ASUS - 11.6" Laptop - Intel Celeron - 4GB Memory - 32GB eMMC Flash Memory - Star Gray

This is a long review, so here’s the summary for those who don’t want to read much – I would highly recommend this computer if you’re willing to do a little bit of work to ensure the best experience. It’s a great deal for the price and makes a fantastic travel computer or second computer. I actually own two of these. Both are the versions with the Celeron N4000 and 4GB ram, but one has 32GB eMMC memory, and the other has 64GB eMMC memory (I don’t believe that configuration is sold at Best Buy). I have the 32GB one running Linux Mint 19.1 without any issues. It’s mostly an unmodified install, though I’ve add a couple of things like Pithos, Bleachbit, Steam and a few games. All hardware was recognized by the OS and everything is running smoothly. But I realize many (most?) people reading this are not interested in changing the OS from Windows to Linux, so I will write mostly about the other one I have, which is running a fully up-to-date version of Windows 10 Pro Build 1809 (the computer comes in Windows S mode, so you’ll want to activate regular Windows 10, which is free to do). The first thing I do with any Windows computer is to do a fresh installation of Windows using Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool to get rid of any bloatware. This tends to free up around 10 GB. Then, I perform any needed updates (to Windows, to Windows store apps, BIOS, etc.) and then uninstall those things that come with Windows itself for which I have no interest (Candy Crush, Office Apps, etc.). I also use Revo Uninstaller and CCleaner to keep the “drive” and registry tidy and to prevent unwanted things running at startup. I’m also using Windows 10 built-in antivirus software. Finally, I put a 200GB micro SD card in there to load up on programs/games. (The micro-SD card slot is spring loaded, and cards fit entirely within the laptop itself. This is extremely useful.) My thoughts so far are below. Positives: *Bang for the buck* - I managed to pick up each of these laptops for $110.00 on sale (the 64 GB one was an open box in like-new shape going for more, but I was able to talk the price down to the $109.99 sale price of the 32 GB, 2GB RAM version) and for the price, I think they are fantastic. They perform well enough to stream music in the background while I’m, say, browsing the web with a few tabs open. They can stream HD video without a problem also and can even be used for gaming (yes, it CAN run Crysis - more to say about gaming later). Thanks to the eMMC memory “drive”, boot up is very quick on my Windows machine (<10 seconds). *Display* - the screen is “only” 1366 x 768 HD resolution, but that is exactly right in my opinion for an 11.6” computer. Anything more would just decrease battery life for no real gain on such a small screen. The display itself is matte (which I prefer), very bright and I have no complaints. Also, the lid folds flat (180 degrees) which can occasionally be very useful when sharing your screen with others. *Battery Life* - excellent. I always go into Windows’ settings to tweak my laptops for maximum performance on battery power and despite this, battery life is excellent. Windows estimates over 10 hrs on a full charge, and while I haven’t pushed it that far before plugging in, I can easily get through an entire day of use. Not having to bring a charger along is really quite nice. *Weight* - this laptop barely weighs two pounds. Incredibly light. *Wi-Fi* - dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi is fine. No issues at all. (There are computers for sale now at 3-4X the price of this one that still don’t have dual-band.) *Ports* - surprisingly good for the price – USB-C, 2 USB 3.1, full-size HDMI, and micro SD. (spring-loaded, and micro SD card fits entirely within the laptop. This is incredibly useful). *Audio* - sound is very good on this laptop as long as you’re not expecting much bass. Max volume is surprisingly loud, and acoustic music sounds great. Acoustic steel-strung guitars sound particularly good, with nice detail and clarity. For the type of music I tend to listen to, this is good enough that I no longer travel with a Bluetooth speaker – I have a 200GB micro SD card onto which I load all of my programs and quite a bit of music, so I just play tunes off this laptop instead. There is one downside that made me briefly consider placing audio in the “neutral” category and that is speaker placement. This is one of the many laptops that has the speakers fire down instead of up. This is not the greatest choice for sound quality. Lifting the front of the laptop up shows just how much more detail you can get our of the speakers when they are not being muffled by the surface upon which they’re sitting. Still, overall the positives definitely outweigh this negative and I consider the audio a positive item. *Keyboard* - chicklet style keyboard with decent travel depth and no issues. Neutral: Build quality – there’s nothing actually wrong with the build quality, and it feels quite sturdy; it’s just plastic rather than metal. That’s not surprising given the price, but I’d always prefer metal builds. The lid is also a fingerprint magnet. Negatives: None. This is a fantastic laptop for the money, and has exceeded my initial expectations. A word about gaming: yes you can! So many times I read reviews of laptops where someone then asks “can it run game X?”, only to be told that “no, it’s not a gaming laptop.” While it’s definitely true that you're not going to run the latest AAA titles on something like an N4000 that lacks a discrete video card, I think people would be surprised at just how much you can do without one. As I like to say, any laptop is a gaming laptop if you choose the right games. :) There are many many great titles from that past that are more than capable of being on perfectly on this hardware, including things like first-person shooters running at over 60 fps. I am personally running the following games without incident: Unreal Gold Unreal Tournament 1999 Unreal Tournament 2004 Half-Life Half-Life 2 Far Cry Silent Hunter III Counter-strike Source Counter-strike Condition Zero Painkiller-Black Painkiller – Overdose Pinball Arcade Clive Barker’s Undying F.E.A.R. No One Lives Forever No One Lives Forever 2 Freespace 2 Medieval II: Total War Civilization IV Age of Wonders Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Crysis (this one is on low settings and in Win 8 compatibility mode, but it plays just fine and quite frankly, it amazes me that I can run this at all.) Nox Android Emulator (to enable me to run some classic games I love, including Chess, Backgammon, Go, Gin Rummy and others.) Other software I am running on this computer without any problems includes: LibraOffice 6.1 (a free alternative to Microsoft’s Office Suite) Pandora Spotify Amazon Music TablEdit (a great program for creating sheet music or tablature) Firefox Chrome Overdrive Cloud Library Amazon Kindle Final thoughts: I love this thing, and it’s become my favorite travel laptop. The combination of performance, light weight, good audio, bright screen, and excellent battery life makes this an easy choice for traveling, or as a second computer. I would highly recommend it.

