Asus X550C (laptop): specifications and customer reviews

Like its more expensive colleague, UX31A Ultrabook, the ASUS X550C notebook has an eye- catching design with a gradient cap and ASUS logo in the center. Nevertheless, unlike UX31A, our animal has a lid made of plastic, not aluminum. Plastic mat, slightly rough, the lid does not slip in the hands. In this case, the material is selected so that you can not see the untidy fingerprints, than the models with glossy surfaces suffer, in contrast to the ASUS X550C, feedback about the design of which is completely positive.

Under the lid is a silvery keyboard with a grayish hue; The wrist rest is different in color. Not a bad design decision.

On the left side there are LED indicators for pressing the Caps Lock key, the battery charge indicator, the Wi-Fi and hard disk activity indicator. When you type the text, you can not see the indicators from under the hand. Not that this is a significant drawback, but engineers should have thought about the more convenient location of the indicator panel.

The notebook has a size of 14.9 x 9.8 x 0.97 inches and weighs 2 kg. It turns out that it is slightly larger and lighter compared to other manufacturers' laptops from a similar price category, trying to compete with the ASUS X550C. Characteristics of the laptop has the following.

Screen

Fifteen-inch screen ASUS X550CA with a resolution of 1366 x 786 pixels will not leave anyone indifferent. The picture quality is good, but not excellent. When viewing images from the hash of colors, if you look closely, some colors are displayed worse than others, although not very much.

The viewing angle of the screen is only 60 degrees in both directions. This is no surprise, although when you last watched a movie on a laptop at an angle of 165 degrees? That's what it is.

The X550CA does not have a touch screen. It was not worth expecting another for a miserable fourteen thousand. In this case, Windows 8 comes bundled. Of course, now it's popular to put this OS even on microwave, but here it is completely useless. Where would be better to "seven".

The integrated image quality control panel offers three modes: "Normal", "Cinema" (adds yellowness) and "Clarity" (adds white shades). There is also a manual setting, with which you can play with the slider, adjusting the color balance.

Sound

The sound of the X550CA is excellent. The speakers give a powerful and rich sound. ASUS decided not to save on sound and built in quite a number of budgeted laptops quite a quality speakers with a wide range of sound and quite impressive bass. The sound was very high quality without any extraneous noise.

In the kit there is also the possibility of sound tuning. In total there are five modes: "Standard", "Music", "Cinema", "Streaming" and "Speech".

Keyboard and Touchpad

Consider the input devices X550C ASUS. The keyboard turned out to be full-size due to its not the smallest dimensions of the notebook itself. Asus engineers say that the laptop has a special keyboard. The depth of the keys, their size and resistance when pressed are chosen in such a way as to avoid accidental pressing during high-speed printing.

Field tests showed an average print speed of 80 words per minute with a percentage error of one. For some reason, there were problems with the space, when it seems that you pressed it, but in fact not.

The ASUS X550CA with a large touchpad is well-grounded due to the lack of a touch screen and the presence of Windows 8 on board. Touchpad ASUS X550CA has support for multitouching, making svaypy it comfortable and comfortable.

Heating and cooling

ASUS uses the technology IceCool, which really works. After fifteen-minute streaming of HD quality video, the ASUS X550CA barely reached the 30-degree threshold. The keyboard warmed up even less. At the same time, the declared upper threshold of a safe temperature is 35.6.

Webcam

Let's look at the camera ASUS X550C. Its characteristics leave much to be desired.

The laptop has a built-in webcam of 9 megapixels, but the image still turns out ugly. Heap of artifacts and distortion of colors. It is not possible to disassemble small details at all. In other words, a webcam from a laptop is no good.

Ports

If you are going to use the X550CA as the main work machine, chances are you will run into a shortage of USB ports. The laptop has only two USB interfaces: 2.0 and 3.0, while located next to the left side of the laptop. There's also HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, microphone jacks and headphones. On the right left the DVD-drive. The combined card reader is located on the front side.

Performance

Dual-core Intel Core i3 with a frequency of 1.8 GHz and 4 gig of RAM do not allow to call ASUS X550C a powerful gaming notebook, but its capacities are enough for comfortable work in classic work applications and in not very demanding games. However, very much depends on the operating system. In Windows 8, eleven simultaneously open pages in the web browser "Chrome" significantly load the laptop, although it would seem that there is nothing special about this. The Metro interface with this load opens with a delay of a couple of seconds, although after that it works smoothly and without any complaints.

Despite the fact that the laptop comes with a rather slow hard drive of 500 GB, the G8 is loaded in just 12 seconds, which is much faster than the analogue from Lenovo, which is loaded for 23 seconds.

Copying a 4.97-gigabyte movie is about 1.5 times faster than that of other manufacturers, which can not but please users and engineers of ASUS.

Picture

Intel HD Graphics 4000 does not have to wait much. Yes, you can play some toys, but forget about twisting the graphics settings to maximum. Will brake appreciably.

In the same "Vovka" laptop produces only 24 fps, although the graphics there are not the highest grade. For comparison, Lenovo gives stable 27 fps, which is much nicer to play, but Hp does not raise the fps value above 24 either.

Battery

With a working Wi-FI, the laptop's operating time is limited to 4 hours, provided that you just sit on the Internet. If you watch movies, listen to music, work in applications or play, the operating time of your laptop is significantly reduced.

Asus x550c: price

Also an important question.

Notebook ASUS X550CA as standard has the following characteristics:

• A dual-core Intel Core I3 processor with a clock speed of 1.8 GHz;
• 4 Gb of RAM;
• HHD 500 GB;
• Intel HD Graphics 4000.

The price of this miracle is 449 dollars (15,000 rubles).

If you want to get a more powerful machine, perhaps you should take a closer look at the X550CA-DB51:

• A dual-core Intel Core i5-3337U processor with a clock speed of 2.7;
• 8GB of RAM;
• HDD 750GB.

All this costs 570 dollars (about 17.500 rubles.).

conclusions

Very attractive in appearance. The sound and price of the ASUS X550C (reviews reasoned) are also on the level. A pathetic 500 bucks will be found almost everyone. However, the viewing angle of the screen, a slow hard drive, a weak battery and not very powerful iron smear a rainbow image. For the same price, you can buy more powerful laptops of competitive brands, for example, HP Pavilion g6t with flawless bright screen, longer working time and more powerful hardware. However, if you need a working laptop with great sound and appearance, on which you will not play in the latest games of the Total War series, this model will suit you as well as possible.

Customer Reviews

Regarding productivity, buyers are of the opinion that this technique meets expectations. "Eight" works perfectly. It is possible to upgrade the laptop to 16 GB of RAM. It will be very powerful. Can be used as a portable video player. Users remain very satisfied.

However, there are some complaints about the technology. Slightly strange touchpad. Periodically does not recognize gestures or recognizes incorrectly. There are small complaints about the screen: something is missing - either brightness, or sharpness. Maybe it's about permission? Not the best picture. There are not enough USB ports. Only two ports are not enough.