Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025) review: Asus dials in its MacBook Pro competitor

Laptop companies have been trying to come at the MacBook Pro for ages — it’s not the greatest powerhouse for all professionals, but it is the most iconic, and so Asus has answered with the Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025).

The Asus Vivobook Pro 15 offers a gorgeous 15.6-inch OLED display, a smooth keyboard and touchpad experience, and incredible overall performance. However, at $1,399, the Vivobook fumbles with its dim screen, short battery life, and middling GPU wrapped in a tacky design.

I’m not that upset about the design or the display brightness, but the low battery life and low-end GPU is a killer for serious professionals. While we would direct you to our best laptops or best Asus laptops for alternatives, depending on your priorities, the Vivobook Pro 15 could still be the right fit for you. Let’s jump in.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Specs and benchmarks

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Price and configurations

As I write this review in March 2025, there’s only one configuration of the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025) available in the U.S., which you can find at B&H for $1,499 and it comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285H processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 6GB GPU, 24GB of RAM, a 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, and a 15.6-inch, 2880 x 1620, 120Hz, OLED display.

If you’re looking for a creator machine for less, we have budget recommendations among our recommended best laptops for Photoshop and best laptops for video editing, or you could look at our best cheap gaming laptops, as they often pull double-duty.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Design

The Asus Vivobook Pro 15 looks like it launched in 2015, not 2025. It’s a bit bulky, and kind of tacky. The metal lid sports a dark gray colorway accompanied by a clean Asus Vivobook logo on the right side. There’s a chunky piece on each of its sides, one for ports and the other for a vent, which reminded me of the Acer Aspires of yore.

But what really gives off its old look is the rubber padding. It’s so thick on the underside, and there’s rubber all over the display as well — two on the top and bottom and one on each side. If your laptop needs this much protection, I worry about the overall build quality.

The deck is pretty standard, with the keyboard in a slight depression while the touchpad is raised up a bit. I do like the contrast between the black keys and the gray keys down the Shift and Backspace rows. Meanwhile, the webcam on the top bezel features the most frustrating privacy shutter I’ve ever used — I felt like I was going to snap the lid in half trying to slide it in any direction.

At 3.97 pounds and 14 x 9.26 x 0.78 inches, the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 is the thickest of its competitors, which wasn’t surprising, but shockingly it isn’t the heaviest. Here’s how it stacks up:

• Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: 3.3 pounds, 12.3 x 8.7 x 0.6 inches
• MSI Prestige A16 AI+: 4.44 pounds, 14.09 x 10.17 x 0.66 inches
• Apple MacBook Air 15-inch M4: 3.3 pounds, 13.4 x 9.35 x 0.45 inches

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Ports

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There are plenty of ports on the Asus Vivobook Pro 15. Here’s what you get:

• 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C with support for display / power delivery (data speed up to 10Gbps)
• 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
• 1x Thunderbolt 4 with support for display / power delivery (data speed up to 40Gbps)
• 1x HDMI 2.1
• 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack
• 1x RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet
• SD 4.0 card reader

Need more ports? Check out our recommendations for the best USB Type-C hubs and best laptop docking stations.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Battery life

Gaming and creator laptops fight for their lives on the Laptop Mag battery test. Unfortunately, the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 got knocked out in the first few rounds.

Tasked with continuously surfing the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, it survived only 5 hours and 58 minutes. That’s several hours shorter than its competitors, even one with more powerful discrete graphics.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Display

With a 15.6-inch, 2880 x 1620, 120Hz, OLED display, the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 offers a deep, colorful panel. However, its low brightness can’t keep up with the demands of a glossy screen — there’s too much glare.

I watched The Fantastic Four: First Steps trailer, and the suits popped off the screen like a wave of ocean blue. Ben Grimm’s pores (rocks) and his cheeks were well-defined due to the sharpness of the panel. However, a darker scene with Reed Richards sketching some equations on a chalkboard fell victim to some glare.

With only 338 nits of brightness, the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 falls nearly 50 nits or more behind the rest of its competitors. Although, it keeps up in color, covering 87.1% of the DCI-P3 (it’s probably better than that though, since OLED results tend to come in lower).

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Keyboard and touchpad

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Typing away on the Asus Vivobook Pro 15’s keyboard felt comfortable. It wasn’t particularly clicky, but it had enough of a bounce to it, and there was enough space on the deck for my palms.

I pumped out 81 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing test, which is my usual. The keys are well-spaced, and the edges are curved enough to distinguish each key.

The 5.1 x 3.2-inch touch impressed me the most. My fingers slid across its smooth surface like a professional skater on an ice rink. The clicker produced a sharp sound but felt shallow when depressed.

The Vivobook Pro comes with an Asus Dial, which is a little dial embedded in the top left corner of the touchpad. You can activate it by swiping down diagonally in the top right corner (there’s an LED to mark its activation. With it, you can adjust the sound and brightness, and it also features functionality with different apps, like Microsoft Edge, which lets you cycle through tabs, zoom in, and control YouTube. There’s an app where you can adjust the settings as well.

