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ASUS N50V Battery Posted: October 24, 2014 @ 11:21 pm |
Battery life is amazing for a gaming notebook. While not quite up the the S96′s standard for some reason(still working that out with Eddie from Geared2Play) the battery life of the Z96 is still great. With maximal power savings, it is possible to get almost 3:30 with the 6 cell and 5:15 with the 9 cell. This would mean that you must lower screen brightness almost all of the way, enable ATI’s powerplay, and turn off Wifi and BlueTooth. If you were to watch a DVD with all the settings previously listed, except with screen on full brightness and using headphones, it is possible to get about 2 hours from the 6 cell and 3 hours rom the 9 cell. I would imagine about 2:30 with the 6 cell and 3:45 with the 9 cell if you were to lower the screen brightness. For gaming, with settings configured for max performance and screen at full brightness with Wifi on, you can get about 1 hour with the 6 cell, 1.5 with the 9 cell. If you turn the brightness down, it is possible to get 1.5 hours with the 6 cell and 2:15 with the 9 cell. This is much better than the average 30 minutes to 1 hour of battery life with a gaming laptop. And you can still use it for light work and get a few hours from the battery. This makes the Z96 perfect for people who want a laptop powerful enough to play games on, but that can also be used for a fair amount of time away from a power source doing things such as school or office work.This notebook is absolutely silent. This notebook emits the least amount of noise out of any computer in my house. Only when the fan comes on full, which is rare, is it ever audible. And even then, you can barely hear it. This will by no means disturb anyone. Depending on your hard drive selection, the hard disk may emit some noise. This can be avoided by changing hard disk settings. Depending on your optical drive, that also may emit some noise. The physical build quality of the K40IN is satisfactory. The quality is consistent; no particular area seems to be stronger or weaker than another. The base of the notebook resists twisting well and the palm rests barely flex under pressure. This lid is one of the better-reinforced lids I have seen on a value-oriented notebook; it is resistant to flexing and pushing in on the back of the lid does not yield any ripples on the screen. The hinges anchoring it to the base of the notebook are strong and display wobble is minimal.The status lights on the K40 consist of three tiny circles below the touchpad buttons. From a functionality standpoint, they should be larger and brighter for better visibility. Ports and Features The UL50Vf has a Chiclet/island style keyboard with a dedicated number pad for those who still use number pads for quick data entry. While the island-style keys have more space between them than a traditional keyboard layout this particular keyboard suffers from flex. The keyboard flexs under firm typing pressure on the right side above the optical drive. This is unfortunate because the area of flex is right where the dedicated number pad is located and you’re likely to notice the flex while typing numbers. The keys are also noisier than we prefer … producing a “click clack” sound while typing.I am also a res junkie (cash flow and common sense permitting) and find that using a higher resolution display helps in your workflow and makes you feel less constrained. Running a widescreen 1680×1050 monitor at home means I dislike using lower resolution machines (if I wasn’t remotely sensible with my money I would have bought one of the Dell 24” or 30” displays) so I was really looking for a laptop with higher than the usual 1280×800 display to work on.
