I own three of the latest tablets/laptops and this is by far the best of the bunch in terms of balancing power, weight, and usability. The other two laptops I own are a Microsoft Surface Pro (too dinky and unstable) and a core-i7 Dell w/ a maxed out graphics card (too big and heavy).Before I begin the technical part of my review, let me say how I use my computers. As an information systems & digital media professor I use my computers for basic tasks like writing papers, lecturing, and presentations. With it's 15.6 inch touchscreen, it's perfect for those. However, as part of my research and teaching, I also use my computers for programming, 3D modeling, animation, visual effects, digital inking, and video production.
My computers need to be powerful enough to not only run Microsoft Office, but Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and Premier, as well as Autodesk Maya, and the Visual Studio programming environment.
Rather than just list features I'll describe why I feel the ASUS is better than my other computers.
Why the Asus is better than my Surface Pro: Both the Surface Pro and the Asus S550CA have core-i5 processors running at the same speed. The Surface Pro has better screen resolution (1920x1080 vs 1366x768). HOWEVER, the Surface packs 1080p into an 11 inch screen, which is too small to use especially in desktop mode where it's hard to touch the tiny icons. I find the ASUS's 1366x768 *perfect* for selecting icons in desktop mode. Of course the Surface Pro is more portable, but you pay for that portability. It only has a single USB 2.0 port, whereas the ASUS has 2 USB 2.0 ports and a USB 3.0 port. The ASUS also has a VGA port, which is still the standard when you're hooking up to projectors. If you want to hook up to a VGA projector on the Surface, you need to buy a $40 adapter. So to summarize, the ASUS is just as powerful, easier to use in terms of the touchscreen, and has better connectivity.
Why the ASUS is better than my maxed out Dell: the Dell's too heavy and gets too hot. Yes, when I need speed for my apps and when I want to play games I use my Dell with it's quad-i7 and discrete graphics card. But the Asus is fast enough for all the applications I mentioned and I only notice the lack of power when I render videos & animations--not while I'm creating them.
Anyway, I don't want this review to get too long. I want to end by saying that I compared the features of my Asus to other ultrabooks at the same price point like the Acers, HPs, and Lenovos, and what I found, to my surprise, was that these other ultrabooks were missing the DVD writer and the VGA port that my Asus had. You may not need these features, but they're important for what I do.
Bottom line: Highly Recommended!
The Asus S550C looks beautiful with it's aluminum finish and is light weight. the screen is very nice and bright and colours are correct with good contrast. The touch screen is very nice and responsive. I feel the touch screen is an excellent feature to have if you are running windows 8, as the apps work beautifully with that and closing an app is easily done using the touch screen. (in case you are not familiar with win 8 apps; they do not have a close button like the windows programs, and always run fullscreen. to close an app you have to left click at the top of the screen and drag the curser to the bottom of the screen. this is not easy if you use the touchpad only.) Plus this being a laptop, you don't have to hold the screen up with one hand.
The laptop is very very fast, 10 second bootup from shutdown, and 2 second wakeup from sleep. Core i5 is very powerful. 6GB RAM is more than adequate. the sound is good and loud. (Some HP have ALTEC LANSING speakers that do a better job though.). And has one USB 3 port, HDMI out port, which are all very useful.
But...
it is not without drawbacks either. The screen has a gloss finish and is reflective (not a major issue though). If you touch the Alumunium cover with oily hands, it will get print marks and these are really hard to remove. The camera is crap compared to HP. (this is just like the one I had in my 2007 model with poor low light performance and bad in backlit conditions.) the DVD drive open button need to be pressed quite hard to open it. The touch pad is slightly mal-aligned (probably in my copy only) and the SD card slot is under the power/charging light set and you have to tilt the laptop up to see it. And to see the SD icon you need to turn the laptop upside down (Initially I thought this was a defect in the cover until I realized it's the SD slot. the SD slot is not marked in the manual either!!!!). There is only one jack for headphone and mic. So if you have an old headset with one jack for speakers and one for the mic, you need to choose which is more important to you , or buy a new headset. The keyboard is not good. the feel of key-press is not good and sometimes the key gets half pressed and you miss a letter. the HP laptops had better tactile feedback and the keys feel more precise. I think even my old ASUS had better keys.
