ASUS X54L-SX013V Laptop Review

ASUS X54L-SX013V
Versatile Performance 2^nd Gen Core i3 Laptop
http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/x54l-sx013v-asus-x54l-sx013v-p-54669.html?sort=2a 
YouTube Review Link

Features

2^nd for today is an Asus X54L series laptop! This is a slightly watered down version of the K53. With less memory and hard drive, this offers an even cheaper everyday laptop with greater versatility

Priced at $649, some might question if the difference in memory and drive space is actually worth the $50 difference, or is there something secret about this laptop were about to find out? Before we begin, let’s take a look at it guts:

Model: X54L-SX013V
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
CPU: Intel® Core™ i3-2310M (2.1GHz)
Memory: 2GB DDR3 (1333MHz)
Hard Drive(s): 500GB 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: 1x USB2.0, 1x USB3.0,  1x Microphone, SD/MMC Card Reader
Outputs: 1x Headphone Out, 1x VGA
Battery: 4 Cell5200mAH 37Whrs

Pretty average specs.

The factory restore feature on this unit is exactly identical to the previous ASUS review. The lack of extra memory however did cause it to take a little bit longer to complete.

The track pad itself has a feature called “Palm Proof Technology” which prevents mouse movement and accidental clicks with your palm while typing over keys that sit above the pad. And guess what? It works amazingly! I have always had the problem when typing my palms would accidently brush over the track pad and I’d inadvertently clicked away or cancelled a whole heap of work, well this laptop will help prevent errors like this!

Design

Unpacking the box was like deja-vu. It was only a few hours beforehand did I unpack a K53, so unpacking the X54 seemed like I was repeating the process. Exactly the same packaging for both units. However the manuals for this unit, instead of having its own pocket within the laptops cover, was placed on top of the actual unit and covered up.

The unit itself looks a bit blander. The lid and keyboard surroundings are simple charcoal black matte plastic, and as simple as it is, I fell in love with it. It feels so much better than the other shiny laptops, and leaves absolutely no marks or prints anywhere on the unit! On the left side of the unit you have the exhaust, a USB 2.0 port, a USB 3.0 port, Ethernet and VGA output. And that’s all you get. Total of two USB ports; however one of them is a 3.0 port. Not exactly sure why they put USB3.0 on a lower end machine and left it out on the higher end. Marketing strategy maybe? On the front you’ll find the audio input and output, which I think is a wise place to put such ports and of course the memory card reader, which is placed in a slighter better position than the awkward K53.

The keyboard is probably NOT one of the most comfortable keyboards I have used. Although it does stay as cool and quiet as the K53, the keys are slightly raised and don’t have its own mould for it to sit in. This can be a bit more annoying, as I found my fingers clipping the edges of neighbouring keys. If you have fingers like mini breadsticks, then you’d probably get away with it, but any chunk on those fingers and you could find yourself backspacing a number of times to fix your typos. It also encourages any food bits that might fall on it to really get in there and become a pain to get out, so if you tend to eat a bit of food in front of your laptop, might want to be careful in front of this unit as you may collect enough food in their to feed a family of laptop key animals.

The notebook is your standard 15.6” Screen sized laptop, weighing in at 2.6Kgs it’s also not the lightest. The power adapter on the laptop is probably one of the most annoying things I have come across in a laptop. 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 review. Same problem on two models. How many more will I come across?

As I went to plug it in, I noticed the power end of the cable, to be ridiculously short and I had the AC unit on the floor because the cables length did not reach the top of the table. This could be a bit frustrating for those who plug it in and walk away to a lengthy distance to use their laptops.

Overall, I actually love the look and feel of this laptop, sure, the keys are a bit annoying, but it just feels so fricken awesome! It also feels slightly smaller and more compact than the K53 which makes it a better option for using it on the move.

Performance

Featuring the same Core i3 processor as the K53 I suspect it to perform similar. It does however have 2GB less memory to work with, which may be problematic for memory heavy software.

Booting the unit came in at 80s, which is a significant increase from a machine using the exact same processor. I think the lack of extra memory can be hold accountable for the difference.

The display of the unit is much better than the K53. It is much more comfortable to view and images like photos from a DSLR look very nice, HD Video clips also produced a good contrast between colours. Blacks and Whites were comfortable and not blotchy.

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

We installed Photoshop CS5 64bit to test out how simple editing will run. Installation took only 8 minutes which is fairly good result, yet slightly longer than the K53. Launching Photoshop was also very responsive, coming in around the 20sec mark. Again, this is where the extra memory would help. 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; however opening a 700mb file took roughly 90s. Slightly more than what I was hoping for. After half an hour or so working with the 700mb file, things did get quite sluggish and unresponsive. It was taking longer and longer to perform simple tasks, and this laptop, just wasn’t up to it.

