ASUS Vivobook 15 OLED X1505ZA 15.6″ Full HD OLED Laptop (Intel i5-12500H, 16GB RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD, 400nits OLED Screen with 600nits Peak Brightness, Windows 11 Home)

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty decent for a 600 euro laptop
My laptop features the intel i5 12500H processor, oled monitor at 60hz and 16gb ram.

I have so far used this laptop to watch Netflix in bed and do some light gaming, so I haven’t gotten around to using it for coding.

The processor is good and the integrated graphics are fine enough. I have played some League of Legends on medium-low graphics settings and obviously the FPS is locked to 60. It runs fine (the game runs on potatos anyways). I wouldn’t dare install any newer more demanding games to be honest, but you are welcome to try!

I don’t own and have not owned any other OLED displays so I can’t comment if this is a good one or not comparitively but it looks good to me. The colours are definitely nicer than my old 1080p monitor.

The laptop’s build quality is nice enough, it is no Macbook or anything but it feels decently sturdy, the hinge could be a better but just pay attention to how to handle it. The material used is definitely a fingerprint magnet. The keyboard is a regular old membrane keyboard and this model features no backlighting sadly. The keys feel fine to me but yeah it could be better.

The weakest link in this machine is the battery for sure. I have gone through all the settings and kill background processes but this thing likes to drain pretty fast from activities as simple as just watching Netflix (while it is the only program running in the forefront too). It is quite disappointing and I actively leave Battery Saver mode on with lower brightness so it lasts a bit longer.

All in all, I was looking for a more budget friendly laptop I can take to college for notes and to do my coding assignments and this will do just fine. If you are like me in that sense, then I think you might be just about satisfied with this laptop, though if you will take it to a place with-out many power outlets, good luck.

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful but otherwise very “budget”
This is for the X1504ZA model which is i5 12th gen and 16gb ram.

I snatched this for under 400 as a warehouse deal – at this price this laptop can be really great value because it’s so hard to find many affordable options with 16gb ram. However, you need to be aware there’s no magic pricing here – significant corners were cut which may or not matter to you.

1. Screen: the specs say “IPS-level” but I wonder if this is actually a glorified TN panel? The viewing angles are incredibly poor, using this laptop on the couch is very complicated since you have to be facing the screen at a perfect angle. The colours are mediocre as with most budget laptops but OK but surfing the web etc. The brightness is quite low, lower than the MSI Modern 15 and an HP 14s-dq2502na, probably very difficult to use on a sunny day (but those don’t come all that often eh?)

2. Battery life: appalling. You can get 4.5hs of light use if you’re lucky. (I profiled it extensively) This was the same as the 1 year old HP 14, and 1-1.5 hours less than the MSI Modern 15 with Ryzen 7730U with a marginally smaller battery (39Wh vs 41Wh). The vivobook draws on average on idle 1.5W more than the MSI Modern which is almost to be expected as the i5 can’t beat the ryzen in power consumption. This, paired with a small battery and probably low quality components that are very power inefficient (and a larger screen) means you just can’t get much battery life. People claiming it’s great are likely coming from ancient dusty laptops that can barely hold a charge.

3. Ports: so outdated. The USB-C port does not support charging nor video out. The poor battery life could be compensated by easy charging via USB-C but no, you have to carry the (albeit small) proprietary barrel charger everywhere which is highly impractical if you move around the house or generally use this on your lap… Also because of this, you can only ever support 1 external monitor so OK but not ideal for say, working.

If you don’t care about any of the above then the laptop is actually very good value depending on the price you get it for. The build is really good for the price, I really enjoyed the keyboard (minus the unusual bottom row of the numpad). The touchpad was very good even if the mouse did skip a few times. The bezels are small and the whole unit feels solid for a plastic build and actually looks sleek if you don’t look too hard at it. As a last negative, I’m personally not a fan of the 16:9 aspect ratio, the 15.6″ screen seems too wide and short – I find the newer 16:10 to be far more practical and enjoyable but you can’t have it all at a budget level, just consider this as well. Lastly, as you’d expect the performance with the recent 12th gen i5 and 16gb of ram (and a decent NVMe SSD) is actually excellent for a budget laptop, super speedy.