If you can live with these limitations this laptop is a very good buy for you. It would be best for you to try out a few laptops at your local store before deciding on one. And do compare the keyboards before buying as it may be a game changer if you do a lot of typing.
Buy ASUS VivoBook S550CA-DS51T 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Now
I purchased this s550 vivobook from Costco a few weeks ago. I got it from Costco because the assurance if I do not like the item, I can return it (up to 90 days, was it?).I had an HP DV6 6119wm before I Got this laptop. I purchased the HP a year ago and was so upset with the quality and lack of HP backing their own product, I actually just decided to sell it and get a new one.
Things certainly changed since a year ago. Most of the laptops now are touch screen and with windows 8, which when I was at the store I had to spend about 20 minutes just trying to get used to how to navigate windows 8. The touch screen was nice and it had 10-key which I need. It's fast enough and light with a sleek design that is not cheap looking like some laptops in this price range are.
The good:
Slim, light and ample amount of ports including VGA
Has optical drive and card reader
10-key
SSD makes for SUPER fast resuming.
Quiet! this laptop is very quiet and that is very nice to have.
The bad:
The 10 key is nearly useless because the arrow keys actually take up space within the 10-key's real estate. I REALLY hate this. The ZERO key should be horizontal and twice the size, the shift/ctrl keyes should be made smaller and the arrow keys should take up the rest of that extra space to make this a PERFECT 10 for me, but since these design mistakes are there it's just shy of that for me.
The ugly:
Battery life is so-so, but then when you see how big the battery is you'll know why. I don't need to be mobile and i'm almost always near an outlet but it would be nice. Perhaps I could play with the settings to increase this?
The touchpad is too far to the left. It would be nice if the divider of left/right click was raised because unless I look at the pad, I often times are clicking to far to the right and end up right clicking, problems I haven't had with other laptops.
The 6GB of memory is the max this line can take and that is terrible. My last year's HP DV6 I maxed out to 16gb. 6GB seems oftly small of a limitation for new hardware.
In short, this laptop is a good buy for the price. You get a lot of features and I don't feel like i'm missing much.
Read Best Reviews of ASUS VivoBook S550CA-DS51T 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Here
When I fist picked up the computer after receiving it, I was like "wow! is that it?" I've never had a computer this thin. It didn't feel like a normal laptop in my hands. I really like how thin and light it is. The display is great. (personally I don't need super high-definition or anything like that) The almost edge to edge glass gives the screen a nice look. It is definitely built to last being made almost entirely out of aluminum. The underside is plastic but the keyboard area and top are all aluminum. The silver aluminum around the keyboard resists marks and fingerprints wonderfully!. The dark aluminum top is a different story. Fingerprints easily show up when touching any part of the top. This of course doesn't affect the performance in any way, you just have to be cleaning the top often for it to continue to look nice. I've only had the computer for a few weeks but I give it a hard use. I teach online, use it for entertainment, etc... basically everything.TOUCHSCREEN If this were a windows7 computer the touchscreen would be useless, but since this comes with windows8 I love having the touchscreen! Windows 8 takes some getting used to, but the touchscreen makes it so much easier. Also the smart trackpad is awesome. You have to learn the different gestures it accepts which are different from a normal laptop trackpad. If you are used to using touchscreen phones, etc. it will be super easy and it really adds to the windows8 experience. Having a glossy screen, it does get fingerprints on it easily, but the computer comes with a nice cloth that cleans them off in a few seconds.
KEYBOARD The keyboard is ok, nothing special. Several other people have mentioned that sometimes you think you've pressed a letter but it doesn't show up. This happens to me too, but less and less as I am getting used to the amount of pressure I need to apply to the keys.
