Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED (N6506) Review: A high-quality all-rounder for a reasonable price

The new Asus Vivobook Pro 15 epitomizes a laptop designed for content creation and graphics-intensive productivity. It offers the option of two Intel Meteor Lake-H CPUs – the Ultra 7 155H or the Ultra 9 185H – and two Nvidia GPUs, the RTX4050 and the RTX4060. All models have a colorful and color-accurate 2,880 x 1,620 OLED panel with a 120hHz refresh rate and a MUX switch to maximize the GPU's potential.

Only the range-topping Core Ultra 185H RTX 4060 model is currently slated for launch in the UK for £1,599 (£1,333 ex VAT). There's no news on UK availability or price for the Core Ultra 155H and RTX 4050 machines, but it's probably safe to assume they will cost around £1,300 (£1,085 ex VAT) when and if launched in Blighty. That's not a bad price when the obvious competition in the form of Apple's MacBook Pro 16 will set you back perilously close to £3,000. 

While the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED is a laptop designed primarily for creatives, it also has a useful gaming capacity thanks to its potent graphics hardware and 120Hz display, which makes it a worthy contender for anyone who just wants a really good, competent, multi-purpose laptop.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED: Design

The Vivobook Pro 15 is quite an anonymous piece of design, especially when compared to some of Asus's other recent models, like the stunning Zenbook S13. It is available in just one colorway: Earl Grey. British users will expect that to be a type of brown, but it's a dark grey verging on black. Only the high-gloss silver Asus Vivobook lettering on the lid relieves the aesthetic mundanity. 

Looks aside, the Vivobook Pro 15 has a metal lid and a plastic body, and despite the latter still feels very solid. Like many Asus laptops, it meets the US MIL-STD 810H standard for resistance to shock, temperature, and particle ingress. At 1.8Kg the Vivobook Pro 15 is quite light for a full-sized machine, and at under 20mm thick it is not too thick either.

The Vivobook Pro 15 comes with a generous array of ports. On the right side, you'll find a Thunderbolt 4 port, a 10Gbits USB-C, and a 5Gbits USB-A port, HDMI 2.1 video output, RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet, 3.5mm audio, and a power jack. On the left, another 5Gbits USB-A port and an SD 4.0 card reader are available.

That's a solid selection, even if the layout is somewhat lopsided. Only the Thunderbolt 4 port supports video output, though you can charge via either Type-C if you don't want to carry the standard 200W Asus power brick around. With the Intel AX211 wireless card supporting Bluetooth 5.3 and 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E, there's no need to worry about the modernity of cable-free communications. 

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED: Keyboard and touchpad 

The keyboard is very rigid to the point that even if you press down brutally in the center, you'll only be able to detect the slightest flex in the deck. It's an expansive keyboard, too, with a two-thirds-width numeric keyboard. The only small niggle we have are the half-height cursor keys, which are slightly annoying on a productivity machine with ample space for a full-sized set of buttons.

The two-color keyboard features grey enter keys, black alphanumeric keys, and a black numeric keypad. This isn't just a question of aesthetics, as we found the layout improved our focus on the central part of the keyboard when typing or the number pad when inputting data. The keys have 1.4mm of travel, a comfortable 0.3 mm key-cap dish, and a clean action with a positive stop. The typing action is effectively silent.

Built into the top-left corner of the touchpad is the Asus DialPad, which is activated by a finger swipe from the top right. The DialPad is a circular controller that gives you fingertip control over your creative apps. For example, you can use it to change brush size or font. It's fully customizable and can also be used for system tasks like adjusting the volume or display brightness.

Opening up the Vivobook Pro 15 is a simple job, and once inside, you'll find space for a second 2280 PCIe 4 SSD and one free SODIMM RAM slot. With 8GB of RAM soldered to the motherboard, you can load a maximum of another 16GB onto the Vivobook Pro taking the total to 24GB. The battery can be replaced with just the removal of four Philips screws.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED: Display 

The 15.6-inch, 16:9 120Hz OLED display, made by Samsung, is impressive. The 2,880 x 1,620-pixel panel has a lower pixel density than the MacBook Pro's at 212dpi to 254dpi, but the difference is invisible to the naked eye. It's not as bright as the MacBook either, peaking at 330cd/m2 in SDR mode and 605cd/m2 in HDR mode, but that's enough to earn a VESA DisplayHDR True Black 600 certificate.