This little laptop is an amazing companion for anyone on the go or students. We bought ours today and Ive been using it for 6 hours now and Im impressed with it. Let me start by saying the specs are good and anyone who has given this a negative review either got a lemon or just dosnt know PCs. First of all with only 32GB drive you need to add a micro SD card to the slot and use it as a D drive where you can save all your data, pics etc. We added a 128GB and space is not a worry anymore. Next you will go nuts trying to find out how to get this out of S mode. S mode is Microsoft's way of checking all apps installed and keeping your pc secure. But if you are not a security freak and just want to use it like a regular Windows 10 Home edition all you need to do is try to install Google Chrome browser and it wont let you, but there it will show you the link to the settings and give you the option to convert to Home and get out of S Mode . Granted once out it will NOT let you back into S Mode. Unlike some others I have read on reviews with other brands, this gem will NOT slow down once you go with Home version (Pro). Frankly a lot of people just like using Chrome so you may want to go that route as I did. No regrets here. Now I just must rave about the touch pad! what a great new idea! Its no wonder that Asus is rated best in this size category.Be sure to check out settings and go to the touch pad for all of its features. This also has a full size keyboard I am typing away with my large hands and no problem here either. This PC has great features and good performance for the price point you just cant beat it! Follow my advice and do not hesitate buying this sweet little laptop. Also has full size HDMI and USB-C the new USB connector like on most Samsung's new phones with the round edges on each side. The WIFI is the best and sensitive with good performance at distances 40 ft away. Get one while they last! Enjoy!

