ASUS K55N-DS81 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Deals

By Michael Freed -
This review is from: ASUS K55N-DS81 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) (Personal Computers)
I did a lot of research before finally purchasing this laptop by ASUS. The biggest selling points for me were as follows:

ASUS 1 year "360 Notebook Warranty" including 1 year of Accidental Damage/Handling and a Limited 1 year manufacturer warranty.
The AMD A8 4500M APU is super speedy. If you're purchasing a laptop beware that the A6 4400 has a 1MB L2 cache while the A8 has a BIG 4MB L2 cache. While the dual core is rated at a higher frequency the quad core is capable of handling multiple data loads simultaneously much more efficiently.
The Radeon 7640G has 512mb dedicated memory and is capable to pull from the system resources. While this machine CANNOT run games at the highest settings it does an excellent job of being able to run MOST games at low-med settings with high FPS.
4gb ram upgradeable to 16gb.

Pros: Low Price point, 1 year ADH warranty, fast quad core cpu, 4mb L2 cache, fast HDD, fast boot option, instant on resume function- 2 second wake-up from sleep mode.

Cons: Poor viewing angles on screen, plastic shell/case,

 By Jeff Bloom (Norfolk, VA) -
This review is from: ASUS K55N-DS81 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) (Personal Computers)
I doubted this laptop would perform that well given its $399 price tag. Incredibly I continue to be blown away by its superb performance, it has quickly become my favorite (of six) computers to use! Even though it's comprised of plastic, it's light weight and superior performance leave me wanting little. Even with 3D games, the performance continues to astound me given the low price I paid.

I bought a 16GB memory upgrade for $85 a week later and it has solidly placed this laptop at the top of my techy toys list. I am dumbfounded by the sheer performance of this low cost laptop.

Pros: low price, above average performance, memory up-gradable to 16GB and out performs my MacBook that cost $1300.

Cons: Made of plastic and does not have superman powers..

By Alexander (CA)
This review is from: ASUS K55N-DS81 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) (Personal Computers)
I recently bought a high-end HP laptop and also purchased this ASUS laptop (both from a sources other than Amazon). If I compare the two the HP was about 3 times the price but had a very fast i7 processor with high end graphics and a large disk and and RAM. The ASUS has a low end quad core processor, mid range graphics, less ram and smaller disk. But otherwise the machines have similar specs: same screen size, number and type of USB ports, HDMI & VGA, DVD burner, and card reader.

Why compare them you ask? What I am really comparing is the experience of buying an HP (a market leader) vs ASUS (a less known brand).

That is all background, now the interesting part:
* ASUS is rated highest reliability after 3 years while HP is rated worst. See Ton's Hardware for a nice chart.
* The ASUS does have a weird touch pad - as others have mentioned. This is the 2nd ASUS laptop that I have purchased and the both had unusual and/or confusing touch pads or mouse buttons. This new machine's touch pad suffers from sensitivity issues and also from the strange design of only having a single physical switch under the pad which means to click easily, you need to be near the center of the pad. But to determine if it is a right or left click, ASUS uses the location of your finger on the touch pad at the time of the click. Clever design idea but irritating to use. I normally use a wireless mouse so this is not a deal killer for me. ASUS, if you are reading this, just go with a normal touch pad with normal top mounted buttons that are not too stiff. Then you won't stand out in a bad way.
* The ASUS is usable right out of the box (assuming you can stomach Win 8). It has not bloatware like an HP and also comes with Win 8 straight, not the handicapped Win 8 Home version that HP uses. This is a huge plus for me.
* Finally, the display is better on the ASUS. Both displays are the same resolution and size. But HP uses a really cheap LCD panel that has poor contrast. The ASUS is better for contrast which makes text more readable. This is also a huge plus.

So whats the net-net? From now on when I shop for to new laptop, I will look to ASUS first and won't even consider HP (given their poor reliability ratings, bloatware, and poor readability displays). But I will also pay attention to the touch pad and the mouse buttons when looking at ASUS in the future given their proclivity of wandering of the tried and true path in this area.