone who travels and curate content, having a decent machine is near damn impossible because it’s a struggle of choosing between power and endurance – but this ASUS Vivobook Pro 15 OLED M3500Q brings a good balance of power you’d “actually” need with the endurance which we have enjoyed in the past.
There you have it. The beginning of an era where thin and light gets to see the power, we wanted to see a long time ago. But seriously ASUS, it’s time to ditch those non-pro USB 2.0 and Micro SD card slot for a USB 3.2 Port and a Full-Size SD Card reader.
Special thanks to ASUS Malaysia for sending the Vivobook Pro 15 OLED for us to Review and make this content happen.