F512DA-EB51 VivoBook 15 Thin and Light Laptop, 15.6” Full HD, AMD Quad Core R5-3500U CPU, 8GB DDR4 RAM, 256GB PCIe SSD, AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics, Windows 10 Home, Slate Gray

I bought the Ryzen 5/ 256GB SSD variant. At $479 in Nov of 2020, with a 15'6 screen, backlit keyboard with numeric keypad and these specs, this is a fantastic laptop for the money. The quality of the screen is great and the keyboard pretty comfortable. The sound is also remarkably good, in case you need to watch something through the built-in speakers. I installed Linux straight away, so I can't review its performance under Windows, but on Linux it works definitely great. This configuration means 8 cores, and everything got recognized and was working flawlessly from the start (at least on Arch Linux, you may get different results with more conservative distros). I haven't come around configuring and testing the fingerprint sensor yet though. My usage is mostly browsing, office tasks, watching movies and programming. I am not a gamer, but do play Minecraft with my son from time to time. It does work pretty well, once you reduce the max framerate from the default 160 or so to a more reasonable 30FPS. The video card setup is definitely not good if you plan to play other more graphics intensive video games, but for the ocassional game, this would also do. As other user reported, the looks are also great, surprisingly good at this price range. It does have some Macbook vibes, which is always nice, and definitely not expected at this price. My only negative remarks are that despite the extended keyboard, the insert key requires pressing the Function key, so there is an extra complication if you use the Ctrl+Ins, Shift+Ins for copy and paste. Also, as reported in other comments, out of the 8GB of RAM, 2 are dedicated to the video card, so you actually have 6GB for the system. Wait till you receive it, and open it to check if you have the one with a SODIMM module of 4GB. I did so and ordered an 8GB module for not much, to upgrade it to the max possible total of 12GB of RAM (10GB for the system). All in all, another perfectly rounded laptop by Asus. At this price and specs there is really no other competitor. Very satisfied with my purchase. I don't have time to write many reviews, but this laptop definitely deserved a good one.

Nothing can make you feel like a relic from the past faster than trying to learn to use these sleek new laptops after having been a "desktop model only" nerd for too many years. My fingers are too clunky, the keys are definitely not where I expected to find them, and the backspace key is my new best friend. Actually, I never thought I'd cross over to a laptop at all because they were too compressed and I am way to old to want to tackle muscle memory lessons on where to find the keys. I had it in my head that I could breeze through it. After all it was just a laptop computer and I was computer savvy. My brother was an IT guy for many years of his life, so I figured most of my issues could be resolved with a simple "call Bob". R-I-G-H-T!!! Not only had I not upgraded my old computer for many years, I hadn't upgraded the operating system and ... OMG this laptop came with Windows 10. After about my 5th call to my brother in less than an hour, he very carefully suggested that I might want to purchase a manual on how to use Windows 10. I think think he also said "for dummies", but it was kind of under his breath and garbled. So, I bought the one for dummies, and another one for senior dummies. Good thing he lives too far away for me to drive down to see him ... LOL I love this laptop. As far I know it works great ... my fingers not so much but they're slowly learning how to touch type again. This one has a nice large screen and the keyboard is very comfortable. I've always used a mouse, so the finger pad is more annoying than hard to use. I know I could attach a mouse, but I'm determined to learn how to use it as it is. My old computer system was clunky and took up the better part of a desk surface. That required me to sit in the back bedroom when I used it and I always felt shut away from everything. This laptop fits great into a roll-top desk I have in my living room and I'm learning. As you have guessed, this is less of a review of the laptop computer and more about the shortcomings of its clunky old user. To be absolutely honest, the laptop is great ... it's the user that needs and upgrade.

Battery lasts for about an afternoon, maybe a little longer, wish it would last for a whole work day, but it does come with a very long charging cord.... Setup is easy to initiate, and the OS is very easy to use. Love that there is a nine stroke touch pad that you can turn on and off. A few hitches, the screen and mouse freeze once in a while (several times a day) which I initially thought was because I was using a lot of memory for work and it was just having trouble keeping up, but we purchased a second laptop for my husband, who just needed a bare bones laptop for some basic work and his does this as well. Other than that this laptop performs well, you can put the blue light filter on and make it less hard on yourself. Definitely a good basic laptop, no color options, but I cover mine with stickers anyways so who cares.

