Asus X53E review

Unfortunately, the X53E’s screen isn’t quite as impressive as the K53SC’s. It’s just as bright and has great contrast, but it has a slight yellow cast. If you’re just watching movies, this actually works to your advantage, adding a certain warmth to the image. If you plan on working with photos, however, or another medium where colour accuracy is important, you may find the yellow cast a hindrance.

That’s a shame, because the X53E’s fast processor means it’s well suited to running photo or video-editing applications, or other CPU-intensive tasks such as 3D modelling and transcoding. It’s equally at home running single applications or multithreaded ones, scoring 77 in the image-editing test and 54 in the multitasking section.

Speed isn’t everything, of course, and the X53E’s focus on the processor means that other areas have lost out. Our main concern is the small hard disk. 320GB isn’t enough room anymore, especially if you want to store large photos or videos. The 4GB of fitted RAM may prove insufficient for multimedia editing too, but there’s a spare slot if you want to add more. A battery life of over five and a half hours is overkill for a laptop that weighs 2.6kg because you’re unlikely to carry it far from a mains socket.

Because it has the same design, a dedicated graphics card and a better screen, the Asus K53SC is a better buy than the X53E, but if you want the fastest laptop you can get for £500, the X53E is it.