I was very excited when ASUS announced that the new ASUS VivoBook S laptop has a starting price of merely $499 at Computex 2017 in Taiwan. That’s just a little under ₱25,000.00 for a sleek and feature-packed laptop!
However, this turned into a disappointment when they released the local pricing. Instead of ₱25,000.00, the ASUS VivoBook S has an official starting price of a whooping ₱44,995.00 in the Philippines.
Reason for the Price Discrepancy
The huge discrepancy in price is due to the variants that will be available here in the Philippines. So far, ASUS can only promise to release the ASUS VivoBook S with 7th Generation Intel Core i5 or Core i7.
The $499 price tag refers to the Intel Core i3 version with HD display.
ASUS VivoBook S Features
The ASUS VivoBook S is a thin laptop with a 15.6-inch full HD IPS display, NVIDIA GeForce 940MX graphics card, 256GB SSD alongside a 1TB HDD, 8GB of RAM and a fingerprint sensor for Windows Hello.
It also boasts several high speed ports including a USB Type-C, USB 3.1 and a couple of USB 2.0 ones. Its keyboard is backlit while the bezels are slim.
Availability
The ASUS VivoBook S will be available here in the Philippines by the end of July 2017. Hopefully, ASUS can offer the $499 version in the succeeding months.