Pros:
-User replaceable battery! Hard to find in thin notebooks.
-Lots of aluminum! Keyboard, palm rests and screen backing are all metal.
-Bottom/underside is a thick plastic. Not cheap feeling at all.
-Matte screen with a 1366x768 is perfect for 14 inch display.
-Chicklet keyboard leaves a bit to be desired, but my desktop has a mechanical so its a bit of an adjustment. Adequate for typing.
-Very easy to get to the memory and HDD bay along with the screw holding in the ODD. Memory comes maxed out for this computer (8 gig max supported) but that is plenty for the foreseeable future.
-Mouse pad is smooth, not that annoying bumpy junk lots of notebook OEM's are using.
-Dimmable backlit keyboard.
-Dedicated Graphics card.
Cons:
-Quite a bit of bloatware. Easy to uninstall, would rather just get a disc and install what I want.
-Mouse pad placement is not good for me. My left plam/thumb keep tapping the upper left corner of the pad causing typing errors.
-The mouse buttons are not good.
-Pretty much I hate the mouse pad. There, I said it.
-Speakers are bad. They are loud, but that's it. Very tinney and hollow sounding. No range at all. Even for laptop speakers, they have a lot of room for improvement. Speaker placement is right under the palm rest.
Overall, I am really happy with this machine. Besides the mouse pad, its just as good in my hands as it looked on paper. After making sure I was going to keep this computer, I immediately swapped out the HDD for an SSD I had laying around the house. The stock HDD was really a huge bottle neck.
Here is the WEI;
Processor 7.1
Ram 7.5
Graphics 6.6
Gaming Graphics 6.6
I recently purchased this as an upgrade to a notebook I received for Christmas in 2010, and it's a very nice upgrade indeed. I've had some time to play with it and set it to my liking, and here are my thoughts:
Pros:
* Very light and thin, but it still has the RAM and storage space of a traditional full-size laptop
* 8GB of RAM, expandable to 16 even though ASUS says the max is 8!
* A dedicated graphics card. Not the best, but it'll do for some photo/video editing work and light gaming (can handle Portal and Team Fortress 2 just fine if that tells you anything. I don't think anything like Battlefield 3 would run at high settings though). I should add that this laptop's cousin, the U47A-RS51, has the exact same specs minus the graphics card.
* 6-cell battery, lasts a very long time. Max is about eight hours which is great.
* Can easily be customized. ASUS is known for this.
Cons:
* The trackpad. Damn it, I hate the trackpad. You'll get used to it, but it's still kind of annoying. It can get in the way of typing at times and the multi-touch scroll is awkward for people with large hands (like me).
* ASUS bloatware, but this comes with any computer. Install Windows 7 (or 8 if you prefer) from scratch and you should very nicely get around all that.
All in all, great purchase. 10/10 would buy again.
Buy ASUS U47VC-DS51 i5-3210M 2.5GHz 14.1" Notebook Now
Researched many laptops. ASUS U47VC is the best around. I always have had great luck with my ASUS custom builds and this laptop is better than the 16" one I previously bought and took back. You cannot upgrade memory on many others. With this you can go up to 16GB. Best laptop I have had. Im not nit picky about the sound since I have a sound bar that sits on top and sounds great. Like I said before. Alot of research went into this laptop.HD,upgradable,great chiclet backlit Keyboard. Very easy to type on.Highly reccomend this model
Read Best Reviews of ASUS U47VC-DS51 i5-3210M 2.5GHz 14.1" Notebook Here
The Asus U47VC is perfectly positioned between the ultrabooks, which are wonderfully light but uncomfortable for real work, and the heavier-weight laptops that have all the features but are too heavy to lug around all day. I am very happy with mine. The only problem was that I found upgrading to Windows 8 involved uninstalling and re-installing numerous drivers. I wish Asus would just put a Windows 8 drivers file on their website so that you could update everything at once. [Are you listening, Asus?]
Pros:
Light weight.
Great Keyboard--comfortable for work, no shallow feeling.
Optical drive, unlike ultrabooks.
Nicely sized, bright screen.
Solid Asus build.
8 gigs of RAM & fast processor.
Battery can be replaced by user, unlike ultrabooks.
Cons:
Touchpad makes the cursor jumpy, but this may merely require more adjustment.
Upgrading to Windows 8 is tedious and confusing.
I honestly don't know why there are so few professional reviews of this notebook out in the media. It is a terrific, elegant design where, for a few extra ounces, you get a computer that is much more than a toy for surfing the web and sending the occasional e-mail. This is my 3rd Asus notebook, and I continue to be impressed with the thought that goes into their best products.
Want ASUS U47VC-DS51 i5-3210M 2.5GHz 14.1" Notebook Discount?
This is my 2nd Asus laptop in the U series line. I previously had a 2011 model #U46SV and sold it recently to my cousin for a cool $700.
This review will be comparing both 2011 and 2012 models. As always with any laptop or ultrabook, I do a clean install on Win7 Pro x64 OS and installed a fresh Vertex 4 SSD 256gb I got on black friday sale!
My impressions with this year's model U47VC has met higher expectations than I thought.
It is slightly thinner, a bit lighter, and has extra features over last year's model.
Aesthetics I find the design of this laptop to be a major upgrade over the U46SV last year.
The battery is a lot more narrow and lighter.
Illuminated keyboard shines in the night time! Big + for me as I'm typing
this review in the night time :)
Brushed aluminum in gray this year over a silver finish. I like both whichever.
Touch pad design is neat and sleek. No separated buttons this time around.
Omission of VGA port. Finally yes! I cringed all the time, now it is gone!
Screen is anti-smudge fingerprint. Big + over last years model!
10/10 score on design and even feels like an Ultrabook. Well done Asus *Cheers*
Battery The battery lasts between 5 1/2 hrs 6 hours. It is just about the same amount
hours I get from a full charge than last year's model.
8/10
Gaming I played Walking Dead so far on Steam. Runs great with this nvidia 620m card.
However, I jumped from a 540m last year to a 620m and wonder if this year is weaker
or nearly the same performance. This is the only sacrifice I made in getting this
U47VC laptop.
Since I don't do much gaming on the go, this area here really suffices for me.
9/10
Features This laptop has an extra USB 3.0 port oppose to only one last year. The nice
architecture about Ivy bridge is it supports USB 3.0 natively from intel.
This means no more installing third party drivers. Yes finally!
10/10
Only downside to this laptop is the panel used in most laptops. TN panels have disaster viewing angles. I say enough is enough already with this low quality tech. IPS or AMVA panels are desirable.
9/10 laptop score overall. It is excellent and I hopefully will keep this gem for a few years to come until I get a super slim ultrabook.
Asus U47VC hits a homerun in the U series line in 2012. Again well done.
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Has exactly what you want and none of what you don't. Light, compact, and powerful. Not loaded up with bloat-ware either. Not a computer to get if you're really into gaming, but has all the power you need for pretty much anything else you need and is only a little bigger & heavier than a net-book. With the advantage of having a DVD RW drive.