This value on this laptop is unbelievable. At the sale price of 139, there is nothing else that comes close. It's a full featured Windows 10 machine for less than the price of a Chromebook. It has the look and feel of a more expensive notebook. Does not feel like a cheap toy like the HP Stream 11.6" notebooks. Keyboard is small, but full featured with good tactile feedback. I generally hover around 100 WPM, and on 10 fast fingers testing I was getting approximately 90 WPM. I have an Alienware 17.3 as my primary laptop but it weighs a ton. I use this as my travel laptop, or if I need to type a quick document for work. I'm sitting on my couch right now using this laptop to type this review right now. Gaming wise, don't expect to play Battlefield or COD on here, but this thing is an absolutely perfect retro emulation machine. Everything up to and including Dreamcast runs at full speed. Also plays 1080p MKV/H.264 files flawlessly in Kodi/VLC. Also has HDMI and USB-C which is surprising for a budget laptop. I've only found two down sides. First is obviously the limited storage space. If you are going to exit out of Windows S mode, you should have at minimum, a 128GB MicroSD card for storage. Second is the screen is HD, but only 720p (1366x768) and the viewing angles are not what you'd get on an IPS screen, but for 139 bucks what do you expect. I bought one of these before an overseas trip 2 weeks ago so I wouldn't have to carry my behemoth Alienware in my suitcase. I was so impressed by how convenient this thing is I just decided to purchase a second one to keep on the living room coffee table just in case I need to access the web or do any quick computing. Unbelievable value in this budget notebook.

This laptop is excellent for what it's designed for. It's meant to be portable light and snappy and it is. If you buy this computer and expect to do gaming on it you will be disappointed. For everything else it's more than adequate. I love that it comes with two 3.1 USB slots. An HDMI out, a USB type c and a headphone jack. It's a dual core Celeron processor that has a base frequency of only 1 gigahertz but it's turbo is 2.5 gigahertz. While monitoring various tasks I've noticed that it can maintain 2 and 1/2 gigahertz for some time. For a small laptop that's impressive. It was interesting because the Best Buy clerk tried to talk me out of this and into a different laptop. Frequent complaints are there's not enough storage and not enough RAM. I disagree. Windows occupies about half of the built-in 32GB memory. Even after I've installed my antivirus and a few applications that I use I still have not gone over 20 GB and have about 18 gigs free. I put in a 64GB SDXC card and use that for applications and documents. As for the ram, the 4 gigabytes installed is perfectly adequate for Windows functioning. During normal tasks, I am usually somewhere between 2.5 and 3.2 gigabytes used. This computer is perfect for portability and then when you get home you can plug your HDMI cord to a much larger monitor and use an external Mouse and use it like a regular home PC. For what it is designed for I would say this is a great choice especially for $150. If you were to purchase Windows home that alone is $100 so far $50 more you're getting a computer.

This is such a powerful, portable, and capable laptop. I first purchased the 2GB variant during Black Friday and was already surprised by how capable the laptop was. I later upgraded to the 4GB variant during the Christmas Sale. An additional 2GB of RAM makes a big difference, I am able to open more tabs and applications without any noticeable lag. The main purpose of this purchase was to have a budget laptop that I could travel and commute with without having to bring my expensive Macbook pro with me. If accidents were to happen to this laptop at least it isn't too damaging on the wallet. I primarily use this laptop for email, word processing, internet browsing, and video streaming. It's been a month and I haven't experienced any issues. Storage is also a nonissue because I save my work on the cloud and external storage for easy access from any computer. I also use this laptop as an access point for my work's VPN so I could always be working on the road. With such portability, sometimes I forget that I even have this laptop in my backpack, but I'm always glad that I have a full PC with me at all times. I love that it has all of the updated I/O ports including USB-C, HDMI, and USB 3.0 ports. The trackpad is spacious for the laptop's size, there is a bit of flex and travel when you tap on the trackpad, but it doesn't bother me. The keyboard is very comfortable to type on, I have MS Office 2019 installed and love bringing it to coffee shops to do light writing. I cannot wait to travel across Japan with this little guy!

