Announced at the end of last year, the Asus Vivobook 13 Slate OLED, a touchscreen tablet under Windows 11, wants to trample on Microsoft’s flower beds and its Third Surface Go of the name with a more interesting equipment / price ratio and a major argument: the pretty 13.3-inch Full HD OLED panel, really rare on a product offered at 500 euros in starting price. All right, but what is this 2-in-1 device really worth to use? Answer in our test.
True to its credo to put as much OLED as possible in its products (even the most affordable), ASUS offered us last year the very good ZenBook 13 OLED : an ultraportable with OLED screen sold for around 800 euros. It is in this same momentum that at the end of 2021, the French representatives of the Taiwanese brand presented us another product with the grail of display technologies … but at an even more contained price — the Vivobook 13 Slate OLED tablet.
Behind this extended name, an ambition: to offer teenagers, students and mobile users an effective product in office automation and lightweight multimedia, and usable as a real PC. With this new product, ASUS’ barely concealed goal is also to break the feet of Microsoft’s Surface Go 3 through aggressive pricing placement.
Clubic received in test the high-end configuration of the Vivobook 13 Slate OLED. After three weeks with him, we’re able to deliver our full impressions of this Windows 11 slate — but first and foremost, here’s its detailed technical specs.
Behind this extended name, an ambition: to offer teenagers, students and mobile users an effective product in office automation and lightweight multimedia, and usable as a real PC. With this new product, ASUS’ barely concealed goal is also to break the feet of Microsoft’s Surface Go 3 through aggressive pricing placement.
Clubic received in test the high-end configuration of the Vivobook 13 Slate OLED. After three weeks with him, we’re able to deliver our full impressions of this Windows 11 slate — but first and foremost, here’s its detailed technical specs.
ASUS Vivobook 13 Slate OLED Datasheet – T3300KA-LQ069W
Summary
BONE
Processor
RAM
Graphics
Screen
Storage
Connection
Wireless network
Equipment
Physical characteristics
The Vivobook 13 Slate OLED is offered at a starting price of 499 euros alone (without keyboard, but with its rear foot). At first glance, however, French retailers seem to favor more willingly the marketing of the bundle including the tablet and the detachable keyboard, for 599 euros. The most high-end model, which we received on loan, is displayed for its part at a price of 699 euros, with the keyboard and a stylus also provided.
Design: rudimentary, but effective
309.9 x 190 x 7.9 mm, for 785 grams (excluding detachable keyboard and removable foot) these are the measurements of the Vivobook 13 Slate. When it is rid of the paraphernalia that accompanies it, the ASUS tablet remains rather bulky and even a little heavy to say the least. We are on dimensions more or less equivalent to those of a Surface Pro 8 and we move a little away from the compact aspect of a Surface Go, which remains easier to carry.
For this product, ASUS has chosen not to integrate a fold-out foot directly into the chassis, as is the case with Surface devices or other competing models. The tablet of the Taiwanese manufacturer is nevertheless delivered by default with a removable foot, which comes to magnetize to its back. Entirely made of plastic, the latter is not elegant for two cents and is even quite cheap, it also has the disadvantage of adding thickness to an already sturdy tablet.
We also regret that the magnets that hold the foot are not strong enough to securely plate it on the back of the tablet. When unfolded, it is often necessary to take care to handle it carefully so as not to take off everything. Although imperfect, this foot nevertheless provides good stability to the Vivobook 13 Slate overall, as well as a good tilt variable to switch from one working position to another. We would still have preferred a foot integrated directly into the chassis.
The keyboard part, also magnetized, attaches to the base of the tablet to form a real convertible laptop. Despite some flaws, the accessory is convincing. Typing this removable keyboard is surprisingly pleasant, with a fairly long stroke and dry return. The spacing of the keys, rather generous, also allows a good precision, enough to write long texts quickly and without getting tired. We feel that ASUS has taken care of the grain on this point. Small practical detail, the shortcut keys are gray and mismatched from the keyboard to identify them easily. It’s all silly, but it’s well seen.
Under this keyboard is installed a large trackpad fully clickable and rather precise. It is enough in most cases, especially since the touch screen comes as a reinforcement in certain contexts. Overall, ASUS offers us a very good user experience with this detachable keyboard… but since it adds 100 euros to the bill, we would have really liked it to be backlit. This is not the case. Too bad it is not better held in place when folded on the screen in the transport position. As it stands, it slides on the screen at any end of the field and unfolds frequently without being wanted.
