ASUS Vivobook S 14 OLED S5406SAL review

The Vivobook S 14 OLED S5406SAL is a 14-inch ultraportable built around an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V. It comes with 16GB of memory, a 512GB SSD and Windows 11 Home. It weighs 1.30 kg, and Notebookcheck measured 1.313 kg on the S5406SA. The chassis measures 31.05 × 22.19 cm and is 1.39 to 1.59 cm thick.

That makes it a carry-everywhere machine for office work, study and light development. The specifications point to a laptop built around the screen, the battery and portability.

The Core Ultra 5 226V has 8 cores and 8 threads. It runs at 2.1 GHz base and boosts up to 4.5 GHz, with 8MB of cache. The NPU is rated at up to 40 TOPS.

With 8 threads, it suits everyday development, a few containers and moderate compiling. Heavy parallel builds or several virtual machines would push against the thread count and the memory ceiling. The research gives no benchmark figures, so this judgement rests on the core count and memory alone.

The 16GB of LPDDR5X is soldered on the package and cannot be upgraded. That sets the ceiling on day one. For containers and an IDE it is workable. For several VMs, it is a limit you cannot lift later.

Storage is a 512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD in a single M.2 2280 slot. The research lists one slot, so there is no second drive to add. It does not say whether the SSD can be replaced by the user. Anyone with large datasets or many images should plan on external storage.

The screen is a 14.0-inch WUXGA (1920×1200) OLED in 16:10. It is 60Hz and non-touch. ASUS lists 400 nits typical brightness, 600 nits HDR peak and 100% DCI-P3 coverage.

Reviewers praised the OLED for its colour and contrast. The 16:10 shape gives extra vertical space for code and documents. The 60Hz refresh rate is fixed, and the listing gives no matte option.

The battery is 75Wh, 4-cell Li-ion. ASUS lists a 65W USB-C adapter for this model row. Reviewers praised the battery life. The research notes that some of them tested different RAM or CPU configurations, so their results do not map exactly onto this model. It gives no rated runtime from ASUS and no single measured figure, so this page quotes no hours.

One reviewer described the build as solid and durable. At 1.30 kg it is easy to carry daily. The research does not cover keyboard travel, layout, hinge stiffness or trackpad quality, so those points are unconfirmed. Check them in reviews that cover typing before buying if you write a lot.

There are two Thunderbolt 4 ports at 40Gbps, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, one HDMI 2.1 output and a 3.5mm combo jack. The Type-A ports mean older drives and dongles plug in directly. HDMI 2.1 connects a monitor or projector without an adapter. The research lists no SD card slot and no Ethernet port.

ASUS does not list Linux support. It says the product has only been tested for compatibility with Windows 11. The research has no owner reports on Wi-Fi, sleep or fingerprint behaviour under Linux. Linux users would be buying without vendor backing or community evidence from this research. ASUS also did not publish a support end date in the pages read.

The specifications suit someone who spends the day in documents, browsers, an editor and a few containers, and wants a bright, colour-accurate screen and a battery reviewers rate well. They suit less well a buyer who needs to grow memory later, run many VMs, or run Linux with confidence.