Asus - 15.6" Touch-Screen Laptop - Intel Core i3 - 4GB Memory - 500GB Hard Drive - Gray

I purchased this laptop for my father. He is not a power user, so this will last him 5+ years easily. In the box you get the laptop, power adapter (small wall wart type), and short quick start guide (that basically just tells you to turn on the laptop). The laptop battery was almost completely drained out of the box, which was a bit alarming as they usually have at least a 20% charge (usually closer to 50%). I feel like a screen cloth would have been a nice add-on. The power adapter isn't as robust as I would like it to be, I have a feeling the cord may slice or fray easily, and the plastic casing doesn't seem like it would hold up to too many drops or blows, so pack it away carefully when traveling. The size and weight of the laptop is ok for using around the house. While it is not ultra portable, it would not be too much of a pain for traveling, though there are better choice laptops for that. It is not quite a desktop replacement, though it does seem bigger than some 15" laptops I have used over the years. It seems very sturdy and looks great. The grey is appealing and the texture of the laptop body itself has a good feel. The next best thing to aluminum casings. The screen is bright and vibrant. The touch screen is a nice touch (haha). Though fingerprints do show pretty well, especially with the brightness down; thus, screen cloth would have been a nice add-on. From what I gather of Windows 8, a touch screen seems almost necessary. It comes with a Intel i3 (Haswell I believe) processor, 4GB ram and a 500gb hdd. The i3 is powerful enough for most common tasks, but do not expect to do too much gaming or easily handle large tasks if you are a power user. There is a similar spec version of this laptop with a Pentium in it for $50 less, I think the extra $50 is well worth the upgrade to an i3, it will be able to handle more tasks in the future, and is much better at multitasking and power management. 8GB of ram would have made this thing future proof for the next few years, I will probably end up putting in more down the line. The 500GB hdd seems snappy enough, I did not notice a huge waiting time for the computer to power on. Swapping out for an SSD or SSHD will help make things snappier, a possible future improvement as well. The battery life is decent if you turn the brightness down some. It will last you a few hours easily. The keyboard and trackpad are responsive and have a nice feel to them. There are better ones out there in much more expensive laptops, however, for the price range of this laptop (<$500), you would be hard pressed to find something better. Out of the box, it has Windows 8 on it, but luckily Windows 8.1 is a free upgrade. However, expect to leave it on overnight to download and install the many updates required before you can install 8.1. I am not a fan of Windows 8, but that is not a fault of the laptop itself. Conclusion: Overall, this is a pretty decent laptop, and you would be very hard pressed to find a better one for the price range. Similar spec laptops in this price range often do not include the touch screen (which is very nice to have with Windows 8). I think with a boost in ram in the next 2 years or so, this machine should last you anywhere in the 4-6 year range. If you are a power user or gamer, then go for something more powerful with a quad core and dedicated graphics. However, for the majority of people, this laptop will be more than enough. Also, do not skimp and go for the pentium version for $50 less, you will regret it in the next few years. I am a power user, so this would not be enough for me, but for my father, this is perfect. This is great for students (non-engineering/technology majors), small offices, and the average user.

I've had this laptop for a week, and I have to say no complaints from me! Most of what I've seen in terms of bad reviews have to do with windows updates, which is an issue with Microsoft and not the laptop itself. The other reviews I've seen talk about the limited RAM size of the laptop (RAM= Random Access Memory. Basically upgrading this allows your computer to handle more programs at once, and to process faster). I gotta tell you, it takes 2.5 seconds to upgrade this thing! A monkey could do it, it's that easy. This laptop is inexpensive for a reason. Laptop producers like to charge huge amounts of money for RAM space, and because this one has less RAM it is less pricey. Easy solution is easy: buy a RAM card. It is super inexpensive to upgrade RAM. A four gig will run you around $50 and an eight gig comes in at around $80. And the best part, you can put it in this laptop yourself for free. On the bottom of this laptop there is a rectangular compartment with two screws. Unscrew the screws and push the rectangular compartment down until it clicks and remove it. Inside the compartment there is a small rectangular opening that's about 4 inches long. Take your laptop sized RAM card and insert it into the opening, making sure that the small slot on your RAM card fits into the matching tab in the opening. Push until the RAM card is flush with the back of the opening. Then push down on the bottom edge of your RAM card until it clicks into place. And voila! Super convenient RAM upgrade! Unfortunately you cannot remove the 4gigs of RAM that the laptop originally comes with, so there's only one slot to add a RAM card. What ever size RAM card you put into the slot just adds on to the 4gigs that are already there. So if you add a four gig card, the laptop will then have eight gigs of RAM and so on. You don't need to do anything else to access the RAM, the laptop will do it auto-magically. By itself, I'd rate this laptop a four stars for its price point. But after I shoved an eight gig RAM card in there, it definitely jumped up to a five! My advice? Buy a RAM card. You can do it with your next pay check if it's easier for your wallet. Also, check out my awesome video review!

