Asus G74SX-TZ358V Laptop Review!

Power Gaming Laptop, the Asus G74SX-TZ358V
http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/g74sx-tz358v-asus-g74sx-tz358v-p-56205.html?sort=2a

Up today is a special treat, it’s the Asus G74SX-TZ358. We all know what a monster of a laptop these are, so today I’ll be putting them to the test to see just how well it performs in real-world use.

So as always, let’s take a look at this monster’s internals.

Model: G74SX-TZ358V
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM (2.2GHz, 3.10GHz Turbo)
Memory: 16GB DDR3 (1333MHz)
Hard Drive(s):  256GB SSD + 750GB 5400RPM
Optical Drive(s): BluRay Writer
Networking: Gigabit Ethernet
Graphics: nVidia GTX560M 3GB
Display: 17.3” Full-HD LED (1920x1080 Resolution)
Audio: EAX5.0, THX TruStudio
Coms: 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1
Inputs: 3x USB2.0, 1x USB3.0, 1x eSATA,  1x Microphone, SD Card Reader
Outputs: 1x Headphone Out, 1x VGA, 1x HDMI
Battery: 8 Cell
Weight: 4.28kg

Well there’s no surprise here, this definitely has the wow factor. So let’s take a look at it in detail and see what it has to offer.

Unboxing the unit I was less than impressed, comes in a standard Asus ROG box with average cardboard moulding, for a laptop of its price I would’ve liked to have seen something a little bit more flamboyant and exciting. Taking it out of its box was a fair effort, weighing in almost double the weight of your average 15” laptop. However once it’s opened up you truly see the magnitude of this machine. It is thick and huge. The casing is a slick matte black plastic with what feels like rubber around some points including the wrist rest area and the lid.

Opening up the lid reveals the full sized backlit keyboard with a dedicated number pad. The keys look fantastic with the backlights (kind of reminds me MacBook keyboards) and are extremely smooth and comfortable to use. Size and ergonomics aren’t compromised with this keyboard with nicely spaced out keys allowing even the bigger fingered gamers to take full enjoyment out of it. Along the top right of the unit you’ll see the power button and the ROG button, which allow you to select difference performance profiles for the machine. For testing purposes, I kept it on Performance (Highest setting)

On the left of the unit you’ll find 2x USB ports, Lock, BluRay drive and audio jacks. The right hand side features another 2 USB ports (one of which is USB3.0), network plug, power plug, HDMI, VGA and a card reader. The rear of the unit is where it is the thickest has two spaceship-like exhausts pushing out hardcore air.

Flipping the unit upside down we can unscrew the small clip to reveal the Memory modules and both hard drives, a fantastic and easy way to upgrade the machine in the future, allowing good future proofing. 

The display on the machine is fantastic. The large 17” LED screen boasts Full HD resolutions with crisp and clear clarity. Full HD films (MKV format) looks and play fantastic, the support of good audio decoders within the laptop produce a solid performing sound to accompany the visuals, but the speakers definitely do lack the quality and power of the rest of the machine. A good solid pair of speakers would’ve really pushed this laptop to be that little bit more exciting to play with.

Blu-ray playback was a bit tricky, the pre-installed crapware simply put, did not work. After downloading PowerDVD did I manage to get a Blu-ray movie working and it was gorgeous. The colours were very rich and vibrant showing off amazingly rich deep blacks with clarity in its colour.

Performance
A power laptop like this would be expected to excel in performance, and as expected it didn’t disappoint. Booting came in at 25 seconds and with a few tweaks and changes  I got it down to around the 20sec mark, which really is unbelievable for a laptop computer. The SSD in the G74 is a LiteOn LAT-256M3S, with Seq. Read and Write coming in at 500MB/s & 360MB/s respectively, something which we will put to test with the same software used as LiteOn. It should be noted though, like other Asus units, the G74 is piled on with pre-installed crapware which if the PC is left idle for 5-10min all popup one after the other, covering your screen.

Starting up 3DMark11 I tested the machine under Performance and Extreme settings with results as follows:
X665 3DMarks
P2040 3DMarks

 

I wasn’t that pleased with the results, it did perform well above any other laptop I have tested, but I was expecting a bit more out of it. So I jumped on the net and updated to the latest drivers and followed up with these results:

X698 3DMarks
P2216 3DMarks

So a fair bit of an improvement, but I feel like it’s being slightly bottlenecked by the CPU. The 3DMark scores excelled at graphic tests but when it came to Physics test it’s where it slight underperformed. None the less, very good results for a laptop computer.

