14-inch HD LED (1366 x768) / i5-450M (2.4 GHz) / 4 G DDR3 / NV 310M 1 G DDR3 + Intel GMA HD / 500 G 5400 / Super Multi / W7HP (64bit) / 802.11BGN / 8-cell / WiDi / 1 USB 3.0 port
Product Details
Product Length:
13.7 inches
Product Width:
9.6 inches
Product Height:
1.2 inches
Product Weight:
4.73 pounds
Package Length:
16.3 inches
Package Width:
12.3 inches
Package Height:
5.0 inches
Package Weight:
9.35 pounds
Average Customer Rating:
based on 105 reviews
Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: ( 105 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
150 of 153 found the following review helpful:
Affordable Style, Performance, and Convenience Oct 02, 2010
By Michael O. Parker
"oxwax"
I bought this as a replacement for a Dell 1720. As I study computer and electrical engineering, I'm very familiar with the internal components of electronics. This is a very well made notebook. Most of my friends and colleagues find the notebook very attractive and distinctively ideal. But, aesthetic taste differ from person-to-person and can only be merely objective. So, what is really important, are the numbers in between that motivated this to be my final choice. And, I'm glad I did 100%.
Processor Core i5 450M This is currently the SECOND HIGHEST SCORING DUAL CORE MOBILE PROCESSOR, according to PassMark's website. The first being the Core i7 620M, which cost roughly twice as much and only provides a 10% improvement. Very smart on ASUS's behalf, because the majority of programs only utilize two cores. This means that most people buying a quad core will only use half of the potential of their CPU. Whereas, this processor doubles the amount of pathways for the dual cores to use. In short, the processor optimizes both cores by having twice as many streams and acts like a quad core ALL OF THE TIME. And, this doesn't even include the 12-way associative 3MB of L3 cache. GREAT NOTEBOOK PROCESSOR. PERIOD
RAM Most people don't really understand RAM or How it woks. So, I'll keep this simple. Your CPU has a core speed. You RAM has a core speed rating. When both of these are the same speed, your computer is termed "synced." A very very important thing. If your computer is not synced, some of the data is lost in the transmission and has to be sent again. Making it slower than originally intended. This computer is synced perfect, so DO NOT GO OUT AND BUY FASTER RAM. It will be a waste of your money. The latency is 7-7-7-20 and as good as you can buy for 1333.
USB 3.0 I bought this with every intention of getting the most out of USB 3.0. I felt really disappointed in the performance for a few reasons. Some are my fault, and I'll explain. Intel has said they will not support USB 3.0 on their boards. They are waiting for LightPeak to replace all current standards. While this is a smart business move for Intel, the rest of us are left with the consequences. The only way USB 3.0 can be used with an Intel processor is through the use of third party controllers. These are not nearly up to the speeds of the AMD boards. I own a Super Talent Supercrypt 32GB that I planned on using for clean installs, but you need to install the drivers after installing the OS for USB 3.0 to work, $#!}. So, USB 3.0 can only be used for AMD board clean installs. And, to make matters worse, the drivers are slow. I can hit about 96MB/sec on the U43Jc, but on an AMD board I get about 230MB/sec. I should have researched a little more, but hopefully, I can save some of you time. DON'T LET THIS BE THE DECIDING FACTOR FOR BUYING THIS COMPUTER. All Intel based notebooks will suffer from the same problem, and AMD processors aren't nearly this good. If it's a problem, wait for LightPeak.
Switchable nvidia 310M By knowing how to use this, you can increase you battery life. Just hit the button in the upper-left corner, and you will switch to the onboard graphics card, simple. This card is not made for extreme video games, but CASUAL games can be played with ease.
Display 1366x768 This is one of the brightest and clearest screens I've seen. Some people might complain about the resolution, not being high enough, but do you really need more resolution on a 14" screen?? NO
Bluetooth Absent in this model. Have never used it before, so it wasn't a factor for my decision.
