Let's be honest: in 2019 having a good smartphone is more practical than a decent laptop.
Sure, if you are a hardcore gamer or somehow involved in an industry akin to photography, they are invaluable; but for the typing, slideshow-presenting, spreadsheet-creating masses, a phone will pretty much cover all those bases and can be used while on the loo.
So what is the point of lugging a laptop around? To find out we test drove the new Asus Vivobook S15.
This is the point in tech reviews where people start gushing about processing speeds (up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM), screens that vividly display billions of colours (it has an 80% screen-to-body ratio) and a bunch of other tech jargon that a lot of us are not particularly interested in but repeat anyway.
The Vivobook has all of those things and more importantly, it is light (18mm in width and weighs 1,8kg), pretty and comes in a variety of colours, making it cool.
The functionality, however, is not only skin-deep. Thanks to something called Asus WiFi Master technology, the Vivobook S15 is able to maintain stronger WiFi connections at greater distances, making it great at streaming and better at piggybacking on someone else's WiFi.
There is also its exceptional sound system, which can be both a blessing and a curse depending on what you're watching.
The battery has a little less stamina than one would like, but it charges quickly so the refractory periods are not annoying.
Takealot has them going from R16,000 which is R1,000 less than they would charge you for a 64GB iPhone X, but for that you are going to have to buy antivirus software.
The point being that the Asus Vivobook is an exceptional piece of hardware in that it does everything you need it to do without a fuss and at its price is punching above its weight.
If you need a larger screen to be able to work properly, then this is a fantastic work companion. The problem is that if you are just going to use it to create and send documents around then just get a phone.
That said, if you are tired of people and their pretentious MacBooks floating around like their laptops are the bees knees, get an Asus Vivobook, sit next to them in the coffee shop and revel in the fact that the Vivobook S15 looks just as good, is just as capable and is significantly cheaper than the oversized rose gold iPhone next to you...