I bought this laptop after a few months of longing, a few weeks of research, and a few days of price hunting. My requirements were fairly simple. I wanted Windows 7 with an i3 or better, at least 4GB of RAM (upgrade-able to 8) and a 320GB drive or bigger. I also wanted to spend no more than $500.
The system arrived within a few days and I excitedly opened it and read through the instructions (this is out of character, but I understand the importance of first start up). The first step was running the backup (4 DVDs later..) and then I worked on removing the bloat. ASUS, like so many others, ships with a bunch of crap you don’t need, though in this case it was less than I expected.
The system itself is nice and quick. I have had it playing Need For Speed Hot Pursuit (the new one) and it performs nicely. I’ve also had it running a Folding@Home client (see [...]) which nets around 2000 points per day. This compares to about 200-300 on my old Athlon64 Desktop machine.
Other notes: - The power socket is on the left hand side about halfway between the front and the back, and the connector itself is a right-angle. This is a weird place, but is convenient. My wife’s most recent Dell had a side connector and it was still damaged through leaning it on things it shouldn’t be. I feel the design and location on this laptop would prevent a lot of those issues.
- The laptop feels very cool, even while pumping out very hot air through the vent. It’s warm on the legs, but by no means hot like I’ve experienced with older laptops.
- The numeric keypad is nice, but is a little weird if you’re used to the separated keypad on larger laptops or desktop keyboards. More than once I’ve hit the right-arrow while trying to tap zero. It can feel very crowded in that area also, with the keys from the left arrow all the way over to the ./delete key being the same size (along with those around them) so it can be difficult to place fingers without looking.
- HDMI works and carries sound with it. I had it hooked in to a 55″ LCD TV a few days ago playing Need for Speed quite nicely. I didn’t think to check what resolution it was at (I suspect the native resolution of the laptop’s panel as it was mirroring), but it looked really nice. Others may be more picky about this than I..
All things considered this seems to be a fine machine, especially for the price, and I expect it to last for quite some time into the future.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
The ASUS A53-AS31-RD is a very good general purpose laptop. It works well with productivity applications, web browsing and basic photo editing. It multitasks well (playing music and working on Office applications). The area around the keyboard and touchpad and the top are each textured; that and the dark red color keep this machine from being a fingerprint magnet: good design!
Ports include an SD media slot, a LAN connection, three USB ports and HDMI out. Battery life is average; around 3 hours out of the box, although you can probably coax more out of it with adjustments in the Windows 7 control panel or the included ASUS desktop power management gadget. Out of the box it was relatively free of unwanted bloatware or trial versions of programs (kudos to ASUS for that).
This computer does not ship with recovery media; you’ll need four DVDs when you run its built-in utility to create your own recovery kit (do this first!).
Overall, this is a solid laptop that should serve well for all but the most demanding computing needs. The color breaks it from the packs of black, silver and white machines out there! Watch for deep discounts to make this unit even more attractive.
Note: this machine’s default hard drive configuration includes two logical partitions, with about 75% devoted to a “D” drive for data. I used Windows disk management tools to shrink that volume and restore all the free space to the “C” drive. This is just my preference, but it can help avoid issues with applications that struggle to remember “non-C-drive” locations for storing data files.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Authors bio is coming up shortly. 
Works fine so far!,
I bought this laptop after a few months of longing, a few weeks of research, and a few days of price hunting. My requirements were fairly simple. I wanted Windows 7 with an i3 or better, at least 4GB of RAM (upgrade-able to 8) and a 320GB drive or bigger. I also wanted to spend no more than $500.
The system arrived within a few days and I excitedly opened it and read through the instructions (this is out of character, but I understand the importance of first start up). The first step was running the backup (4 DVDs later..) and then I worked on removing the bloat. ASUS, like so many others, ships with a bunch of crap you don’t need, though in this case it was less than I expected.
The system itself is nice and quick. I have had it playing Need For Speed Hot Pursuit (the new one) and it performs nicely. I’ve also had it running a Folding@Home client (see [...]) which nets around 2000 points per day. This compares to about 200-300 on my old Athlon64 Desktop machine.
Other notes:
- The power socket is on the left hand side about halfway between the front and the back, and the connector itself is a right-angle. This is a weird place, but is convenient. My wife’s most recent Dell had a side connector and it was still damaged through leaning it on things it shouldn’t be. I feel the design and location on this laptop would prevent a lot of those issues.
- The laptop feels very cool, even while pumping out very hot air through the vent. It’s warm on the legs, but by no means hot like I’ve experienced with older laptops.
- The numeric keypad is nice, but is a little weird if you’re used to the separated keypad on larger laptops or desktop keyboards. More than once I’ve hit the right-arrow while trying to tap zero. It can feel very crowded in that area also, with the keys from the left arrow all the way over to the ./delete key being the same size (along with those around them) so it can be difficult to place fingers without looking.
- HDMI works and carries sound with it. I had it hooked in to a 55″ LCD TV a few days ago playing Need for Speed quite nicely. I didn’t think to check what resolution it was at (I suspect the native resolution of the laptop’s panel as it was mirroring), but it looked really nice. Others may be more picky about this than I..
All things considered this seems to be a fine machine, especially for the price, and I expect it to last for quite some time into the future.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Excellent general purpose laptop…,
The ASUS A53-AS31-RD is a very good general purpose laptop. It works well with productivity applications, web browsing and basic photo editing. It multitasks well (playing music and working on Office applications). The area around the keyboard and touchpad and the top are each textured; that and the dark red color keep this machine from being a fingerprint magnet: good design!
Ports include an SD media slot, a LAN connection, three USB ports and HDMI out. Battery life is average; around 3 hours out of the box, although you can probably coax more out of it with adjustments in the Windows 7 control panel or the included ASUS desktop power management gadget. Out of the box it was relatively free of unwanted bloatware or trial versions of programs (kudos to ASUS for that).
This computer does not ship with recovery media; you’ll need four DVDs when you run its built-in utility to create your own recovery kit (do this first!).
Overall, this is a solid laptop that should serve well for all but the most demanding computing needs. The color breaks it from the packs of black, silver and white machines out there! Watch for deep discounts to make this unit even more attractive.
Note: this machine’s default hard drive configuration includes two logical partitions, with about 75% devoted to a “D” drive for data. I used Windows disk management tools to shrink that volume and restore all the free space to the “C” drive. This is just my preference, but it can help avoid issues with applications that struggle to remember “non-C-drive” locations for storing data files.
Was this review helpful to you?
|