Otaku Gadgets

Last time round, I reviewed a high-end portable gaming solution from Asus. Today, we go towards the very opposite direction with the same Asus for the K50IJ that offers the strictest usability under a tight budget. It offers you no feel good factors like great looks but it does offer you something better and larger than a netbook at the really low price of $700. It has all the features that a family portable entertainment hub needs without being too pricey.

So are you ready to make a few sacrifices for the sake of affordability and no-frills on a 15 inch desktop replacement? Read on to find out.

For a $700 price point, testers report that the build of the K50IJ is pretty sturdy. There are not too many points that flex or squeak under pressure. The surfaces are a combination of matte and glossy plastic. The roomy palm rests and the full sized keyboard with a separate number pad just add to the over all appeal of the notebook.

The lid is not that sturdy however and does show some flex under light pressure. The screen hinges do not provide adequate tension when the lid is very close to being shut. So this creates a bit of worry for users. However, it will survive daily abuse in a good laptop bag for a considerable amount of time.

The bottom of the laptop has only one access panel for removing the battery. Every thing else is sealed shut. The lack of upgradability will definitely turn off some potential buyers but for the majority of buyers, this kind of a budget laptop will not see any upgrades during its lifetime. So Asus is justified in not providing access panels. In any case, the RAM is the most common upgrade and the single slot on the K50IJ is maxed out at 4GB at purchase. And I do not think people buying this laptop will want to upgrade to an SSD now.

The 15.6-inch screen on the K50IJ is reported to be quite decent. It has a native resolution of 1366×768 and slightly better color reproduction than the average fare with sufficient brightness and contrast. The 16:9 aspect ratio is good for movies and is fast becoming a standard issue on notebooks. It has really good horizontal viewing angles, so the entire family (consisting of only your parents that is) can gather round to watch.

The speakers are from Altec Lansing, which is a good thing. They are located beneath the palm rests and the openings face you, which is bad. This inevitably produces muffled sounds when on your lap. However, on a flat surface the sound will be reflected to reach up to you and you will be able to appreciate the Altec Lansing Quality. Headphones are recommended as usual. Or get the Altec Lansing speakers.

The keyboard on the K50IJ is reported to be quite comfortable to type on. It has a full sized keyboard with a full number pad and traditional keys. The traditional keys provide good travel and a reassuring feedback. This isn’t the strongest of keyboards and it will produce some flex when you type hard but you will not notice it much unless you really push it. Over all, it is good for longer typing sessions.

The touch pad is based on Elantech and is well sized for comfortable touch navigation. It has a comfortable texture and is capable of multi-touch gestures. However, the multi-touch gestures do not work as well as you would want them to. Plus the sensitivity on the touch pad is not that great and lags behind when fast finger movements are made. The only thing that really works properly is the two-finger scrolling. The buttons on the touch pad are large and usable but do not provide much of a feedback.

The ports on the K50IJ are your average fare. It could probably do with few more ports in fact. It has 4 USB 2.0 ports, 1 VGA out, 1 3-in-1 card reader, line out and mic. in ports, 1 Ethernet port, a power jack and the optical drive. There ends the list. No HDMI or eSATA or FireWire or ExpressCard. But I do not know why anyone would complain because you should really look at the price and configuration combination on the Asus K50IJ before asking for more.

The Asus K50IJ runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo T600 processor clocking at 2.1Ghz, which is very decent for such a cheap laptop.  It has 4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM (1×4GB on 1 slot, 4GB max). The onboard graphics is Intel GMA X4500M. The storage on the $700 configuration is a 250GB 5400rpm SATA HDD. The optical drive is a DVD super multi drive. There is wireless at 802.11/b/g and even N, so do not fret. The Ethernet is a Gigabit one, so you can look forward to fast data streaming. It has a complimentary 2 years global warranty, 1-year accidental damage warranty and 1 month zero bright dot LCD warranty.

The performance is quite good, as the configuration would suggest.  Even though it lacks discrete graphics, it should provide decent multimedia performance. You will not be able to play Crysis or BioShock on it, yes, but you can run heavy applications like MS Office suite, Photoshop CS4, etc. at decent speeds. Just don’t over do anything and you will be fine. Also, I do not recommend the Vista Home Premium that comes with the K50IJ. Find a dealer who offers a free upgrade to Windows 7 when the thing arrives and/or downgrade to XP in the mean time if you value your sanity.

The 6cell battery on the K50IJ will likely give you a battery life between 2-3 hours depending on what you are doing. At 15 inch, I am presuming that you will not want to lug it around wherever you go. So this is fine for a desktop replacement. If you want something cheap that will perform well and last you long, you can buy the Asus K50IJ and be happy about it.