I don’t usually recommend budget laptops, which end up being useful for little more than getting online and ordering a real replacement, but occasionally there’s exceptions. Like the ASUS Vivobook 14 (X1404ZA) from 2023, which apparently was made in great numbers but didn’t sell very well, because stores are still trying to unload it. It’s not a great laptop, but for $225 or so, it’s better than most of the alternatives. (Unless you find a good deal on an ebay thinkpad, etc. An X1 Carbon G3 from 2015 seems to be about the same price.) I picked it up specifically because I wanted an Alder Lake CPU for reasons, and I’m happy that it hasn’t been a waste of money.

install

After several hours dragging through the inconceivably slow Windows setup process (so I could get the BIOS up to date), it was time for OpenBSD. Reboot with a USB stick inserted and break into the BIOS (F2) to change boot order. Fails, I forgot to disable secure boot. Reboot and change that, get into the installer, but there’s no disk found (other than the USB stick I booted from). Well, it was a 7.6 installer, maybe there’s something new. Reflash a snapshot installer and try again, but still no dice. Figure what the heck, I’ll just install to the flash drive. It’s slow and suboptimal, but I should be in a better position to diagnose. That drags on a long time, but eventually we get to the end. Reboot, and no luck. BIOS reports nothing bootable. Little stumped.

Make another desperate sweep through the BIOS options and discover something called VMD, which is some volumen manager scam that eats hard drives. Disable that, and tada! OpenBSD can see my SSD. Install OpenBSD a second time, now on the SSD, which goes very smoothly, but again fails to boot. Realize that out of habit, I’ve been formatting the drive with MBR, and this computer is very new and very smart and can only boot GPT drives. We get to install OpenBSD a third time. The good news is I was able to complete all three installs, even the dreadfully slow USB stick one, in less time than it took Windows to get itself sorted out.

upgrades

OpenBSD doesn’t support the MediaTek wifi, but an Intel AX210 was easily installed. After I took out my contacts so I could see the little wires, that is.

There’s 8GB RAM hard wired in (which is fine for me), but also one empty slot, so I dropped in another 8GB while I had the case open. I’m not sure what the max capacity is.

This laptop was made new in 2023 and comes with only a barrel charger. Discardable chromebooks come with USB PD, but they really cheaped out here. Ah, well, having discovered the world of after market USB-C power adapters, I got a converter. Unfortunately, I forgot my calipers and ordered the supposedly made for ASUS model 4.0mm, which did not fit. I needed the 4.5mm made for Dell model. It’s not actually brand specific, and works fine apart from the For Dell lettering on it.

With all that, the budget laptop is a little less budget, but only the wifi was essential, and all told, still not very expensive.

hardware

As for everything else, the reason I picked this laptop is I was able to handle it in a Best Buy store before purchase, and was generally impressed with the not great but adequate build quality. It feels pretty solid, it’s not huge, and it’s not heavy. It feels like a lot of plastic, but it’s well assembled.

The screen is a usable 1080p, but with terrible viewing angles. At normal distances, at least part of the screen will always be slightly washed out. I haven’t used a screen this bad in years. Somehow I thought the trickle down economies of scale would mean the better screen tech would displace this crap, but nope. It’s not unusable, and at least it’s a matte finish, so okay for a backup laptop. I managed to use it for a day and it didn’t really impair productivity.

The keyboard and touchpad definitely feel budget, but work fine. The keyboard in particular has a normal layout, and I can type accurately and quickly. There’s something that’s just a little off, something that says they saved a nickel using this over a more premium model, but it doesn’t interfere with my typing at all.

There’s a caution strip printed on the enter key. It’s kinda funny, but okay, cool. The keyboard is not backlit to save another nickel.

The touchpad has a feature where it can become a numpad. Fortunately, OpenBSD doesn’t support this. I kept turning it on accidentally during my brief Windows usage.

The battery lasts about 4.5 hours until dead. That’s not great. For some reason, it’s always drawing at least 11 watts while idle. I don’t know where the power goes. My decade old X1 draws around 7 watts, for comparison. Similar platform, U series CPU, etc. I wish I knew exactly where the money goes in making one laptop almost twice as efficient. Like the Thinkpad uses copper wiring and this thing uses wet strings, or what.

The fan is usually quiet. Sometimes when idle it even turns off, but then it pulses on and off whenever anything happens, which can be annoying. I find it’s generally inaudible except in a very quiet room however. I was unable to hear it at all outside the house.

It’s an i3-1215U, but it’s reasonably suited for anything that isn’t folding coins or the like.

thoughts

I would not encourage anyone to buy this laptop, but if you were considering it for some reason, like an international laptop, I think it’s one of the better options for the price. I’d like to believe this would have been very popular if ASUS had invested about $25 more into its BOM, but I know nothing about laptop economics.

It works more or less perfectly with OpenBSD once the wifi is replaced (and the BIOS is properly massaged). Suspend and resume. Volume buttons. The screen brightness keys don’t work, but xbacklight does.