ASUS VivoBook Pro 15 OLED Slim Laptop, 15.6” FHD OLED Display, Intel Core i5-11300H CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Max Q, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Windows 11 Home, Quiet Blue, K3500PH-DB51

A+ display and great specs with horrible quality control issues + frustrating design choices = Brick
I was sold on the specs and display. I’m not a “creator”, but I was upgrading from an older generation Macbook Pro and wanted something similar. This was almost it, but it had so many problems that I needed to return it.
Asus customer service was friendly, but not helpful. Shockingly, ASUS WARRANTY CUSTOMER SUPPORT SAID THEY HAVE NO RECORD OF ANY DEFECTS WITH THIS MACHINE DESPITE THE OVERWHELMING REVIEWS DISCUSSING THE SAME CRASHING PROBLEM. That’s the biggest red flag and the reason to remove this laptop entirely from your laptop search. That means this machine destroying problem is not even on their radar. They’re not going to fix it if you send it in and they’re not going to release any firmware updates that could solve the issue. The problem is very disruptive and and will probably get worse over time. It was crashing just sitting on the desktop with no other programs running beyond the operating system itself.
They said there was a 3 week repair window which would go past Amazon’s 30 day return window. Other reviewers said they got the runaround with ASUS warranty, that they never fixed the issue or ASUS broke other things in the process. I returned it to be safe. There are enough reviews to say with certainty that if your model comes defective, don’t even bother with ASUS or you’ll be trapped with a still defective laptop that you can’t return.
It’s still very unclear what causes the crashing problem. I think it might have to do with the intel integrated graphics, but I’m not sure. Beyond the crashing problem:
1) SHIPPED WITH A TROJAN VIRUS. -_- The Trojan specifically was disguised as “Synaptics Pointing Device Driver”. This computer doesn’t have synaptic drivers… Of course, Windows 11 by default requires you to connect to a network and login with a Microsoft Account unless you alter the setup process utilizing a command prompt command. So I didn’t find this until after I gave it all my information and connected the laptop to my home network. Thanks ASUS for not doing any quality checks and thanks Microsoft for putting data collection over security! (I did a clean install exactly as ASUS instructed after) The crashing happened before and after the clean install.
– Doing some research. This trojan seemed to contaminate many prebuilt laptops in 2021-2022 when this laptop was specifically made. Just guessing, but someone along the assembly line probably used an infected USB drive when installing software or other firmware. Microsoft Defender picked up the threat immediately so I don’t think this was some conspiracy and probably just another example of terrible quality control by ASUS.
——-
If you’re extremely lucky to get a unit without these hardware issues, here’s my review on the laptop.
– Excellent display.
– Audio is passable for a non-audiophile, but not great. They cheaped out by putting speakers on the bottom instead of front facing speakers despite there being ample room for front facing speakers. This computer is also marketed towards creators, don’t creators need good sound?
– To disguise the lack of front facing speakers, they put in a cumbersome full size keyboard that I don’t think anyone looking at this type of laptop would actually want. The keys were not that clicky, not the worst, not the best either.
– The trackpad was good quality, but they centered it with the laptop instead of the keyboard. (Still a windows trackpad which means it’s effectively worthless and you’re still going to want an external mouse) The position of the trackpad means your palms rest directly on the touch pad when typing or you’re going to get a lot of wrist pain trying to contort your hands to avoid it. It’s poor typing experience. ASUS came up with a workaround, a physical button on the bloated keyboard to turn off the trackpad while typing! Because apparently having to manually turn on and off your trackpad while typing is an acceptable workflow?? I’m pretty sure this was a last second design change to incorporate a full size keyboard instead of front facing speakers so they never bothered to realign the trackpad.
– Speaking of unnecessary physical buttons. There were buttons to turn off the microphone, camera and trackpad. All of these had a blaring orange LED lights to indicate that these features were turned OFF. I hate unnecessary LEDs, but why would I want a reminder that its off instead of a light to tell me it’s on as is convention. This makes no sense and means I have blaring light in my face 99% of the time unless for the few times I’m video chatting with someone. Imagine trying to watch a movie on this nice screen only to be distracted with these stupid lights.
– The ASUS dial brush thing that looks just like the controls from the original iPods. Apart from the gesture to turn it on and off, none of the other controls actually worked nor could I find how to troubleshoot them. Since I didn’t plan to use it anyway, at least it wasn’t intrusive. This just looks like a gimmick.
– Ports. Other reviewers already touched on this, but again. What were you thinking ASUS??? Putting most of the ports on the right side so the cords interfere with an external mouse?? USB 2.0, what is this 2009??? HDMI 1.4 on a creator laptop where visuals are supposed to be front and center??
These problems are so stupid and against convention that I can only assume they were intentionally implemented to lower the perceived quality so this Vivbook wouldn’t cannibalize the sales of their more expensive Zenbooks that have extremely similar specs and visuals.
In terms of Specs. On paper, they were great and the model was specked out with tons of RAM and SSD space, but I never got a chance to even test the RTX 3050 because of the crashing issue. This Intel model compared to the AMD has less cores, but it was enough for me. However, the AMD version has a USB-C that’s not thunderbolt. ASUS is just ridiculous with these design choices.
Yes, it has some very impressive features on paper, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that it’s not a functional laptop. If you’re looking for a brick, save your money. Home Depot will sell you one for less than a dollar.

Hmm
Screen was yummy, but keyboard, not so much.

great value great performance
great value great performance all the top asus vivobook pro for creators and gamers don’t missed it.

It’s good and bad, could be alot better
I bought this computer, easily the most I’ve ever spent on a laptop. Out of the box it was really slow and drivers weren’t installed correctly. I reset the whole computer to factory and I knew what I did wrong and got it working. The key is to get to the setting where you can choose which graphics card to use because it seems to use both and that drains the battery fast. Now it works for about 5 hours on a charge using the intel graphics.
I’ve had it for a year and the paint on the case is peeling and the screen randomly shuts off. The OLED screen is rather nice and seems to be close to calibration out of the box. I really wish it didn’t have to be tweaked so much just to get it working. I still haven’t figured out the screen dying and keyboard lights going out ever hour or so issues. This will be the last ASUS computer I ever buy. It gets the job done but could be so much better.
Pros:
The screen is great
It pretty capable and fast
The keyboard is good for typing
It’s pretty good at gaming
It has great cooling
Cons:
The screen shuts off and needs to be reset by closing the lid and opening it several times
The trackpad loses tracking often
The keyboard backlight turns off when it wants to
Needs tweaking to make it work well
Why are the speakers always on the bottom?

Es muy buena, rápida, bonita y excelente pantalla

Laptop que tras meses de uso es lo que puedo opinar:
Su pantalla es su mejor atributo, pantalla oled que se mira de maravillan, es una pasada ver series películas e incluso jugar con esa calidad de colores en pantalla.
Batería: la batería si deja algo que desear ya que te dura como 3 horas de continuo uso, es uno de los puntos malos de la laptop pero nada que no se solucione con un cargador.
Performance: tiene buen rendimiento y puedes hacer cualquier tarea de edición y diseño básico e incluso jugar algunos juegos sin problema, en cuanto a trabajos y juegos pesados queda a deber ya que solo tiene 8 de ram y una gráfica de gama baja.
En general es una laptop muy recomendable sobre todo por su hermosa pantalla👌