ASUS Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402) review

As a member of the more mainstream part of the market, the Vivobook series has an appeal to a very wide audience. The S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402) in particular is a convertible notebook, which offers more than any traditional clamshell device.

But convertibles are not new, right? What does the Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402) have, that others don’t? Ultimately, this machine is not super innovative, if we’re talking about technology that didn’t exist prior to the laptop itself.

However, it combines very good hardware, with display tech that is literally the cream of the crop in the field. And the fascinating thing is – it comes at a very appetizing MSRP.

You should keep in mind that you are dealing with slightly dated hardware – the Ryzen 5000H series. However, it has pretty much the same computational performance as the 6000H series, while being considerably less expensive. Not to mention the performance gains of 45W CPUs over 15 and 28W ones.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/asus-vivobook-s-14-flip-oled-tn3402/

Contents


Specs Sheet

ASUS Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402) - Specs

  • Samsung ATNA40YK07-0 (SDC4171)
  • Color accuracy  2.4  2.2
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 2000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 40GB
  • OS
  • Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro
  • Battery
  • 50Wh, 3-cell, 70Wh, 3-cell
  • Body material
  • Plastic / Polycarbonate, Aluminum
  • Dimensions
  • 313.2 x 227.6 x 18.9 mm (12.33" x 8.96" x 0.74")
  • Weight
  • 1.50 kg (3.3 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 2.0
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 2.0
  • Card reader
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • optional
  • Web camera
  • HD with privacy shutter
  • Backlit keyboard
  • optional
  • Microphone
  • Array Microphone with Cortana and Alexa voice rec.
  • Speakers
  • Stereo Speakers by harman/kardon, Smart Amp
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

All ASUS Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402) configurations

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

Not only is there a 90W USB charger inside the box, but you also get a dedicated ASUS Pen with three reserve tips, as well as a USB Type-A to USB Type-C cable.


Design and construction

Once we get it out of the packaging, we can see that the Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402) has a pretty stylish outlook. Its design features a lot of tiny details that make the product a bit more interesting.

Here, we have a metal lid, and a plastic base, both of which are pretty resistant to flex. Naturally, the aluminum and glass combo of the lid makes it significantly stronger than the base. Nevertheless, the thickness of the machine is 18.9mm, while the weight is 1.50 kg.

This notebook features a rather boxy construction, mainly because of the 16:10 display, and the pretty tall “chin” beneath the screen.

Here, the lid can be opened with a single hand, which is great. As we said, this reveals quite a substantial bottom bezel, while the top and side ones are significantly slimmer. Above the OLED panel, protected by a Gorilla Glass display, you will find a Full HD Web camera with a privacy shutter.

Moving to the keyboard, we see that the power button doubles as a fingerprint reader. The rest of the board features keys that have decent key travel and clicky feedback.

You can see that the touchpad comes with two weird symbols in the top corners. This is because it is a NumberPad, which can be activated by holding the top-right icon. Respectively, you can open the calculator app by swiping diagonally from the top-left shortcut.

Now, turn the laptop upside down, where you will find two speaker cutouts and a large ventilation grill. Interestingly, the hot air exhaust happens through two vents – one on the back, and one on the left side of the laptop.

Ports

On the left side, there is a single USB Type-A 2.0 port. This leaves most of the I/O on the right side of the device. There, you will find the charging plug, an HDMI 2.0 connector, followed by a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 2) port, a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port with DisplayPort and Power Delivery capabilities, and an Audio jack.


Disassembly, upgrade options, and maintenance

To open this device, you need to undo 10 Phillips-head screws. Then, pry the bottom panel with a plastic tool, starting from the front two corners.

The 70Wh battery pack lasts for 10 hours and 30 minutes of Web browsing, or 9 hours and 30 minutes of video playback. To remove it, unplug the connector from the motherboard, and undo all 6 Phillips-head screws keeping the battery to the chassis.

This laptop is provided with 8GB of DDR4 RAM soldered to the motherboard, as well as one SODIMM slot for further expansion. As for storage, there is one M.2 PCIe x4 slot, which runs at Gen 3 speed.

The cooling is this laptop’s secret weapon. There are two heat pipes, leading to two heat sinks, and a quite large fan. In addition, there is a heat spreader meant for the VRMs.


Display quality

ASUS Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402) is equipped with a 90Hz OLED panel, Samsung ATNA40YK07-0 (SDC4171). Its diagonal is 14.0-inch (35.5 cm), and the resolution – 2880 x 1800p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:10, the pixel density – 243 ppi, and their pitch – 0.1 x 0.1 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 36 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Viewing angles are comfortable. We offer images at different angles to evaluate the quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

The maximum measured brightness is 357 nits (cd/m2) (HDR off) in the middle of the screen and 354 nits (cd/m2) as an average with a maximum deviation of only 1%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6650K – almost matching the 6500K temperature for sRGB (“Splendid” – Color Gamut: “Native”, “Normal” mode).
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective.
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio here is incomparably better than that of the IPS and TN panels and is mathematically infinite.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows ASUS Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 100% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976 and 100% of DCI-P3 providing a punchy and vibrant image (HDR off, “Splendid” – Color Gamut: “Native”, “Normal” mode).


“MyASUS” can also emulate the DCI-P3 and sRGB color spaces.


We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc.

Below you can compare the scores of the ASUS Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402) against the P3-D65 standards (HDR off, “Splendid” – Color Gamut: P3-D65, “Normal” mode).

We also tested it in sRGB mode (HDR off, “Splendid” – Color Gamut: “sRGB”, “Normal” mode).

