Asus Vivobook 13 Slate OLED

A Surface rival that puts all its love and budget into the screen, with inevitably mixed results

- TIM DANTON

The rear mount snaps on via a magnet when you want to go hands free

PRICE £458 (£550 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk

There are two ways of looking at this machine. One, an open goal missed. Two, a cleverly balanced use of budget that places all the focus on the thing you look at all day: the screen. Having spent three weeks in the Vivobook’s company, I lean towards the latter.

Its biggest selling point is AMOLED technology, with its 13.3in panel offering 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. It isn’t a wide-gamut panel, only covering 70% of the DCI-P3 colour space, but it’s sharp and accurate, with an average Delta E of 0.45. And it covers almost all of the sRGB gamut, 97.6% to quote precisely from our tests, with a respectable peak brightness of 395cd/m2. It would have been nice to go even brighter than this, but how can you complain when the whole computer costs less than £600?

The panel is at its best when playing back films and games, with many of the Netflix sci-fi titles I tried looking fantastic thanks to the deep blacks that AMOLED so enjoys. If you’re looking for faults then you can spot banding when displaying gradients, but I’ve seen far worse on TVs. The pair of speakers are capable of handling most soundtracks, too, but if you need bass then head elsewhere. Amon Tobin’s “Bridge” came through all mids and trebles, with the beat of the drums lost in the background.

Tablet test