I originally bought this computer with the intentions of programming on the go. Let's get the bad out of the way first. This laptop is not designed, nor advertised for gaming by any stretch. You'll be able to get away with some older games but forget about getting reasonable performance at reasonable graphics levels on anything more modern. We're talking just barely getting 60fps on Spyro: Reignited Trilogy at 720p, lowest graphic preset. But that's impressive for not being a gaming laptop. Just keep your expectations in line. The good: This thing is blitzing fast in practically every other regard. This is where the SSD and CPU really take center stage. Everything is incredibly responsive and installs are very painless. Overall usage had me forgetting I wasn't on my desktop at times, so I give this a laptop a solid A+ in that regard. Boot times are damn near instant and restarting to finish installing applications happens in under 10 seconds. Battery life has yet to be tested very well so I can't comment too much on that just yet. I'll update when I get more usage out of the battery but from the get go, it seems pretty standard. Screen quality is again very standard. It's not winning any beauty contests compared to a decent ISP panel but again, it's not advertising itself as being anything spectacular in that regard. You get what you pay for and with this laptop, you're paying for the SSD/CPU performance which it absolutely nails. Style: I absolutely love the way this laptop looks. It's clean, sleek, and professional. Nothing over the top but doesn't look or feel cheap. Build quality is very solid. Obviously it's no MacBook in terms of build quality but it's also less than half the price of a MacBook so again, you get what you pay for. Sidenotes: My first unit had an odd manufacture defect on the screen; A white blotch that was only visible under certain conditions, namely over more muddy colors like off shades of white, dark blues, etc. It was incredibly distracting but I contacted Amazon who stayed on the line with me while we discussed possible solutions with ASUS and ultimately resulted in Amazon sending me a replacement unit in less than two days. The new unit has none of these issues and looks to be exactly what I was looking for in the first place. So good on both ASUS for making a decent laptop and Amazon for honoring the exchange.

The review score is based on the 8gb model as Amazon does not separate the review scores. The 4 GB model only has 50gbs of internal storage with over half being taken up by Windows itself, it is also incredibly slow. The cpu writes at less than a mb/second with it's fastest writing speed being 100 kb/second so expect multi hour long downloads and installs. This is not helped by the storage not being on a standard SSD or HHD it's on an internal SD card and very slow. The seller tries to trick you into thinking this doesn't matter as they offer a small external SSD, but even using an external SSD for speed and storage space is horrible. I bought my own 1 TB high-speed ssd, but most installs will still try to run through the C:\ drive which does not have enough storage to hold temp files. You can try to bypass this if you have extreme technical knowledge but even still you will suffer performance issues and crashes. The limited ram on this laptop means it also struggled to do anymore than 1 chrome tab, expect to reset frequently if you do not use edge or intended to have more than 2-3 tabs open, even worse if you run multiple apps. Overall it's very difficult to use, relaying on misleading marketing and the reviews of another product to take your money. Instead you should look for a pre-owned of a better laptop or something else all together don't waste your money.

After having used it for coming to 1 year, I must say it's one of the most pleasant laptops I have used (and I have used quite a number, both personal and work, from thin and light to workstation class). It has a large screen despite its size, a full keyboard with numeric keypad, and it's light and thin. It always struck me how fast it powers on, and how easy to log in using the fingerprint reader. I can go from full power down to logged in in matter of seconds with no fuss. I don't even see the need for sleep state anymore. The keyboard is easy to type on, as best as it can be for a laptop I guess. My only gripe is the location of the power button, located at the top right. I would have preferred it to be even more isolated to prevent accidental pressing of it when using the keypad. But it's not a big deal. It would have been better if there is a full size SD card reader (my camera uses full size SD cards, so it's good not to carry an extra adapter). Finally an ethernet port will be perfect, as I always prefer ethernet to WiFi whenever possible. But for most, I don't think these will be deal-breakers. The touchpad is well sized and responsive, very easy to scroll pages or click. The screen is matte, which is great, but not very bright unfortunately. A pleasure to use, and it's not expensive at all for a laptop.

I’ve only had/used this laptop for a day so far. I do a decent amount of video editing and 3D modeling so if your into that, this review is for you. The battery life on this computer is decent. When you’re using it heavily, for example, video editing and modeling (I use cinema 4d and premiere pro), the battery life is not great. You will get roughly 2-4 hours with this computer without it being plugged in. Color accuracy isn’t great, but it’s not bad. The computer is extremely fast for its price. The fingerprint sensor is a very nice feature. I’m yet to do heavy video editing in premiere but when it opens up, it is quick. I used to use a Toshiba Satellite for 3D modeling. Each frame would take around 1 minute with a lot of detail. Using the exact same scene on this computer, it is now down to 20 seconds a frame. (It seems like a while but it really isn’t) Overall I am loving this laptop. As I said it has only been my first day, but so far so good. I will add onto this more as I continue to use this laptop. Update: Over the past month I’ve used this laptop a bunch. For video editing, it’s pretty good. Premiere Pro 2019 runs very easily on this laptop and can do some pretty hefty editing. After effects 2020 also works great but when you want to play back your video, it doesn’t work. Cinema 4D continues to work great with alright rendering times. If you want to game, I don’t recommend this laptop. Other than Minecraft Windows Edition, not many games will run well.

Laptop is fine. Did not come with the hub advertised in the listing. Laptop only has 64 gbs of internal storage. Glad I have an external, but beware this does not come with all the accessories listed in the post.