Asus X553SA Review
Asus X553SA overview - Most human beings can’t manage to pay for to spend £one thousand on a computer. Workhorse finances laptops that make up that bulk of what you’ll find on excessive avenue shelves not often get lots attention, even though. Today we’re here to ask: what does £280 get you in 2016? Here's our Asus X553SA overview.
The Asus X553SA is a cheap pc, with an awesome exquisite of access-level capabilities throughout the board in a ‘right’ laptop body. Asus would quite simply admit there are compromises at this factor, however ought to they positioned you off a buy?
Having spend an awesome even as the pc, there’s handiest one principal difficulty right here: performance. Intel has made excellent progress with its Core M collection processors over the past 18 months, however the Celeron chipset used here is slow. Matched with a slow tough force, you’ll need persistence to get on with the Asus X553SA.
ASUS X553SA: PRICE
At £279, the Asus X553SA isn't always too a long way off as little as you may spend on a new, good sized 15.6-inch pc that has a big tough force rather than a tiny Chromebook-style wedge of stable kingdom memory.
It’s also available reduce-rate at £249 on the time of writing, genuinely with its eye on the bargain hunter.
ASUS X553SA: DESIGN
A laptop with a shoestring price range, you’d desire the Asus X553SA wouldn’t make any stupid design actions, and it doesn’t. This is a completely regular-searching pc with a plastic shell.
In natural aesthetic terms it’s pleasantly easy. While the lid is plastic, there’s still a texture of concentric circles fanning throughout it, mimicking the brushed steel style Asus makes use of in its better-cease ZenBook laptops.
Asus sent us the sober, all-black version. It’s an amazing look for folks who need a low-key pc. However, there are colourful fashions too. It comes in purple, white and purple, every greatly changing the influence they’ll make even as converting nothing but the coloration.
Build best isn’t too fantastic, even though. Press down at the keyboard and you’ll see flexing, a sign of a less-than-tough pc. Little build issues like this are all the more grating now that capsules have made us anticipate high priced-feeling gadgets for similar money.
The Asus X553SA’s size and weight are the ones of the ageing pc archetype too. It’s 2.2kg and 26mm thick. As such it’s too heavy to take around for hours at a time without your shoulders complaining, however will match into most larger file luggage for the occasional journey out.
ASUS X553SA: CONNECTIONS
The Asus X553’s functions approach is to offer masses of breadth, but not all that a lot depth. It’s in all likelihood the right direction for a cheap computer.
It has each VGA and HDMI video connections, positive to please those who've antique pre-HDMI monitors they may be not quite geared up to retire simply yet. However, there are simply two USBs. One is a USB three.Zero port, the alternative a USB 2.0.
Other entry-level laptops generally tend to offer three USBs, however all the Asus X553SA’s connections are decked out on one aspect, which may additionally make production less expensive.
There also are headphone, Ethernet and SD ports. The Asus X553SA isn’t right here to cater for the hardcore crowd, however there’s sufficient too fulfill many.
On the relationship-free facet is the DVD multi-creator and Kensington lock port. Once you start including up what the Asus X553SA, it begins to sound like a quite good deal.
ASUS X553SA: KEYBOARD AND TRACKPAD
The question is whether or not the deal will advantage the sacrifices required. Its keyboard features the sort of.
At a glance it does a lot right. It has a fashionable layout, and even manages to fit in a NUM pad to the right. However, the flex-satisfied casing and entry-stage keys leave it feeling springy, with a less properly-described action than a more costly pc. There’s lots of key travel, however it seems indistinct in comparison with a taut chiclet design.
The Asus X553SA’s trackpad is huge, designed to work nicely with gestures. With a smooth-however-textured plastic surface it tries to emulate the texture of a pitcher-topped trackpad on a finances, and doesn’t do too horrific a job. However, like quite a few Windows laptop pads, it comes with frustrations.
It makes use of evenly-spaced buttons incorporated into the pad itself, and as there’s a NUM pad, the left mouse button region is simply toward the left of the pc. As such, the resting function of your left hand wishes to be way over to the left, which may additionally experience unnatural.
The Asus X553SA will paintings nice when used with a mouse, an awful lot as there are some true components to the pad.
