ASUS VivoBook Flip 14 Thin and Light 2-in-1 Laptop, 14” FHD Touch Display, AMD Ryzen 5 5500U, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Stylus, Fingerprint Reader, Windows 10 Home, Bespoke Black, TM420UA-DS52T

Description

★★★★★
$668.00
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Features

  • Standing screen display size: ‎14 Inches
  • Processor: ‎2 GHz ryzen_5
  • RAM: ‎8 GB DDR4
  • Hard Drive: ‎512 GB SSD
  • Chipset Brand: ‎AMD
  • Card Description: ‎UMA
  • Wireless Type: ‎802.11ac
  • Number of USB 2.0 Ports: ‎1
  • Number of USB 3.0 Ports: ‎1

Description

  • Powerful & efficient AMD Ryzen 5 5500U Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.0GHz, 6 cores)
  • Windows 10 Home, 512GB SSD and 8GB DDR4 RAM
  • 14” Full HD Wideview touch display (with glossy finish) with up to 178° viewing angle optimized for entertainment
  • 12.8” wide, 0.7”...

    User reviews

    Most of you are on Windows. If you are, you can pretend that this review has 5 stars because everything works fine on Windows, and Microsoft did a very good job with their touch UI. Hell, I'm even thinking of just giving it 5 stars.The AMD Ryzen in there, along with its integrated graphics, is very fast. It beats my (old, but still kinda beefy) gaming pc in frames per second on Minecraft. Battery lasts forever. It's also very quiet. Under light loads, the fans don't spin at all, and when you start doing heavy stuff, they still spin quietly, and the whole thing stays cool.When AMD dropped these processors this year, they made a statement that says nobody should have to pay extra to get a machine that doesn't suck.I got used to the keyboard and touchscreen very quickly. I don't have like a million laptops to compare to, but I can say the keyboard is nice and comfortable. Build quality is metal so this will last you a long time.And upgradable memory is really something you want. 8 GB might not be much in a couple years, but if you start running out, you can replace one of the 4GB sticks with a 16, giving you a very nice 20GB of ram. Many companies are moving towards soldered ram, which is sad.So if you're running Windows, and want a 2 in 1 that runs quickly, this is the machine for you. You can stop reading the review here.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------But if you run Linux, and want something that you don't have to fiddle with to keep running without having to make sacrifices, you should look somewhere else. I hear good things about Lenovo, so you might have better luck over there.I don't like Windows out of personal preference. I'm a developer, and while Linux Subsystem for Windows is getting better, it's nowhere near as good as running the real thing. I'm also a little paranoid when it comes to my privacy. I'm not gonna run an operating system that mines my data, and I wont take any of that "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" crap. I might as well go for a walk with no mask and no pants. There is nothing wrong with having something to hide. Valve's proton is getting better and better, and almost all my games run faster on Linux, so I game on Linux too.Now, I knew what I was getting into. Linux touch UI is not the best. I'm running Ubuntu 20.10 (sorry its not arch). Some apps play nicely, mostly Gtk apps and Blink based browsers (Chromium, Chrome, and the one I use, Brave). But it's nowhere near as good as touch support on Windows. But, that's why I got this. I'm hoping to make touch support better on Linux, and I can't really do that if I don't have a touchscreen Linux machine.Some other things also don't work out of the box. Some function keys don't work. Only volume, brightness, touchpad, keyboard backlight, and lock screen do. When you flip the screen over and use it like a tablet, the keyboard stays on, so you'll probably bump keys. The screen doesn't rotate like it does on Windows. I've seen some fixes going around but I haven't had the chance to install them so I can't tell you how well they work. They probably work well though.Fingerprint only kinda works. On Windows, you can just tap and you're fine. On Linux, libfprint can't get a high enough resolution image, so you have to carefully swipe your finger over the reader. It works, but it takes a few tries to get right, so you're probably gonna be faster just typing your password.But what really caught me off guard was that when you sleep it, the kernel hangs about 80% of the time when you wake it up. It doesn't stop the fans when you do sleep it either, so it will keep burning battery. You're better off setting it to keep running when you close the lid like I have, and shutting down if you wont use it for a while, which is fine because even with dm-crypt full disk encryption, it still boots very fast.Turns out ASUS used some weird UEFI implementation that breaks away from the standards. Only Microsoft's kernel works with it. There's no documentation for where it breaks the standards, nor is there source code or even closed source binaries for it. It's all up to reverse engineering projects, which I will probably join as soon as I get the chance.Everything else works great. AMD's graphics drivers run great on Linux, and if you choose the community driven open source alternative, those work good too. Wireless is more stable than my old laptop (Dell Latitude E6330).------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Before I end this review, I just want to say that ASUS does not support Linux, and they don't have to. Most people run Windows. ASUS wants to focus on making the more popular operating system run as good as possible. We made the choice to run something else. Even if their choice was for money, there's nothing wrong with that because they have families to feed.We should not be toxic with them for making this choice. I see a lot of yall getting toxic with companies who don't support Linux. ASUS will probably change their mind if there were a lot more of us, but if the Linux community is known to be just a bunch of toxic nerds who throw a fit if some innocent company refuses to spend millions of dollars paying engineers and licensing code just to please like 19 people, we will never grow. If we don't like it, we need to either fix things ourselves or go somewhere else.