ASUS’ R&D department has managed to increase the color representation capabilities of the laptop.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 3 ms.

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Unfortunately, ASUS Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402)’s panel uses low-frequency PWM for luminance adjustment up until 85 nits. Afterwards, we detected small pulsations, which makes the display generally safe in this aspect (after 85 nits).

The last segment of this char represents the reduction in luminance at 100% brightness when using the Flicker-Free Dimming slider (50%). The latter is used to eliminate any pulsations due to PWM at low luminance levels – similarly to our Health-Guard profile.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Gloss level measurement

Glossy-coated displays are sometimes inconvenient in high ambient light conditions. We show the level of reflection on the screen for the respective laptop when the display is turned off and the measurement angle is 60° (in this case, the result is 155 GU).


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for ASUS Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402) configurations with a 14.0″ Samsung ATNA40YK07-0 (SDC4171) (2880 x 1800p) OLED panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

ASUS Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402)’s Harman Kardon speakers produce a sound of pretty good quality. It also shows no deviations across the entire frequency range.


Drivers

All drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-home/vivobook/vivobook-s-14-flip-oled-tn3402/helpdesk_download/

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with the Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. The 70Wh battery pack lasts for 10 hours and 34 minutes of Web browsing, or 9 hours and 43 minutes of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

You can find this machine equipped with either the Ryzen 5 5600H or the Ryzen 7 5800H.


GPU options

On the graphics side, you are offered only what comes integrated inside the processor of choice.


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS152 fps93 fps65 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS141 fps85 fps46 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

AMD Ryzen 5 5600H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
ASUS Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402)3.75 GHz (B+14%) @ 93°C3.47 GHz (B+5%) @ 99°C3.18 GHz @ 99°C
ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED (M3502)3.41 GHz (B+3%) @ 92°C3.15 GHz @ 92°C3.11 GHz @ 92°C
Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 (15″, 2021)3.85 GHz (B+17%) @ 82°C3.85 GHz (B+17%) @ 92°C3.84 GHz (B+16%) @ 98°C
Lenovo ThinkBook 16p Gen 23.68 GHz (B+12%) @ 86°C3.67 GHz (B+11%) @ 93°C3.53 GHz (B+7%) @ 100°C
ASUS Vivobook Pro 15 OLED (M3500)3.52 GHz (B+7%) @ 78°C3.58 GHz (B+8%) @ 94°C3.40 GHz (B+3%) @ 90°C
Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-45)3.57 GHz (B+8%) @ 69°C3.47 GHz (B+5%) @ 69°C3.56 GHz (B+8%) @ 82°C
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (14)3.43 GHz (B+4%) @ 78°C3.35 GHz (B+2%) @ 88°C3.06 GHz @ 93°C
Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (16″)3.77 GHz (B+14%) @ 84°C3.79 GHz (B+15%) @ 89°C3.76 GHz (B+14%) @ 97°C

From our previous tests, the Ryzen 5 5600H seems to be comfortable running at high temperatures. In the case of the Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402), it was pretty fast too. Well, at least in the first couple of minutes of the test. Honestly, you would rarely need maximum power for that long, so you shouldn’t be in trouble.

Comfort during full load

Indeed, the single fan is quite powerful and it produces a bit of noise, during extreme conditions. On the bright side, the keyboard hotspot barely reaches 40°C.


Verdict

With the target being young people, we think that the Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402) will be able to strike. Its bold design looks like a good fit for the design student, or the young professional.

But the results of our tests were more expressive than the small words we’re writing. Especially when it comes to the qualities of the display.

ASUS Vivobook S 14 Flip OLED (TN3402)’s touchscreen panel has a high resolution, comfortable viewing angles, and a practically infinite contrast ratio. It covers 100% of the sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts, which makes the image look really attractive. Its color accuracy is absolutely fantastic, both in terms of sRGB and DCI-P3 readings.

In addition to that, the screen comes with a 90Hz refresh rate. The nature of the OLED panel results in almost instantaneous pixel response times. We still have to mention that the display uses PWM for brightness adjustment below 85 nits. On the bright side, the My ASUS app has built-in software, that eliminates the flickers.

To think that this laptop comes with a bundled ASUS Pen feels like a dream. In fact, it has three reserve tips, while the surface you’re going to use it on is made out of Gorilla Glass.

Naturally, we were a bit skeptical, when we saw the older CPU options. However, ASUS seems to know what it’s doing, as the device possesses a fantastic performance. Its dual-heat-sink cooling solution manages to maintain a frequency of over 3.00 GHz.

We also have to add the ton of features, which include a fingerprint reader, privacy shutter over the Full HD Web camera, and the infamous Noise Cancellation of the My ASUS app.

Indeed, there is one disadvantage, of the aforementioned-year-old hardware, and it is the lack of Gen 4 SSD support. Nevertheless, this is a cost worth taking. Also, one of the USB Type-A ports runs at 2.0 speeds, while half of the memory is soldered to the motherboard.

We say that because we feel it is the right way to cut your expenses. Instead of compromising the build quality, the performance, or the screen, ASUS made the difficult choice to cut on other specs. Nevertheless, this doesn’t make the laptop any more appealing.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/asus-vivobook-s-14-flip-oled-tn3402/

Pros

  • 100% sRGB and DCI-P3 coverage + HDR support
  • Accurate color representation
  • High resolution and 16:10 aspect ratio
  • Deep blacks and virtually infinite contrast ratio
  • NumberPad + Stylus inside the box
  • 90Hz refresh rate with fast pixel response times
  • Fingerprint reader + Noise cancellation


Cons

  • No MicroSD card slot
  • Older processors (although still pretty powerful)

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