Overall, This computer was a fantastic purchase! I wanted a laptop that I could use for email, surfing the web, using microsoft office, creating shutterfly picture albums and using iTunes to upload/download music to my iphone. This laptop is such a great price given the fact that it has a CD/DVD player, it has an Intel Core I3 processor (yes they cost more than AMD but they are far superior) and since I primarily use it for home (some business use) it does everything I need. It's gorgeous as well! Sleek white, slim design with a fantastic screen! I bought Tech Support for a year and let the Geek Squad load everything. It was ready earlier than promised and it has worked GREAT since I bought it. I need to take some classes to get up to speed on the new Windows/Microsoft Office products and that will probably eliminate the laptop from randomly zooming in and out on me. You can't go wrong here for UNDER $500 with MS Office!

I don’t write reviews that often but felt the need to from reading the bad ones. Not sure why people are complaining so much about this notebook. It’s worked flawlessly for me. I’d recommend it for anyone looking to get a new budget friendly entry/mid-level notebook. Just had a friend purchase one due to my recommendation. You can’t beat it for the price. I come from 20 years in the IT industry and do research before buying any product. The unit is thin and fairly light. Its only crutch is the 5400RPM Hard Drive. However, overall speed (mainly boot time) is increased with the Windows8.1 update. So make sure you perform all updates as soon as you can. If you really want to solve any speed issues swap out the stock Hard Drive for an SSD Hard Drive. I just did this and it’s worth the cost. At least consider it at least in the first 6 months of ownership. I also purchased a wireless mouse. Would have gone with the external Logitech T650 touchpad but plan on moving over to Linux and due to lack of the driver did not. Steps taken: • Performed all Windows updates. Continue scanning, performing and rebooting until all Windows updates have been done and there are no more (took about 3.5hr to perform on a 50Mbit download connection). • Proceeded to the Windows Store and installed the Windows8.1 (3.7GB - took another 1.5hr). • Checked and performed any additional Windows updates until there were no more to be done. • De-installed all unnecessary applications (aka Bloat ware) that wouldn’t be used (do not un-install WinFlash). Reboot as necessary. • De-installed Norton anti-virus trial and installed the free AV of my choice (Avast). • (Optional) Updated BIOS by downloading the latest version from the ASUS website and then used WinFlash. Unit came with version 215. Latest available on the ASUS Support website is version 217. • Installed several other applications as needed. • Migrated from stock 500GB Hard Drive to a 250GB SSD drive. Steps used: De-installed 500GB drive from inside unit and placed in external USB dock. Installed 250GB SSD drive inside unit. Used drive imaging software (Paragon Hard Disk Manager) to create a bootable USB thumb drive with the needed applications. Hooked up 500GB in USB dock to USB 3.0 (blue) port and booted to the bootable USB thumb drive in the USB 2.0 (black) port. Performed drive copy from original drive to new drive (this will move over all partitions including the restore partition). After this completed, rebooted the system and all came up fine. Additional input: The stock hard drive in my unit is an HGST 500GB 5400RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s drive so it has a SATA III (6.0Gb/s) interface and is backwards compatible. For memory (RAM) there is an open slot (next to the hard drive) under the bottom cover that is empty. So the installed memory is either on the system board or in another slot under the main bottom chassis cover. I have not removed that cover so I’m not sure. You should be able to drop in a 4GB or 8GB RAM stick to bring it up to 8/12GB respectively. I couldn’t get a good read on the speed of the memory but believe you’d use a 204 pin DDR3 SO-DIMM – DDR3 1600 (PC3-12800) for the addition. System resources show used memory at 24% / 1GB out of 4GB. So right now I don’t feel the need to upgrade this. The wireless network adapter is a Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 (1x1) 802.11 b/g/n. It will only operate on the 2.4GHz channel and it’s supposed to have a max connection speed of 150Mbit. I’m running a NetGear WNDR3700v3 802.11n Dual Band Gigabit(2.4GHz/5GHz) router flashed with DD-WRT and cannot get the wireless connection to go above 72.2Mbit on the laptop even after making any needed adjustments in the router config. This is probably an isolated issue on the router side and is not a deal breaker as I tested it on a Trendnet 802.11n router and was getting a 150Mbit connection. The onboard gigabit LAN connection screams. When doing a file transfer test on the home gigabit network from server to the laptop it sustained 113MB/s and a 4.5GB file transfer took 39 seconds. The onboard USB 3.0 connection is even faster. When doing a file transfer test on and external USB 3.0 hard drive from the drive to the laptop it sustained 160MB/s and a 4.5GB file transfer took 26 seconds. Battery life is ok but that can be expected from a 4-cell battery. After migrating to the SSD the battery life increased. The processor seems to run cool and the unit does not get hot when sitting on your lap. The external AC adapter is not large or bulky. The old 500GB drive that came out of the unit can now be put in an external USB carrier and used for file backups, etc. Sound quality from the internal speakers is fair.