Sadly in the UK it appears that manufacturers don’t think that us Brits need these types of display, I found it incredibly hard to find a sub 1000 notebook that had a display that was higher than 1280×800, at least on anything that wasn’t a 17-inch screen. Those 5kg beasts are prone to giving you a hernia just looking at them.I have long been an AMD fan, since the days of the Athlon XPs and 64 chips, they represented very good value for money and were consistently better than similar Intel P4 chips, these days the tide has turned and Intel have really produced something special with the Core (2) Duo processors. At present AMD don’t have a viable alternative to these processors, sure there are the Turion chips but clock for clock the C2D chips are better.The Enter key is large, as well as the backspace key, which is good, in general the keyboard is good and I am sure once I get used to the layout of certain keys it won’t be a problem to use. The touchpad sits flush with the chassis and there only appears to be 1 button, although using the left or right side gives you different buttons. It can be a bit stiff in use, needing a firm click to use but it’s not a real issue.One thing that I will say about the touchpad is that users should take the time to set it up using the Synaptics mouse application. There are several good features hidden away there that can be useful and it also helps to fine tune the touchpad. I found that after setting the touchpad to my preferences it is a lot nicer to use, especially the scroll bar section, which was a hit and miss affair before. Now I can use the scroll section with around 90% accuracy of it actually working. I am quite impressed by the ports on the notebook, one of the reasons I purchased it was because it has five USB ports, as well as VGA, DVI and video out, which are very useful to me. The only negative point on these display ports is that there are no screw holes to keep the cables connected to the laptop, but on the other hand if the laptop got pulled away with the cables connected I would assume that they would come off, so I wont complain too much on that point.So far I have only briefly tested the battery, and haven’t been that impressed, currently with wi-fi turned on and various power saving schemes set I can manage around just over 2 hours until the battery runs out. I am putting this down to the onboard graphics and the lack of decent drivers available now. I am certain that once I am actually able to update the nVidia drivers I should get more respectable time from the battery. Another Asus review from here states that they get around 4 hours (using XP), and that was on a lower capacity battery. I am sure that there must be something not setup correctly. Battery is a standard 6 cell, but due to the location of the battery I am unsure on whether it can be upgraded to a higher capacity as it sits under the front of the laptop instead of the rear. I am glad to say that this notebook is very quiet, in a room with only outside noise you can barely hear the notebook running, it really has impressed me, regardless of what I have done on the notebook I have hardly heard the fan kick in, with only the heat exhaust showing that its running.The hard drive is probably the loudest component, and even it is not irritating, I prefer knowing that it is doing something, and in general when not copying large files etc it is quiet.Another plus is the heat (or lack of) whilst using the notebook. I have copied large files across the network to the notebook as well as installing applications and the notebook is only warm to the touch. I can comfortably rest it on my lap. The left wrist rest is probably the warmest part of the notebook, which is directly above the hard drive, even so it is not irritating.The notebook came with 1 recovery DVD (there appears to be a recover partition also) as well as a Nero 7 CD. Pre installed software was minimal thankfully, with only a Symantec 90 day trial of their security suite to remove. There are some Asus utilities, such as InstantFun, LifeFrame, LiveUpdate and the Splendid Utility installed, although I wont really have any use for them (apart from possibly LiveUpdate) I have left them installed. There were no other applications or trials installed, which is always good in my eyes.I have been impressed with Windows Vista, having used XP for many years you get used to the layout of items, such as documents etc, Vista seems to have shuffled things around slightly, which can be confusing at times. In general it seems to be as stable as XP, but I still have some doubts as to whether the battery life suffers under it.
Vista to me seems to be a natural evolution of XP, the integrated media center is useful, although I am still trying to get it to recognise and play xvid/divx etc movies. Overall I enjoy using Vista, the redesigned start menu is growing on me, and the added security features, whilst irritating at times, is a welcome addition and something that XP lacked. What amuses me in this situation is that many users of Linux berate having to click OK or type in the administrator password in Vista for everything, but this has always been the case under Linux, yet they see this as one of Linux’s strong points. I have nothing against Linux, having used it many times before, and using AIX on a daily basis at work means that I am no stranger to it as an alternative to Windows. I don’t think that I will install XP on the laptop, but time will tell if it becomes necessary. Asus is one of those companies that you may never have heard of, but if you use computers then there’s a good chance you’ve purchased something with either a component inside that they made, such as a computer motherboard, or it’s possible that the entire laptop computer you purchased was made by Asus — even if it is a brand such as Apple. You see, Asus is what’s called an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM). An ODM will design and manufacture a notebook, and then that notebook is branded by another company such as Dell, Sony or Apple and those companies sell and support the notebook. So Asus, a Taiwanese based company, has been designing and manufacturing notebooks for years, but have only recently started selling notebooks under their own brand label. After making notebooks for other computer companies Asus figured they had learned enough about marketing and support of notebooks to make a go of it themselves. So far they’re doing pretty well and have developed a veritable fan base of people who are huge fans of the Asus brand. There certainly are good reasons to be a fan of Asus and the V6V notebook in particular. The Asus V6V is marketed as a thin and light notebook. At 5.49 lbs it certainly fits the weight category of a thin-and-light. At 1.18-inches thick, it’s certainly respectably thin too, although I like to think of 1-inch of thickness as the holy grail for something to be called truly thin, that’d be a tough thickness to cram all the goodness you get with the V6V into. So while the V6V is a little thicker than my 14.0″ screen IBM ThinkPad (about 1-inch thick), it’s more powerful and has a larger 15.1″ screen.
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