Keyboard A chicklet style keyboard that is almost identical to a MacBook Pro. I like it.
DVD Drive I guess people still use these things. Anyways, it contains one of the best made for notebooks, a Matshita UJ89A2S.
Bloatware Almost all PC computers come with this nowadays. Just download Revo uninstaller and remove what you don't think you'll use. Search Google for Asus Bloatware guide for information.
Camera I believe all computers come with, pretty much, the same camera. Until someone starts putting Carl Zeiss lenses on these things, there all the same to me.
Audio Audio is on the low end, but most loud notebooks go loud and sound distorted. If audio is really important to you, you probably think all notebooks sound horrible. Cure: Buy a pair of Klipsch Image S4. Simple the best affordable headphones available.
Coupon I'm mentioning this now, because this severely affected the final part of my review,but since it was part of the original price, I included this in the review. I purchased this for $999, and received a $150 Amazon gift card. This made all the difference in the world. I know computer speed "bottlenecks" in certain areas. The biggest area is the hard drive. While the U43Jc-X1 comes with a Seagate Momentus 5400rpm, the Crystal Disk Mark I scored was around 90MB/sec. Faster than most, but I wanted this notebook to fly. So, I used the coupon to order a 64GB Crucial RealSSD C300. Best upgrade for any computer in the world.
Battery Life Most people are getting close to 6 hours, and I concur. After changing the hard drive, I was getting closer to 8 1/2. Huge improvement. Everything else increased immensely too. My cold boot time is around 13 sec. Microsoft Office Word 2010 opens in 1 sec. No exaggeration. Shutdown is between 3-5 sec. Everything else opens immediately, and I have a longer battery life.
Heat The most important fact for determining notebook reliability, longevity, and build construction. This product is so well made that I RARELY HEAR THE FAN EVEN TURN ON. This means the computer doesn't get hot enough for it, although I am speaking after the SSD install. This is a sure sign of a solid build construction.
Overall This is a quality computer with some of the best components on the market. Asus gives a 1 year accident warranty. Meaning you can drop it in the pool and get a new one. Hard to beat. You'll be hard pressed to find something of this caliber at this price, not to mention you'll stand out in the crowd. Just remember, sometimes, "It's what's on the inside that counts." ~proverb
78 of 83 found the following review helpful:
Incredible. Aug 21, 2010
By Kyle Pros: Long battery life. I have never seen "10 hours" as Asus claims, but 5-6 hours of use on a battery-saving mode is quite realistic.
Performance. The i5 in this laptop is incredible for browsing and general tasks. Even on a power saving mode (mine throttles the CPU down to 40%) there is no discernible processing lag for everyday tasks. The Intel graphics are capable of running light, casual games like Audiosurf and Beat Hazard, allowing you to save the Geforce 310M for more heavy tasks. With the Geforce graphics, I was able to obtain a steady 30fps in Left 4 Dead on high settings with no AA and 16x AF.
Good Display. Granted, I have never seen one of the $1800 Thinkpads with S-IPS panels up close, but this is the best screen I've seen on a notebook in person. I'm sure there's better on more expensive laptops, though.
Ergonomics. The laptop is light enough that it can easily be carried around with any accessories you might have. The keyboard is also very comfortable to type on.
Style. Aluminum-accented bamboo? Yes please. Nice and thin too. Also, the bamboo has a nice, dark finish to it and seems well-protected from scratches and scuffs.
Good Touchpad. Personally, I hate touchpads. I already tapped the giftcard to order a mouse, but this touchpad is quite sensitive, accurate, and has multi-touch. Asus also bundles the laptop with pre-installed multi-touch gesture software that works very well. I actually kept it installed as it is quite useful.
HDMI and USB 3.0.
Good wireless adapter. Supports B/G/N and works well even when set to "max power savings."
Cons:
It has a VGA out where they could have put something more useful.