In our Unigine V2.5 benchmark, the G74 came in with the following result:

FPS: 18.1
Score: 457
Min FPS: 6.5
Max FPS: 43.1

Testing the SSD’s performance with HD Tune Pro came up with the following results:
Max Read: 308.3MB/s

Fairly short of the 500MB/s listed in the spec sheet of the drive. When it came to writing, the software failed. This was because the SSD drive is actually partitioned. Your C drive is given 100GB of the SSD and the remaining is partitioned separately, along with the 750GB drive which is also split into two partitions, both which are completely stupid ideas. Asus, what are you doing? However, going on the performance result of the read, I’d say the write is fairly lower than the stated amount.

 

Gaming however, put to rest all the controversial benchmark scores. Crysis 2 ran like a breeze with Full HD Resolution pushing out an incredible 39 FPS average while keeping less than 65 degrees. Brilliant score for a laptop! If you think about it a 6970 averages around the 50fps mark for certain models, so for a complete laptop system to push out 39 as an average, that’s pretty good.

Modern Warfare 3 had no issues at all running it at 1920x1080 with full settings maxed out. Over the span of gameplay it average a solid 40fps.

Temperatures were amazing. Even under full load the GPU didn’t pass 70 degrees with the CPU coming in even lower. The exhausts at the back however were pushing out a good amount of heat so full credit goes to this design by Asus, the dual fan design they have in the machine definitely gets the heat out. Having said that I would not recommend using this on your lap, this will burn the hair of your legs! A desk and even if you have one, an elevated cooler would be the wisest option.

Conclusion

 

Asus have built something special here; this is definitely a laptop you could use as a desktop replacement… even for the gamer. I would however recommend any user who buys this to do a complete format and partition back the drives together to create a true 256Gb SSD + 750GB Hard Drive combo. Partitioning 2 drives into 4 on a laptop just does not seem wise or logical. The machine has plenty of grunt, it’s a shame you need to spend so much time to take full advantage of it. For a price tag of around $2200, you definitely do get equally performing machine. Its upgradability makes it future proof and open for improvements (How about an Intel or Crucial SSD??). If your into your LAN events and are sick and tired of lugging around complete system around, this is definitely a worthy option to consider.

By Sahin Selvi
sahin.s@centrecom.com.au

The benchmark results may differ from user to user depending on what background software you are running and versions of benchmark software. These results aren’t portrayed to be seen as exact performance figures but merely as a rough estimate on the performance of the machine. These results are in no way bias to any company or person and are here to provide the end user in depth details and to provide extra assistance of potential purchases. All information on this page is subject to copyright. Please do not copy any parts of this article.

Asus X53E-SX1167V Laptop Review!

Versatile Performance 2^nd Gen Core i5 Laptop
http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/x53e-sx1167v-asus-x53e-sx1167v-p-55007.html?sort=2a

Features

For the final review of the year, I have for you guys an Asus X53E laptop. This is you mid to low range laptop at an acceptable price range for those on a budget. Let’s take a look at what this has to offer

Model: X53E-SX1167V
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-2430M (2.4GHz)
Memory: 4GB DDR3 (1333MHz) (Max 8GB)
Hard Drive(s): 750GB 5400RPM
Optical Drive(s): Super Multi DVD R/W
Networking: Gigabit Ethernet
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000
Display: 15.6” HD LED Backlight (1366x768 Resolution)
Audio: Altec Lansing Speakers
Coms: 802.11b/g/n
Inputs: 2x USB2.0, 1x USB3.0,  1x Microphone, SD/MMC Card Reader
Outputs: 1x Headphone Out, 1x VGA, 1x HDMI
Battery: 6 Cell

Pretty average specs.

Out of the box one can’t help but notice the white casing from the usual blacks and charcoals. If you want a laptop to standout this is definitely one to think about.

Design

Unpacking the box was less than ordinary. Standard Asus packaging. Unwrapping the unit reveals its white casing. The white casing is covered with small grey dots in shape of swirls and twirls which add quite a unique look to it. Opening the lid, the keyboard and surrounding plastic is all the same white material with the dots. The edge around the display however is your usual glossy black, which is a bit of a shame. I would’ve liked to have seen a more unified design with the white colour.

The keyboard itself is also a nice white colour and comes with a full sized keypad as well, which should be appealing to a lot of people. It is nice and comfortable to type on and features Asus’ Ice Cool palm rest areas.

On the left side of the unit you have the exhaust, a USB 3.0 port, VGA and HDMI output, Ethernet and the power plug. Right hand side features your audio jacks, 2x USB2.0 ports, the DVD drive and the Kensington lock. 

The notebook is your standard 15.6” Screen sized laptop, weighing in at 2.6Kgs. Once again the power adapter on the Asus laptop disappoints me again. It is positioned on the left hand side of the unit, and it has a 90 degree plug. Also, the cable sits in front of the exhaust, with all hot air coming out of the unit, blowing right onto the power cable. Not exactly the wisest thing to do. I’m sure not all users would be comfortable with their laptops power cable heating up constantly. Unless you plug your cable in on an awkward angle, this could potentially be hazardous in the future. 

