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I have to admit, I agreed to review the ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED BAPE Edition without knowing what the BAPE part meant. Even when I realised it was a shortened version of “A Bathing Ape”, I had no idea what that was.
I’m getting old, you see, and Japanese street fashion labels are not something that I know much (or indeed, anything) about.
So I was a little surprised when I opened the package from the courier to discover cute animals covering the ASUS laptop box. It was… not what I was expecting.
I was equally surprised by the entire package, which includes the BAPE design on a two-button mouse, a BAPE camouflage -style laptop case, and a Bathing Ape figurine, kind of like a Pop Vinyl.
It was clear this laptop was targeting a very particular demographic, of which I am not a part. But I am nothing if not professional, so I started testing the laptop for the review.
ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED BAPE Edition review: Design
It is clear from the first moment of unboxing that this is not a typical laptop. The Bathing Ape design is loud and proud everywhere. The shipping box is etched with the cartoon animal design, which opens onto the laptop box with the camouflage illustration, and the matching laptop bag.
Inside the laptop box is the laptop itself, which is fortunately much more subtle in its reproduction of the illustrated design. The laptop has a stylish matte black finish with a glossy overlay of the Bathing Ape illustration.
On the inside, the same imprint covers the trackpad, while in the box there’s a wireless mouse with the camouflage design plastered over the top.
If you like that, there are stickers for all of your keycaps so you can turn the inside of the laptop into a proclamation of your Bathing Ape appreciation.
If you prefer to avoid the camp design, the top of the mouse is changeable to a more subtle black and white design.
There’s also the BAPE figurine, which I left in the box. I’m sure the next reviewer will appreciate it more than myself.
The Bathing Ape theme continues through to the wallpaper when you first turn on the laptop as well. But behind all of that, you have a highly specced ASUS Vivobook OLED.
Powerful specs
ASUS’s Vivobook lineup is sleekly designed and a solid combo of power and battery life, as we saw in the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED (K6604) review.
The centrepiece of the Vivobook S 15 OLED BAPE edition is the 15.6-inch 2.8K 120 Hz OLED display. With its 2880 × 1620 resolution and tiny bezels around the outside, the OLED screen is stunning to look at.
It offers 600 nits of brightness and a 0.2ms response time, making it a great display for any type of scenario.
Under the hood you get plenty of grunt as well. The Vivobook is powered by a 13th-gen Core i9 processor, with up to 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage space.
On the connectivity front, there’s plenty to plug into. There’a s USB Type-A port, an HDMI 1.4 port, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, a power port, and a USB Type-C port on one side of the laptop, and a second USB-A port on the other side.
The keyboard is the same style as the previous Vivobook we tested, which is a good thing. It’s easy to type on, has satisfying key depth and while the number pad on the side is a little cramped, is still usable enough that I prefer having it to not.
ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED BAPE Edition review: Performance
Given the laptop is powered by the Intel Core i9-13900H processor, performance is typically strong.
On the benchmark front, we ran the device through GeekBench 6 tests, and it scored 1681 for single-core and 9384 for multicore.
That’s a bit weaker on the single-core and stronger on the multicore results we saw for the Vivobook Pro 16X OLED, which scored 2082 and 8260 on those tests respectively.
On the OpenCL GPU test, the BAPE-themed laptop came back with a score of 16637, which is a significant drop from the Vivobook Pro 16X’s 58567, which is undoubtedly down to the inclusion of an Intel IRIS GPU rather than a GeForce RTX 4060.
Which ultimately means that this probably isn’t the ideal laptop for gaming. It will play games, but anything too graphically intensive is going to struggle.
To test that out, I downloaded Fallout 76 and tried to make my way through the post-apocalyptic world. With the graphical settings on anything other than low, movement was janky and jumped around a bit.
On low, it was okay – I could see where I was going and aim well enough to shoot the mutants roaming the wasteland, but it was far from the most seamless PC gaming experience I’ve ever had.
Battery life
There’s a pretty huge 75Wh battery inside this laptop, but that 15-inch screen and the Core i9 processor need some juice.
Which is to say that unplugged on the go, you will struggle to get a full day of battery out of the Vivobook 15 S OLED BAPE Edition.
With average use, I was getting anywhere between 4–6 hours of battery life from a single charge, which was a bit less than I was hoping for.
But on the upside, the laptop’s 90W charger can get you from 0-100 in about an hour and a half.
Just make sure you don’t leave home without the charger, I guess.
ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED BAPE Edition review: Verdict
This is a laptop designed for a specific audience. In particular, it’s for younger, trendier people than me who would know what A Bathing Ape is without having to Google it.
But for those people, the good news is that this is a solid laptop with plenty going for it. Battery life and graphics aren’t as good as you might find in other Vivobook models, but they are still good enough for everyday use.
The fact you’re getting a whole package here, including a mouse and a carry case (and a plush toy) also helps sweeten the deal.
It doesn’t quite deliver enough to make the list of the best laptops in Australia, but it’s a great option for those who want a bit more style in their computer.
Where to buy the ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED BAPE Edition online
Bing Lee, Centrecom, and Mwave all have the laptop in stock at the time of writing.
ASUS supplied this product for review.
