Hello and thank you for reading this review. I'm not going to babble much so lets get straight to Business.
Overview: The Asus X550JX is a Multimedia/gaming hybrid,It gives You great specs for a great price.But what ARE these great specs you say? Well, read the whole review and if I don't forget or misspell anything You'll find out.
The specs are as follows:
GTX 950M Gddr3 4 GB - i7 4720HQ 2.6Ghz - 8GB dual channel 1600 mhz ram -1 TB 5400RPM WD HDD
1920x1080 TFT backlit LCD , Matte - VGA Camera - Sonic master Sound - 4 cell Lithium-ion 44Wh Battery
2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, 1x Ethernet port, 1x VGA 1x HDMI port, 1x Combo Wombo SPDIF port
3-in-1 Card reader - DVD RW drive - 2 Year it was Your-own-damn-Fault warranty that's Worth
nothing.
Kensington Lock - 120 W ,19V DC 3.42 A Power Brick
Package: In the box You find The Laptop itself ,The charger, Driver DVD and a Logitech m105 mouse with Asus' name on it (don't ask) ,and a Bag that I'm sure didn't Cost Asus more than 5$.
Size: 38 CM wide, 25.1 CM Deep and 2.92~3.17 CM High.
Pre-installed Bloatware: It came with Free DOS installed so no need to worry about that.
Chassis and body:The Entire body is made of Good quality Plastic,The lid cover is Glossy and very susceptible to Finger prints and smudges,the inner body however is matte,and does a better job at covering up finger prints. the Color Black rules supreme when it comes to the general look,with stylish red stripes running Down the Sides of both the lid and the Keyboard Area, overall, A very beautiful machine.
the bottom most part can be opened so that you upgrade Your total Ram To 12 GB max,change the HDD,And Access the WiFi card.
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Screen: The Screen isn't Something You'd go around talking about,the colors are nice,the brightness Is good but the Viewing angles are just bad.It is also impossible to Achieve the color Black,not matter What you do.When Viewing from Head-on, the bottom Half is Kinda Gray and the top half Is too Dark and weird.
Thankfully it Doesn't have that Blue hue most TN Panels have.It's a shame about the black though.
So the screen isn't exactly the best.shame on....someone, I don't know.
Webcam: The Webcam is as meh as it gets,but for this price point, some compromises had to be made.in dark environments it's the same as being off,and the quality is just average, something You'd get out of a 2$ webcam.
Keyboard and touch-pad: Black Chiclet Keyboard with Red letters, Kinda makes it hard to see at night considering it Doesn't have back lighting. It is however very Pleasant to use whether for Typing or Gaming. It offers good feedback,and never misses any stroke,no matter how vigorous it may be.There is never any flex when typing.
The touch-pad is also Black, no apparent physical buttons. It's not in the middle,and Is veered to the left,Sitting directly beneath the Alt button. Similar to the keyboard it is also very pleasant and accurate to use,and does a good job at palm rejection.Clicking is also Good,nothing more and nothing less.
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Battery:As I said it comes with a 4 cell 44 Wh battery, and those number mean You shouldn't count on getting more than 5 hours of daily use,like WiFi Surfing and such.Getting more than an hour of gaming is also out of the question.
Performance:So we finally get to the important part,performance. Daily use is GOOD,but it's only GOOD because of the 5400 HDD,it takes ~14 seconds to boot.and programs Start/load rather fast,but I, for the life of me can't figure out Why whenever i Right click,it takes a second or two to load the right click Menu.
gaming performance is exactly what You'd Expect from these specs,i haven't installed that many games yet but here are the results of the ones i have.
Dishonored maxed out at 1080 60+ FPS
Tomb Raider: ultimate with FXAA ~25 FPS
Batman Arkham City: Maxed with highest physX ~20-35 FPS
Metro LL: maxed no SSAA,physX on ~17-22 FPS
so as You see it a Pretty Decent Setup for games.
Throttling and Heat: These's no throttling on AC ( as you'd imagine),on battery though The results are unpredictable, i managed to run Dishonored flawlessly on Battery with the same FPS as on AC,but Tomb Raider Proved to be a different story,it ran Just like AC for the most part,but there were instances where the GPU Clock went down to 200, causing massive FPS loss,they lasted for about 5 seconds then it was fine again,with ~1 minute intervals between each throttle,either way,it does a surprisingly good job when it comes to running games on battery,with Normal games being perfectly playable,but very demanding Games are left wanting.
as for the heat neither the GPU nor the CPU heat up to a degree that it becomes risky,the highest GPU temp I've recorded is 71 during furmark. The CPU Reached 85 while Running Furmark's CPU burner test with 8 threads.
The body it self Doesn't Heat up at all,except for the area to the left of Tab and Esc,which becomes moderately warm,the keyboard area however stays cool no matter what.
Noise: No noise even under heavy load,the only SOMETIMES audible sound is the hard drive,which some times makes a Ticking sound.That is all.
Sound: The Audio is very pleasant, and offers good depth, Bass is kinda lacking however but. nothing a little equalizer cant fix. Something that Asus had already thought of when they put ICEpowers Audio wizard in the Driver DVD,it has Presets that include Game mode,Music,Movie and Speech,all of which are actually good.
Conclusion: I like it.
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