For a long time it was pretty hard to get excited about laptops. They all had the same features, ran the same software and looked exactly the same as the ones we had five years previously. But the arrival of Windows 8 has changed all that, and no device showcases this fact better than the Asus Vivo Book S200. It's a fantastic 11.6-inch touchscreen laptop that offers pretty much everything you could want from a portable device and, what's more, it can be your for a thoroughly reasonable $474.
The brain inside this laptop is an Intel Core i3-3217U CPU, which means it provides more than enough grunt to power Windows 8 through any day-to-day tasks while keeping power consumption to an absolute minimum.
You don't get any fancy graphics here - look elsewhere if you want to play 3D games - but again, the integrated Intel HM70 Express chipset is good enough to keep Windows 8 and its apps running smooth as butter on the 11.6-inch screen without pulling too much juice from the battery.
The Li-Polymer 38Wh battery itself consists of two cells, and is good for two weeks on standby or a maximum of five hours' constant use. In our test it lasted just over three hours when looping video, which makes it about average for a device of this size. A bigger, longer-lasting battery would only add to the weight, which would negate the main benefit of this device - portability.
As it is, it already weighs in at a distinctly normal 1.3kg, which we think is about right. We're talking about premium materials here too - none of that faux-metal plastic rubbish. The S200 is graced by a lovely brushed-metal finish with aluminium base. You can thank Apple for pushing industry standards this high.
Fine touch tech
The screen is standard LED TFT fare - you're going to have to spend a bit more money for an IPS panel - but it's decent enough, and for most people we imagine it would be perfectly adequate. Viewing angles always suffer from this display technology but this screen does pretty well, all told. On the touch side of things it can handle 10 inputs at once, which puts it right up there with the best.
Of course while a computer of this size and specification could never be described as a media
machine, the fact that it's so portable means you may wish to load it up with music and movies. If that's you, you'll be pleased to find that the 500GB internal hard drive should be more than enough.
There's no SSD on this model, mind. It's not an Ultrabook after all, and so the SSD option is reserved for the much more expensive Core i7 version, which also comes with a full HD IPS display and a price more than three times the size.
Sound is provided by Asus's SonicMaster brand, which is really just a fancy way of saying it's got a sound card and some speakers. The speakers aren't bad. Many laptops like this can sound quite nasty, but the 5200 does a good job of putting out sound that at least sounds nicely rounded instead of shrill and piercing.
All your standard inputs and outputs are here, with a full HDMI socket included as well as two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, a VGA-out, an SD card reader and an Ethernet port. The only thing you might find missing is an optical disk drive, but if you want one of those you're going to need to choose a different class of device.
Impressively specced
To finish off the specs, you've also got Wireless N for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 5MP front-facing camera for video chats and 4GB RAM, which is enough to run Windows 8 twice.
The keyboard is also faultless. We're writing this review on it now and simply can't find anything wrong with it at all, which is often not the case with laptops of this size and price. Even the trackpad is responsive and catches Windows 8 touch gestures well.
So there you have it. The Asus VivoBook 5200 is a brilliant little laptop that offers supreme good looks, slick performance and excellent portability and all for a highly agreeable price.
