ASUS A54C-AB31 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black)

Edit- Amazon now has the laptop $100 more than I paid for it. Take that into consideration when reading the review.

I bought this for a present for a family member on the Black Friday deal, so my time using it only included starting it up, updating windows, removing Mcafee, installing adobe flash, reader, and Java, installing Libreoffice, and making the restore disks.

Unfortunately battery life will not be included in this review.

First impressions – WOW! taking it out of the box I was very impressed with the look, feel, and weight. It’s very light compared to my Toshiba and HP I3 laptops.

texture- the entire laptop as with most Asus laptops have what appears to be a semi-rough texture on the palm areas and mouse pad. This texture kept my family from buying these laptops and I have to say that’s very unfortunate, because after spending 5 hours setting the computer up I realized one thing.. I love the texture! It’s so much more comfortable than it appears.

Screen – I didn’t get to play games or watch movies, but what I did get to see is the viewing angle of the screen is pretty much unlimited. Unlike my Toshiba I3 LCD laptop that you have to constantly adjust the screen so you are square to it or you can’t see, the viewing angle of this Asus LED is very wide and actually better than my HP LED I3 laptop that cost twice as much.

RUNS COOL! – I can’t overstate this enough. Place my other two I3 laptops on the bed and within 20 minutes the Toshiba will be very warm and the HP will actually overheat with both units fans running at full speed like an airplane. I ran the Asus on the bed for 3 hours during my installation and the unit never got even close to luke warm. I’m not sure what in the design makes this happen, but my in person response was “Holy @#%!, I’ve never seen a laptop run this cool” and the fan was whisper quiet!! I may have just become an Asus laptop fan!

Some people may gripe about the 4 gb ram or the 320 gb hard drive – in response to this I have two I3 laptops one running 8 gb ram and the other running 4gb and neither have ever ever hit the ceiling. Usually the computers tend to run around 3.2 gb RAM use when multi tasking. Even with tons of movies and literally 100′s of excel, word, and publisher documents on all my laptops none of them would need a hard drive greater than 320 gb. We have networked terabyte hard drives in our house and everything is backed up to there anyway. I just don’t see a need for laptops sporting 500 gb or higher hard drives unless you like to travel with 50 or 60 full length uncompressed DVD movies. If you burn movies in blue ray quality however the 320 gb may be too small for your liking.

Pros:
I3 clocked at 2.1 ghz (pay attention to the clock speed some are clocked as low as 1.5 ghz with many in this category clocking in at 2.5ghz, 2.1 is respectable)
RUNS COOL
lightweight
screen angle widest and crispest I’ve seen on a laptop period
the tactile feel of the palm rest and mouse pad have to be experienced
key stroke response is very crisp
keyboard layout not cramped and very comfortable
USB 3.0 and HDMI

Cons (or what I didn’t like)
My biggest gripe is the power input. it’s mid chassis just outside the caps lock key. Most laptops have the power input on the side of the chassis as well but all the way to the back. This input location may really annoy people using their laptop while plugged in.
The DVD drive is a little on the loud side and appears slow. Burning the 4 restore disk on Sony DVD +r took 56 minutes.
no onboard graphics card

Overall: I really didn’t want to give this laptop up after using it. Without more time on it, it’s hard to say for sure, but what time I did have I liked it better than my Toshiba I3 and light years ahead of my HP I3. Amazon’s standard price of $389 makes this laptop an easy recommend and if you can get it on sale it’s an absolute must buy. Its performance vs price earns it an easy 5 stars. Well done Asus!

Bought this during the black friday sale for my dad for Christmas. The laptop has a cheap plastic feel with textures to make it feel, well, less cheap. But I didn’t buy it for the exterior, I bought it for the price/performance. I did remove some bloat ware that would potentially slow it down like the McAfee trial and some other stuff I know my dad nor I will ever need and installed MS Security essentials. It handles all the windows update fine, usually I’d get hiccups with some updates but not this time. I installed photoshop and illustrator and it runs well. The battery life is what you would expect about 4 hours of intensive usage. I know my dad is gonna love this when he gets it.

