Asus A32-U53 Battery |
Posted: October 26, 2014 |
The wi-fi card is an Intel branded one so this is a Centrino machine. I’ve never had problems connecting at distances of 100 feet from the access point, and that’s as far as I can go from the one in my office before I crash into a wall, so that’s as good as I need and no complaints.Battery The Asus A6V gave me exactly 3 hours and 1 minute of battery life with Wi-Fi on, screen at half brightness and while letting the notebook idle or use it to browse the web and do other small tasks. This is not bad for battery life. Others say they’ve been getting 3.5 hours per charge. That could easily be accomplished by turning off wi-fi, Bluetooth and setting the screen brightness down some. If you watch a movie you’ll get closer to 2 – 2.5 hours of battery, which is usually ample for watching a movie. You know what was the most refreshing thing about the V6V? There wasn’t tons of garbage software installed. No AOL trial software thank goodness. In fact, it’s a pretty fresh install of Windows XP Pro other than some Asus utilities included for configuring your power settings, wireless and bluetooth settings, getting updates from Asus and a trial verson of Norton AntiVirus. Now the flip-side is that you don’t get any really cool software included for free, but I think most of us are happy to have a clean machine and install our own stuff anyway. I prefer that. If you want a thin and light notebook with a good screen and excellent performance for its category, the V6V is definitely worth a look. The build of this notebook and look are very nice. A lot of people that shun big brand names such as Dell, HP or Apple (news break, Apple is not counter culture any more) and like to seek out notebook companies that are currently small players but offer strong products will like Asus. I have to confess this is the first Asus product I’ve used and, while I’ll stick to using my ThinkPad T43 for what my needs are, I’m impressed by this Asus offering and feel comfortable recommending the brand and this notebook in particular. Mobile professionals that like to do a little gaming or a college student that wants a notebook for work, play and mobility can look to this model. Thanks to PROPortable for giving me this opportunity to review the V6800V. Asus is available worldwide, but they are generally not sold in mainstream retail outlets such as Best Buy or CompUSA in the U.S. Rather you’ll find Asus sold by independent stores. Do your research when buying from an independent seller, using online forums or word of mouth is a great way to find out what people think about particular Asus sellers. We are able to of course recommend PROPortable.com if you’re in North America, but there are other honest and good sellers out there so once you’ve decided that an Asus notebook might fit your needs then do your homework and find a good place to buy from.
I can’t help but mention the modern, sleek touchpad that the A8Js sports. The touchpad has no separation between the left and right mouse button — it appears to be just one big button, but in fact it still retains its left/right clicking abilities. The touchpad feels almost identical to the rest of the laptop.The black keyboard contrasts nicely with the silver case and the Asus logo on the lid of the laptop is understated but still impressive.I’ve seen many screens in my day and I would say that this screen is one of the best for several reasons. First, the resolution really sets it apart. It’s tough to find 14” screens with anything higher than WXGA resolution. I’m used to higher resolution laptops, so I’m biased, but it just seems that if you can turn up font settings and if you can’t tell the difference between games at native and non-native resolutions then you might as well go for the higher resolution. Second, the viewing angles are surprisingly good and there seems to be a large error margin for being within the “sweet spot”. Third, the clarity and brightness of the screen are superb and the glare-type screen (versus matte) is not as distracting as I had feared it would be. Battery life ranges from around 2 hours 15 minutes at full brightness and while downloading large files over wireless. With battery saving mode on, that number changes to around 2 hours 40 minutes. Not too shabby, I thought it would be worse so I was pleasantly surprised. It’s not ideal for road warriors but okay for those who need some battery time between plug-ins.The A8Js comes with Windows XP Professional and Asus is a part of the Vista Express Upgrade program so if you buy it during the promotional period, you should have a free or at least subsidized upgrade to the new Windows Vista. A lot of software comes pre-installed, but it’s not as bad as other manufacturers. Skype comes pre-installed as does Norton Antivirus but the majority of the other programs are Asus utilities which actually are pretty useful. Power4Gear has a variety of power settings and Asus’ Splendid program has varying color settings for different occasions. Included was a carrying case which says Asus Design on it and an Asus optical scroll-wheel mouse. The case is stylishly subdued and I think I’ll use it, but the mouse is just way too small. It’s bigger than the typical notebook mouse but markedly smaller than a standard mouse. Personally, I abhor smaller mice and this fits into that category.This is a laptop where it’s hard to go wrong. My one complaint would be the battery life, but for the price and the feature set it’s a small complaint among many praises. This laptop is exactly what I was looking for and it should last me on through law school. Hopefully its gaming prowess won’t prove to be too much of a distraction during my studies. I would recommend this to those gamers who like power but don’t want to lug around unwieldy 17” desktop replacement laptops. Asus has found the niche between thin and light and desktop replacement and I applaud the A8Js for fitting my needs so perfectly. With the