Wow wow wow. I can't find enough good things to say about this portable powerhouse. I'm a pretty hardcore gamer who also uses a lot of graphics intensive programs like Photoshop and Unreal 4. This laptop... is not for that.
It's for those times away from your high-end programs, where you need 10 chrome tabs open in a coffee shop while you're experimenting with Microsoft Word layouts. It's for when you're out in the woods and want to sort and organize the photos on your camera's SD right then and there. It's for trips where you want to travel light, but still want the world at your finger tips.
OK, OK, enough flowery language. Let's get to the pros / cons:
Pros:
-The keyboard feels great, with a nice balance of being chunky and "clicky" while still being compact. Once you get used to its size, it's pretty easy to get close to your fastest typing speeds with minimal errors.
-This thing is really light. Maybe I'm too sued to heavier laptops, but seriously, this thing is effortless to bring around. Throw it in a backpack, tuck it under your shoulder, do whatever. This thing is pretty durable from what I can tell, so all that lightness doesn't come at the cost of having to gingerly secure it in a special compartment. Any ol' laptop bag / pocket will do!
-The battery life is great! Maybe I'm too used to being tethered to outlets by more power-hungry machines, but I was able to get hours of typing and Chromeing out of this thing. The key I've found (as with most machines) is to keep the brightness a bit low when you're not plugged it, it can make a big difference.
-ASUS has always made my favorite laptops and this one is no exception. If you're a fan of ASUS' work, you'll find everything you know and love about and ASUS packed into a tiny package.
-The ports, lordy, the ports! So many ports in such a tiny machine.
-The screen is far brighter and more colorful than I was expecting. My other laptop is a "state-of-the-art" ROG Strix II, with a high color accuracy, high refresh-rate display... the issue is they never calibrate said displays and they always end up coming out sickly yellow, requiring hours of manual adjusting. Not this little fighter though! Bright and beautiful right out of the box! Color pureists will notice things can get a bit washed out, but it's certainly preferable to the yellow tint of other machines.
-The price is the best I've seen for the quality of machine you're getting. This thing is durable, sturdy and built for a few specific things it excels at. It's definitely given my productivity a boost and is well worth the investment.
-There was pretty minimal bloatware on the machine, which was great.
-Office 360 for a year is a HUGE plus. Also be sure to upgrade the machine to full Windows 10 (from S), the process is free, fast and jarringly painless.
Cons:
-Even 64 GBs is not a a huge amount of space. This is definitely more of a document and cloud oriented device. If you're hoping to put your entire music library on this thing you're going to need to expand the storage. If storage isn't an issue, than this is probably the book for you!
-Similarly the 4 GBs of RAM can make this little engine chug sometimes. Don't expect it to be happy with running 20 chrome tabs at once,n or for it to instantly load pages the moment you click them. It's certainly fast enough, but as someone who's coming from a 16 GB machine the little differences can be noticeable.
-The touch pad is ... OK. It's not terrible, but (much like all touch pads these days) it loses tracking now and then and lacks any real buttons for the left and right. I never much enjoyed touch pads to begin with so maybe I'm biased.
Closing thoughts: If you like what you've read, read more reviews and honestly take the dive. If you're looking for a durable portable typer, that can do a little bit of everything this is your machine!
More closing thoughts: A story for you, about ASUS laptops...
In winter I got an ROG Strix II, a very powerful and very pricey machine. It was maddening getting the thing to work properly. Getting photoshop to play nice with the dual graphics. Getting the screen to not look yellow. Getting the damn speakers to not crank the bass. Many of these issues are still unresolved and frankly though I love the hardware I'm more than likely going to have to start from square one with that thing.
I was all emotionally prepared to go through the same process with this little trail-blazer. I was ready to troubleshoot and troubleshoot and finally get something that mostly did what I needed. To my absolute delight, this machine seems to be the last bastion of PCs that do everything right, everything the way they're supposed to, right out of the box. I haven't had to troubleshoot a single thing about this beautiful laptop and honestly couldn't be happier. If you're looking for something portable, something durable, something to up your productivity and most of all something easy to work with, this is the laptop for you.
| Standing screen display size | 11.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1366 x 768 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 Pixels |
| Processor | 2.6 GHz celeron_n4000 |
| RAM | 4 GB DDR4 |
| Memory Speed | 2.6 GHz |
| Hard Drive | 64 GB Embedded MultiMediaCard |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel UHD Graphics 600 |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 4 GB |
| Wireless Type | Bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 10 Hours |
