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I own three of the latest tablets/laptops and this is by far the best of the bunch in terms of balancing power, weight, and usability. The other two laptops I own are a Microsoft Surface Pro (too dinky and unstable) and a core-i7 Dell w/ a maxed out graphics card (too big and heavy).
Before I begin the technical part of my review, let me say how I use my computers. As an information systems & digital media professor I use my computers for basic tasks like writing papers, lecturing, and presentations. With it's 15.6 inch touchscreen, it's perfect for those. However, as part of my research and teaching, I also use my computers for programming, 3D modeling, animation, visual effects, digital inking, and video production.
My computers need to be powerful enough to not only run Microsoft Office, but Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and Premier, as well as Autodesk Maya, and the Visual Studio programming environment.
Rather than just list features I'll describe why I feel the ASUS is better than my other computers.
Why the Asus is better than my Surface Pro: Both the Surface Pro and the Asus S550CA have core-i5 processors running at the same speed. The Surface Pro has better screen resolution (1920x1080 vs 1366x768). HOWEVER, the Surface packs 1080p into an 11 inch screen, which is too small to use especially in desktop mode where it's hard to touch the tiny icons. I find the ASUS's 1366x768 *perfect* for selecting icons in desktop mode. Of course the Surface Pro is more portable, but you pay for that portability. It only has a single USB 2.0 port, whereas the ASUS has 2 USB 2.0 ports and a USB 3.0 port. The ASUS also has a VGA port, which is still the standard when you're hooking up to projectors. If you want to hook up to a VGA projector on the Surface, you need to buy a $40 adapter. So to summarize, the ASUS is just as powerful, easier to use in terms of the touchscreen, and has better connectivity.
Why the ASUS is better than my maxed out Dell: the Dell's too heavy and gets too hot. Yes, when I need speed for my apps and when I want to play games I use my Dell with it's quad-i7 and discrete graphics card. But the Asus is fast enough for all the applications I mentioned and I only notice the lack of power when I render videos & animations--not while I'm creating them.
Anyway, I don't want this review to get too long. I want to end by saying that I compared the features of my Asus to other ultrabooks at the same price point like the Acers, HPs, and Lenovos, and what I found, to my surprise, was that these other ultrabooks were missing the DVD writer and the VGA port that my Asus had. You may not need these features, but they're important for what I do.
Bottom line: Highly Recommended!
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I have owned an Asus laptop previously (a 2007 model) and used several HP laptops in the recent past. I will be basing my review on my experiences with these and the Asus S550C.The Asus S550C looks beautiful with it's aluminum finish and is light weight. the screen is very nice and bright and colours are correct with good contrast. The touch screen is very nice and responsive. I feel the touch screen is an excellent feature to have if you are running windows 8, as the apps work beautifully with that and closing an app is easily done using the touch screen. (in case you are not familiar with win 8 apps; they do not have a close button like the windows programs, and always run fullscreen. to close an app you have to left click at the top of the screen and drag the curser to the bottom of the screen. this is not easy if you use the touchpad only.) Plus this being a laptop, you don't have to hold the screen up with one hand.
The laptop is very very fast, 10 second bootup from shutdown, and 2 second wakeup from sleep. Core i5 is very powerful. 6GB RAM is more than adequate. the sound is good and loud. (Some HP have ALTEC LANSING speakers that do a better job though.). And has one USB 3 port, HDMI out port, which are all very useful.
But...
it is not without drawbacks either. The screen has a gloss finish and is reflective (not a major issue though). If you touch the Alumunium cover with oily hands, it will get print marks and these are really hard to remove. The camera is crap compared to HP. (this is just like the one I had in my 2007 model with poor low light performance and bad in backlit conditions.) the DVD drive open button need to be pressed quite hard to open it. The touch pad is slightly mal-aligned (probably in my copy only) and the SD card slot is under the power/charging light set and you have to tilt the laptop up to see it. And to see the SD icon you need to turn the laptop upside down (Initially I thought this was a defect in the cover until I realized it's the SD slot. the SD slot is not marked in the manual either!!!!). There is only one jack for headphone and mic. So if you have an old headset with one jack for speakers and one for the mic, you need to choose which is more important to you , or buy a new headset. The keyboard is not good. the feel of key-press is not good and sometimes the key gets half pressed and you miss a letter. the HP laptops had better tactile feedback and the keys feel more precise. I think even my old ASUS had better keys.
If you can live with these limitations this laptop is a very good buy for you. It would be best for you to try out a few laptops at your local store before deciding on one. And do compare the keyboards before buying as it may be a game changer if you do a lot of typing.
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I purchased this s550 vivobook from Costco a few weeks ago. I got it from Costco because the assurance if I do not like the item, I can return it (up to 90 days, was it?).I had an HP DV6 6119wm before I Got this laptop. I purchased the HP a year ago and was so upset with the quality and lack of HP backing their own product, I actually just decided to sell it and get a new one.
Things certainly changed since a year ago. Most of the laptops now are touch screen and with windows 8, which when I was at the store I had to spend about 20 minutes just trying to get used to how to navigate windows 8. The touch screen was nice and it had 10-key which I need. It's fast enough and light with a sleek design that is not cheap looking like some laptops in this price range are.
The good:
Slim, light and ample amount of ports including VGA
Has optical drive and card reader
10-key
SSD makes for SUPER fast resuming.
Quiet! this laptop is very quiet and that is very nice to have.
The bad:
The 10 key is nearly useless because the arrow keys actually take up space within the 10-key's real estate. I REALLY hate this. The ZERO key should be horizontal and twice the size, the shift/ctrl keyes should be made smaller and the arrow keys should take up the rest of that extra space to make this a PERFECT 10 for me, but since these design mistakes are there it's just shy of that for me.