For approx. $350.00, this is a great deal and a great machine. It is white which is very attractive and seems to match our new high tech phones like the Samsung Galaxy phones and Iphones, they compliment each other. The Display is a generous 15.6 and is very vivid. It has a card reader in it, which I use for my camera's SD card. Battery life seems to be good. I feel that this laptop is up to date and includes a Intel CORE i3 processor. Which is not usual in low priced pc's. I have 2 of them, and I am very happy. It is more than what I expected, paying the low price I paid. ASUS is doing a really good job, and it seems they are getting better and better. In short I love it all the way around! I get many compliments when people see it. It looks expensive. I found my new brand of computer..ASUS. Thank you Best Buy for offering this item at your store at a value.

Asus, in my experience, has been a phenomenal brand. When I purchased my first Asus laptop, I knew I was purchasing a quality product. I was blown away with how solid the construction and performance of it was. My mother needed a good laptop, but was on a tight budget. I am ultimately in charge of deciding what technology my household purchases and adopts. However, in this case, I decided to let my her find one that she felt suited her needs. I gave it my seal of approval and it was purchased. After looking around, and having found plenty of her primary, albeit cheaper choices out of stock, we began our quest for this one in red. She's enjoyed this laptop very much, as have I, thus this review is written with the intent of describing performance of her use, along with some of mine. Style so unique, everyone will take a second look. This laptop comes in two colours; white and red. Walking up to the laptop section of a Best Buy store, it immediately caught our eyes. Coloured laptops are especially rare, and while on the box it appears with a pink hue, I can assure you, this one is red. It's bound to pique a few people's curiosity, and often times people have wanted to get a closer look. The back keyboard keys compliment the red surroundings very well, making it look modern and unique. The circle ridges on the plastic cover help hide fingerprints well. Sound so loud, you can probably leave your speakers at home. My personal ASUS laptop was built to perform. Unfortunately, the sound wasn't as powerful as I had hoped. On this red laptop, however, the sound is phenomenal. ASUS included their SonicMaster technology. The sound is rich and accurate, and can get louder than on most laptops I've used. ASUS uses large speaker resonance chambers which help provide a wide frequency range and deeper bass. Anti-Glare Display with crisp picture. The display is crisp and vibrant. The viewing angles are a bit limited, so you won't have a semi-circle around your laptop when you're watching a movie, but for most uses it's an acceptable range. It doesn't feature a touch display. Asus includes a suite of technology called Splendid which adjusts the display's contrast and colour saturation. This gives a much better experience when watching movies, for example. Keyboard. This laptop features a full-size keyboard and number pad. They keys are island-style. They keyboard if very comfortable to type on. The keys are perfectly spaced and prevent key float. Touch-pad Usually when I review, I like to include the Touch-pad in the keyboard, however since many of the negative review feature the touch-pad, I decided to separate it. Part of the learning curve on this laptop, aside from Windows 8, is the touch-pad. It's a multi-touch gesture-enabled touch-pad. It's designed to make using Windows 8 easier. You'll want to configure the Smart-Gesture software to suit your needs. I suspect many people are having trouble in this area. Using multiple fingers and/or swiping from different areas bring up menus or options. Once you get used to multi-touch gestures, you won't be able to live without them, but learning them can be a little frustrating if you're not a quick learner. Fortunately you can turn off and reassign most gestures. Ports, Jacks, In or Out; You're covered. The left side is busy on this laptop, It has the only two USB ports (you may want to consider buying a USB Hub) one of which is a blue 3.0 and the other 2.0. You also have the HDMI port, which works wonderfully to connect your laptop to your TV or projector, as well as VGA to connect to an external monitor or projector. This computer features a combination headphone and microphone jack, Ethernet port, and the fan left. The Ethernet adapter has an interesting design, it's similar to a clip to allow the laptop to be thinner, it works nicely though. On the right, you have a Kensington lock slot, and a media card reader sits on the front. Networking, to move around or not to move around. The laptop comes with a Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 Wireless Adapter compatible with Wireless B/G/N. Up to 150Mbps on Wireless N. This adapter has great reach, where my non-ASUS laptops say 3-4 bars @<60Mbps, both my ASUS devices have 5 bars @>60Mbps. It also features a Realtek Gigabit Ethernet adapter. Battery Life is average with no notable differences. The 4-Cell battery, will give you about 3-5 hours of battery life, depending on what settings you have enabled. I average about 4 hours. Webcam As with most integrated Webcams, they're not meant to be for photo-shoots. The .9 mega-pixel camera is noisy, but en par with most webcams, and front facing cameras. It's great for video conferencing, but you'll probably want to stick with your phone for most of your self portraits. Configuration With a 1.8 GHz dual-core Intel i3-3217U processor, along with the Intel HD 4000, chip you won't be winning any benchmarks, nor playing the latest and greatest PC game. (I'll be explicitly clear, this laptop is NOT designed to be a gaming laptop, up your budget at least another $200-400 for that.) 4GB of RAM ensures you'll have solid performance under a moderate load. Windows 8 boots up quickly in about 15-20 seconds. 500GB gives you enough space so you can keep all your documents, pictures, software, music, etc. with you on the go. Asus's IceCool technology keeps the laptop cool under pressure. Unless you're pushing the hardware to it's max (like trying to render a Full HD video in video editing software -- which this is not the computer for) it'll do a great job at keeping the device cool, especially if you're using active cooling rather than passive. Bundled Software This laptop's bundled software is pretty minimal. Asus includes their own utilities, which I recommend you keep to take full advantage of what your laptop has to offer. (Especially the Smart-Gesture utility, the Maxx Audio, the Splendid Suite, and the ASUS Install utilities.) Also ensure you allow Windows Update to complete all updates and upgrade to Windows 8.1 ASAP. You also have a 30-day trial of Office 365, Kindle app, Netflix app, Music Maker jam, Fresh Paint app, some Microsoft Apps, and WildTangent games. Multi-Language Support Unlike many other laptop brands, ASUS has included various language options in their OEM software. When you set it up, you can choose the language appropriate to your use.

