Asus VivoBook W202 - Review 2022

Remember netbooks? They were small, inexpensive laptops with slow processors and paired-down versions of Windows 7, whose sales mostly stale up by 2022. If it were just a few years ago, the Asus VivoBook W202 ($279) could certainly fall into that category. This 12-inch laptop that runs Windows ten South is aimed at parents and schoolhouse districts searching for a durable yet inexpensive laptop for kids. It's a niche marketplace, just i that the VivoBook W202 serves well. It's besides a worthy choice for anyone who pulls a laptop in and out of a crowded purse or haversack several times a day. Only selecting the Asus over our Editors' Choice for budget laptops, the Acer Swift 1, means giving up USB-C compatibility and settling for design cues of yesteryear.

H2o-Resistant and (Mostly) Sturdy

With the lid airtight, the W202 feels sturdy, perhaps even as much so as the unibody MacBook Pro. In fact, durabilty is this laptop's signature feature. The edges and corners are lined with safe to reduce the impact of knocks and bumps, while Asus boasts that it tin can survive farthermost twist forces and high pressure.

To test this out, I pushed it off a lab bench with the hat open a few times, simulating what could happen in a crowded classroom with lots of kids' elbows flying. Each fourth dimension, the impact with the floor forced the hat to snap shut, and at that place was no damage. I also applied pregnant pressure to both the display lid (which flexed a lot and caused artifacts to momentarily appear on the screen) and the chassis (which didn't budge). Finally, I investigated Asus' claim that the keyboard can survive up to 2.2 ounces of water. The water droplets beaded and allowed me to brush them off similar dust, and the laptop was presently dry out with nonetheless-operation keys.

Swathed in condom and plastic, the W202 measures 0.89 past 11.half dozen by 7.9 inches and weighs 2.6 pounds. That's a tad on the heavy side for a laptop of this size, considering that the larger Acer Swift 1 weighs just 3 ounces more. Within, in that location'southward a wide bezel around the screen and a shrunken keyboard. The resulting aesthetic is fine for kids, only the antiquated design might get out you shrugging off raised eyebrows from your airplane or train seatmate if you're planning on using information technology yourself.

Opening the clamshell hat reveals an eleven.6-inch matte screen with a bezel that's enormous past mod ultraportable standards, though is similar to what you can expect from other inexpensive laptops, including Asus'south own Chromebook Flip. Matte screens are fewer and further between these days, but I'm pleased to meet one on the W202 for two reasons. First, the screen does an first-class chore of filtering out the glare from the fluorescent ceiling lights that adorn PC Labs, a setup that resembles the school classrooms where the W202 is probable to exist used the most. 2d, the screen has a fairly low resolution (1,366 past 768), which ways that you won't miss the more vibrant colors of a sleeky display as much as you lot would if in that location were more than pixels packed in.

The W202'due south chiclet keyboard is not quite total-sized and suffers from significant flex, then it's bad-mannered if you accept fat fingers that strike forcefully, but at least there's decent central travel. Below the keyboard is a Windows Precision Touchpad, which means that its ability to accept multifinger gestures and reject accidental palm input meets Microsoft'due south standards. It makes a startling clicking sound and has some slight flex when you tap, though, and is even louder and flexes more when you click. Kids won't care, but y'all'll certainly notice the departure if you're used to the quality glass trackpads on Macs and high-end Windows ultraportables.

On the laptop'south left edge, yous'll find an HDMI port, a USB 3.0 port, a headphone jack, and an SD menu slot. The other side features a second USB 3.0 port, a ability port, and a Kensington lock slot. There'south no DisplayPort or Thunderbolt-uniform USB-C connectors here, which is unfortunate since peripherals that support those standards are apace proliferating the market. Their absence on the W202 is likely due more to its small chassis than to price-cutting efforts, since other larger budget laptops, including the Acer Swift 1 and the Asus F556UA, practice offer USB-C ports.

Powerful Speakers

My review unit comes with 4GB of memory and 64GB of eMMC flash storage. That should be adequate if you lot or your kid stores everything in the cloud and rarely opens more than ane app at a time. There are two speakers with grilles located on the left and right edges of the notebook, and they're surprisingly powerful for such a small-scale laptop: at full volume, I could hear both audio and music across several rows of test benches in PC Labs, so they'll have no trouble filling an average-sized room. The W202 also comes with 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, and a VGA webcam that is acceptable in a compression but suffers from inaccurate colors and significant video lag. Asus offers a ane-year warranty.

Every bit for software, the W202 is among the outset grouping of laptops to run the new Windows ten S, a locked-downward version of the operating system that blocks non-Windows Shop apps. This limitation will inconvenience some people who have specific legacy apps they need to install, but it also reduces the possibility that outset-time computer users volition inadvertently install malware. If you lot'd rather switch to Windows ten to avoid this limitation, Microsoft volition let you lot do information technology for free until the cease of the yr. Afterwards that, you lot'll accept to pay a $49 upgrade fee. Asus besides plans to sell a $299 version of the W202 with Windows x Home pre-installed starting in September. The only other Windows S laptop we've tested so far is the significantly more expensive Microsoft Surface Laptop. The W202 should appeal to schools or students who want or need to work in Windows 10 S, just don't have the budgets for Microsoft'south $999 notebook.

Surprising Operation

With an Intel Celeron N3350 CPU running at ane.1GHz and an integrated GPU, I wasn't expecting great operation from the W202, but information technology turned out to have a surprising amount of processing oomph, at least compared with its low-price competition. In fact, information technology boasted a score of most 2,000 on the PCMark 8 criterion, which measures a multifariousness of productivity tasks that PC users are probable to perform on a daily basis, such every bit typing, video conferencing, and web browsing. That's significantly better than the mid-1,000 scores of the Celeron-based Lenovo IdeaPad 110S and the HP Stream 11-y010nr, and it even tops the Pentium-equipped Acer Swift 1. Unfortunately, the W202 fell behind on our multimedia-editing tasks, coming in most the 10-minute mark on our Handbrake video encoding and Photoshop image-editing tests.

Graphics performance was once more impressive compared with the competition, with leading scores on both the Heaven and Valley frame rate tests. The bodily rates are far below what'due south required to play virtually games, however, as you'd await from a notebook with these specs. For many inexpensive laptops, foregoing gaming is a compromise you lot'll accept to endure. This is a perk, notwithstanding, for parents who desire to make certain that their teenagers stay focused on schoolwork instead of fragging the enemy.

The W202 managed to last for 13 hours and xi minutes on our battery rundown test, which involves playing a looped video file at 50 per centum screen brightness. That's slightly better than the Acer Swift ane'south 12 hours and 48 minutes, and more five hours longer than the HP Stream 11, the Lenovo IdeaPad 110S, and the Dell Inspiron xi 3000. Since you or your kids are most likely to be using the W202 for taking notes in class rather than streaming online videos, it will have more than enough juice to get you through a total solar day of classes or a long flight home.

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Not Another Cheap Netbook

The Asus VivoBook W202 combines an attractive cost, a durable chassis, and specs that upshot in performance that'due south among the all-time in its class (though past no means adequate for more intensive calculating tasks). The W202 is aimed at students, but it should really appeal to anyone who'due south constantly on the go and needs a basic productivity car that will shrug off spills and scratches and won't fall apart on the manner in and out of a handbag or backpack. On the other mitt, if you're looking for a basic laptop for casual computing around the house, the Acer Swift ane is a ameliorate choice for its larger screen, USB-C port, and sleeker design.