Having the same CPU as the K53, the X54L performed identically when it comes to simple software like Office, Excel and Outlook. Though it’s an i3 processor, it’s more than capable of handling majority of everyday user’s needs. I am becoming fonder of this i3 processor for the everyday user, as it costs less, produces less heat and consumes less power. It seems like an ideal specification to choose if you’re after all the above.

Our Cinebench software gave us the following test results:

CPU: 2.01pts
OpenGL: 7.71ps

The CPU in this unit performed .02pts better than the K53. Being such a small amount, overall, it will perform no different from each other. The on board Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor however demonstrated why this is not a very good graphical machine, giving half the frame rate of the K53.

Our PCMark07 benchmark gave a result of 1862 PCMarks. 

That’s roughly 300 marks higher than the K53. Although it struggled with any of the gaming side of things averaging 11.09FPS, it absolutely creamed the Video Playback and transcoding sections almost doubling the results of the K53. This is a remarkable outcome for a unit that has less memory and graphical power. It seems as though the Built-In Visuals with the Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor helps in doing simple graphical tasks, but struggles on the heavy end of things.

As this is not a gaming unit, and also being able to roughly predict the score I decided to skip over the 3DMark tests.

Temperatures were interesting with this unit. The hard drive itself barely flinched between idling and being under full load. At no point did the drive reach above 36 degrees. This is a fantastic outcome for such a unit. The unit itself as a whole, and not just the palm areas also remained unbelievably cool, even when the CPU was peaking at 70 degrees. I’m not sure where all that heat is going, but it’s good to know it’s actually going somewhere and not burning up the desk or my legs. I am somewhat bedazzled as to where this heat is actually going.

Conclusion

This unit has a similar target market of those for the K53. Like its successor, it is not aimed at heavy end users that require more power for multimedia applications and gaming. However, for the price this is an unbelievable machine. It has done more than just impressed me but given me hope for the lower end user market. It is good to see manufacturers can still produce machines that don’t have all the beef and oomph yet can still put out a wow factor.

sahin.s@centrecom.com.au

DV6-6145TX Laptop Review

HP DV6-6145TX
Powerful 2^nd Gen Core i7 Laptop
Centre Com Product Page
YouTube Link
YouTube Review Link

Features

Today I will be testing out the HP DV6-6145TX which sits up pretty high in the DV6 range of notebooks from HP. It sits pretty competitively in the market, being a 2^nd Gen Core i7 laptop in the par $1000 range.  Out of the box you get yourself nothing more than the usual, the power cable, battery, start guide and the unit itself, pretty exciting stuff already!

Priced at $999, it offers customers a pretty good deal for what it can do. For the price you get yourself a 2^nd Gen CPU with a 1GB ATI 6770M graphics card. Let’s have a look at the specs in detail:

Model: Pavilion DV6-6145TX (QC368PA)
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
CPU: Intel Core i7-2630QM (2GHz / 2.9GHz Turbo)
Memory: 4GB DDR3 (1333MHz)
Hard Drive(s): 500GB 5400RPM
Optical Drive(s): Dual Layer DVD R/W
Networking: Gigabit Ethernet
Graphics: ATI Radeon 6770M 1GB GDDR5
Display: 15.6” HD LED (1366x768 Resolution)
Audio: Beats Audio Quad Speakers
Coms: 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth
Inputs: 2x USB2.0, 2x USB3.0, 1x Microphone, SD/MMC Card Reader
Outputs: 2x Headphone Out, 1x VGA, 1x HDMI

A quick glance over the specs suggests it to be a pretty decent looking notebook internally. The processor and graphics card alone might be quite appealing to most at first glance.

 

Design

Unpacking the unit, one can’t help but be immediately attracted to its brushed aluminium lid. It gives it a very slick and stylish look. Opening the lid I notice the complete outer keyboard area with the same material. It looks neat and won’t be very sticky with your fingerprint which is always helpful. The same cannot be said about the mouse pad though, even though it looks pretty with its illuminated outer line, your fingerprints stick to it like a bee to honey.

The keyboard itself is designed very well. It is comfortable to use and the reflective casing it sits in helps the keys stand out more. However without illuminating keys, all the darkness with the notebook itself can present a problem when typing up long documents at night. The keys can be quite difficult to read and you’ll find yourself spending more time fixing your typos than typing, unless of course you’re a super keyboard user!