62 of 69 found the following review helpful:
Refreshingly Different - In a Sea of CopyCat Designs Aug 21, 2010
By Life Aquatic
"life aquatic"
First of all, I would like to say that I just received this laptop yesterday - after a bit of a twist. I first ordered this laptop a few days prior partially because of the 150$ GC promotion, only to find out a day later that there is an additional free item that I can get with this laptop. The netgear Push2TV wireless adapter is free with the purchase of this asus model. However you would have to go to the netgear-adapter page to find this deal. It is annoying that amazon did not make a link on the asus page (a deliberate act on their part?). In any case, I had to order another asus since the first one was already shipped and they couldn't just ship the free adapter to you (asus+GC+netgear have to be simultaneously added to checkout in order for the deal to count), and I returned the first one back to amazon (just asked UPS to take it back at the time of delivery). So finally the second one arrived yesterday with the free adapter too. Now I am happy.
Now, onto the laptop itself.
This laptop exudes classical beauty. The bamboo is gorgeous and comfortable to touch, and forms a really interesting combination with the aluminum brush-metal keyboard in a vintage yet futuristic way. The chrome rims add an additional level of sophistication, and I love the lighting of the on-button and the 4 lights located in the front of the laptop (for battery, hdd etc). The overall color scheme is maroon/brown, which is an unusual color palette in a market where black and silver predominates. However it works really well and sets this laptop apart from the rest. After using it around my house for almost 10 hours, there is some fingerprinting on the touchpad, which is easily cleaned. Overall I find that this laptop looks the best when situated on a glass desk surface, with the lights reflecting off it.
I was kind of expecting this laptop to be heavy since it has an optical drive, but in fact it is very easy to carry around. The 14" screen is very generous and I love the widescreen HD display. I did a side-by-side comparison with the macbook 13, and the colors on the asus are more vivid, however the white can be too bright in my opinion (i.e. the white background on most webpages and documents can be a bit hard to read at first), so I played around for a while with the graphical adjustments of the asus in order to achieve a good balance. Most of the online videos play very well - I tested it with various apple trailers, youtube videos, shows on cbs, nbc etc, and all of them came out with more vivid colors than the mb-13 counterpart, even though sometimes video on the asus can look more "saturated" (ex: people's faces can look too rosy sometimes and dark can be too dark).
Windows 7 is really a step-up from VISTA, with more streamlined functionalities and less hassle. I selected the "Quiet Office" power profile and the machine runs very quietly for the most part. I am still testing other functionalities of this laptop (camera, burner, wireless tv connection etc) so I will update this review at a later time. But so far I am very happy with it.
Update: 8/24/10 I played with the Nvidia Graphical Panel some more to get the display to an "optimal" color balance, saturation, and brightness/contrast for video playback. In my opinion the default graphical settings are subpar - colors look kind of washed-out and brightness is too high. The Asus is capable of more with the proper adjustments. As I mentioned above most online videos look clear and crisp, however DVD playback was unimpressive - Avatar looked too dark and somewhat grainy, and the same DVD looked crisper on the macbook even though the color palette was more muted.
My playstation 3 made an effortless connection to the Asus via Windows Media Streaming, and I was able to stream HD movies on the laptop onto my TV with minimal lag. This is pretty impressive to me, as I might not even need to use the Netgear push2TV adapter.
Even though the trackpad works fairly well most of the time, the two-finger scrolling is not always accurate (I sometimes have to shift my finger positions on the trackpad in order to achieve better precision). Today I started to use the Microsoft wireless Mouse 6000, and it works like a dream. I hate having fingerprints on the beautiful bamboo trackpad anyway.
I did a video transcoding today (avi to m4v) and while the Asus was quiet throughout most of the process, the left side-vent got pretty hot during the process. I would recommend moving all power cables away from that position during CPU-taxing events or get a cooling pad.
