Costco Wholesale has for their
Members:
ASUS Vivobook S 16 Laptop (M5606WA-IS99) on sale for
$899.99. Shipping is $14.99
Thanks to Community Member
Eric79149 for finding this deal.
Note: Includes: 2 Year Warranty, 3-Month Microsoft 365 Personal, 1-Year McAfee Total Protection.
Specs:- AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 (10-Core) Processor
- 16" OLED (3200x2000) 120Hz Display
- 1TB PCIe G4 Solid State Drive
- 32GB LPDDR5X 7500MHz RAM
- Integrated AMD Radeon 880M Graphics
- Wi-Fi 6E (2x2) and Bluetooth 5.3
- Backlit Chiclet Keyboard 1-Zone RGB with Num-key
- Microsoft Windows 11 Home
- Ports:
- 1x USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C (support display / power delivery)
- 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C (support display / power delivery)
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
- 1x HDMI 2.1 TMDS
- 1x Micro SD Card Reader
- 1x 3.5mm Combination Audio Jack
- 75WHr 4-cell Li-ion Battery
- Weight: 3.31lbs.
Top Comments
The Vivobook S14 has dual intakes and stays cooler than some of their more "pro" models that only have a single cooler. The form factor is great and the build quality is more than decent. You're not getting a dedicated GPU, but the Ryzen AI with 800 series AMD iGPU is the best integrated GPU you can get. The only upgrade in this league is the Ryzen AI 370 w/ an 890m GPU but the performance gain is negligible. 32gb RAM w/ 1TB SSD is awesome as well. I like these more than their "more premium" Zenbooks. It's also worth noting that non-touch displays have better clarity than touch displays, so there's a tradeoff there. I personally don't care for touch but it's a personal preference.
I highly recommend deleting all partitions from the SSD, creating a new one, and installing Win11 IoT LTSC, disabling Vendor Updates for Windows Update so that MyAsus and other bloatware doesn't sneak its way back on, and immediately installing O&O ShutUp++ to disable much of Win11 bloatware and telemetry. Just install G-Helper for PWM-free dimming and other power options. Win11 LTSC does not include the App Store but you can restore it with a single Powershell command. Your favorite AI chat can guide you through all of this, and you'll have an extremely lean and performant portable machine with a beautiful display and excellent battery life.
I'm honestly very tempted to pull the trigger on this just for the extra 2 inches and the number pad, but I think the smaller form factor of the 14" is serving me better personally. Again, personal preference / tradeoff. But I sure appreciate the extra screen real estate whenever I go back to using my 16" Macbook.
14 Comments
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I would pay more if they offer a touchscreen version or even just put one more layer of glass on the screen like the zenbook or macbook. The extra glass adds huge robustness and makes it way easier to clean the screen.
Also some tips for cooling. I own several of this model from the previous deal and a lot of s14 as well. Both are quite similar on build. I thought they have low temp because they have strong cooling. Last week we did a thermal paste replacement for all S14s and the temp went up 20 degrees on all of them ~95C full load. We checked and tried everything and ended up finding that the original thermal paste Asus used in these laptops are high quality phase change thermal pads rather than normal thermal paste and nothing can match the original temp ~75C full load except PTM7950.
Some clusions here:
(1) the vivobook 2025 chassis is decent but not as stellar as I thought it was.
(2) Do not ever touch the cooling system and change thermal paste unless you are going liquid metal. Asus did a fantastic job.
(3) Intel Lunar Lake is crap. Seriously. Very garbage CPU performance and just so-so battery life with VERY BAD performance on battery. It is not a cool chip as snapdragon either since the snapdragons are mostly cooled by thermal paste. The Lunar Lake leaves me an impression of cheating in battery life exam while not caring about anything else. It even feels significantly slower than my 5600G old machine. Go with AMD if you want any performance (significant difference on everyday tasks such as media and office). Go with snapdragon if you want smoothness. Only go with Lunar Lake if you absolutely need long battery life with no performance demand and can stand a slow laptop.
(4) With that being said, I like Lunar Lakes's iGPU. I am the world record holder of Ultra 7 256v and iGPU on Time Spy. Super sweet performance but useless to my business.
I would pay more if they offer a touchscreen version or even just put one more layer of glass on the screen like the zenbook or macbook. The extra glass adds huge robustness and makes it way easier to clean the screen.
The Vivobook S14 has dual intakes and stays cooler than some of their more "pro" models that only have a single cooler. The form factor is great and the build quality is more than decent. You're not getting a dedicated GPU, but the Ryzen AI with 800 series AMD iGPU is the best integrated GPU you can get. The only upgrade in this league is the Ryzen AI 370 w/ an 890m GPU but the performance gain is negligible. 32gb RAM w/ 1TB SSD is awesome as well. I like these more than their "more premium" Zenbooks. It's also worth noting that non-touch displays have better clarity than touch displays, so there's a tradeoff there. I personally don't care for touch but it's a personal preference.
I highly recommend deleting all partitions from the SSD, creating a new one, and installing Win11 IoT LTSC, disabling Vendor Updates for Windows Update so that MyAsus and other bloatware doesn't sneak its way back on, and immediately installing O&O ShutUp++ to disable much of Win11 bloatware and telemetry. Just install G-Helper for PWM-free dimming and other power options. Win11 LTSC does not include the App Store but you can restore it with a single Powershell command. Your favorite AI chat can guide you through all of this, and you'll have an extremely lean and performant portable machine with a beautiful display and excellent battery life.
I'm honestly very tempted to pull the trigger on this just for the extra 2 inches and the number pad, but I think the smaller form factor of the 14" is serving me better personally. Again, personal preference / tradeoff. But I sure appreciate the extra screen real estate whenever I go back to using my 16" Macbook.
It does -- if you search "vivobook S16 teardown" you'll see a few videos and images confirming this.
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Costco will price adjust right?
https://slickdeals.net/f/18354478-asus-vivobook-s16-16-oled-amd-ryzen-ai-9-365-32gb-1tb-ssd-999-99-at-costco?sort=old
Some clusions here:
(1) the vivobook 2025 chassis is decent but not as stellar as I thought it was.
(2) Do not ever touch the cooling system and change thermal paste unless you are going liquid metal. Asus did a fantastic job.
[...]
- Whisper mode: <85C
- Standard mode: <90C
- Performance mode: <95C
- Full-speed mode: <100C
Kinda scary on the higher modes. I haven't benchmarked performance or generation time, but subjectively Whisper mode doesn't feel like it takes noticeably longer, and it's MUCH less ear-piercing, so I just leave it on that mode all the time now.I should note that 1) Mine's the HX 370 version, which might run a bit hotter than the 365, and 2) It was an open-box, so there's a nonzero chance that the previous buyer tried changing the paste themself, though I doubt it. I'm hesitant to mess with it myself unless I really have to.
EDIT: Aha, I found a review that also has some temperature numbers for the HX 370 version on different cooling modes:
https://www.gadgetpilip
Relevant pic attached. Numbers look similar to mine or a tad higher, which is reassuring that my unit is normal.
I'm not sure why (s)he is posting about Lunar Lake, because this laptop is not Intel Lunar Lake, it's AMD. (Also, despite the posting to the contrary, Lunar Lake has incredibly good battery life and performance, though again, that doesn't matter here because this is NOT a Lunar Lake laptop.)
Is AMD's 365 better in terms of cpu and iGPU? (battery life is not a big Concern for me since it will be mostly plugged in 90% of the time).
Is the extra performance (if any) worth the additional $150?
Thank you.