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Asus K53S review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £530
inc VAT

The K53J looks like a decent-value budget laptop at first glance, but the dedicated graphics card isn't up to much

The last K-series laptop we saw from Asus was its K52JC, which impressed us with its smart design and switchable graphics – it was one of the first laptops we’d seen with Nvidia’s Optimus technology. The K53S follows in its footsteps, with a new Nvidia graphics card plus a new Intel Core i3 processor.

Asus K53S

The i3-2310M may be the slowest of the new chips, but a score of 41 in our new benchmarks puts it on a par with middle-range chips from only a few months ago. With two cores and Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology, it doesn’t slow down much when multiple applications are running.

There’s a dedicated graphics card in the form of an Nvidia GeForce GT 520M. Although it has 1GB of memory, it performed poorly in our Call of Duty 4 test, scoring only 22fps. This may be twice the speed you’d get from an integrated chip, but it’s still not powerful enough to play most modern games unless you turn off most of the fancy effects. The GT 520M also supports CUDA, so it will speed up certain operations in GPU-accelerated programs such as Photoshop.

The glossy 15.6in screen has good image quality, although the backlight isn’t amazingly bright and a slight blue cast makes flesh tones and reds lose impact. With fussy vertical viewing angles, you’ll have to tilt the screen carefully to get the best picture. If you’re planning on watching catch-up TV or movies, you may need some external speakers, as the internal pair is weak and tinny.

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Basic Specifications

Rating***
ProcessorIntel Core i3-2310M
Processor clock speed2.1GHz
Memory4.00GB
Memory slots2
Memory slots free0
Maximum memory8GB
Size378x252x38mm
Weight2.7kg
SoundRealtek HD Audio
Pointing devicetouchpad

Display

Viewable size15.6 in
Native resolution1,366×768
Graphics ProcessorNvidia GeForce GT 520M
Graphics/video portsVGA, HDMI
Graphics Memory1,024MB

Storage

Total storage capacity320GB
Optical drive typeDVD+/-RW +/-DL

Ports and Expansion

USB ports3
Bluetoothyes
Wired network ports1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support802.11b/g/n
PC Card slotsnone
Supported memory cardsSDHC, MMC, Memory Stick Pro, xD
Other portsminijack audio output, minijack microphone input

Miscellaneous

Carrying caseNo
Operating systemWindows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Operating system restore optionrestore partition
Software includedMicrosoft Office 2010 Starter, CyberLink Power2Go v6
Optional extrasNone

Buying Information

Warrantyone year RTB
Price£530
Detailswww.asus.com
Supplierhttp://www.comet.co.uk

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