I own a PC repair shop as well as a video production business. I use very powerful computers for most of my work, but I see many advantages in keeping a cheap tiny laptop around to take with me anywhere I go. I upgraded to this from a one-year-old Dell Inspiron 11 with a Celeron N3050, a similar machine with a much bolder color and nearly identical specs. A lot has changed in one year! This laptop has a Celeron N4000 which is a true game-changer in the world of cheap laptops: its single-thread speed is more than double that of the Celeron N3050 from the Dell and its total speed is nearly double, plus it's faster at single-thread processing than the Core i3-3217U in my beloved Asus Vivobook X202E. The built-in GPU should not be underestimated; it won't play the most greedy games of today, but it's got a lot of 3D processing power behind it. This laptop can run Adobe Premiere and can be used to edit 4K 100Mbps 8-bit footage at a 1/8 resolution preview, so a Premiere proxy editing workflow is very doable. It has more USB ports than the Dell Inspiron 11, all 3.0/3.1, with one as the new Type-C connector. Having Wireless-AC in this package is simply amazing. The design is classic Asus: the touchpad is great, the keyboard is a flat Mac-style one that takes a second to get used to but is wonderful and quick once you adjust to it, and the thing just plain looks good. You can drive a 4K TV and the GPU can hardware-decode H.265 HEVC 4K video too! It's obviously no Ryzen 5 or Core i5/i7, but this little budget beast should not be underestimated. Two last tips: buy a 128GB V30-rated microSD card for extra storage since it only has 32GB and if you're handy in an admin command prompt, run "compact /compactos:always" to compress the OS and cd into Program Files and Program Files (x86) and ProgramData and run "compact /c /s /i /f /exe:lzx *" to compress all your program files; this takes full advantage of the fast CPU to further accelerate the 30 MB/sec maximum you get out of he eMMC SSD and frees up a lot of the otherwise insufficient storage. This makes a much bigger difference than you'd think. You're welcome!

I bought this notebook computer primarily to use for giving PowerPoint presentations using a projector and for taking notes at meetings. Overall I am very pleased with my purchase. The computer is lightweight, has a decent keyboard, and is able to run Microsoft Office with no trouble. One thing I was not expecting is how well Windows 10 now integrates with your cell phone. Upon installation I was prompted to install Microsoft Launcher on my Android phone. I was initially hesitant to do this, but Microsoft Launcher is actually pretty good and has some clever features, and it greatly improves the integration between the phone and the Windows desktop computers I use (one at work, two at home, plus the new notebook). On the less good side, when I first got the notebook I repeatedly got blue screens of death, and the computer kept restarting. I originally figured that the notebook was defective, but after about the fifth time the problem went away, so I strongly suspect that a buggy device driver was updated. Device driver issues like this really shouldn't happen with a brand new computer, but hopefully Asus and Microsoft will work this out. The other slightly annoying thing was that I was unable to activate the version of Microsoft Office installed on the computer using the account created by my employer (my employer has an arrangement with Microsoft that allows employees to install Office on personal computers). Instead I had to take the operating system out of 'S Mode' (very easy - just do a search in Microsoft Store), uninstall the copy of Office that came with the computer, and reinstall the version available through Office.com. While I realize that this is nothing Asus has any control over, it was a big time waster and is something that Microsoft should really address. At the very least they should allow you to download and install the correct version of Office without taking the computer out of S mode.

The dual-core Celeron comes in at a nice 6W TDP, giving this laptop sufficient speed and long battery life. It's nice and light if you're on the go. 4GB RAM is a plus, and the microSD slot gives you additional storage above the 32GB eMMC (which is kinda slow, btw). I ditched Windows 10 on this machine and installed Linuxmint 19.1 Cinnamon. It's a match made in heaven! I use a 400GB microSD card for additional storage. Both Chrome and Firefox run well, each with Ublock Origin add-ons running. Thunderbird is running just fine too. I haven't seen any problems with video streaming. Libreoffice also runs well inside the 4GB of RAM. The 4 virtual workspaces make up for the limited 720p screen real estate. The main drawback is the low-end TN display, -1 star. When you're viewing from off-angle, even by just 10-15 degrees, the image quality is poor. I.e., it's intended for one viewer sitting directly in front of it. Yes, it's a low end machine, but a slightly better TN display would be nice. IPS would be perfect. Otherwise, it has a matte display which I LIKE for extended use. Summary: is this a gaming rig? No. Is it a capable web/email laptop that can also handle light application work? Sure. If you're OK with the screen, it's hard to beat the price. It's also easy to install Linux alongside of or fully replacing Windows 10 (need to boot win10, then setup bios to boot unsigned images from USB).