ASUS 14" FHD Laptop - Intel Pentium N6000 with 4GB Memory - 64GB eMMC - Star Black

This laptop initially looks like it would not be much for the price. I unboxed it and pleasantly it is similar to laptops priced above this price class. Build materials are ok but not as cheap as you would think. I liked the number pad built into the touch pad. The Power adapter is just ok but wish they could have used USBC over the barrel connector but assuming cost was a factor. When powering on and setting up the initial out of box. It took over 2 hours to run the initial updates and setup prompts before I was at a working desktop. After using for basic productivity such as web browsing and word documents. It performs ok. Just as long as you’re using one thing at a time. I found the most delay when loading web pages especially if you had more than one tab open at a time. It was just painful to let the system freeze and wait for it to respond. Obviously, the low ram and SD storage is the limiting factor but for basic school use this works. I would spend more if I needed to do more multitasking. The battery life is decent. I was able to get 6-7 hours of basic web and word use. I would recommend if the use was limited otherwise, I personally would just spend a little more for something with at least 8gb of ram and a larger SSD since you cannot really save anything to this laptop. I know the use is more web based but sometimes you need to save stuff offline. Pro’s: • Affordable • Number pad built into touch pad • Ports: USBC, USBA and HDMI • Good battery life Con’s: • Still slow with multitasking • Number pad is inaccurate • No backlit keyboard • No upgrade options for ram/ssd

Great budget laptop for basic activities. The only downside is it has LCD as opposed to LED mentioned incorrectly on the product page.

