Cheap ASUS X75A-DS31 17.3-Inch Laptop (Black)

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $499.00
Sale Price: $436.99
Today's Bonus: 12% Off

I like the 17.3 inch screen, it works great, and the price was right. I'm so glad I didn't get a laptop with a small 15 inch screen. Battery charges fast. There wasn't a lot of bloatware to remove. Asus has a nice smart gestures utility to suppress any Windows 8 gestures that become annoying. It is fast enough for my purposes and Asus has 24/7 support and 1 year warranty, plus 1 year accidental warranty. I didn't really want Windows 8, but that's what you're gonna get. After 3 weeks intensive training, I now am comfortable with Windows 8. The laptop has really fast wake-up from sleep (they are not kidding when they say 2 seconds). However, it runs warmer than I had expected when the charger is plugged in. On the negative side, there isn't a free period of Windows 8 support for complicated issues from either Asus or Microsoft due to being an OEM copy of Windows. That's probably typical. However, Microsoft will help with minor things free of charge.

Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>

I'm not sure why one of the reviews says the computer is slow I was impressed with the performance. The computer was marked down and included a $100 Amazon gift card for a net sell of $330. Nice display, no glare. With free 2-day Prime shipping, easy set up I am happily surprised!

Best Deals for ASUS X75A-DS31 17.3-Inch Laptop (Black)

This is a great machine for the price, but there are a few caveats.

The hardware is, as usual with ASUS, of excellent quality. The frame is sturdy, the case is a stylish matte black with very understated ornamentation, which I like. The screen produces a surprisingly good looking display, and at 1600x900 it's compatible with standard widescreen media. At 17.3 inches it's just big enough to pull off 16:9 without being a burden on your eyes. The keyboard's not great, but it's not terrible either. It's tough to be objective about these things when your main keyboard is mechanical. The hardware is mostly great, but there are two areas where it's somewhat deficient.

The touchpad leaves a little to be desired. Clicking is very awkward because the left and right mouse buttons are both part of the same panel that you touch to manipulate the mouse. This means that you can still click even if your finger is near the top left hand side of the touchpad, and if you're like me you may do this often, and it may annoy you a lot. ASUS does bundle some software with the machine to do gesture recognition and try and make using the touchpad less painful, and to some extent it does work; they introduced some interesting and thoughtful shortcuts but it's not enough. The touchpad itself is not sensitive enough to be fit for general use. The good news: if you just plug in a mouse, you don't have to deal with any of this. Also I would recommend using the ASUS configuration software to disable the touchpad when the mouse is plugged in.

The other area where the machine is a little sub-par is the audio controller. It's an integrated VIA audio processing chip, and you may notice some noise in playback if you have quality audio hardware. This will worsen significantly if you use an application which attempts to play a bunch of sounds at the same time. Also, the 5mm audio port is reused for headphones and microphones, and sometimes the software fails to detect which is which. It's happened more than once where I plugged in my headphones only to receive an earful of noise. But, again, you can buy external audio playback equipment if this bothers you too much, so it's not a big problem either.

The Intel integrated HD Graphics 3000 is more than adequate for everything that's not GPU intensive 3D applications, (read: recent games). The CPU is decently fast. Similar to the GPU, it's just powerful enough that you can do almost all things which fit the profile of modern 'typical use' i.e. web browsing, word processing, etc. without noticing any significant delay. Same goes for the size and speed of the available RAM. Also, if you really need more RAM you can buy some and install it yourself there is an available slot. (I don't know what effect this will have on the warranty, but it probably won't be pretty). The HDD is not too snappy, but with all of the new boot optimizations in software, you'll barely notice.

This brings me to the software. Like it or not, you have no choice in the matter, this system ships with Windows 8 pre-installed (the licensing fee contributes in some small way to the total price of the machine). This particular model does not come with a backup disk nor a means to create one easily, so if you mess up your install and do not know how to fix it then you are dependent on ASUS or a repair shop to fix it for you. They partition the one disk into four parts by default: EFI System, OS Recovery, OS Partition, and Data. The EFI system partition is used to store specially signed boot images. The OS Recovery partition can be booted into to try and fix whatever is wrong with the OS Partition, and will load after the OS Partition itself fails to load. The Data partition is intended to be used to store, well, data (Music/Movies/Documents etc.). This system is one of many systems to use a new system for booting which obsoletes the old MBR/BIOS based approach, which has some important consequences for you, the consumer. Now, the vendors of the hardware have the power to decide what operating system will run on the device, as well as the power to prevent other operating systems from running. This functionality has been met with heavy opposition from global proponents of software freedom, and the legal and ethical debate continues. This particular system still allows the user to enter the firmware and disable the 'SecureBoot' functionality, but the process requires some technical acumen and is only required if you intend to replace Windows with certain other operating systems. Thusly, installing GNU/Linux on this machine is a little trickier than on the older BIOS based machines, but still possible. Failing that, the i3 2370M supports VT-x and so virtualization is an attractive option if you don't want to take a risk dabbling with the firmware.

Aside from the boot concerns, transitioning to Windows 8 from Windows 7 or an earlier version of Windows can be a little jarring. The system seems to be more geared towards a touch sensitive device (which this laptop is not), and the typical user experience is vastly different from prior versions. Only after extensive reconfiguration and tinkering was I able to put the machine into a state that I was comfortable using, but that is of course very personal and your mileage may vary.

I give the laptop four out of five stars: the hardware is mostly great but the software not so much. The frame, the general build quality, the screen, and the keyboard are good, but the touchpad and audio controller are a little lacking. The new firmware offers questionable benefit while taking away the consumer freedom, and Windows 8 is still not really suitable for a machine of this form.

Honest reviews on ASUS X75A-DS31 17.3-Inch Laptop (Black)

This review is with this PC running Windows 7

Pros:

PRICE

Handles HD Movies Well

i3 2370M (CANT WAIT TO TEST VMWARE & GNS3 using this processor)

You can downgrade to 7 64-bit

PRICE

Cons:

WINDOWS 8

spent all day downgrading from this windows 8 garbage, back to windows 7 64-bit, and installed all the drivers, from Asus website. Got a copy of windows 7 and did a clean install. ITS WORTH IT. 8 IS FOR TOUCH SCREEN DEVICES, EVERYTHING BACK UP AND RUNNING PERFECT. NOW

I PROBABLY WOULD HAVE GIVEN THIS LAPTOP A 5 STAR IF IT WITH 7 LOADED.

UPDATE: SOME IMPORTANT THINGS I FORGOT TO ADD....

1. THIS LAPTOP HAS ONLY 1 OPEN RAM SLOT. THE 4GB RAM IT COMES WITH IS BUILT IN (SOLDERED ON).

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? IT WILL ONLY SUPPORT UP TO 12GB DDR3 RAM, NOT 16GB. (SHOULD NOT MATTER TO THE AVERAGE USER)

2. THE PROCESSOR CAN ONLY TAKE ADVANTAGE ON 1333Mhz DDR3, however you can install 1600Mhz.

I Just upgraded this PC to 8GB.

Windows Experience Index Rates this PC at 5.8/7.9 (Graphics being the lowest score)

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for ASUS X75A-DS31 17.3-Inch Laptop (Black)

Fast! Lightweight! Bright Screen!! Also have had zero issues with the laptop or the software Very satisfied Would definitely purchase again. A great laptop for the price !! :)