The notebook is pretty average in size in relation to other 15.6” notebooks. The slick and curvy edges makes this look a bit smaller, that’s of course until your attempt to carry it. Weighing in at around 2.63kg, it isn’t the lightest of notebooks and can be a bit of a nuisance for those who use their notebooks on the run.

The DV6-6145TX dissipates heat pretty well. The exhaust is located on the left hand side of the notebook; however I couldn’t help but notice the left hand side of the notebook getting pretty warm under load, while the right hand side stays cold as ice. So if you use a keyboard with one hand, which happens to be your right hand, you will have a constantly cool laptop experience!

Overall, the look and feel of this notebook is one of the better ones I have seen. The simply and polished off look will definitely appeal to those looking for something stylish in their lives.

 

Performance

So, how does it fair up while actually using it? With the specs in the unit one would hope for impressive results. After doing the initial setup of the system, it took exactly 1 minute to boot from pressing the button to Windows opening up to a usable state. After a bit of tinkering with its settings and a few reboots later, I managed to get the boot down to 45secs, which is more than acceptable for a notebook. Installing small applications like Winrar, CloneDVD, VirtualCD and drivers for small external hardware took just a few seconds for each, which might not sound like a huge deal, but it’s always good to be assured that the small things in a computers life is not forgotten. Copying files from and to USB2 and USB3 drives came at standard acceptable speeds for a 5400RPM drive, nothing out of the ordinary here, and most users won’t be phazed with any file transfer speeds.

Sound on the DV6-6145TX is remarkably well. It features BeatsAudio Quad Speakers. You’ll find two speakers on the front bezel and two speakers just under the display mounted in a stylish silver housing. The audio is pretty loud, but struggles with low frequency sounds (in another words, no bass!) It has two headphone outputs just in case your pair has stereo plugs. The sound through headphones is much better, I got full responsiveness from all frequencies. The bass and high pitched sounds were very comfortable. For testing purposes I had a pair of Sennheiser HD201’s.

Our PCMark07 benchmark gave a result of 2175 PCMarks. The notebook blitz all CPU related tasks (as expected from a quad core i7!) but struggled at times with data related tasks like Video and 3D rendering to disk. Although the notebook CPU performs well, it is bottlenecked by the low hard drive speed. However plug in a USB3.0 hard drive into one of the ports to work off of, and you’ll notice improved transfer speeds.

 

Our 3DMark11 produced a result of P1517 3D Marks. And as like our previous benchmark, the CPU blitzed its side of the benchmark, but the graphics struggled at times, putting out an average of 10fps throughout each of the tests. Our Windows Experience Index gave the Graphics Gaming section a 6.4. Just a thought for mind however, these tests are designed to push the graphics card to perform out of its limits. For more accurate results check out our results for real work gaming.

 

Call of Duty Black Ops:
Installation time was under 10 minutes which is pretty decent for a 7.28GB Game installation. Loading up the game with default settings did prove a bit disastrous. Temp wise the notebook performed remarkably well. Temps alternated between 68-73 degress which are more than acceptable results for a notebook. Changes between gameplay and cut scenes/menu wasn’t any different. The games FPS was struggling and was fluctuating a fair amount. The FPS peaked in around the 56fps mark and its lowest point was a miserable 5fps during heavy action scenes with pre-animated sequences. In total over the 20min playing period my average was recorded at 22 FPS. Well below comfortable playing limit.

Crysis 2
Installation took a mere 5 minutes to complete. Loaded up the game with its default settings. Like our previous test, there wasn’t much of a change in temperatures from idling to actual gameplay. However, unlike our previous game which was mildly playable, Crysis 2 really struggled to get in a playable state. Throughout my 20min playing period I managed an average FPS of 18! Though it peaked at 46, it struggled to keep it up to a playable amount. Lowering the settings did improve the gameplay, but not enough for a smooth gameplay experience. 

Following are the temps and performance recorded for different tasks. Our tests were based on the average temperate throughout a 20 minute time period:

 

Overall the temps of the laptop were quite impressive, even under full load the CPU doesn't reach 80 degrees. The powerful exhaust on its side definitely helps in pushing the hot air out.

Conclusion

Overall, the unit performed well, even though it lacked in the heavy end gaming department (understandably) this laptop will perform more than enough for your everyday to higher end user. The Quad Core i7 processor on board definitely helps drive this laptop up performance wise. If you’re after a gaming laptop, you may need to fork out a little extra to get something with a bit more graphical power. Users will find this laptop to be pleasant on the eyes and easy on the wallet!

sahin.s@centrecom.com.au