Asus K50AB : Cheap gaming laptop review

[codedivine]

I got a cheap Asus K50AB going for about $650 on newegg US and CAD 700 on newegg.ca. Its a 15.6'' laptop (1366x768) powered by a Turion x2 RM75 (2.2ghz) and a Mobility Radeon 4570 (512MB DDR2). It ships with 4gb of RAM and Windows 7 x64 Home Premium. It weighs about 2.7kg and is mostly a desktop replacement. I have not seen many reviews on the web so I decided to write this one.

Pros:
1. Day to day performance is adequate.
2. Gaming performance on the simpler games is adequate. I do not play too many games so I cannot give you too many numbers. However, on Street Fighter IV benchmark, it ran at 40-45fps at 1366*768 with model settings turned to low detail and AA turned off.

Average:
Keyboard, touchpad, webcam and speakers are all average. Keyboard is completely flat and has some flex but the keys are large. If you are coming from a raised-key keyboard, then it will take some getting used to but after a few hours it feels ok and I can now type accurately. Touchpad is so-so but I mostly use an external mouse anyway. Speakers are good when sitting close to the laptop. I also tried the sound-out with some decent Sennheiser headphones and the output was actually very clear and hiss-free.

Cons:
1. Battery life is between 90 minutes to 120 minutes. On web-browsing over wifi, you will get close to 110 or 120 minutes. This laptop only has a 48Wh battery which is too small for a laptop of this size. By comparision, some Eee PC models ship with larger batteries!
2. No HDMI, e-sata or expresscard. You get 4 USB ports, 1 VGA and 1 ethernet. No HDMI is particularly annoying. I guess you get what you pay for.

Post any questions you may have. Can also run some additional benchmarks as long as the benchmark is free and not time consuming.
edit: The precise model number is K50AB-X2A. You can check it here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834220636

[A_Pickle]

It's sad that it doesn't come with an HDMI port, because that Mobility Radeon HD 4570 would make for a helluva HTPC experience...

[codedivine]

Random notes:
1. Yes lack of HDMI is very disappointing. I wanted to connect this to a 1080p monitor but over VGA the image quality is really bad as expected.

2. I recommend also installing pumastatectrl for this laptop. Puma State Control (pumastatectrl) is an open source utility to undervolt Puma platform processors. I have successfully undervolted the processor and now during CPU intensive tasks the laptop remains practically silent. It did not make much difference to the battery life though.

3. Some reviewers online mentioned that you can switch off the discrete GPU to save battery. But in my model, there is no such option in the BIOS and I did not find the "PowerXpress" option in the Catalyst driver either. I have tried the original catalyst that shipped with it as well as a modded Catalyst 9.10 using mobility modder but neither show powerxpress as an option. Overdrive is also not showing as an option on either Catalyst.

4. Windows experience index is stuck at 4.1 because the aero score is somehow only 4.1. The processor, memory, HDD, gaming etc scores are all higher. Maybe the aero score is texturing intensive somehow and this GPU is using a 500MHz DDR2 on a 64-bit bus. (edit: though this is just my theory).

[Welch]

Random notes:
1. Yes lack of HDMI is very disappointing. I wanted to connect this to a 1080p monitor but over VGA the image quality is really bad as expected.

2. I recommend also installing pumastatectrl for this laptop. Puma State Control (pumastatectrl) is an open source utility to undervolt Puma platform processors. I have successfully undervolted the processor and now during CPU intensive tasks the laptop remains practically silent. It did not make much difference to the battery life though.

3. Some reviewers online mentioned that you can switch off the discrete GPU to save battery. But in my model, there is no such option in the BIOS and I did not find the "PowerXpress" option in the Catalyst driver either. I have tried the original catalyst that shipped with it as well as a modded Catalyst 9.10 using mobility modder but neither show powerxpress as an option. Overdrive is also not showing as an option on either Catalyst.

4. Windows experience index is stuck at 4.1 because the aero score is somehow only 4.1. The processor, memory, HDD, gaming etc scores are all higher. Maybe the aero score is texturing intensive somehow and this GPU is using a 500MHz DDR2 on a 64-bit bus. (edit: though this is just my theory).

Hmmm.. wow.. not that windows index scores are really worth a dang but.. my laptop (From Mid 2007) gets a 4.3 and that's only due to the 4300rpm HDD. Mines the Toshiba P205D-7479, had 4 gigs in it but running 3gigs right now (one 2gig stick died, in the process of RMAing atm) AMD Turion TL-64 and then an ATI Mobility 2600HD, 256mb of discrete mem. I'm running games like Aion at 1440x900 with things on low to one step above low and managing roughly 20-30fps.

I was considering the laptop you just bought due to its having the 4570, but it sounds to me like it just straight up does not perform, not horribly much better than what im running on now considering my much older hardware and higher resolution on a 17".