Multimedia laptops tend to score well between price and performance. Such devices typically offer high-quality screens for video viewing, are powerful enough for light gaming, and are relatively affordable. Asus’ Vivobook series is following this trend, and today we’re taking a look at the new K15 OLED series, which is surprisingly well priced.
NS Asus Vivobook K15 OLED Series prices in India start at around Rs. 47,000 and go all the way around Rs. 80,000. We will be testing a variant that sits in the middle and has an AMD Ryzen CPU instead of the Intel that most other variants have. With not many other OLED laptops in this price segment, is the Asus Vivobook K15 OLED worth your attention? Let’s take a look.
Design Asus VivoBook K15 OLED (KM513)
The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED is large due to its 15.6-inch display, but it’s not too thick or unwieldy. It weighs more than 1.8kg, but this is not too bad for a laptop of this size. The build quality of the frame is good, and the plastic has a good fit and finish, with no unwanted cracks or bends anywhere. Asus sent me one with a Brilliant Gold finish, but this model will also come in Indie Black and Transparent Silver.
The OLED screen is the main attraction of the Asus VivoBook K15 OLED
The main attraction is the OLED display. This 15.6-inch screen has a full-HD resolution, a maximum brightness of 600nit and supports 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. The display also carries certifications from Pantone, TUV Rheinland and others for things like color accuracy and low blue light emission. The Asus Vivobook K15 OLED has narrow bezels on the left and right sides of the screen and slightly thicker bezels at the top and bottom. There’s a built-in webcam above the screen, but it’s only 720p. The lid provides good protection for the OLED panel, and although there’s a bit of flex, this doesn’t clearly affect the display.
One of the big advantages of a 15.6-inch laptop is that you get the luxury of a full-size keyboard with a numeric keypad. I needed to recalibrate my muscle memory a bit coming from a smaller laptop, as I kept hitting keys at first, but I got used to this after a few days. The keys themselves are reasonably well-spaced and comfortable, but I wish they were a bit sculpted and uneven, for a better typing experience. The ‘Enter’ key has fluorescent green highlights, which is a nice touch. The arrow keys are also spaced apart. Asus VivoBook K15 OLED has a fingerprint sensor placed in one corner of the touchpad. It works fine and doesn’t get in the way.
Asus VivoBook 15 OLED has a full-size keyboard
Going to the ports, you will get a lot of things. On the left side, you have two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, and on the right side, there’s one USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A port, one USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C port, HDMI 1.4 video output, headphone jack, DC power input and a microSD card slot. For day-to-day use these should work fine, although I would have preferred more USB 3.0 ports instead of the two USB 2.0 and HDMI 2.0 instead of the older v1.4 spec which would allow output in 4K. 60 fps.
I also don’t understand why Asus would include a microSD card slot instead of the standard slot, especially since a 15.6-inch laptop would have plenty of space. You can’t charge the laptop via the Type-C port, and none of the USB ports provide power to charge other devices if the laptop is off. This may sound like I’m fooling around, but it’s the little conveniences that make a big difference in everyday use.
Asus VivoBook K15 OLED (KM513) Specifications and Software
Asus VivoBook K15 OLED is available with Intel or AMD CPUs. Intel-based variants start at Rs. 46,990 and for this price you’ll get an 11th Gen Intel Core i3-1115G4 CPU. You can switch to a Core i7 if needed. At the time of this review, Asus has only one AMD-powered variant on sale in India, featuring an AMD Ryzen 5 5500U CPU with integrated Radeon graphics. This variant also has 8GB RAM, 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD and 1TB mechanical hard drive. Out of the 8GB of RAM, only a single 4GB module was detected in the CPUz app, which means the remaining 4GB is most likely soldered to the motherboard.
The MyAsus app offers quite a few customization options
My device ships with Windows 10, but you can choose to upgrade to Windows 11 during setup. Some of the pre-installed programs include a trial version of McAfee Livesafe and a fully licensed version of Microsoft Office Home & Student 2019. All Asus programs can be found through the app. MyAsus launcher, which has a dedicated shortcut button on the keyboard. The app is a bit clunky but fully functional and offers loads of options for battery care, updates, and display settings.
There’s also an OLED Care section here, which has options for a special screensaver that can be activated if the laptop is idle on a static screen for too long, and a Pixel Shift feature to avoid screen burn problems. They are enabled by default to protect the OLED screen in the long run. Another feature that I like is the ability to toggle the main functions of the Fn row keys.
Performance and battery life of Asus VivoBook K15 OLED (KM513)
The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED excels in video playback thanks to its vibrant OLED display. Blacks are deep and colors can look very vivid, depending on how you adjust the monitor. Glossy screens can cause reflections, which is something to be aware of. Viewing angles are good, but there is a bit of color shifting when viewing the screen off-axis, although this is only really noticeable against a white background.
The monitor has HDR support, but to use it, you need to enable this setting in Windows. The default picture profile is pretty bad, as any highlights in the HDR video will be instantly turned off. You’ll need to adjust the HDR brightness slider in Windows display settings to find the right balance, and enable HDR streaming while on battery power. After doing this, the HDR video looks much better. The stereo speakers sound good but not great, even with the improvements of the DTS app.
There are many port options, but a full-size SD card slot would be preferable
Windows 11 runs very well on the configuration of the Asus VivoBook K15 that I tested. Programs open and close quickly, wake the laptop from sleep quickly, and the fingerprint sensor works well for authentication. The white backlighting on the silver keys makes their labels hard to see in daylight, but still performs well in low light. The laptop also performed well in benchmarks, returning good numbers in synthetic tests.
The Ryzen 5 5500U CPU is only marginally worse than the Ryzen 5 5600U we recently tested in the Acer Swift X, which makes sense. However, the integrated Radeon GPU is not powerful enough for demanding games. Fortnite is only playable at low graphics settings at the screen’s native resolution. Games like Far Cry 5 are only playable at low graphics quality, and here the resolution has to drop as well.
Asus VivoBook 15 OLED’s bright and vibrant display makes it ideal for binge-watching
The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED packs a modest 42WHr 3-cell battery, about four hours of use with light to moderate use, and the Windows battery profile set to ‘Balanced’. This kind of battery life isn’t great, especially for a 15.6-inch laptop. With the laptop in ‘Better Power Saving’ mode, I was able to get another hour with similar usage, still not much. It would be nice to have a larger battery for the size of the chassis, even if the laptop is a bit heavier.
Identify
The Asus VivoBook K15 OLED (KM513) is a great laptop for media consumption and is relatively thin and light with its 15.6-inch screen size. The six-core Ryzen 5 CPU provides plenty of power for demanding multitasking and workloads. Gaming isn’t this laptop’s strong point, meaning you’ll have to consider other options if this is your priority. Battery life is a bit disappointing, and I wish Asus had provided a full-size card slot instead of a microSD slot.