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------edit: with ubuntu out of the box i later realized audio had a noticable delay. if you have the same problem, ill lay out some steps for those with little to no terminal experience1. open a terminal2. run the command `gedit admin:///etc/pulse/daemon.conf` without ` and type your password when it asks4. go to the bottom of the file and add two new lines, `default-fragments = 5` and `default-fragment-size-msec = 2`5. save and close the text editor6. either go back to the terminal and run the command `pulseaudio -k`, or just reboot your computerthis is from https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio/Troubleshooting#Laggy_soundill be back with more fixes as i find them.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------edit: 21.04 update just came out, which switches the default compositor from x11 to wayland. i was excited to move to wayland with its promises of better performance and security, but i got worse performance from it. i tried launching half life 2, and it locked up my whole display. game made sounds and everything but i couldnt even drop into a tty. so make sure at the login screen you click that gear icon and select "ubuntu on x.org"the login screen will still run on wayland, meaning you have both x11 and wayland running at the same time, which means nothing for speed once youre in x11 as far as i know, but it will slow down boot time a little bit and hold a little bit of extra ram. if you wanna get some of this ram back, you can edit the file /etc/gdm3/custom.conf1. open a terminal, this time type `gedit admin:///etc/gdm3/custom.conf`2. fine the line where it says "# Uncomment the line below to force the login screen to use Xorg"3. uncomment the line below it by removing the #4. save and close iton your next reboot, x11 should be all that runs. if you want you can uninstall wayland, but it shouldnt really take up too much space and i dont know how a system upgrade would react to that.wayland will get better in the future though, its just not ready for this machine rn.sleep is still broken sadly. a little bit more reliable but not for daily use.
    (Edited again ) After 3 month of use this are my impressions. So far its soo good so impressed with this product even after 3 months use. My model is with Amd ryzen 4700u.Body : Laptop is made of aluminum and its very sturdy i will say its really really good for the price. I wish it had more colors as this black is matte and its a fingerprint magnet. And the 360° hinge also very good one.Port : The port selection is good 2 normal USB(usb 2.0 and usb 3.2 gen 2), HDMI port, 1 usb Type-C, headphone jack, Kingston lock and charging port. I wish the Usb Type - C supported charging (it doesn't support charging and display port just for data transfer).Display : Its good for most users and for my use its really good. It covers 60% SRGB ( if your photo or video editor who need 100% SRGB then go for others). The panel itself is good and have decent brightness level for my use i usually keep at 35% . And its touch screen and the touch response is soo good.Performance : My model comes with Amd 4700U and the performance is very fast. Its soo good whatever you are doing it can handle very well. And the fan noise silent for normal use and if you doing heavy task the fan noise increases but it's under control . [(update) Also if u are doing light stuffs like reading a pdf or doing some light stuff the fan completely turns off. So its super silent for light users.] There is performance fan mode in MyAsus App which increases fan speed and noise for performance mode. For gaming i don't know i actually didn't use for gaming but it can handle some gaming i guess atleast from internet i saw it has a Nvidia Mx 150 like performance.Ram : 8 GB Ram comes on board and the surprising thing is one slot is expandable. Out of the box it comes with 4GB sorted + 4GB in expandable sort. It can be upgraded upto 16 GB Ram so it can handle total of 20 GB. And this itself makes one of the best reason to go for it.Storage : 512 GB SSD its fast and even that is upgradable.Battery : (update) Now after driver updates and windows update My laptop goes 7-8 hrs normally and if using light stuffs it can go all the way upto 12-14 hrs. Thats a massive change after updates. So now u don't have to worry about charging. And the charger is very compact 45 W charger its small and it can fit in any bag.Wifi card : My model comes with intel wifi 5 and its good. And if you want that's also upgradable. This laptop has so many user replaceable parts that make it best for customers even if you don't need to upgrade it can be useful for future needs.Track pad : Its decent the tracking is very good but the button are not that great atleast for my taste.Keyboard : The keyboard is good one with backlight. And it has very decent travel and i like the shortcut keys in function keys and you can change it when you want to use function keys(eg: f1) by just pressing FN +esc and it shows a small led color when its in Function button mode in FN button . The only thing i would say bad is that the "back space key" is little smaller than normal laptop.Camera and Mic : Not good not bad its just a typical laptop camera but the mics are surprisingly good one.Speakers : The speakers are good. Just goto Audio wizard app and change it into Movies it literally makes the speakers very good.Pen : I am not a professional but from my usage for normal note taking usage it was good one. And it comes in box.Security : It has fingerprint sensor and it so fast and it also supports windows hello.Conclusion : (updated) This laptop is Excellent for the price of $699 for Amd ryzen 4700u. It balances out every thing for the price. And the value for money is 10/10. The only Downside is the stock of the product it just finishes so quickly. Otherwise this should be one of the popular laptops. For those who trying to buy this laptop. My advice is constantly check the product page because it sometimes suddenly comes to stock.
    Greatest value laptop (if you can catch it in stock). The RAM is relatively easily upgradeable to 20GB. See the images attached for those of you who were curious of the internals like I was. Hopefully I didn't void my warranty..So we have a Ryzen 7 4700U, with 20GB RAM, 512GB Samsung NVMe, 2 in 1 (with pen) and a backlit keyboard. With a base cost of $699 + $57 for RAM, this is unbelievable value and outclasses the non upgradeable Lenovos and Acers.Everything will function to your expectations. My only complaint is that the screen seems dim in bright light/outdoors but this is forgivable since the 250nit spec was stated upfront. Please adjust your colour settings via the Radeon app, as at first the colours will appear washed out.Will get another if it's ever in stock again.


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