The ugly:
Battery life is so-so, but then when you see how big the battery is you'll know why. I don't need to be mobile and i'm almost always near an outlet but it would be nice. Perhaps I could play with the settings to increase this?
The touchpad is too far to the left. It would be nice if the divider of left/right click was raised because unless I look at the pad, I often times are clicking to far to the right and end up right clicking, problems I haven't had with other laptops.
The 6GB of memory is the max this line can take and that is terrible. My last year's HP DV6 I maxed out to 16gb. 6GB seems oftly small of a limitation for new hardware.
In short, this laptop is a good buy for the price. You get a lot of features and I don't feel like i'm missing much.
Honest reviews on ASUS VivoBook S550CA-DS51T 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black)
Okay, already own hmmm over 8 notebooks ranging on the small side: Viliv N5, Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 10.1" 64GB Win 8 Pro Tablet (367927U), Alienware 10 inch notebok and Apple MacBook Air MD760LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION). On the mid size Samsung Series 9 NP900X3E-A02US 13.3-Inch Full HD 1080p Premium Ultrabook and Apple MacBook Pro MD101LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION) and on the large size Alienware M17x R4 AM17xR4-8424BK 17.3-Inch Laptop (Stealth Black with Soft Touch Finish),Sony VAIO Tap All-in-One Touchscreen SVJ20217CXW 20-Inch Desktop (White) and 17 inch Macbook Pro.However, for appointments where I need to meet with clients and do anything other than book and appointment or take notes (where the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 10.1" 64GB Win 8 Pro Tablet (367927U) is used).
The size of the Asus Vivobook is a little larger than your standard 15 inch notebook (15 x 10.5 verse 14 x 9.5 for my Samsung Series 9 NP900X3E-A02US 13.3-Inch Full HD 1080p Premium Ultrabook) but not to big for most notebook bags (but perhaps check the size specs).
I would suggest the ASUS VivoBook S550CA-DS51T 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) instead of the ASUS VivoBook S550CA-DS51T 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black). Only differance is that the ASUS VivoBook S550CA-DS51T 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) has a CD/DVD drive.
As far a boot speed, good. Not the quickest but not the slowest but lets remember SSD and HDD configuration instead of straight SDD drives.
Keyboard layout is slightly smaller than normal but I am a 6'3, 210 lb male with large fingers and no major problem takes a bit to get used to to using the numerical keypad and the numerical keypad keys are slight smaller and closer together than normal.
Love the number of USB ports, hate notebooks with only two ports (Apple take note)!
So the Pro's and Con's:
Pro's:
-Fast boot time from SSD
-Good Memory size
-Numerical keypad (for anyone in the numbers business this is key)
-Bright clear screen
-Touchscreen have to keep reminding myself that I can touch the screen)!
-Trackpad, actually not bad love the vertical line on the bottom to let me know left and right sides very smart!
Con's:
-Slightly smaller than normal keyboard
-Screen resolution would love to see higher resolution but understand that limits with touchscreens
-Would love full SSD version.
-Would love to see higher memory configurations.
Basically, I keep on the leading edge of technology and when it came to looking for a slim notebook that includes everything (touchscreen, numerical keypad, SSD, slim size), this notebook was the closest on the market.
Hopes this help :)
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I wanted to say that as someone who has owned multiple laptops in the past, none of them can beat this one.I was very hesitant to buy this laptop because of bad reviews on windows 8 but since I am the type of person who likes to see, test and review for herself I thought "Hey, why not give it a try myself and if I don't like it...well what can be worse than my last laptop dying on me after only a year of use, right ?"
Pros and cons:
At first I was very surprised at the finish and body of the product, it seems to be made of aluminium, this stuff seems resistant to random falls or hits, it gives the impression that it can withstand any blow (I wouldn't try to drop it on purpose though...just for the sake of finding out if it can lol).
Aesthetically, the aluminium finish makes this laptop look very posh, I feel like I own a Lamborghini in the form of a laptop. The design is just plain gorgeous.
The thing is, for an ultrabook I was expecting something lighter than a regular laptop but this laptop is heavy, no joke ! Compared to my previous laptops, this is the heaviest laptop I have owned (It's probably because of the aluminium finish).
The other thing that pleasantly surprised me is the size of the laptop screen and bottom part, is this laptop really a 15.6 inch laptop ? Nope, it's slightly bigger than this, I compared it to my old vaio 15.6 inch laptop and the asus is a lot bigger, the screen is wider, and the quality of the screen better.
The touch-screen is so responsive and amazing, My little sister owned a lenovo touch screen laptop and because the touch wasn' very responsive I was afraid to buy a touch screen laptop but I was very pleased with the asus touch screen, I barely use the mouse now. It makes accomplishing tasks so much easier.
I'm not too fond of the keyboard though on my old laptops I just had to press the keys lightly for them to respond, with this keyboard you have to somehow apply full pressure for the keys to respond, it's annoying for people like me who type quite fast because of that I like to use the on-screen keyboard instead.
The speakers...when I first opened my laptop, I did not pay attention to the speakers, I like to listen to music while drawing and working, my last laptop had poor speakers not to say the least, so when I decided to put some music I was not expecting the next thing that happened. The music blasted out of the speakers so loud and clear that my little sister and I were taken aback, shocked and panicked because my mum was asleep next door and you could hear the music from miles and miles...ok, not that far but you get the point.
The integrated camera is also good for a webcam, the quality is better than most laptops' webcams I have used so far.
Overall, only positive things to say about this ultrabook. Asus has done great on this one.
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