ASUS X553SA: DISPLAY
You’re no longer going to get a stellar display screen in a sub-£300 preferred-design pc. The Asus X553SA takes a few cues from the tablet school of display layout, but that is in the end a fairly uninspiring computer display screen. Given the rate, that should no longer be a deal breaker.
The Asus X553SA has a 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 pixel LCD display. It’s no longer extraordinarily sharp, this being the identical resolution and pixel density laptops of 10 years ago.
This isn’t an IPS display either, which means it only appears totally ‘right’ seen front-on. Look on the display from above or underneath and it either appears washed out or shadowy, thanks to some thing called contrast shift.
Asus’s stab at getting a cutting-edge appearance consists of the use of a sleek display end as opposed to a matt one. On the fantastic, this makes the colours appearance fairly punchy despite the fact that actual shade overall performance of the display isn’t extraordinary.
Using our colorimeter, we discovered it hits fifty nine.9 in keeping with cent of sRGB, 41.Three of forty two.Four Adobe RGB and of DCI P3. These are the three most popular coloration requirements, and hitting simply 60 according to cent of sRGB method the display will appearance a bit undersaturated. However, for the fee it’s a satisfactory performance.
The difficulty with the use of a glossy display is that it’s fantastically mirrored image-susceptible, even among sleek laptops. Take it outside and the Asus X553SA can be absolutely useless. The show is going as much as a reasonable 283cd/m, however reflections are so intense that seeing what’s on-screen turns into a tribulation.
ASUS X553SA: SPECS AND PERFORMANCE
A so-so screen and a springy-feeling keyboard are issues you may probable get used to if you need to paste to a totally tight budget. The problem you want to take greater critically is overall performance.
Most of the laptops we overview have Intel Core series processors. All of these get you largely compromise-unfastened everyday overall performance whilst matched with fast-sufficient garage.
The Asus X553SA has a much decrease-stop Intel Celeron N3050 CPU. It’s a dual-middle chipset clocked at 1.6-2.16GHz, and its performance within reason dismal. It scores 1143 in PCMark 8, which is much less than half of what an excellent Intel Core i5 might rating, and 1558 points in Geekbench 3. That is the identical sort of rating we'd assume from a £a hundred and fifty entry-level smartphone.
Limited power is usually a non-trouble when you take a pc from the abstract global of benchmarks and into the context of actual use. However, right here the low uncooked power is obvious. Rudimentary elements of Windows 10 can take a little even as to load, like the Start menu apps display, and even surfing feels sluggish a variety of the time.
This Intel Celeron processor has a higher TDP than the modern day Intel Atom CPUs (which tells you ways a good deal warmness they could generate, or how hard they are able to rev if you like) but real overall performance is worse in some cases.
It’s not all down to the CPU. The Asus X553SA also has a slow 5400rpm hard pressure. Download over an ultra-fast optical connection (100Mbit Virgin Media is our test connection) and there’s a further knock to performance, and the system turns into almost difficult to apply if it's far installing a program on the time.
Of route, in the exchange off you do get 1TB storage. Just shopping for a 1TB SSD could fee you almost the complete charge of this pc.
We’ve seen an awful lot of true stuff going on in pc hardware over the past couple of years, but the Asus X553SA suffers from performance developments that would have irritated in laptops 10 years old or more. The trouble is that each the CPU and the hard power are capacity overall performance bottlenecks, and their choke factor is inside arm’s attain always.
The Asus X553SA will nonetheless make a satisfactory gadget for simple office tasks, browsing and so forth, however you do should take delivery of that some of those can also sense slower than they do in your smartphone or pill. Bargain hunters available must recollect seeking out an older Core i3 system, some of which might be to be had at a comparable fee.
It almost goes without pronouncing that the Asus X553SA’s gaming overall performance is terrible. Even with visuals pared proper back and the decision dropped right down to 720p, Thief is categorically unplayable, with a median body price of 5.8fps, losing as far down as 2.6fps. Just for masochist pleasure we also attempted it on the local screen resolution (1366 x 768 instead of our ordinary 1080p) and it averages 2.9fps, dropping down to zero.4fps at points.
The less demanding Alien:Isolation is unplayable too, averaging simply nine.3fps with settings minimised and backbone at 720p. Theme Hospital (1997) ought to run fine, however don’t anticipate games from this era to shine.
- Source by www.techadvisor.co.uk