It should also be noted that the combination of the removable foot and this detachable keyboard brings the total thickness of the Vivobook 13 Slate to almost 1.7 cm. It’s starting to do a lot. The total weight of the device and its accessories is also not negligible. It’s easy to approach the weight of some ultraportables: it’s unfortunate for a convertible tablet, at least in our opinion.
The design of the tablet itself is however very serious. If plastics are preponderant, they sound quality and the assembly is quite difficult to fault. We don’t feel like we’re dealing with an entry-level product, which is undeniably a good thing. The design is also perfected, even if the addition of slogans in English, worthy of bad marketing rhymes of the 80s, come to ugly a set of the rest relatively sober.
On the connectivity side, the Vivobook 13 Slate does the necessary without being zealous. There are two USB-C 3.2 Gen2 ports (supporting display and power), a micro SD card reader and a headphone jack. Nothing very surprising here, we are on a tablet whose thickness does not allow much better. Just take into account that you will have to go through adapters to connect a conventional USB key or connect an external monitor.
Let’s quickly mention the two cameras installed on the device: a 5 Mp front module, and a 13 Mp rear sensor. The one on the front serves as a webcam and does a good job, with a wide-angle shot and a fairly sharp rendering, superior to what the vast majority of current laptops offer. Be careful though, starting price content obliges, ASUS does not add to this front module the sensors necessary for facial recognition via Windows Hello. No biometric identification device is available on the Vivobook 13 Slate OLED… you must enter a password or code by hand when logging in.
On the back of the tablet, and finally, the 13 Mpx sensor will clearly not satisfy photo lovers, it is not there for that anyway. Let’s argue that it will allow to scan documents in good conditions, which is already not so bad on a product of this type.
Screen: the big highlight of this affordable tablet
ASUS does not hide it and also focuses most of its communication on this argument: the Vivobook 13 Slate is equipped with an OLED screen … despite its starting price of 500 euros. As it stands, it’s almost an anomaly in the laptop market. It is indeed particularly rare to find this type of screen on a machine offered at this price, but ASUS has probably ordered 13.3-inch OLED panels in very large volumes to manage to pull prices down. It must also be said that the manufacture of these organic tiles, in small diagonals, has increased sharply at Samsung Display in recent months: two elements that explain this price.
Because the Vivobook 13 Slate is equipped with an OLED panel signed Samsung Display. According to ASUS, this 13.3-inch screen is supposed to cover 100% of the DCI-P3 spectrum, but also go up to a maximum of 550 nits of luminance, with a response time of 0.2 ms. This display benefits for the rest of a VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification and is calibrated Pantone like most screens at ASUS in recent years. With our probe and the Calman Ultimate measurement software, we wanted to know if these specifications are true on our loan model.
Let’s start with luminance, which is not always the strong point of OLED technology. For our part, we measure a value of 299.5 cd/m2 in conventional brightness, and a peak luminance of 362.3 cd/m2: a convincing value, but which remains below that promised, at least in SDR. Despite a strong shine, the screen of the Vivobook 13 Slate remains perfectly readable in all circumstances. And as on all OLED screens, the contrast is infinite, so much so that our probe is not able to measure it precisely. In short: the blacks are perfect and give the image a relief very pleasing to the eye.
But what about calibration? Well it is practically perfect: we note a DeltaE at 2.6 and a color temperature at 6401 kelvins. Ideally, the Delta E is supposed to be equal to or less than 3 to allow a gap between colors imperceptible to the human eye, here we are. On the temperature of the colors, it is the video standard and its 6500 kelvins that are authentic … we approach it very strongly despite a temperature a chouia too hot on the screen of our tablet.
The coverage of the color spaces is also very satisfactory, especially on an affordable product. Our probe tells us that the sRGB spectrum is 100% supported, while the DCI-P3 gamut is 99.1% covered. Adobe RGB color space is finally 94.2% supported. High-flying results that confirm, if it were still necessary, the very high quality of the OLED screen chosen by ASUS. We can say without risking too much that the Vivobook 13 Slate is, to date, the convertible tablet offering by far the best display quality at 500 euros.
The only flaw that we could find on the screen of said tablet would touch its lower and upper borders a little thick, and again… we quibble. Let’s keep it short by saying that if you want the best possible image quality on an affordable product, the Vivobook 13 Slate, unassailable or almost unassailable on the display, is the product that will make you vibrate.