This is a basic laptop for a person who does basic things. In that regard, this laptop is GREAT. I had friends telling me to buy a MAC just because it’s popular and because I can afford one, but all I do is download music, browse the web, watch videos, and write countless college papers– all very simple things. So I didn’t need a pricey, over-the-top laptop; just something basic but of good quality and at a decent price. So a couple of people recommended an Asus. Not very familiar with Asus, I had to do a little research on it first. Then, I spotted this on Amazon one day. I’ve had it for a few days and I am quite pleased. I am not tech-savvy AT ALL, but the setup and everything was very easy and it runs quite smoothly (at least so far it does). My only aggravation with it is very slight– the keyboard is wider than what I am used to with my old Dell. The keys are wide and flat and my fingers can’t grip them, so my typing is sometimes very off unless I am looking down. But this is just an adjustment issue; I’m gradually getting used to it and I’m looking down less and less as I type more and more. Also, it is true that the volume doesn’t get too loud but that’s really not a big deal to me. I like how smoothly this laptop operates, its light weight (compared to my old Dell), and its simplicity– all at a great price!

Bought this for my Nana for Christmas when it was time to get rid of the old one (and it was definitely time). The fact that it was still available with Windows 7 was perfect as this made it an easy transition for an 80 yr old woman used to using XP. The full keyboard is a nice feature and she seems to like it for using Facebook, storing pictures, and managing her real estate career. Quite good for the basic computer user.

Product was easily tracked, arrived on time, very easy to assemble and does everything add said it does. Would buy another if I could

Updated(after 2 months of use)

I bought this laptop on black Friday (about $100 discount) to my brother who wants to use it for word processing, internet browsing, watching videos and playing games. I have used it for the last three weeks. Surprisingly, I found this laptop to be much better than my Toshiba Satellite M305D-S4828 which I bought for $700 about four years ago. So I decided to use this for myself and give my old one to my bro. I am planning to use it for basic applications (internet, video, games…) and also to run simulations in Matlab which needs a fast processor.

Pros.
-I3 2.1GHZ processor which is very adequate for most applications that I am planning to use it for
-Runs very cool
-Number keys pad included in the key board
-HDMI and USB 3.0 outputs
-Light weight for a 15.6 inch laptop
-Inexpensive

Cons.
-The quality of the speaker is average. Slightly Lower than my Toshiba laptop (Dolby sound room).
-Power input location is on the side. I would prefer it on the back side.

Other info
I got about 2hrs battery life on high-performance. So I would say about 3 – 3.5 hrs if it is used on power saver mode. I am not really concerned about battery life either because battery performance usually decreases fast upon use.

In summary, I am very satisfied with this laptop.

I WAS LOOKING FOR A SMALLER UP TO DATE COMPUTER. NOT KNOWING THIS NAME I TOOK A CHANCE AND IT IS A GREAT ONE. THE SPEED IS TERRIFIC AND I LOVE THE OUTSIDE COVERING. NO PRINTS. FOR THE PRICE I PAID, IT SUITS MY NEEDS.

I don’t require anything too high tech for my home computer – word and excel document work, some surfing of the internet and watching movies or listening to music is about it. Just follow the initial prompts to burn recovery discs (I needed 3 discs for this process) before loading or unloading any new software. For the nontech geek it was easy enough.

I bought this for my girlfriend who only uses a computer for docs, photo downloads from her camera, scanning and email. This was a perfect computer for her and very easy to set up. When it arrived, and I used the express two day mail since the first computer was stolen, I assume at the post office since it was tracked there and never left. I think Amazon should pack these in brown paper with no indication that it is a laptop. Anyway, this one came in quickly after I waited 10 days for the other one to show up, but it never did.

So when this arrived, I just had to plug it into the wall and turn it on.

Some points:

1. You need 6 CD’s to back up the computer so have them ready when it arrives.
2. You have McAfee installed and good for 10 days. I just bought McAfee for two years, no problems. You need to find the hidden McAfee icon on the bottom task bar to activate it though, a little white arrow pointing up to the right. No issue there.
3. I also downloaded Malwarebytes, free edition.
4. Needed to buy Microsoft Office Students and install that.
5. Adobe is already installed.
6. I bought two USB hubs for around 15 dollars each and plugged them in. Worked fine. There are only 2 USB ports and I wanted to have the scanner and printer on one hub and I use an external keyboard and mouse so plugged them into the other. No issues.
7. You have the normal registration window to fill out of course.

Hope this helps.

So far so good, By design its an average laptop, nice weight, but not as thin as you may want. Price its ok, according with its specifications.

The only bad point is that even when I upgraded to 8 GB of ram, there is no way to increase the shared video memory, considering it has an acceptable video card, there is no option on BIOS to add more video memory.