The functionality isn’t as smooth as I’d like, I wish the dial would light up because the texture isn’t enough to tell where I am in the dial. This may just be me, but I’m not sure how useful this thing even is — it seems faster to do what you need to do manually. However, it features tight integration with Adobe and Microsoft Office products, so if you like the idea of a different way to interact with your apps, maybe it’ll be right up your alley.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Audio

Despite sporting bottom-firing speakers, the Vivobook Pro 15’s Harman Kardon-certified audio produced quality mids and lows, but struggled highlighting highs.

I listened to “God Games” from Epic: The Musical, and the backing vocals were deep and present. Maybe too present, as they kept up with the leading vocals. However, both sounded quite crisp. Meanwhile, the electric guitar practically squeaked like there was a back-background. But the overall ensemble was pleasant to listen to.

With the Dolby Access app, you have a full EQ at your disposal, but you can use quick presets for Game, Music, Movie, and Voice. There’s also Dynamic, which adjusts the audio automatically based on the content you’re listening to.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Performance and heat

Packed with the latest Intel Core Ultra 9 285H and 24GB of RAM, the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 powered through a series of tasks with little issue. I popped open a couple dozen Google Chrome tabs and a handful of YouTube videos while Spotify blasted in the background. There was minimal slowdown.

The Vivobook Pro 15 also did remarkably well on our benchmarks. It wiped all the competitors on the Geekbench 6 overall performance test, which include the Zephyrus G14’s AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS, the Prestige A16’s AMD Ryzen AI 9 365, and the MacBook Air’s M4.

It also cleaned up on the HandBrake test, which tasked them with transcoding a 4K video to 1080p. Tripling down, the Vivobook Pro’s 1TB SSD clocked in the fastest file transfer speed — even flying by the MacBook.

Now, it gets warm under the hood, peaking at 105.9 degrees Fahrenheit, which is above our 95-degree comfort threshold. We caught that under the left arrow button on the deck of the keyboard, which is a terrible spot to have your hottest point.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Gaming and graphics

This is not a gaming laptop, but it does sport a discrete graphics card you’d find in gaming laptops, namely the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 6GB GPU. So you can do quite a bit of gaming on the Asus Vivobook Pro 15.

Driving through the jungle in Far Cry 6 at Ultra, 1080p settings netted me 72 frames per second, which was more than enough to crush my enemies in a definitely accidental collision. However, playing Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra, 1080p felt like I was in the worst part of The Matrix where operators decipher digital rain.

Despite that, the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 crushed the MSI Prestige A16’s AMD Radeon 880M and the MacBook Air’s M4. Naturally, the Zephyrus G14’s RTX 4060 took the lead.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): AI features

Like most chipsets nowadays, the Vivobook Pro 15’s Intel Core Ultra 9 285H is outfitted with an NPU (neural processing unit), which is capable of running a number of AI processes.

There aren’t many Asus-branded AI features beyond two AI Audio settings in the MyAsus app. They let you adjust the noise-canceling in the speakers and microphone.

Of course, you get all your Copilot features, like Recall, Live Captions, and Cocreator, which lets you navigate through your PC history, provide real-time subtitles, and generate art, respectively.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Webcam

After spending a stupid amount of time uncovering the camera, I found the Vivobook Pro 15’s 1440p to produce miserable images.

In the photo I took, my blue shirt turned black, the lights in the background washed out half my office, and I could see RGB noise in each pixel. I wouldn’t create anything with this webcam, so I highly recommend checking out the best webcams if you need something professional.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025): Software and warranty

Unfortunately, since the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 isn’t a gaming laptop, you don’t get access to the Armoury Crate. However, the MyAsus app does give you access to settings for performance, fans, driver updates, hardware scans, and warranty information. The GPU settings are just a little tucked away — you need to click Device Settings > Power & Performance > and scroll down to the third setting. It’s not exactly the cleanest software to navigate.

Similar to the Asus ROG Flow Z13, the Vivobook Pro comes with the ScreenXpert app, except it’s pretty pointless in this context. There are no performance settings to quickly access, and there’s no discrete button that gets it to pop up. If you enable it, the icon just hovers in the bottom left of your screen for time immemorial.

The Vivobook Pro 15 ships with a one-year limited warranty.

Bottom line

The Asus Vivobook Pro 15 (N6506, 2025) starts throwing punches with its strong overall performance, colorful OLED display, and super comfortable keyboard and touchpad. However, it takes one too many hits with its short battery life and low-end GPU for its price.

If you are looking for a superior creator laptop, consider one of the best laptops for Photoshop or best laptops for video editing, and if gaming is more of a priority for you, then the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is longer lasting and more powerful for a little more money. It’s even far more portable.

Despite that, the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 does offer unique features with its Asus Dial. I’m not a fan, but it may fill someone’s niche.