I just tested my first AMD Ryzen AI 400 series laptop — the Asus Vivobook 14 quietly nails the fundamentals

2026 is going to be the year of the laptop, and I just got my first taste of it with the new Asus Vivobook 14 — sporting AMD’s new Ryzen AI 400 series processor. And in short, even the boring notebooks are turning out to be pretty great.

I’m getting serious flashbacks to the Dell 14 Plus when using it. I mean, if laptops had personalities, the Vivobook 14 would be the kind to own exactly one pair of jeans and get way too excited telling you about a trip to buy granola. And with the energy of a calendar reminder, Asus has worked quietly on the fundamentals that make this a solid all-rounder.

The AMD Ryzen AI 7 445 processor here is enough to keep up with the general day-to-day while offering decent all-day battery life.

The display’s a bit dull (don’t expect to get work related to color accuracy done on here), but it’s bright and gets the job done. The keyboard feels nice to type on with plenty of travel, and the larger touchpad now packs edge gestures to control volume and brightness — all with value for money at its core.

But if you’re looking for any sizzle or a premium design, this isn’t the one. It’s a very cookie-cutter slab of plastic that will blend in anywhere, complete with a webcam that is more potato than prime shooter.

That being said, that’s the point of it. This isn’t meant to be the supercar you walk into the dealership to look at; it’s the boring station wagon you walk out with the keys to. And Asus putting its efforts into the ways you’ll use it makes this a dull but competent option for anybody looking for a general productivity system.

Asus Vivobook 14 (2026): Cheat Sheet

• What is it? It is a laptop. Nothing more. Nothing less.
• Who is it for? This one's for the general productivity crowd. It’s not going to set any benchmark tables alight, but it has the fundamentals to get stuff done.
• What does it cost? At the time of writing, we know the UK pricing is £749.
• What do we like? The usability fundamentals of this laptop are solid. The keyboard feels great, and the touchpad is smooth with edge gestures to boot. A decent port array gives you a nice amount of connectivity, and for the basics, that AMD Ryzen AI 7 445 processor is zippy.
• What don’t we like? That display is dull, the design is dull, and the webcam is dull. You can feel the budget nature of this system in certain areas.

Asus Vivobook 14 (2026): Specs

Asus Vivobook 14 (2026): The ups

The Asus Vivobook 14 is the laptop equivalent of sensible shoes — you’ll never love them, but your feet will thank you.

Sensible design and ergonomics

The Vivobook 14 may not pass the vibe check, but that’s on purpose. This is a sensible design that focuses on what matters — a durable construction that is military-standard tested (do quite like the blue colorway), with ergonomics that feel good to get stuff done with.

That keyboard is a joy to type on. With 1.7mm of key depth and a nice tactile bump at the bottom of every press, you’ll have no problem typing your heart away into long-form content, such as this review I’m writing up right now.

And the touchpad gets an upgrade, too. It’s roughly 20% larger and feels oh-so smooth, alongside edge gestures that I first fell in love with way back on the Huawei MateBook Pro. Controlling the brightness and volume with swipes along the left and right edges is always pretty slick.

Pack it all into a shell that seems to ensure it can do a good job at cooling without needing to sound like a jet engine under pressure, and you’ve got a decent workhorse.

Gorgon Point gets to the point

So I’ll be honest. When I first looked at the benchmark results for the AMD Ryzen AI 7 445 chip, I was a little disappointed.

The lineup has deepened this year with a focus being placed on affordability, and while the Ryzen AI 7 450 is the natural equivalent to last year’s 350, but with a slightly higher clock speed, the 445 in here is a trimmed-down version with fewer cores and a lower speed.

To you, that means you’re getting enough for your basic productivity needs and some light gaming, but there are some interesting things to write home about.

First, it does still come with that higher memory bandwidth, which provides impressively fast loading times for zippy app opens/document loads. Second, that lower wattage going to the chip does mean you won’t be feeling any noticeably bad heat or thermal pressure when under load.

And third, that also means you’re getting rather good battery life. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not Snapdragon-levels of it, but from 100% at 8 a.m., I did my standard work day of multiple Chrome tabs, a little bit of basic Photoshopping, some video over lunch and Spotify for background ambience, and by 5 p.m. I was at 32%. Not bad, Asus. Not bad — especially for that £749 price tag.

Asus Vivobook 14 (2026): The downs

This is a budget laptop after all — so there were always going to be compromises.

Performance will underwhelm (if you want to do more)

Whenever a retail assistant asks a potential laptop buyer what they want to do with it, the answer is usually “well…everything.” Of course, that’s an open-ended answer to a rather daft question, but it cuts to the core of something.

A lot of people will be just fine with the performance the Asus Vivobook 14 offers, but what you want to do with a notebook evolves over time, and if it evolves in performance demands, you’ll hit that ceiling pretty quickly.

Make no mistake about it, this is solely a great cheap laptop for casual productivity. If you want to have the confidence that it can keep up with something a little more demanding down the road, I’d invest a little more money in looking for something with a little more overhead.

Keeping it dull

I could roast the design being the equivalent of the guy who gets amped up about khakis because of the dimensions of the pockets, but that’s unnecessary. You’ve seen it — you know what you’re getting.

What I mean is you can tell some of the compromises made across other parts of the system. The display is bright, but color reproduction is much more on the faded side. The speakers do have decent clarity without distortion, but they lack any real bass.

And the webcam… On paper, it’s a full HD shooter, but the end result feels anything but. The colors are oversaturated, and it quickly falls apart in anything other than bright direct light. There is Windows Hello support, though, thanks to the IR sensor, so at least there’s that.

Asus Vivobook 14 (2026): Verdict

Design-wise, it’s a firm handshake with eye contact. Nothing more. And that’s more than enough for what most folks need out of a system. Something simple that can get your daily essentials done.

And on that scale, the Vivobook 14 does well. It’s a solid, affordable daily driver that makes compromises in the right places while putting emphasis on what matters — a laptop that can keep up with your standard day-to-day.