The display has wide color gamut coverage, with 100% sRGB, 98.6% DCI-P3, and 95.3% Adobe RGB registering on my colorimeter, all validated by Pantone. The display is also very accurate, with Delta E variances of just 0.66 Display-P3, 0.91 DCI-P3, and 0.7 sRGB. Those results are extremely impressive.

Being an OLED rather than a Mini IPS panel, the black level is zero, giving an infinite contrast ratio. This means HDR performance is superb. If you want a laptop to stream HDR content from Netflix, you can't do much better than the Vivobook Pro 15.  Asus claims a 0.2ms response time for the screen, and we will not argue with that because motion fidelity is excellent, with hardly any ghosting or smearing to be seen. 

The webcam is another top-quality component. It can shoot video at a crisp and colorful 1440p and supports Windows Hello IR facial recognition. Thanks to the Intel AI Boost CPU tile, it comes with Microsoft's Studio Effects features like background blur, automatic framing, and eye contact. There's also a physical privacy shutter, and the camera can function as a presence detector, so it can dim or turn off the display when you move away and turn it back on when you move back into view.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED: Specs and Performance

The most powerful model for the series is the Core Ultra 9 185H and GeForce RTX 4060 machine, which will soon go on sale for £1,599. Our review model is the lesser Core Ultra 7 155H, RTX 4050 model. Both models come with 16GB of RAM as standard.

Our test model scored 420 in ITPro's bespoke 4K multi-media benchmark along with 6,468 in the PCMark 10 benchmark and 8,708 in the 3DMark Time Spy test. That puts the Vivobook Pro into the same performance category as some hardcore gaming laptops while the 4K test easily beat the entry-level M3 Apple MacBook Pro which scored 292.

The 16-core Ultra 7 155H is one of Intel's latest processors, with a boost clock speed of 4.8GHz, 22 threads, and 6 performance cores. The GeekBench 6 and Cinebench R23 multi-core scores of 12,612 and 16,298 mean the Vivobook Pro 15 can romp through multiple productivity tasks without sweat.

The Vivobook Pro 15 scored 75 points in the SPECviewperf 3dsmax workstation 3D modeling test, a very healthy result when one considers a 140W RTX 4060 GPU would only score some 20-25 points more.

If you plan on using your Vivobook Pro 15 for gaming, you'll be pleased to know that the RTX 4050 GPU has a healthy 115W TGP. This means you can run even demanding titles like Cyberpunk 2077 at 50fps without ray tracing. Nvidia's DLSS3 upscaling can easily double that frame rate or let you run at the lower rate with ray-traced lighting effects.

Our review machine's 1TB Western Digital SSD proved a mediocre performer. The sequential read speed of 4,015MB/s was fine, but the average write speed of 1,985MB/s was rather unimpressive for a machine that will likely be used to move large media and data files around.  

In our standard video rundown battery test, a full charge of the Vivobook's 75Wh battery lasted for 8 hours and 32 minutes which isn't too shabby for a laptop with a 75Wh battery. Granted that can't hold a candle to the MacBook Pro but is a very solid performance for an Intel Windows machine.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED: Is it worth it?

As an all-rounder, the Asus Vivobook Pro comes close to matching the highly highly-regarded Apple MacBook Pro 16. The MacBook has superior battery life and a brighter screen, but I'd expect rather more given the price difference: If you want a 16-inch MacBook with a 1TB SSD, you'll have to pay around £2,800 for the privilege.

Another machine that the Vivobook Pro runs more closely than the price gap would suggest is the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X. The 16X has a more powerful GPU in the form of the Nvidia RTX 4070 but even with the current discounts (one retailer has it on offer for £1,999 down from £2,499) the new Vivobook Pro 15 still offers better performance per £/$/€.

The message to take away here is that if you want a laptop that fully deserves a "Pro" badge but don't want to end up spending between £2,000 and £3,000, the new Vivobook Pro is an obvious choice, and remember I'm basing that on the price of the range-topping model. If the RTX 4050 version arrives in the UK with a price of around £1,300 inc VAT it will be an automatic choice for many because it has more than enough power under the bonnet.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED specifications