25 of 28 found the following review helpful:
Almost perfect Aug 22, 2010
By Corey Malone
"Corey M"
Style: Very Beautiful
--Hardware-- Keyboard: A little spaced out, drivers are required for ANY fn keys to work Touchpad: Good, however button is a little hard to push(maybe this actually makes it more durable?) Palm rest: retains oil from hands easily but its very very smooth feels nice. it doesn't feel like you are using a computer. dvd-rom: ok sound ports: seperate mic/headphones will not detect mic if on same port as headphones speakers: good quality with the "SRS" sound enhancer , not sure without it Fan Noise Level: Meduim to low Screen : my screen is defective, it flickers like crazy when the brightness isn't 100% :( Weight: decent weight
--Software-- expressgate : doesn't work well. Crapware: Too much including microtrend, quite a few startup programs Linux: Ubuntu seems to work out of the box, however could not install bootloader to partition instead of MBR due to partition layout. Hardrive Partition layout: 1 19GB recovery, 116 OS, 330 Data Partition
--Drivers-- asus website is really overwhelemd and won't work now, the 64 bit touch pad drivers aren't on the site but can be found by changing the url in 32 bit drivers (32 -> 64)
Performance, Portability, and Productivity CAN go together with Price Sep 05, 2010
By Eric Jin 1-year-update: I've just crossed the year-mark for ownership and the laptop's running as it did when new! I strongly recommend uninstalling a lot of the ASUS bloatware that comes preinstalled with the computer - it helps speeds things up a bit. Battery life has dropped very slightly, from 5-6 hours new (moderate usage) to now 4-5 hours. Which is still very good. I will definite purchase an ASUS again in the future, haven't been disappointed!
--------------------------------
In the laptop world, you either get something that is ultra lightweight, has insane battery life, and absolutely no processing power, or something that has no battery life, performs very well, and has no portability.
This laptop is the best of both worlds, and even better yet - it doesn't cost $1500.
I'm a college student who needs portability to be able to lug my laptop around classes, take notes, and do homework away from home. However, I'm also a college student who likes playing games, photo and video edit, and doesn't want to have a netbook that takes five minutes to open Word.
I've been looking forever for a laptop that was relatively cheap, yet was small (14" or less), had a dedicated graphics card for games, and a powerful CPU for multitasking and running more complicated tasks such as video editing. This laptop (so far) has been almost absolutely perfect for me.
>>> PROS: > Intel Core i5 450m CPU - Blazing fast for plain everyday tasks, also blazing fast for dedicated tasks like running a photomerge in Adobe Photoshop CS5 or executing code in your favorite programming language.
> 1 GB NVIDIA GeForce 310m Dedicated GFX Card - Not the highest graphic card in the market, but that's okay, because I don't play Crysis on Ultra settings anyway. Runs Starcraft II on Low with absolutely no frame lag (30+ FPS constant), and drops to ~15-20 on Medium, but I don't care about the minute amount of detail gained by playing on Medium. Runs Dirt 2 on Low at 20~25 FPS, which is fine by me.
> Switchable Intel HD graphics! - I don't get why more laptops have this feature. This is the key for good battery life. I can choose what programs I want to use the power-hungry NVIDIA card, and which to use the tamer (but still very powerful) integrated card. Watching movies in 1080p on my 24" external monitor poses no problem with the integrated card, and I can even play several older games on this card just fine.
> Battery life! Okay so it's not 10 hours like ASUS advertises, but when are those predictions right anyway? ASUS has a very effective power management system called Power4Gear Hybrid/Super Hybrid Engine, which on the battery saving mode can get me 5-6 hours battery life, which is still pretty darn good for a laptop that has a dedicated graphics card (of course gaming on this laptop will effectively slash that time in half). This was a mix of idling, word processing, e-mail, photo viewing, YouTube video watching, and general web browsing. You know, the stuff you do in everyday life. If I did turn off WiFi and stared at a blank dim screen with no programs running, I'm sure I can get the 10 hours ASUS mentions, but what good is that?
