Laptops Arena

Asus notebook computers may not be as popular or well sold as Dell or HP laptops but that does not means that they are inferior in quality or that their specs can never live up to the expectations of the public. One of the nicest models when it comes to Asus notebook computers is the Asus UL50Vf.

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This laptop has a 15 inch display with a native resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels which is pretty low for a laptop with a 15 inch diagonal if you consider the fact that there are more and more laptops on the market with a 11 inch display diagonal and which have the same resolution of this Asus over here. The levels of brightness are acceptable but the contrast is quite low.  With this laptop you will get the chance to test the Windows 7 Home Premium operating system (the 64 bit version).

The unit runs on a 1.3 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 Ultra Low Voltage processor and 4 GB of DDR3 RAM which is well known for offering better file transfer rate and being more powerful compared to the DDR2 type of RAM. The total storage capacity of the hard drive is 320 GB and the graphics card can be switched between the Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500 MHD and the nVidia GeForce G210M with 512 MB of DDR3 video memory. For a starting price of $850, you can also get your hands on one of these beauties.



The speakers are not that amazing but they are acceptable considering that this is not a high end multimedia notebook. The touchpad is very similar to the one found on the Apple MacBook except that this one is black and is also comes with a dedicated numerical pad. If you apply pressure, you will notice some flexing in certain areas of the keyboard. The keyboard can be considered too noisy by some people. The touchpad has a glossy surface which could become uncomfortable at a certain point. Nothing special to report here. As for the selections of ports and features, the unit comes with 3 USB ports, one HDMI port, a media card reader, a Kensington lock slot, a VGA out, an Ethernet port and the regular headphones out and microphone in jacks. A Blu-ray optical drive would have gone along just fine with that included HDMI port.



Generally, I have not met a lot of 15 inch laptop which could be proud of their battery performance. However, the Asus UL50Vf manages to impress with the battery figures obtained after the performed tests. With the screen display set to 70%, the wireless card activated and used to surf the internet and the with Windows 7 operating system set to “balanced mode”, this Asus notebook will provide you with up to almost 9 hours of battery life. This score is amazing and you have to admit that you don’t get this kind of performance even from netbooks.  Can you imagine the performance that this battery could reach if the wireless card were disabled and the display brightness lowered?

Cheap mini notebooks are a real bargain when you think about the maximum of portability that they offer. They are compact sized and very light so you can throw them in a bag or purse and take them to work or school or even on trips anytime you like. Another thing that people love is that cheap mini notebooks are very easy to find and you have a wide range of products to choose from.  There are a lot of famous manufacturers like Dell, Toshiba, Acer, Asus or Sony which produce mini notebooks.

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An example of a good and cheap netbook is the Asus EEE PC 701 which can be bought for $399 and it has good specs when you consider that mini notebooks or netbooks like some people like to call them are dedicated mainly for surfing the internet and working on documents. There is not very much to talk about when it comes to the specs of a mini notebook.

Compared to other netbooks which generally use Intel Atom processors, the Asus EEE 701 runs on a 900 MHz Intel Celeron processor and 512 MB of RAM. Unfortunately, some people may find it annoying that the hard drive can only support 4 GB of files. The graphics card is integrated and it only has 64 MB of video memory which means no game play on this unit.

The 701 is a super small notebook as it has a display which measures only 7 inches in diagonal and it has a native resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. The unit hosts 3 USB ports, one Ethernet port, a modem port, an SD memory card reader and the headphone plus microphone jacks.

For $330, you can buy the Acer Aspire One D250, another high quality netbook which has made its users very happy. This unit runs on a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 processor and 1 GB of RAM. The total storage space is 160 GB so this is one aspect which is in favor of the D250 if we compare it to the Asus EEE PC 701. The graphics card is also an integrated one which takes shape in the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950. The screen is 10.1 inches in diagonal and it has a native resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels.

As for the selection of ports and connections, the unit comes with 3 USB ports, one VGA out, an Ethernet port, a 5-in-1 media card reader and the headphones plus microphone jack. The unit also has a 0.3 integrated webcam which can be found above the display but the quality of the images during video calls is not very appealing.

The battery life of this laptop does not offer any amazing performance as we generally expect netbooks which are ultra portables to last turned on quite a lot when they are away from a power outlet. If you enable the wireless card, turn the display brightness to 70% and set the Windows XP power management profile to “power saver” you will get about 2 hours and 30 minutes of battery life. Quite disappointing, isn’t it?