Felt like deja-vu? That’s because you may have read the exact paragraph in my previous reviews. This is now the 3^rd Asus machine with the same problem. I think it’s safe to say it is a design flaw with a few of their models.

Performance

Featuring an Intel 2^nd Gen Core i5 processor and 4GB of memory, it serves up a good technical specification for most home users. The larger memory and increased storage space definitely work in the units favour.

Booting the unit came in at 50s, which is acceptable and expected from an i5. Although I must admit there are a lot of background processes going on, something which consistently bugs me about Asus. All the pre-installed applications and utilities that come with the unit are a complete waste of resources most of the time and would barely be useful to the majority of users. I would really like to see an Asus one day with not as many junk in their machines.

The display on the unit is as expected. Seems like the same display from other models. Watching HD movies and photos from a DSLR appeared sharp and clear. The good thing about this display is it is quite crisp so you don’t have blurry spots which is always great.

Sound on the X54L is relatively good. Although you’re not going to get boom box equivalent sound coming out of the speakers, it still manages to provide comfortable listening levels through the Altec Lansing speakers.

I installed Photoshop CS5 64bit to test out how simple editing will run. Installation took only 6 minutes which is a good result. Launching Photoshop was also very responsive, coming in around the 20sec mark. It took me just a few seconds to open up 5-10mb files which are promising as these are the average sizes most users will be working with; surprisingly, the 700mb file didn’t perform as badly as I expected. The file opened easily and I was able to work on it for lengthy time without slugging out too much.

Simple everyday software like Office, Excel, Outlook and browsing internet was normal without any hiccups. The 4GB memory gives a pleasant browsing experience managing to handle multiple open tabs with streaming video.

Our Cinebench software gave us the following test results:

CPU: 2.68pts
OpenGL: 8.16fps

The CPU performed well and achieved an acceptable result for an everyday computer. The OpenGL as expected struggled with the Intel HD3000 graphic processor. Obviously not built for the gamers.

Our PCMark07 benchmark gave a result of 2076 PCMarks. 

Our PCMark results sits snug in between an i3 machine and i7 machine which is comforting to know there’s nothing unordinary going on within the unit.

Temperatures were very good with the unit. Load times were fantastic with 28 and 37 degrees for the hard drive and CPU respectively. On load the unit handled the heat very well and kept the keyboard and palm rest areas cool. A surprising element was the loudness. The unit maintained a very low sound even when under load.

Conclusion

The unit is perfect for those looking for a nice and simple family laptop or something to do your house financing work on. It provides good performance at little cost, running nice, cool and quiet. However it’s missing something; something I can’t get my head around. There’s just something about it that doesn’t interest me. It feels like it’s a bit boring and would never excite me. This is a bit of a personal opinion though. Others may fall in love with the decorated white casing and elegant feel to it, because overall, it is a solid unit that performs well at a reasonable price.

By Sahin Selvi
sahin.s@centrecom.com.au

The benchmark results may differ from user to user depending on what background software you are running and versions of benchmark software. These results aren’t portrayed to be seen as exact performance figures but merely as a rough estimate on the performance of the machine. These results are in no way bias to any company or person and are here to provide the end user in depth details and to provide extra assistance of potential purchases. All information on this page is subject to copyright. Please do not copy any parts of this article.

Asus All-In-One ET2410IUTS-B011C Review

Asus All-In-One ET2410IUTS-B011C
All in one feature packed desktop!
http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/et2410iuts-b011c-asus-et2410iuts-b011c-p-54104.html?sort=2a 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABCDsW8i5cA

Features

Today we have something special straight from ASUS. I’ll be looking at their all-in-one desktop computer. Today’s model is the base Core i3 priced at $1199; they go up to a Core i5 priced at $1599 with BluRay drives. Bit disappointing to see no Core i7 in one of these units. Would have been interesting to see how much power they could have put into one of these.
So, let’s take a look at what we have to play with today.

Model: ET2410IUTS-B011C
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
CPU: Intel® 2nd Gen Core™ i3-2100
Memory: 4GB DDR3 1333MHz
Hard Drive(s): 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6GB/s
Optical Drive(s): Super Multi DVD R/W
Networking: Gigabit Ethernet
Graphics: Intel Graphics 3000
Display: 23.6” Multi-Touch LCD-LED (1920x1080)
Audio: Stereo Speakers (2x3w)
Coms: 802.11b/g/n
Inputs: 3x USB2.0, 2x USB3.0, HDMI-in, e-SATA, 1x Microphone, 3-in-1 Card Reader
Outputs: 1x Headphone Out, HDMI-out
Webcam: 1.3m

Taking it out of the box was a bit of a struggle, I must admit the box almost had me beat. Once you open the box you need to pull up the unit to take it out, problem is, it’s pretty much stuck on to the lower foam, so you need to put a bit of strength in your pull to take it out.

