Recently, Asus launched its new 2-in-1 laptop in India featuring the latest AMD Ryzen 4000U mobile processors but was not promoted that much as its Intel-powered laptops are. The new Asus VivoBook Flip 14 TM420 is an ultraportable 2-in-1 laptop with the latest Ryzen APUs and it been a week or so since its available on Amazon.
I was looking for a productive Ryzen 4000U powered laptop for a long time now for my personal use and I had two-three options including the Lenovo Ideapad Slim 5, Asus VivoBook S14, Asus Zenbook 14, and the brand new Asus VivoBook Flip 14. So, there are a few reasons that I ended up buying this laptop over others in the market:
- The laptop features a 2-in-1 touchscreen display
- Very thin and lightweight
- One upgradeable RAM slot
- Good build quality
Basically the new Asus VivoBook Flip 14 TM420 is a productive laptop focused on work-related purpose comes with Windows 10 Home lifetime license along with comes with pre-installed MS Office Home and Student 2019. So, I ended up buying the Ryzen 7 4700U variant at ₹ 74,500 as I had to post a review for it to you all, however, you will be happy to know that the laptop is now available at its original price of ₹ 70,990 at Amazon. Check out all of the specs here.
This first impressions article will help you to get an overview of the laptop and I will summarize my experience after using it for two days:
Design & Build
This 2-in-1 laptop features a bold Bespoke Black all-metal chassis with diamond-cut edges and I like the metal lid as it feels premium but due to this, it might leave smudges. The VivoBook Flip 14 TM420 has a diamond-cut lid which makes it easy to flip open the lid and even though its the budget VivoBooks series it never feels cheap.
Obviously, its advantage is the 360° metal hinge which is very sturdy and it never felt like it would break or something like that. As Asus has claimed that it has tested to pass a 20,000-cycle open-and-close test and I feel it really does well. The laptop is incredibly lightweight and easy to carry because of its dimensions and thin edges.
Physical overview:
On the left you have 1 x Kensington lock and a USB Type-A.
While on the right hand side you have the power on button, the charge indicators, the Audio combo jack, 1 x MicroSD card reader, you have one USB Type-C port that doesn’t support charging, 1 x USB 2.0, 1 x HDMI and a DC-in port.
Overall, build quality is very good and can be a great option for using it for longer periods.
Display
The VivoBook Flip 14 TM420 features 14-inch LED-backlit Full HD (1920 x 1080) touchscreen display with a 16:9 aspect ratio and an 82% screen-to-body ratio which I feel is pretty good for daily use. There’s the logo of Asus VivoBook and I like the fact that the screen is stretched more on the sides to make it look a lot modern and the touch response is quite good and I faced no issues whatsoever.
The tone of the display is on the yellowish side and can be adjusted via the MyASUS app, and the display covers 60% of the sRGB color gamut which I was quite keen to try, but to my surprise, that amount of color accuracy is perfect for daily usage, however, if you want to do professional work go for the Asus Zenbook 14 laptop which is much more color accurate.
I was also concerned about the display of the panel as it was rated at 250 nits but with the AMD Radeon driver, I feel the brightness was adjusted and was enough for indoor usage. Using it for daily browsing or work is not an issue at all and at first watching videos was not compelling enough, however, installing the AMD Radeon drivers did make significant improvements.
Performance
In this segment, I feel this thin and light portable 2-in-1 laptop to be a beast as it packs all 8 cores in a 15W TDP. I tried running both Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R20, in the Geekbench the Ryzen 7 4700U in it scored 676 points in the single-core test while scoring 3879 in the multi-core test and this is significantly low and I feel using the BIOS update things should change.
In the Cinebench R20, I found the laptop scoring 2491 points, however, one strange thing I noticed is that at full load the APU was max clocking at 2.87GHz not its full potential of 4.1GHz and I think the BIOS update can improve this. I haven’t played any games yet but will mention the performance in games in the full review.
In the daily usage, the laptop worked like a breeze opening 20-30 tabs or doing heavy stuff in the backend never bothered the laptop and I like how cool the laptop remains most of the time. Out of the 8GB RAM, 512MB is reserved for the Vega iGPU, but the thing I like is that you can swap the 4GB RAM and use an 8GB stick to make it up to 12GB in the long run. Overall it is a good performer, however, I will reserve my judgment for the full review.
Battery Life
The laptop is equipped with a respectable 3-cells 42 Watt Hours lithium-polymer battery that gives almost 5-6 hours battery life with normal to high brightness and can be increased to an hour more with low brightness. I am pretty satisfied with the battery life this thin and light laptop offers at this pricing with the powerful Ryzen 7 4700U in it.
The laptop charges very fast and lives up to the expectation of charging up to 60% in 49 minutes and fully charges in about 1:30 to 2 hours, which is decent enough for a 2-in-1.
Keyboard & Trackpad
The keyboard layout is compact, however, the keys have a good amount of key travel and I like the clicky feel of it, a great keyboard overall to type upon. Although if you are not used to a small layout you might feel a bit odd to type on if you get used to it then this is a great laptop.
The backlighting also works well with 3 brightness modes and adequate enough to work at night comfortably. The trackpad is tiny and compact, however, with the fingerprint sensor on it that also works very fast, but if you are used to using a larger trackpad, you can always use a mouse. So, even if its small, the quality of the trackpad is great.
MyASUS software and the ASUS Pen
I like the utility of the new MyASUS software that is an all-in-one software for all your needs and you can completely sync your phone to the laptop while working, get support, download drivers & updates and do a lot more than you could have expected. The pre-included ASUS pen is great for daily use and I felt it very smooth to use for drawing, using it for work, and doing a lot more.
Overall, this is a great 2-in-1 laptop which is both thin and light as well as powerful for work, it absolutely great for work and is basically meant for productivity at a low budget. I expect it to provide better performance after BIOS update and I will bring more benchmarks and details in my final review soon. If you have any questions and query about this laptop do let me know in the comments down below.
Check out the laptop from here: https://amzn.to/2ZfiRwE
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