There is a growing demand for bigger screen laptops, and such is the case of the ASUS Vivobook 16 X1605 featuring a 12th-gen Intel Core processor and a huge 16-inch display. Is it the affordable everyday laptop you need to get through the day? Here’s what it’s like to use this big laptop every day for activities.
Let me take you through a design walkthrough first. The ASUS Vivobook 16 X1605 offers a standard array of ports, including USB Type-A and Type-C ports, HDMI, a headphone/microphone combo jack, and the proprietary barrel charger on the right side.
The left side has airflow holes to aid in ventilation and only has a lone USB-A port. See that thinness? Despite being big, it’s quite easy to carry it around my home to work on things — in my room, the living room, or even our common entertainment area.
Opening the lid will give you a tight full keyboard layout, the trackpad leaning more on the left side, and the 16-inch all in its full glory. The keys are lighted up by default which should help you travel through keys better, but would take a bit of an easy learning curve if you’re coming from a laptop with no number pads like mine. The 86% screen-to-body ratio is commendable and results in relatively slim bezels around the display. There’s also a physical camera blocker, so you don’t have to put stickers on the camera hole every time you use it.
More ventilation grills are seen at the bottom, as well as the speakers at opposite ends. The bottom plate is removable to upgrade your RAM since this device has an additional RAM slot.
The laptop’s chassis is predominantly made of plastic, with the Indie Black colorway that gives it a sleek and professional appearance. The build quality is decent and sturdy, which is typical for laptops in this price range. Sadly, there’s no fingerprint scanner here.
It’s honestly a fingerprint and smudge magnet though, but ASUS has shipped this laptop out with an Antibacterial Guard, a special silver-ion coating applied to the most frequently touched parts of our laptop surface, guaranteeing bacteria growth inhibition by up to 99% in 24 hours for up to three years. The grime is also easily wipeable after every laptop use.
Its hinge is designed to raise the profile of your keyboard by a few degrees to ensure a more comfortable typing experience without much need for an additional armrest. Similar to other Vivobook models, you can also tilt the display to 180 degrees, giving you that straight laptop profile should you wish to attach the laptop to a stand.
Sporting a 16.0-inch WUXGA display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, the screen provides a reasonable viewing experience with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. The IPS-level panel ensures decent color reproduction and viewing angles, although the 45% NTSC color gamut might not satisfy users with demanding visual requirements. If you dabble in creative and you yearn for a laptop with a near-accurate color profile, this ain’t it. However, it is a laptop good enough to use for less stringent functions such as light PC gaming, social media, communication, and office work.
Its speakers offer reasonable clarity, with the loudest volume not cranking up audio coming from YouTube Music. We’re also being heard loud and clear from the built-in microphone, and the 3.5mm combo audio jack works well. We recommend using the
The ASUS Vivobook 16 X1605 is a mid-range laptop that offers a decent set of features for everyday computing tasks. Under the hood, the ASUS Vivobook 16 X1605 is powered by an Intel Core i5-1235U Processor and 8GB of DDR4 RAM onboard, with an additional upgrade slot available for expansion, which provides sufficient performance for everyday computing tasks such as web browsing, word processing, and multimedia consumption.
However, users should not expect this processor to handle demanding graphic applications or gaming with ease. The integrated Intel UHD Graphics deliver basic graphical performance, suitable for light gaming and multimedia playback but not for intensive gaming or graphic design work.
It also comes equipped with Windows 11 plus Microsoft Home and Office Home and Student Edition, providing out-of-the-box productivity tools for users. McAfee Antivirus is installed (which you can uninstall), and the MyASUS app that checks your laptop’s condition and other pertinent information you need including warranty.
Connectivity options work well – WiFi 6 is great, and so is Bluetooth. The ports work well, too. The camera is decent enough for online meetings and photo time with your loved ones.
As for its battery life, we can get around 4.5 hours of medium to heavy use (social media, YouTube and other streaming apps, YouTube Music, Canva, Adobe Photoshop) with the 42Wh battery before we are prompted by the system to recharge the laptop. The accompanying 45-watt laptop charger can fill up half the battery capacity in just 30 minutes, with the remaining time seeming to trickle based on your battery health preference on the MyASUS app. A gripe here – the USB-C port does not offer Power Delivery charging, so you’re relegated to using the laptop’s proprietary barrel center pin charger to recharge it.