The unit comes with a bunch of built in ASUS programs that help add a bit more interactivity with the touch screen. Some of the apps include a nice little paint program which kids would love, however I wouldn’t be a big fan of letting my kids keep fingering my brand new touch screen computer, but each to their own I guess. The programs surprisingly, can be a bit time consuming but it provides good several hours of fun.

One of the biggest things in this unit would be the touch screen. Straight up I can tell you it is very responsive and manages multi-touch gestures very well. It definitely adds a unique experience browsing through windows explorer simply by touching on what I want, however I can see it to be an effort to keep it up. After all, it is a desktop computer, so it will be sitting on your desk (or mounted on a wall if you like with the VESA mounts (not included)) so it means your arm will be constantly raised for you to use this computer by touch. Unless you’re the Hulk, keeping your arm in a suspended state can be ridiculously tiring and I couldn’t do it for longer than 20-30 minutes.

With touchscreens comes the worry of finger prints and smudges, and you'd be right to worry. It does retain prints and smudges however it doesn't keep as much on it as one would think, and doesn't become noticeable till you turn the screen off.

Design

Once I took it out though, it was pretty. I’ve usually been the one who is skeptical about all-in-one designs from companies other than Apple, and though the iMac is definitely up in top spot for its uniform design, this ASUS unit I must say sits up within top 5.

The screens border and backing is a nice mix of polished and matte black, with the speaker area and base in silver. The speakers grill reaches from end to end and is plastered with branding stickers on the left hand side. Not sure what they were thinking with that one. I mean, it looks so sexy, why ruin it with a bunch of unsexy stickers?

The base is one solid piece of hardware. I’m not sure what it is made of, but it is solid to the bone and weighs as much as the entire unit, but it does a good job keeping the screen grounded and no little bump or knock will tip this bad boy over.

On the back of the unit, we have 3x USB2.0 ports, 2x HDMI (1 in, 1 out), Ethernet port and VGA Output. The input can be a very handy feature. If you have a PS3, plug the HDMI into the unit and switch between the inputs and turn your computer into a screen for your PS3. Same goes for any other device with HDMI. This could be very useful features for people who want to watch something on a portable device on the big screen, quickly.

The keyboard and mouse are small and petite and come in a shiny plastic black material. Looks very clean and elegant and are wireless! I did however ask myself why the wireless devices have their own dongle which you need to plug in to the unit, meaning, at the back you have 2x USB2.0 ports and not 3. Not sure as to why they couldn’t just build the wireless dongle, into the unit? Both pieces are quite comfortable to use, however the mouse is quite small.

Overall though, this is a fantastic piece of design. It looks fantastic and would complement any home or office. For small businesses and office workers, this could be a machine you are looking for. The simplicity of it will save you space and power consumption.

Performance

The unit was quite quick to boot up and restart, coming in around the 45sec mark.

The display of the unit is gorgeous.  Full HD playback on the unit produced vibrant colours and rich blacks. At no point were the blotchy marks or pixilation.

The sound on the unit features “Sonic Master” and “DTS Surround Sensation UltraPC™” which simply means, it puts out good sound! Watching HD content, the audio was crisp and clear. From explosions to speech, everything was clearly audible.

The unit features in integrated Intel Graphics 3000 chip for its graphic processing. This means the unit is not suitable for high end gamers. Mid-range casual gamers however might find the unit to be quite pleasant overall.

Our Cinebench software gave us the following test results:

CPU: 2.96pts
OpenGL: 6fps

The CPU performed remarkably well. Easily out scoring 2^nd Gen Laptop processors of the same speed. The graphics however is let down by the Intel Graphics 3000.  

Our PCMark07 benchmark gave a result of 2561 PCMarks. 

Conclusion

This is probably the perfect unit for the family computer. If you need something for the kids to do their homework on, to pay some bills, watch movies, listen to music, then I would highly recommend considering one of these. Its simplicity would be a big attraction to most as you do not have to worry about plugging this into that to work. What I would like to see from ASUS though, is beefed up versions of these units. Give us a unit with 2^nd Gen Core i7, fill it with memory and a dedicated graphics card, and you could find yourself the perfect desktop machine.

A BIG plus to this machine is its 2 year on-site pickup and return warranty! A big advantage to have in an all-in-one pc!

sahin.s@centrecom.com.au