Reading an Asus notebook N80V review has revealed a very stylish, beautiful and powerful laptop. With a price of 640 pounds back in May 2009, this unit cannot be considered expensive. A quick look though the specs will determine if this laptop is worth the effort, or it’s just cheap notebook with nothing particularly special to offer.

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First of all, the laptop is gorgeous. You cannot write an Asus notebook N80V review without saying a couple of words about the design. In my opinion, the looks are to die for. You will never be ashamed to take out this laptop in public as the bronze glossy chassis almost makes it seem like the laptop is made of wood. It has a 14.4 inch display with a native resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels which is ok considering the fact that this is a resolution commonly found on 15.4 inch laptops.

With 2.6 kg in weight, you can say it’s heavy, but not too uncomfortable to determine you to keep it inside the house forever. Besides, who is going to admire the unit if you don’t take it our “for a spin”? The unit runs on a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 processor which is combined with 4 GB of RAM. This means that our N80V can handle multi tasking at an excellent speed without having to wait too long for programs to launch and switching between tabs is not going to be a nightmare.

We did not expect to get a powerful graphics card on this unit. To our huge surprise, the notebook came with the nVidia GeForce 9300M GS graphics card which has 512 MB of video memory. It may not be able to handle ultimate game play, but games are not a mystery to this unit either. No super cool 3D games for you but you can play some good games at average frame rates nevertheless. 320 GB of free disk space are more than enough so you don’t have to worry about running out of laptop memory too soon.

Oh yes, the unit does come with goodies. You get a Blu-ray optical drive which means you can now watch DVD movies in HD on your 14.1 inch display. And another thing: this wonderful laptop also has a HDMI port. Not only can you watch HD movies on the 14.1 inch display, you can also attach a TV or a HD monitor and get an ever bigger kick out of this whole movie watching experience.

Here is another amazing thing: 5 USB ports on a 14 inch laptop?! Could this get any better? There is also a 1.3 mega pixel webcam if you ever want to have pleasant video calls with your friends via Skype, MSN or Yahoo! Messenger. I’m starting to wonder why I didn’t buy this laptop yet. It also comes with an integrated Bluetooth so file transfer between your laptop and your phone (and even between your laptop and another laptop) is now much easier and faster.

While trying to find a good Asus notebook to review, we came across a very interesting model. Why is it interesting you ask? Well, because even if it only has a 13.3 inch display, it is considered to be a desktop replacement. Reading the review, we have decided it’s worth dedicating one of our articles to the Asus F6Ve.

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Our configuration of this Asus notebook cost $1,300 which is the same as the starting price of this unit. Based on a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9550 processor and 4 GB of RAM, this notebook seems to have the specs necessary to cover most mainstream computer tasks. While moving on, we discovered that the Asus F6Ve has an ATI Mobility Radeon 4570 graphics card with 512 MB of video memory.  The storage capacity of the hard drive can save files up to 320 GB and this is one more reason for us to believe that this notebook makes a great investment.



The 13.3 inch display has a native resolution of 1200 x 800 pixels with sharp and vibrant color that improve the overall quality of the images. The horizontal viewing angles are good for a 13.3 inch notebook. The keyboard is fully sized and the texture of the keys makes it very pleasant to type. There is a bit of flex noticed in this area but the keys have great travel and good response. The touchpad has an ok size and there is no significant lag registered here.

The left and right mouse buttons are easy to press even with your thumbs. As for the selection of ports and features, the unit comes with 3 USB ports, one Ethernet port, one HDMI port, an Express Card slot, a 5-in-1 media card reader, a modem port, a VGA out, a Kensington lock slot and the headphones and microphone jacks. I have to admit that is quite a great selection for a laptop which only has 13.3 inches in diagonal.

We expected to find good performance when it came to the battery of a 13.3 inch laptop. The results were not that encouraging. With the display brightness set to 70%, the wireless card enable and the Windows Vista power management profile set to “balanced mode”, the battery managed to keep the laptop on for 2 hours and 55 minutes. It’s too bad that we didn’t get a better battery life performance but since this is a desktop replacement, battery life may not be such an important aspect.



If Asus worked more on the design part, we would have performance and beauty on the same unit but apparently the specs were more important than the looks. You have to admit that the unit provides great performance for the 13.3 inch category. The keyboard and the touchpad are average but an external mouse is a better choice in most cases. The design feels a little dull and it does not have the best built in construction quality. I would give it a 3.5 out of a maximum 5.