Performance: a small, very small processor… tiny
To integrate a screen of this quality on a product launched at such a contained price, ASUS had to make sacrifices. We saw above that some compromises had been made on the design of accessories sold with the tablet, and that the latter ignored certain approvals. Obviously, however, this is not where ASUS has made more savings. In reality, the dark cuts were mainly perpetrated on the performance of the internal components — and especially on those of the processor. Using the Vivobook 13 Slate on a daily basis is enough to remind us that yes, we are indeed on an entry-level product.
Because whatever the model chosen, the ASUS convertible tablet is content with a small Intel Pentium Silver N6000 processor. As a reminder, it is a chip with very low consumption (6 W of TDP), Jasper Lake generation, engraved in 10 nm. There are 4 cores and 4 threads clocked between 1.10 and 3.30 GHz, 4 MB of L3 cache, and an embryonic Intel UHD Graphics iGPU (grouping 32 execution units up to 850 MHz).
This chip with very modest properties is coupled with 8 GB of RAM (LPDDR4X) on our loan model, but the most affordable version, the one offered from 500 euros, is content with 4 GB of RAM. Suffice it to say right away: we are clearly not on a racing beast. With this configuration, ASUS aims for only one thing: to allow essentially office use, and to offer just the right amount of performance for web browsing or video playback. We did not expect a crazy versatility on the Vivobook 13 Slate, but we must admit that even in the context of a basic use, the performance offered remains very limited … and limiting.
In use, we quickly realize that the tablet does not allow optimal fluidity in Windows 11. The interface and animations of the OS are often slow, the launch of applications lacks dynamism and overall the system is not of a thunderous responsiveness. In absolute terms, we still manage to work without too many problems on the device, but this lack of performance is seen as the nose in the middle of the face, everywhere, all the time. The Vivobook 13 Slate is a soft tablet… with a superb screen, certainly, but soft still. It lacks punch in multitasking, and its small processor will allow nothing more than archi-basic activities. Take it for granted.
To be concise, ASUS offers us overall the same level of performance as on a Surface Go 3, no more and no less. Like its rival, the Vivobook 13 Slate therefore takes on the air of a typewriter, efficient in its work (up to a certain point), with which you can watch Netflix, Disney or Prime Video in the evening when you come home from class. Note, however, that the tablet has everything of a good playmate. Don’t get me wrong, it won’t be able to run anything on its own, but it does a good job in Cloud Gaming. The insolent quality of its screen then works wonders to sublimate the games accessible on GeForce Now or Stadia, for example.
What about heating and managing CPU-supported frequencies? We launched our usual stress test under AIDA64 to observe the behavior of the Pentium Silver N6000 in prolonged and intensive load situations (100% on all four cores). What we can say is that the frequencies do not rise very high (2.55 to 2.65 GHz great maximum) and quickly fall below 1.50 GHz to then yoyo depending on the heating. For their part, temperatures rise to 84 degrees in peak and over short periods … maximum threshold above which frequencies sting from the nose. To the touch, the chassis of the tablet is then warm, nothing more. Note that the Vivobook 13 Slate is devoid of an active dissipation system. The silence of the device is therefore total, regardless of the context of use.
In benchmarks, the Vivobook 13 Slate does not make a very strong impression. Nothing surprising here. Under CineBench R23 it thus gleaned 1947 points in multi-core against only 686 points in single-core calculation. Predictable results given the specifications of the small Pentium Silver N6000 we are dealing with. That said, Intel’s processor still manages to easily beat the Pentium Silver N5030 (4 cores / 4 threads too, but Gemini Lake generation, engraved in 14 nm) that we found on the Acer Swift 1. The latter was indeed limited to 1126 points in multi-core and 495 points in single-core.
For comparison, and to give you an order of magnitude, the Core i7-1165G7 (4 cores / 8 threads, 10 nm) found on most high-end ultraportables of 2021 collected 4538 points in compute-multi core and 1479 points in single-core on the Acer Swift 5 2021.
Let’s finish with a quick point on the performance of the SSD installed on board our Vivobook 13 Slate. Here too ASUS seems to have saved money. We limit ourselves to 2228.62 MB /s read against only 634.61 MB / s write. Weak transfer speeds, especially in writing, just enough in 2022 for the intended use. Again, ASUS really doesn’t offer us anything more than the bare necessities on the performance side.
Autonomy: honest without more
The presence of an OLED screen often tends to impact autonomy. With its small battery of 50 Wh, the Vivobook 13 Slate nevertheless saves the furniture… even if we remain far from the longevity on battery offered by some competing ultraportables. In versatile use, mixing office automation, web browsing on Google Chrome and punctual video playback, with the balanced power mode, we the ASUS tablet manages to hold 7 to 8 hours before claiming its charger. The day of battery work is therefore possible, but really close from what we have observed.