I reviewed the prior version of this laptop that was, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as this machine with the exception that the new, speedier Intel Celeron N6000 processor is contained in this laptop. That is only a good thing as this laptop remains incredibly efficient but also has more power to make multitasking and doing productivity tasks on this laptop feel smoother than ever. I rated this laptop’s predecessor as a 5 out of 5 usable budget laptop with perfect utility for young students with non-power tasks on their laptop and for casual users performing simple daily tasks like answering emails, browsing the internet, and doing basic Word, Excel, and PowerPoint-type tasks. This laptop also takes the gold for that category in this price range, with the added benefit of being even snappier than before! Operating System: This PC is equipped with Windows 11 S edition, which is essentially a lightweight, Windows-app only version of Windows 11 that will truly work just fine for the majority of basic users who aren’t wanting to fiddle around with a bunch of novel software installs. You get your basics here: a Microsoft Edge web browser, Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other apps available and/or preinstalled in the Microsoft Apps store. I think this is perfect for users who aren’t looking for all the bells and whistles and are happy to use Microsoft Edge for web browsing and checking email, as well as whatever programs are available natively through Windows. If you really want full featured Windows 11, you can get into the Windows store settings and switch out of Windows 11 S into normal Windows 11 Home, just have caution that this laptop model does only have 64GB of storage and you will quickly run out of room (and speed) if you try to load this up with too many programs. If you are or your child are in need of Google Chrome for Google University and apps, you will need to switch this laptop to Windows 11 Home to be able to install Google Chrome onto the laptop. Just note, that switching out of Windows S mode to regular Home is a one way street, you can’t switch back (not that you’d want to, I think). Set up: This laptop, to the shock of no one who is familiar with budget PCs with Windows 11 loaded on it, takes a long time to get through its initial booting processes, updates, and setups. Gratefully, though, it is faster than its predecessor; it took about 45 minutes to get this laptop up and running from out of the box! While this is still slow, I have had this experience with multiple other budget Windows machines I have reviewed, and that is just the way it is when you are dealing with lower-end hardware that runs such a bloated and poorly optimized OS like a factory Windows 11 install. Just get your laptop plugged in, boot it up, and put your favorite show in the background on your TV for a couple of episodes while you wait on this machine to go through its steps for set up. Additionally, when it seems to be done updating, make sure to go into settings and click on the Windows update icon in the top right corner of that screen to make sure you check and install for any more updates. This is, unfortunately, what you must deal with on almost any Windows 11 OS laptop these days. Regular use: Overall, I think this laptop is unequivocally perfect for basic users. What do I mean when I keep saying, basic users? What I mean is, people who are only opening this laptop up to do a few basic tasks at a time, like browse the web, check their emails, type up a Word document, work on an Excel spreadsheet, maybe play some Solitaire built into the computer, haha! The important qualifier in this use case, is that you, the user, MUST have excellent “computer hygiene”. What I mean by this is that you must close programs you are not using in order to avoid slowdowns and program stutters. This is due to the fact of what I talked about earlier, this laptop has very little RAM (Random Access Memory) and cannot keep multiple programs open and running smoothly at a time because of it. So, with whatever you are doing on this laptop, expect to have to keep browser tab counts down and to have to close programs you aren’t using. You will be less frustrated and enjoy a much smoother experience on this machine! Build Quality: This laptop's build quality utterly belies what its price tag says. It is actually an admirably well-built machine. It is, for one, very lightweight and thin. It measures on my scale a few hairs under 3 pounds in weight and is 3/4 of an inch thick at its thickest point. It is a little thicker and wider than a current generation Apple MacBook Pro 14 for comparison, but half a pound lighter! I think aged users who are tired of carrying around bulky, hot machines are going to be happy with this laptop. It is gentle on the body to use and gentle on the budget too. More on the build quality is a metal keyboard deck and lid with an otherwise plastic housing construction. Truly not bad! Keyboard: This laptop sports a solid and comfortable keyboard deck and keycaps that offer a great typing experience. The keyboard is not backlit, which is a bit of a bummer, but at this price, I don’t think anyone can complain. I love typing on this keyboard; it feels like a simple scissor-switch membrane-style keyboard, which is perfect for most users. The only thing I have come to realize after reviewing this laptop and its predecessor is that I really don’t love the layout Home, PgUp, PgDn, End, and FN keys taking up an entire row at the far right of the keyboard deck. This shifts all your familiar typing keys to the left of the center, and as a result, I continuously find myself hitting Home when I try to hit backspace. This isn’t the worst thing, and I do believe one can grow used to it, but I just want to mention it here to be thorough. Webcam: The equipped webcam is a barebones 1280x720 resolution webcam, with 0.92 megapixels, that can still be called “HD”, but just barely. It has a very slow frame rate of 8FPS, but it seems to get the job done. There is no physical shutter for the webcam; it is just one that is software-based and triggered by pressing F10. There is also a white indicator light at the top of the laptop frame next to the webcam aperture hole that shines brightly if your webcam is on. I am going to say that I am just happy there is a webcam here, and it looks better than a potato! I would say it is even on par if not better than a webcam on a $1000 Dell laptop I tried recently! Display: The display here is excellent for a budget laptop! It is a full HD resolution 1920X1080p display running at 60hz. Translation: for a budget laptop, you are not getting a crappy-looking display. It displays YouTube videos and picture content nicely and gets nice and bright for working in brighter environments like out on a coffee shop patio. The lay-flat display may be nice for some, but I personally have never seen the utility in a laptop screen that lays totally flat, so I am not losing my mind over this feature. Altogether, it is an excellent full HD display for this budget laptop! Battery: As expected, the battery life on this laptop is pretty decent, with lower-end and lower-power internals! My projections are showing about seven hours of sustained multitasking use at 40% brightness on the “balanced” in the Windows power settings. I think this is reasonable and far exceeds the laptops of even half a decade ago in this price range. It charges via a proprietary charger barrel port and does NOT charge via the USB-C port included on the laptop. I understand that Asus would want to keep costs down on such a budget laptop, but it is still nice to have power delivery through a USB-C port available for versatility when on the go. Opening up the laptop: I got peppy and decided to open up this laptop to see what is inside the guts of it. Take a look at the pictures! What I found is a highly organized and not overstuffed internal configuration, complete with soldered-on RAM (bummer), a cute lil’ 64GB eMMC storage module, a user-replaceable single antenna Wifi card, and an extremely sturdy and nicely thermal pasted CPU heat sink! I was impressed by this. I really think there could have been room in here for user replaceable RAM, so that is a bummer that means you are stuck with the amount of RAM that you buy this with. However, I found something quite interesting in the motherboard… what appears to be an M.2 slot complete with a full-sized mounting screw position for a M.2 SSD! So, if you or your kid are tech savvy, they might enjoy the ease of opening this laptop up and installing an M.2 SSD to transfer the OS onto in order to gain more storage and faster boot speeds of varying programs. This laptop was really easy to get into with Philips head screws, and the bottom popped off with just a little jostling from a gift card in a couple of spots near the hinges. If only this laptop had replaceable RAM, I would be losing my mind with excitement! But it is still excellent and speaks to being future-proof for easy battery replacements, too. Stats: Speedometer 2.1 score: 98.9. This is an almost 10-point increase from the prior processor-containing model and is part of why web browsing and web apps feel snappier. This is definitely a win! Speedometer 3.0 (a newer and more intense web apps stress test): 5.77 (not an excellent result, but reasonable for a laptop in this price range) Overall, I would retain this laptop as a 5 out of 5 stars, but I would give it 4.5 out of 5 if it was an option because, truly, in Quarter 4 of 2024, there should be no more laptops or computers with 4 GB of RAM as the minimum spec in my opinion. It is time for companies to face the fact that the demands of modern computing have gotten far too intense for a mere 4gb of RAM to handle masterfully. At the very least, there should be options for adding additional RAM given how much space is in this chassis.