Asus X555LA review

Display

The screen is a little bit disappointing too. The glossy display suffers from glare and reflections when working in direct sunlight or under bright overhead lighting, and there’s a noticeable amount of colour shift from the top to the bottom of the screen, even when you’re viewing it straight-on.

The 1,366×768 resolution means objects onscreen appear larger than they would on a 15.6in Full HD panel, but it lacks the fine details you’ll find on a higher resolution screen. You also can’t comfortably put two windows side-by-side for speedy multitasking.

The screen only covers 63.7% of the sRGB colour gamut, leaving most colours looking a little washed out. This, paired with 373:1 contrast ratio, means that detail in photographs is left a bit washed out, and the high 0.52cd/m2 black levels leave a distinct hint of grey on black onscreen items such as text.

Performance and benchmarks

At least performance was otherwise fairly sprightly. The X555LA uses a 4th generation Intel Core i3-4030U processor, a dual-core chip running at 1.9GHz. There’s only 4GB of RAM on board, but seeing as this isn’t a laptop aimed at video editors or multitaskers that shouldn’t be a major issue. If you do want to add more memory, a removable panel on the underside of the laptop lets you access a single empty RAM slot. This is the only easily accessible part of the interior, and the battery isn’t removable either, meaning almost complete disassembly to replace the 1TB hard disk.

Running the X555LA through our benchmarking tests yielded results of 46, 32 and 7 respectively in the single-core image conversion, video rendering and ultra-challenging multitasking test, giving us an overall score of 22. For the purposes of this laptop you should ignore the rather harsh 7 in the multitasking test as you’re unlikely to ever subject this machine to such intense usage. Actual performance in day-to-day tasks will be just fine.

The X555LA also put in a reasonable result in our moderate usage battery test for a budget laptop, lasting five hours 18 minutes. However, it means you won’t be able to rely on it for an entire day of working off the grid.

Conclusion

In the end, the Asus X555LA’s shortcomings are to be expected for a laptop with such a low price. If you have modest demands and want to spend around £300, it’s a great Windows-powered choice. Toshiba’s Chromebook 2 is a viable alternative, costing £50 less with a Full HD display, if you don’t mind being restricted to Google’s Chrome OS. If that doesn’t suit your needs either then check our regularly-updated Best laptops and buying guide. Buy Now from Amazon.