In video playback under Netflix (via Microsoft Edge), with a headset plugged in, the brightness of the screen at 100% and the power settings in power saving mode, we were not beyond 7 hours 40 of autonomy before seeing the tablet turn off, fully discharged. It’s honest without more. We remain far from what was proposed, the Acer Swift 1, with a similar configuration … but an IPS screen. The latter was indeed tutoy the 12 hours in video playback.
ASUS, on the other hand, equips us with a small USB-C charger of 65 W allowing a relatively efficient fast charging: going from 0 to 50% of autonomy will be done in almost 30 minutes, while the full charge will be recovered in a little less than 1 hour 30 on mains. On the space side, the charger of the Vivobook 13 Slate is barely larger than that of a smartphone. It is very easy to slip it into a bag.
Audio: very basic speakers
As for the audio, we are faced with four speakers (two on each side of the tablet) certified Dolby Atmos. These little speakers troubleshoot to watch a video or movie, but you can’t decently ask for more. They also quickly display their limits in musical listening, with a total absence of bass and rough treble. Their tendency to lose precision is also very marked after a certain volume.
Unlike other products (including the ZenBook 13 OLED and ZenBook Flip S), ASUS has the good idea to spare us its crazy experiences… consisting in removing, without warning, the 3.5 mm Jack output. The Vivobook 13 Slate therefore has a headphone jack. This output delivers good audio quality, with a clean and strong signal. Of course, it is also possible to get rid of any cable by using a bluetooth headset, with a more pleasant pairing system thanks to Windows 11.
Price: a canon rate, but…
Do you really want an OLED panel? The question is worth asking. Because if the Vivobook 13 Slate is indisputably attractive with its superb OLED screen at less than 500 euros, it takes 600 euros to enjoy a pack combining the tablet and its detachable keyboard – an accessory practically essential for everyday use. This budget remains accessible, but is also not negligible, especially if we compare the ASUS tablet to what some “classic” laptops offer at the same price.
For 600 euros, you can for example attach the services of an Acer Swift 3, equipped with an 11th generation Intel Core i5 processor and 512 GB of SSD. Regularly sold at Microsoft, the Surface Laptop Go can also be traded on the same price range. These two devices both offer a much better level of performance… failing to be able to count on a screen as beautiful as the Vivobook 13 Slate. Another alternative: the iPad 9 and its Smart Keyboard, for 568 euros in all. We gain in mobility here, but we have to do without the Windows environment… and of course without an OLED screen.
Finally, note that at 700 euros, the most high-end configuration of our Vivobook 13 Slate seems too expensive to be recommended. Even though, for this price, the keyboard and a stylus are provided.
ASUS Vivobook 13 Slate, Clubic’s opinion:
Low-cost convertible slate, the ASUS Vivobook 13 Slate is a good product for basic office and multimedia use. Its performance, and especially that of its processor, however, does not allow the ASUS tablet to have much more ambition.
The user experience is therefore suitable for modest activities, but we quickly reach the limits of the small Intel Pentium Silver N6000. A point to take into account when buying, especially since the autonomy is not prodigious either: count 7 to 8 hours on battery at most.
That being said, ASUS succeeds in a rather prodigious sleight of hand: offer on an affordable tablet, sold from 500 euros with a perfectly calibrated OLED panel, worthy of the best ultraportables on the market. This is the main argument in favor of the Vivobook 13 Slate. It’s quite simple, its display quality is properly messianic at this price. You will not find much better on products of this type offered by the competition, even by going up strongly in range.
The Taiwanese manufacturer also does not make fun of the customer with the quality of assembly and construction of its tablet. Despite simple materials, the Vivobook 13 Slate is well-designed, solid and never makes a bad impression when handled. We also appreciate the quality of the detachable keyboard, provided as a bundle for a total of 600 euros. Too bad on the other hand that ASUS did not choose to integrate a foot directly into the chassis of its slate. Instead, a detachable plastic foot is provided, but the latter did not really convince us. This is one of the elements that we would like to see ASUS fix on a next generation of this imperfect but attractive tablet.
A tablet that suffers on the other hand from the comparison with some entry-level ultraportables in the field of performance offered. For the same price, and if you’re willing to lose out on display quality, some classic laptops offer a better overall user experience. How far will your oled appeal go? In fact, that is the question.
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