After reading some reviews here I think some people have forgotten #1 it's a Windows computer and #2, you only paid $350.00 for it. Over all I think this is a wonderful unit for the price, I'm very pleased with it. Out of the box you will need to up date all of the Win 8.0 updates before you can download Win 8.1 and yes it takes forever but it takes just as long on a $1000.00 unit with 8.0 Microsoft operating system installed what do you expect? At least you get 8.1 for free and it's much better than 8.0 so update the unit first before anything else. The case seems sturdy and well finished for the price. The track pad is nice and big and works well. I would call the over all performance middle of the road, not a speedster but not a slug either. I would not choose this unit for gaming but for anything else you will have plenty of computing power. It comes with some basic programs so you will have to add your favorite programs such as a word processing and a photo shop type program if you write and take and store pictures. I really don't see much missing from this unit except a little speed from the HD that a laptop selling for $600 has. It's a nice package for the money and the red version is quite a handsome choice .

I bought this laptop to replace a netbook I was using for work. First of all any time you buy a laptop you are going to have to install Windows updates. You can't avoid it. Updating to 8.1 was painless as well. This is the first time I've purchased a non HP machine and I have to say I'm pretty happy with it so far. It does what I need it to do, which is mostly remote support. I use it to transfer large data files which is where the USB 3.0 comes into play. Love that it has an optical drive so I no longer need to carry around my USB optical drive. Didn't really need the 6 months of antivirus but it was nice that they threw it in with the laptop. Overall I say this laptop was way worth the $350 that Best Buy was charging. If you want more from it all you really need to do is max out the RAM and install and SSD and it will fly. I have already swapped out the old Hard drive for an SSD and I see no need to upgrade the RAM...yet. If you are on a budget you could just use the SD card slot for Ready boost. Won't help much but it's cheaper than buying an SSD drive. I saw some comments that said people were adding 4 to 8 GB of RAM. The manufacturer states it can only be upgraded to 6 GB. I will try it out and post another review if it works. Great for the price.