ASUS Vivobook Go 15.6" L510 Star Black 2022

The ASUS Vivobook Go L510 is a super cheap Windows laptop that gets you a 15-inch screen and a backlit keyboard for around $250. But the 4GB RAM and Celeron N4500 make it painfully slow, and the 128GB eMMC storage is a joke. Only buy it if you have the lowest expectations and literally can't spend a penny more.

The Celeron N4500 dual-core chip clocks at just 1.1GHz and gets absolutely crushed by any modern processor. In our tests, even basic multitasking caused noticeable lag. The 4GB of RAM is a major bottleneck (it sits at the 2nd percentile in our database) and the 128GB eMMC storage is painfully slow and tiny at the 6th percentile. The integrated Intel UHD Graphics share that meager RAM, so gaming is a non-starter with a dismal 11.7 score. The 15.6-inch 1080p screen is sharp enough for documents, but its 200-nit brightness and 45% NTSC color gamut make it look washed out and dim in any bright room. Connectivity is middle-of-the-road with USB-C, two USB-A ports, HDMI 1.4, and Wi-Fi 5, but that's pretty standard for this price.

Stacked against a Chromebook, the Vivobook Go L510 offers the familiarity of Windows but with far worse performance. Even a $250 Chromebook typically has smoother multitasking thanks to lighter OS overhead. Compared to a proper laptop like the MacBook Air or Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition, it's not even in the same universe. Those machines cost multiples more, but they deliver a genuinely usable experience. The HP OmniBook X Flip and Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge are premium alternatives with excellent battery life and speed. This ASUS is for the cash-strapped user who won't compromise on Windows, period.

At $249 to $305, this laptop lives in the same price bracket as Chromebooks. If you absolutely need full Windows (even S Mode) and can't spend more, it technically works. But the experience is so compromised that even a used business laptop like a Dell Latitude 5420 from a few years ago would be a smarter buy. The value proposition only holds if you have rock-bottom expectations and never need to run anything beyond a web browser and Office.

The ASUS Vivobook Go L510 is a budget Windows laptop that puts price above all else. For around $250, you get a 15.6-inch FHD screen, a lightweight chassis, and a backlit keyboard. But that low price comes at a high cost in performance, and you need to know exactly what you're signing up for. We logged plenty of benchmark data on this thing, and the numbers are brutal. The Intel Celeron N4500 and 4GB of RAM are a painful combo that struggles with more than a handful of browser tabs. Our database rates it best as a student laptop at 56.7 out of 100, but even then, it's only suitable for the lightest workloads.

Skip this if you plan to do any multitasking beyond a couple of browser tabs, need to run Windows applications outside of S Mode, or want a screen that's visible in normal lighting. Also, if you can scrape together another $100, a refurbished ThinkPad will run circles around this thing.

Pick up the ASUS Vivobook Go L510 only if you're on a strict $250 budget and can't stomach a Chromebook. It's fine for a student who lives in Google Docs and email, or as a secondary machine for light browsing. Anyone who needs to run multiple apps simultaneously or store more than a few files will quickly hit a wall.