PERFORMANCE The computer is decently fast. I haven't noticed any lagging so far. Be sure to turn off automatic updates, or it will obligate you to restart no matter what you are in the middle of doing every once in a while. Twice while watching Hulu it restarted by itself for no apparent reason. It hasn't done it since though, so I'm not sure what that was about. While teaching I will have multiple programs open at the same time (blackboard collaborate, browser with up to 8 windows open, gtalk, powerpoint, word and skype) and it continues to work perfectly. The i5 processor and 6gb ram do a great job for what I need it.
COOLING Tons of laptops have issues overheating. My last two were HP's which had tons of problems overheating. I'm not sure how Asus does it but this computer stays supercool! I've never heard the fans running, even on high performance with all my programs open. The aluminum stays cool and only sometimes will it feel slightly warm. I love this aspect of it.
SPEAKERS The speakers are oddly positioned on the bottom of the computer. I couldn't figure out why but, regardless they work great. They are louder than any other laptop I've ever owned, however when turned up past 80-90 the sound quality starts to suffer a little and I think it could damage them if used often at those levels. Where I live there is a lot of ambient noise and with my last laptop(15.6" hp)unless it was the dead of night I would almost always have to plug in extra speaker. Since buying this laptop I've only had to do that once or twice.
I would definitely recommend this laptop to almost anybody. It's a well-built, fast performing laptop especially for this price! Windows 8 needs a review of it's own. I don't mind it and think it has some nice features especially with the touchscreen.
Want ASUS VivoBook S550CA-DS51T 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Discount?
Okay, already own hmmm over 8 notebooks ranging on the small side: Viliv N5, Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 10.1" 64GB Win 8 Pro Tablet (367927U), Alienware 10 inch notebok and Apple MacBook Air MD760LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION). On the mid size Samsung Series 9 NP900X3E-A02US 13.3-Inch Full HD 1080p Premium Ultrabook and Apple MacBook Pro MD101LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION) and on the large size Alienware M17x R4 AM17xR4-8424BK 17.3-Inch Laptop (Stealth Black with Soft Touch Finish),Sony VAIO Tap All-in-One Touchscreen SVJ20217CXW 20-Inch Desktop (White) and 17 inch Macbook Pro.However, for appointments where I need to meet with clients and do anything other than book and appointment or take notes (where the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 10.1" 64GB Win 8 Pro Tablet (367927U) is used).
The size of the Asus Vivobook is a little larger than your standard 15 inch notebook (15 x 10.5 verse 14 x 9.5 for my Samsung Series 9 NP900X3E-A02US 13.3-Inch Full HD 1080p Premium Ultrabook) but not to big for most notebook bags (but perhaps check the size specs).
I would suggest the ASUS VivoBook S550CA-DS51T 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) instead of the ASUS VivoBook S550CA-DS51T 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black). Only differance is that the ASUS VivoBook S550CA-DS51T 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) has a CD/DVD drive.
As far a boot speed, good. Not the quickest but not the slowest but lets remember SSD and HDD configuration instead of straight SDD drives.
Keyboard layout is slightly smaller than normal but I am a 6'3, 210 lb male with large fingers and no major problem takes a bit to get used to to using the numerical keypad and the numerical keypad keys are slight smaller and closer together than normal.
Love the number of USB ports, hate notebooks with only two ports (Apple take note)!
So the Pro's and Con's:
Pro's:
-Fast boot time from SSD
-Good Memory size
-Numerical keypad (for anyone in the numbers business this is key)
-Bright clear screen
-Touchscreen have to keep reminding myself that I can touch the screen)!
-Trackpad, actually not bad love the vertical line on the bottom to let me know left and right sides very smart!
Con's:
-Slightly smaller than normal keyboard
-Screen resolution would love to see higher resolution but understand that limits with touchscreens
-Would love full SSD version.
-Would love to see higher memory configurations.
Basically, I keep on the leading edge of technology and when it came to looking for a slim notebook that includes everything (touchscreen, numerical keypad, SSD, slim size), this notebook was the closest on the market.
Hopes this help :)
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