ASUS A53E-XA1 15.6-Inch Versatile Entertainment Laptop (Black)
ASUS A53E-XA1 15.6-Inch Versatile Entertainment Laptop (Black)
- Intel Core i3-2310M (2.1GHz);
- 4GB DDR3 1333MHz, 2 SODIMM Sockets, up to 8GB
- 320GB Hard Drive; SuperMulti Optical Drive
- 15.6-Inch HD (1366×768) LED Display; Intel GMA HD
- Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
15.6” HD (1366×768) LED/i3-2310M Dual Core (2.1GHz)/4GB DDR3 RAM/Intel GMA HD/320GB HDD/SuperMulti ODD/Windows 7 Home Premium (64bit)/802.11BGN/0.3M Pixel/6 Cell battery/3 USB 2.0 ports/5-in-1 card reader/1YR Global warranty/1YR Accidental Damage Warranty/30-Day Zero Bright Dot/2-way FREE shipping/24-7 tech support Not Just another Pretty Face
Smart, Reliable & Efficient
Powered by the 2nd generation Intel Core i3-2310M processor with Intel Turbo Boost 2.0 Technology, the A53
List Price: $ 549.99
Price: $ 449.99
Good laptop for the price,
After a (probably far too) long time of scouring Amazon’s laptop selection, I eventually settled on this model. I’ve had it for about 1 week, and in that time, I can say I am fairly happy with the purchase.
Pros:
Price. Considering what you are getting, this computer seems like a quality product for the amount it costs.
Display: It’s slightly larger than I expected and quite crisp.
Battery: While this doesn’t boast the 8+hours I’ve seen on smaller models, it has been hovering around 4-5 hours on batter.
Keyboard: I enjoy the well-spaced out chiclet keys. It feels less cramped than other laptops I’ve used in the past, although, having the full numerical keys on the right will take some getting used to.
Speed: This thing is a powerhouse compared to my last laptop (Acer Aspire 5100 with 1 GB RAM). The i3 seems quite quick and the 4 GB of RAM appear to have ample processor speed to handle most of what I do (Web browsing, streaming and light gaming). I think I will, however be upgrading to 8 GB RAM shortly, mostly because I can, when I figure out which sticks will work best.
Windows 7 Home Premium: Having used the starter kit on some netbooks, this seems like a much better user experience.
Protection plan: Since I haven’t needed it (yet), I can’t speak to how Asus is about fulfilling the drops and spills protection, but, being a clumsy person, I appreciate the piece of mind.
Frame: The aluminum around the keyboard makes it seem like a much nicer computer than the price tag suggests, and so far it has stayed quite cool despite sitting in my lap.
Undecided:
Track pad: It has a nice feel to it and I enjoy the multi-touch functions, however, I have inadvertently clicked while trying to type emails on several occasions. This is a bit annoying, but I may just need to fiddle with the options.
Cons:
Setup/bloatware: For the most part this was easy; the initial setup took maybe 10 minutes or so. The downloading of the necessary updates from Windows, while not Asus’ fault, took quite some time. Another gripe I have is the amount of bloatware. That probably took 2 hours to figure out what was necessary and what was useless crap (the facial recognition, while kind of a cool idea, is pointless to me [especially when I wear so many disguises]). One wish I have is that computer manufactures will start selling PCs with minimal software to allow customization without having to undo what they have already planted. Pipe dream, but I can bitch nonetheless.
Cord: I wish it was just a bit longer. It’s pretty easy to pick up a replacement, and I may do that.
Speakers: They are laptop speakers, what did I expect? They are generally adequate for me (my apartment is pretty quiet), but if you live in a noisy environment, I would invest in some external speakers, or choose a different model.
Conclusion: For the price, I think this laptop is a nice buy. I think this would be a great computer for people who do not frequently need to do labor-intensive computing (i.e. Photoshop, heavier-type games [WoW, etc.]). I imagine this will be fine for the occasional Photoshop session, but I think it would be slightly frustrating over time. It’s a little larger than a netbook, but IMHO, it is far more functional and comfortable, while not adding significantly to the cost or heft. I would also suggest this to people heading to college as a computer that is portable, yet large enough to be comfortable.
I’ll post edits after I (find the correct and) install the RAM upgrade.
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|More bang for your buck.,
As an engineering student I scraped up my savings to purchase a decent computer this summer, and after several days of surfing and researching I decided on this one. So far I have no complaints, I’ve installed all of my programming software for school with ease, and they run flawlessly. I’ve noticed others have had problems with crashing, however I find that hard to believe as this laptop has been performing beyond expectations since the moment I opened it. One tremendous feature of this laptop that I absolutely love is the different battery settings for those nights that I’m grinding out code; on the energy saver settings it outlasted 6 hours!!!!(I fell asleep before the laptop did)
I am a little disappointed with the hard drive space of the laptop, however for the money you can’t find a better deal on the market.
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|Maybe mine was a lemon?,
My husband and I bought this laptop strickly for me to do school work on, we have a desktop but I needed something a little more portable. This was not used for gaming, or any type of video streaming. I bought the Microsoft Office suite with it and that was the only thing we installed on this computer. We ran every single update it asked us to (I believe initially it was around 57 updates).
We purchased it on a Sunday, by Tuesday it crashed. We called the manufacturer and they told us how to reset the computer back to the factory settings. After that it was good until the following Tuesday. The computer had crashed again, we had earlier in the week backed up the computer so from that we restored it again. By that Friday (3 days later) the internet would not connect and if it did there was a load time of about a minute and a half. It also would not pull up any of the Microsoft Office Suites without “Not Responding”.
In my opinion, the software (bloatware) was too much for the system to handle. My husband finally decided to return it to Best Buy and we then switched to a Toshiba i3 500gb laptop that is perfect. One clear sign that maybe this computer was an all around flaw for everyone is when we bought it on that Sunday and returned it a week and a half later Best Buy had already removed it from their shelves and their website so they are no longer selling this computer.
This computer is still fairly new to the market so there isn’t a lot of reviews out for it. Beware of the possible troubles and ensure that there is a good return policy in place before purchasing just in case.
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