> Style - Nobody cares if you have a Macbook Pro or a generic Dell. Hell even the "stylish" HP's. Everyone has one. I've never gotten so many compliments about a laptop in such a short period of time (I've owned this laptop for around a month now). And of course you get to brag that it's made of real bamboo. Besides the very nice finish, which is absolutely NOT a fingerprint magnet, the keyboard is very smooth and the build quality is generally on the higher end, despite people complaining about the perhaps "somewhat" flexible areas around the laptop.
> Size and Portability - Okay this isn't the lightest laptop around (5.15 lbs with 8-cell battery), but it is definitely a notch lighter than my old 14" Dell Inspiron. Light enough to carry around in a backpack around classes just fine. Boots up from Sleep in literally two seconds, and Hibernate in 30 seconds or so, and complete cold start takes just under 100 seconds (yes I timed it). In my opinion, that's pretty darn good. So okay it's not a netbook or a 13.3" laptop, but find me a smaller laptop that's in the same price range and can do all the things this laptop does.
> Price! - My laptop ended up costing me around $790, because I sold the Netgear TV adapter that came with the package. And since Amazon provided me free shipping with no tax, it was really $790. That's a fantastic price in my opinion for what you get.
So this laptop is definitely very good. But no product is without its flaws.
>>> CONS: > Screen - Doesn't matter as much to me, because I hook my laptop up to a 24" LCD when I'm home. But when I'm photo editing remotely for example, I notice the color contrast isn't that good. That is, the blacks aren't as black as they should be. It makes photos look much noisier than they really are, when you see specks and grains in the darker regions of a digital photo. Only screen aficionados would care about something like this though. Doing everyday things, you won't even notice a difference.
> AC Adapter - is HUGE! The thing weighs like a pound and a half, which in the world of college students and portability, is a big deal. Fortunately, because of how good the battery life is on this laptop, I never take my AC adapter with me, and get through a day of classes taking notes and browsing the web, and still get home with a good chunk of battery remaining.
> Graphics Card, if you care about high end gaming - If you really want to game, you know that this is not the laptop to get for playing demanding games on Ultra settings. But for the rest of the world, the graphics card is perfectly suited to everyday tasks.
> Track pad - Only has "one" button (you can left- and right-click with it), and it is quite stiff. Kind of annoying to have to exert effort to actually click. I use a wireless mouse though (Logitech MX1100), so this problem doesn't affect me too much.
> Sound - The speakers on this thing suck. I think this is the only real "problem" I have with this laptop. Suck as in volume; a YouTube video even at 100% volume will get drowned out if you're in a cafeteria for example. If you're alone at home and it's quiet, you'll be fine. But for anywhere else the volume is just too low. My old laptop was much louder, and I miss that. Fortunately I have external speakers (Logitech Z-2300, a brilliant set of speakers!) and I plug those bad boys in whenever I get a chance.
> Size - This is getting really picky - I had originally wanted a 13.3" laptop with even more portability, but decided not to wait for ASUS to release the smaller laptop and decided to go with this. Its weight is just on the borderline between convenient and "slightly too large" but I got used to it quickly. Especially since this laptop is a good half pound lighter than my previous 14".
>>> CLOSING THOUGHTS: Despite the flaws, I am very happy with this laptop. Nothing has "seriously" gone wrong...at least for now. ASUS makes good laptops and this is a great example of their quality of work. If you're someone who's like me - someone who values portability but also performance, then you'll enjoy this laptop very much. If you don't care about performance, there are so many other choices you can get (just getting rid of the dedicated gfx card will save you $100). Similarly, if you don't care about portability, there are so many other choices you can get with better processors and graphics cards. But for now, this laptop in my opinion is the best of both worlds, and at a competitive price too.
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based on 105 reviews
Affordable Style, Performance, and Convenience Oct 02, 2010
By Michael O. Parker
"oxwax"
Almost perfect Aug 22, 2010
By Corey Malone
"Corey M"
