Like its more expensive brother, the UX31A ultrabook, the ASUS X550C has an eye-catching cover design with a gradient effect and the ASUS logo in the center. However, unlike the UX31A, our beast has a lid made of plastic, not aluminum. Matte plastic, a little rough, the lid does not slip in the hands. At the same time, the material is selected so that untidy fingerprints are not visible, which affects models with glossy surfaces, unlike the ASUS X550C, the design reviews of which are thoroughly positive.
Under the lid is a silver keyboard with a grayish tint; palm rest differs in color. Nice design decision.
On the left side there are LED indicators for pressing the Caps Lock key , a battery indicator, Wi-Fi and hard drive operation indicators. When you print the text, no indicators are visible from under your arm. Not that this is a significant drawback, but engineers should have thought about a more convenient location for the display panel.
The laptop measures 14.9 x 9.8 x 0.97 inches and weighs 2 kg. It turns out that it is slightly larger and lighter compared to laptops of other manufacturers from the same price category trying to compete with the ASUS X550C. Characteristics of the laptop has the following.
Screen
Fifteen-inch screen ASUS X550CA with a resolution of 1366 x 786 pixels will not leave anyone indifferent. The picture quality is good, but not excellent. When viewing an image from a hash of colors, if you look closely, some colors appear worse than others, although not very much.
The viewing angle of the screen is only 60 degrees in both directions. You will not surprise anyone with this, although when was the last time you watched a movie on a laptop at an angle of 165 degrees? That's it.
X550CA does not have a touch screen. Another was not to be expected for a pathetic fourteen thousand. At the same time, Windows 8 is bundled. Of course, it is now popular to put this OS even on microwave ovens, but here it is completely useless. The "seven" would have looked better.
The built-in image quality control panel offers a choice of three modes: "Normal", "Cinema" (adds yellowness) and "Lightening" (adds white shades). There is also a manual setting, with which you can play with the slider, adjusting the color balance.
Sound
The sound of the X550CA is excellent. Speakers give powerful and rich sound. ASUS decided not to save on sound and integrated quite high-quality speakers with a wide range of sound and rather impressive bass into a number of budget laptops. The sound was very high quality without any extraneous noise.
The kit also comes with the ability to adjust the sound. There are five modes: Standard, Music, Cinema, Streaming and Speech.
Keyboard and touchpad
Consider the input devices X550C ASUS. The keyboard turned out to be full-sized due to its not the smallest dimensions of the laptop itself. Asus engineers say the laptop has a special keyboard. The depth of the keys, their size and resistance when pressed are selected in such a way as to avoid accidental keystrokes during high-speed printing.
Field tests showed an average typing speed of 80 words per minute with an error rate of one. At the same time, for some reason, there were problems with a space, when it seems that you clicked it, but actually not.
Options ASUS X550CA with a large touchpad is justified due to the lack of a touch screen and the presence of Windows 8 on board. The touchpad ASUS X550CA has multi-touch support, making swiping on it conveniently and comfortably.
Heating and cooling
ASUS uses IceCool technology, which really works. After fifteen minutes of streaming HD quality video, the ASUS X550CA laptop barely reached a threshold of 30 degrees. The keyboard has warmed up even less. In this case, the declared upper threshold for safe temperature is 35.6.
Webcam
Let's take a look at the ASUS X550C camera . Her characteristics leave much to be desired.
The laptop has a built-in webcam of 9 megapixels, but the image is still disgusting. A bunch of artifacts and color distortion. It’s not possible to make out small details at all. In other words, the laptop’s webcam is no good.
Ports
If you intend to use the X550CA as your primary work machine, you will most likely run into a shortage of USB ports. The laptop has only two USB interfaces: 2.0 and 3.0, while located nearby on the left side of the laptop. There are also HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, microphone jacks and headphones. Left DVD drive. Combined card reader is located on the front side.
Performance
The dual- core Intel Core I3 processor with a frequency of 1.8 GHz and 4 gig of RAM does not allow calling the ASUS X550C a powerful gaming laptop, but its capacities are enough for comfortable work in classic work applications and in not very demanding games. However, a lot depends on the operating system. In Windows 8, eleven simultaneously open pages in the Chrome web browser significantly load the laptop, although it would seem that there is nothing special about this. The metro interface with such a load opens with a delay of a couple of seconds, although after that it works smoothly and without complaints.
Despite the fact that the laptop comes with a rather slow hard drive of 500 GB, the G8 loads in just 12 seconds, which is much faster than the Lenovo counterpart, which takes 23 seconds to load.
Copying a 4.97 GB movie comes at a speed of about one and a half times higher than that of counterparts from other manufacturers, which is good news for ASUS users and engineers.
Picture
You should not expect much from the Intel HD Graphics 4000. Yes, you can play some toys, but forget about twisting the graphics settings to the maximum. Will slow down significantly.
In the same Vovka, the laptop produces only 24 fps, although the graphics there are far from the highest grade. For comparison, Lenovo provides stable 27 fps, which is much more pleasant to play with, but Hp also does not raise the fps value above 24.
Battery
With working Wi-Fi, the laptop’s operating time is limited to 4 hours, provided that you just surf the Internet. If you watch movies, listen to music, work in applications or play, the laptop’s battery life is significantly reduced.
Asus x550c: price
Also an important question.
The ASUS X550CA laptop comes with the following features as standard:
- 1.8 GHz dual-core Intel core I3 processor;
- 4 Gb RAM;
- HHD 500 GB;
- Intel HD Graphics 4000.
The price of this miracle is $ 449 (15,000 rubles).
If you want to get a more powerful machine, perhaps you should take a closer look at the X550CA-DB51:
- 2.7-core Intel Core i5-3337U processor with a clock frequency of 2.7;
- 8GB RAM;
- HDD 750GB.
All this costs 570 dollars (about 17.500 rubles).
conclusions
Very attractive in appearance. The sound and price of the ASUS X550C ( reasoned reviews ) are also on par. Almost everyone has a miserable 500 bucks. However, the viewing angle of the screen, a slow hard drive, a weak battery and not very powerful iron lubricate the rainbow picture. For the same price, you can buy more powerful laptops of competitive brands, for example, the HP Pavilion g6t with a flawless bright screen, longer battery life and more powerful hardware. However, if you need a working laptop with excellent sound and appearance, on which you will not play the latest games of the Total War series, this model will suit you perfectly.
Customer reviews
Regarding performance, buyers are of the opinion that this technique meets expectations. G8 works just fine. It is possible to upgrade the laptop to 16 GB of RAM. It will turn out very powerful. Can be used as a portable video player. Users are very satisfied.
However, there are some claims to the technique. A little weird touchpad. Periodically does not recognize gestures or recognizes incorrectly. There are minor complaints about the screen: something is missing - either brightness, or clarity. Maybe it's a matter of resolution? Not the best picture. There are still not enough USB ports. Only two ports are not enough.