Asus K50

Asus K50 is a new portable computer aimed at businessmen, or home users with little demand for extraordinary graphics performance. The laptop features a 15” excellent display, durable and comfortable keyboard, solid performance, but also rather poor speakers.
Asus K50 pros:

+ Outstanding 15.6” screen
+ 2.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 processor
+ Quite good overall performance
+ 4 GB of RAM
+ Comfortable keyboard
+ Elegant design

Asus K50 cons:
- No dedicated media controls
- No HDMI or e SATA ports
- Integrated GMA X4500M GPU
- Rather poor speaker performance

Design:

The Asus K50 measures 14.6 x 10.1 x 1.4 inches and weighs 5.7 pounds so it might seem quite large but as it houses 15.6-inch display, a full keyboard with numbed it is quite understandable. The laptop has a glossy lid covered in dots giving it a nice look, yet as with all glossy devices it might attract fingerprints. All the keys on the keyboard are responsive and feel comfy, however, you might be interested in the fact that above the keyboard there are no media controls. The trackpad is quite large (3 x 1.4 inch) and responsive. The mouse buttons are equally responsive, yet slightly too loud.

Performance:

The Asus K50’s 15.6” screen displays 1366 x 768 pixels with vibrant colors and sharp edges. The viewing angles are very good and the only issue is the reflective glossy surface making watching something with a source of light behind us quite undoable. The single speaker in the Asus K50 is simply too poor to make listening to music, or watching film without an external speaker comfortable.
The laptop has two USB 2.0 ports on both sides, a VGA port, an Ethernet jack, and the headphone/mic jacks and that’s all. The DVD recorder is to be found on the left side of the Asus K50 right next to two USB ports. The rest of the ports is on the right. The built-in 1.3 megapixel webcam does a good job rendering accurate colors and sharp images so it is quite sufficient for online conferences.
With its 2.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 processor and integrated GMA X4500M GPU you simply cannot expect miracles. In a performance test the Asus K50 scores slightly worse than the average in this price range. The battery in the laptop is quite good and suffices for over 3.5 hours of browsing the internet wirelessly.

Conclusion:

Although the Asus K50 is quite a good laptop for browsing the internet or playing SIMPLE games it loses compared to the competition. At the time of writing this review you can get a $100 cheaper laptop with comparable specification and better speakers, or even GPU performance.

Selected Asus K50 features and specifications:

• Operating System

Windows Vista Home Premium

• CPU Type

Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 2.1G

• Screen

15.6″

• Memory Size

4GB DDR2

• Hard Disk

250GB

• Optical Drive

DVD Super Multi

• Graphics Card

Intel GMA 4500M

• Video Memory

Shared memory

• CPU

CPU Type
Intel Core 2 Duo

• CPU Speed

T6500(2.10GHz)

• CPU FSB

800MHz

• CPU L2 Cache

2MB

• Chipset

Intel GL40

• Display

Screen Size
15.6″

• Wide Screen Support

Yes

• Resolution

1366 x 768

• Operating System

Windows Vista Home Premium

• Graphics

GPU/VPU

• Intel GMA 4500M