coming of the Intel Duo Core age, Centrino based laptops are reaching the peak in performance packaging. With prices falling on models even with dedicated PCIe, you can now get mobility and graphics in one at affordable price. The Asus W3V is one of those great packages that also come with a beautifully designed shell at a reasonably portable size. As mentioned in the other reviews, W3V comes with a native resolution of 1280×800, which may be a bit high given the 14″ widescreen. But it nevertheless displays sharp text and vibrant photo images and is comfortably visible at normal working distance. One complaint I have regarding the screen is that it has a blue hue, giving it a “cool” overtone, which can be adjusted under the color management in video properties. But calibration requires some time with a CRT monitor nearby. The slower hard drive definitely has its toll on performance. I wondered why Asus decided not to install a SATA 5400rpm HD. Cost was probably the first issue. Second may be heat. A faster HD also meant more heat. The performance gain from a faster HD may be offset by the extra heat generated under load. Case in point, the 3DMarks05 score, which is about a factor or so lower than its 15.4″ siblings of identical hardware specification. It’s probably a good idea that Asus went for the X600 rather than the X700. If the latter were in place, the computer might run even hotter. Regardless, the score is still on the magnitude of 2-3 factors higher than an integrated graphics card. So I am happy with that. I only have an ABG class router at home, and this (aside from my PDA) is the first PC that I have used for any extended period of time on it. The router is only around 10 feet away on the other side of what is probably only a thick plasterboard wall but the laptop picks up the signal very well, and is 90% in the “Excellent” range. I have not had a real chance to test the range of the wi-fi but I did notice that it picks up around five more access points than my house mates PC does. I wish I had the chance to test out the 802.11N but I do not know any one with these newer routers. I am at least happy that I have the option in the future to use it. In real use browsing the Internet has been as fast as on my wired PC, with the only real problem being slow LAN file transfers (around 1.8MB/s), I am not sure if this is something to do with Vista and XP but it has been suggested that interference from other wireless devices could be to blame, and changing channels should help. Your mileage may vary.Testing the laptop at a friends house with a similar Netgear router I was quite surprised that in testing through three brick walls I could go to the end of his garden (in total around 50 feet from the router) and still have four bars on the wireless console. Personally I think this is very good and should be sufficient for most situations.
Just about everything that I wanted in a laptop, this Asus has. Mobility, graphics power, build construction and price. It’s a real bargain. Here’s a run down on the good and the bad.The Asus W3V is a jack-of-all-trades notebook. It combines portablility (5 lbs), power (Sonoma 1.86 Ghz CPU 533mhz FSB, ATi X600 64mg), and beauty (aluminum and carbon fiber casing) into an elegant package that draws many looks. I do have to say that if you are interested in a desktop replacement but hesitant to look like you really are dragging a desktop around, this is the notebook for you.I’m one of those obsessive compulsive buyers. I search and search for the best, even if it takes me months before I finally put my money down and make the purchase. When I went looking for a laptop I wanted something that would stand out, be able to do more than my current desktop, and do it for a reasonable price. After considering an IBM Thinkpad T43, Dell Inspiron 6000, and the Sony FS series, I came away feeling like I could do better. The ThinkPad lacked styling and was too expensive, the Dell was just kind of boring, and the Sony seemed too flimsy and lacked any power behind the styling. What brought me towards this relatively unknown brand was the review posted a while back on the Asus V6V. That to me looked like a great option and when I saw its smaller sibling, I became obsessed. This truly was the notebook for me. The speakers on the W3V are no different than the speakers on other notebooks, sound quality is slightly tinny with little bass to speak of. I would recommend a good pair of external speakers or headphones, the new version of Intel’s integrated sound, Azilla, has many improvements over its predecessor and included a S/PDIF optical out (part of the headphone jack) which supports 5.1 surround sound.The Intel Pentium M 750 1.86 Ghz with 533mhz FSB is a powerful processor in such a small package. The performance gain over my desktop AMD Athlon XP 2800+ is quite noticable, especially in the load times for Half Life 2. I would say that it takes less than half the time to load a level compared to my desktop. Startup is quick as well, about a minute. The 60GB 5400 RPM hard drive is quiet yet agile, copying a large file from one partition to the other took noticably less time then my desktop. The 512 MB of included RAM also is enough for demanding applications, though another 512 would unlock the full potential of the 533 mhz FSB. I played Half Life 2 in the highest resolution allowed for widescreen mode and was quite impressed with the performance. There was no lag visible on the screen and the images flowed togeather seemlessly. I would have never expected such excellent performance on a demanding game such as Half Life 2, but the ATI X600 does the trick. A notable fact is that in the newest BIOS update, ATI has included a new feature called Hypermemory which allocated memory from the system for the video card. When running Half Life for the first time this feature was on so I cannot compare the performance from before with the performance after.
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