While we often talk about more heavy-duty laptops, we tend to forget that the “light” range of laptops are in a league of their own. These machines almost exist in their own ecosystem, and there’s a lot more to them than simply being compact.

ASUS was kind enough to let us check out the new Asus Vivobook A413F. It’s in a similar league of light laptops, but with some tricks up its sleeve that really make it stand out in its weight class.

A Pretty And Light Package

If nothing else, the Asus Vivobook A413F screams elegance. It’s got a sleek, cool look to it, helped by the bevel on its designs. It comes in three stylish colors: Blue, black and white. We got the blue version of the laptop, and we’re pretty pleased with how it looks.

The laptop has a nice matte-like finish to it, which is great since it prevents fingerprints from smudging the laptop. This of course means less time obsessively wiping down your laptop, and more time actually getting to use it.

Carrying the laptop is pretty easy too, since it weighs in at 1.4kg. That’s very light for a laptop, and can easily be carried one-handed. It’s pretty ideal for carrying around, especially if you’re the type that does your work at cafes.

No matter for work or play, the screen on the Vivobook has you covered. It has The 14.5 inch screen is capable of a Full HD display, meaning you’re watching your videos in 1080p with no problems. The screen’s default resolution is also 16:9, which means you’re getting the best out of your video watching experience.

Of course, it’s not just for passive watching experiences. The screen’s decent color reproduction also makes it great for editing. Combined with its ease of weight, you’ll be able to engage in a variety of creative endeavors with this laptop.

The laptop is nothing particularly special, as its a pretty standard business keyboard. The keys are well spaced, so there should be less accidental typos especially when you’re in the thick of it. It’s not all standard, though, as the ‘Enter’ key has a very charming lighting effect around it. This can be especially satisfying for things like sending messages, as nothing feels better than sending off your work emails by pressing a big glowing button.

Unfortunately, due to the laptop’s preference of compact size, they keyboard lacks a numpad. This can make it less useful for gaming, since you have less button options.

The Support You Need

On the sides of the laptop, you can see the Vivobook comes with plenty of additional ports to suit all your extra needs. It has two USB 2.0 slots, a 3.2 USB Gen One, as well as a 3.2 USB Type-C. Additionally, it also comes with a HDMI 1.4 for a second monitor, as well as a 3.5mm jack for your headphones.

The port selection here is actually really robust, considering its entry as a lighter laptop. There’s more than enough slots for either an additional mouse, or even two controllers for any local co-op or versus play. In a sense, this would be a great machine to bring around for playing local co-op games with your friends.

Aside from that, the laptop also comes with a fingerprint scanner, and supports the suite of MyASUS functions.

The Nitty Gritty of It

Now that we’ve looked at the outside, let’s take a look at the insides. The Vivobook A413F has some pretty neat hardware running under the hood:

Despite its small size and light weight, the Vivobook is actually better-equipped than many of its contemporaries. Unlike many light laptops, this one doesn’t skimp on the Graphics card. In fact, the graphics card comes with its own 2GB VRAM, which is an interesting feature for this type of laptop

Benchmarking

Unfortunately, the Vivobook suffers from a common problem with all-rounder laptops in that it never excels in any particular field. While it’s a passable gaming laptop it does run into problems as a specialized machine, so you’d probably want to steer clear if you were looking for something high performance.

TimeSpy gives the graphics processing a score of 1212, with some questionable framerates.

PC Mark gives it a good score for essential activities like writing and browsing, however the laptop does fall quite short otherwise.

That being said, many of these scores are drawn from comparing them to top-of-the-line products. The Vivobook isn’t meant to excel at any one thing, but instead sit as a nice jack-of-all-trades.

Gameplay Experience

We tried out games on this laptop, and it very much confirms the benchmarking results. It’s a great middle-range PC, but it’s not exactly built for gaming. Credit where credit is due, though, it never pretends to be.

Our experience with Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey was fairly decent, although we had to have the game running at medium settings. That being said, it was a smooth experience once we’d turned it down.

We also found that the game runs Re:Legend fairly well. We managed to get the game running over 30fps, however that was only on medium settings. Still, being able to run a game like Re:Legend on medium settings like this is still a good sign for the laptop, because that means that it’s a lot more beneficial to more casual consumers.

Final Thoughts

The Asus Vivobook A413F is a great middle-ground laptop. While it may stack up less favorably to more powerful purpose-specific machines, what you get is a nice, all-rounder laptop for both work and play.

At a RM2899 price tag, it’s not a bad laptop for those with many problems that require laptop-based solutions. Definitely something to look into for university students or working adults.