When it comes to laptop manufacturers that we trust, it’s safe to say that Asus has gained a special place in our hearts as it has proven itself a good laptop producer. It knew just how to position itself in the mind of the consumer and even if it hasn’t achieve the same performances like Dell or HP have, it is still a brand that deserves our full attention. If you want to buy a cheap Asus laptop, like always, you have to keep in mind what you require from a laptop. Think about all the aspects, like the processor, the amount of RAM, the hard disk space, the graphics card and all the extra features, like Bluetooth, a webcam or an SD card reader.  After you have established what you need that laptop for, start surfing the internet to see that offers are available on different models.
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The online purchasing method has become very popular in the last few years because more and more people have gained every day access to the internet. I mean, most people hate having to go from store to store and waste time, gasoline and energy to look for a product. This is why they like purchasing they stuff online or they can at least look for a store that is selling the product they want and then go straight for it. If you are on a really low budget but still want to buy a good Asus laptop, you can always look into some refurbished laptops which will act just like brand new ones. Refurbished is not a synonym for damaged, it just means second hand. Now that we have cleared all that up, time to look for the lowest price on Asus laptops. Well, we are going to show you the lowest prices we could find for this brand’s laptops.

On www.amazon.com, the successful Asus Eee PC 4G can be bought refurbished for a price of $145. It has a 7 inch display, 512 MB of RAM, the Intel Mobile Processor and 4 GB of free disk space. The success of this netbook was due to its small price and functionality. This mini laptop is ideal for those that have to travel a lot and are in need of a small computer that will allow them to surf the internet and do some word processing. The unit we are talking about here has the Linux operating system preinstalled. I guess it’s pretty hard for people that have been working for years with the Windows operating systems to get used to the Linux interface, but it’s not impossible.



On the very same trustworthy Amazon website you can find the Asus UL30A-X5 for $650. With a weight of 3.74 lbs, this laptop can be considered an ultraportable. It has a 1.3 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor plus some 4 GB of RAM which means you could run Windows 7 operating system on this laptop with no trouble at all. Oh, did I mention that the 4 GB of RAM were DDR3 Ram? This means that we have a higher transfer rate and yes, that is good news. 500 GB should about cover you disk space needs. Come to think of it, I saw gaming laptops that didn’t have this much available disk space. Unfortunately, when we get to the graphics card part, we can tell this is no gaming laptop. We are dealing here with the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500 MHD which is one of the weakest video cards available. You have to admit, $650 is not a big price to pay for a brand new Asus laptop.



Another interesting purchase that fits into the lowest price on Asus laptops category is the UX50V-RX05. For $530 you can buy this laptop from www.tigerdirect.com. This laptop has a 1.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Solo processor, 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, the nVidia GeForce G105M graphics card with 512 MB of video memory. The hard drive offers a total space of 500 GB so there is no need to worry that you don’t have enough room to store your pictures, movies and music. This 15.6 inch laptop is actually good investment if you think about the price and the specs. It’s a thin and glossy laptop which looks very elegant I might add. As for the ports and connections, we have 3 USB ports, a HMDI out and a VGA port, a multi format card reader, an Express Card slot, the Ethernet port and the stereo speakers, headphones out and microphone in jacks. It even has an integrated webcam so you can use it to chat with your friends and even take some pictures for your Facebook profile. The 6 cell battery of this laptop can keep the computer alive and running for about 2 hours and 38 minutes on the battery drain test using video playback. It’s nothing spectacular but the time is ok for a 15.6 laptop with the components of this Asus.



These are a couple of examples for really cheap Asus laptops which are available for online purchase. There is also the old fashioned way of buying a laptop – visiting the local stores and retailers. This traditional way is somehow a better option because it gives you the chance of actually seeing the laptop before buying it. You can touch the keyboard; press the keys to see how they feel and if you are comfortable with the feedback. You can see for yourself how your unit is tested before you take it home.



It gives you a better chance to compare one laptop model with another. When you touch the chassis of a laptop you can sometimes figure out if it’s easier to be scratched or not. In the end, it’s always better when you have the opportunity to see what you’re buying with your very  own eyes. And besides, if you’re a woman, it gives you the chance to see what other products are on sale this time of the year (and even if you are a guy, maybe there is a sale on that huge LCD TV you’ve always wanted).