ASUS Vivobook Flip 14

FLIPPING TO A MORE AFFORDABLE CONVERTIBLE.

THE HALF PLASTIC, half metal-veneer case and the bulkier screen bezels of the ASUS Vivobook Flip 14 makes it pretty clear that this laptop isn’t aiming to be the most prestigious 2-in-1 ever made. The device runs on a Core i5-7200U CPU and is paired with an ample 8GB RAM. It’s also worth noting that the Vivobook Flip 14 settles for a 256GB SATA 3 connected SSD, which is a pretty big concession against the bigger and much faster NVMe drives found on the best units.

The Intel Core i5-7200U CPU holds up surprisingly well against the latest CPUs, considering it’s only a dual-core array, netting PCMark 8 Home scores that were only around 17% less than what Intel’s new Core i7-8705G achieved in the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 (page 53). The Vivobook Flip 14’s scores were much lower when it came to raw computing power with the i5-7200U getting around half the scores of the leading device’s 8th-generation quad-core chips in Cinebench’s multi-threaded CPU tests. The Vivobook Flip 14 does have an Nvidia GeForce 930MX up its sleeve, but it only seems to boost the graphical performance by about 30% against Intel HD Graphics 620, which means it maxes out at an unplayable 15fps on Total War: Warhammer 2 using low 1080p settings.

Unfortunately, the 42Wh Li-Ion battery isn’t ideal, lasting just 4:43 hours in movie playback benchmarks, but this is pretty standard amongst cheaper units. With a street price of under $1,300, it’s pretty good value, but the battery life, small SATA SSD and year-old CPU are a compromise in the long run.