Asus X552CL review

The X552CL’s 15.6in screen was superb for a £500 laptop as our colour calibrator showed it was displaying a huge 80.9 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut. We normally only see colour accuracy scores of this kind on more expensive laptops, so it was great to see such bright and vibrant colours in our subjective image tests.

However, the screen was noticeably lighter at the bottom of the display, which affected the uniformity of our solid blacks. Admittedly, this wasn’t helped by the screen’s black level of 0.48cdm2, but it did mean that blacks appeared quite grey regardless of where we angled the screen.

This had a knock on effect in our high contrast test images, as it made it difficult to see a good level of detail unless we had the screen positioned just right. That said, once we’d found a good viewing angle, our test photos were surprisingly well lit. We could see plenty of shadow detail in all of our test photos despite our somewhat average measured contrast ratio of 453:1, and colours looked good throughout.

We were also pleased to see that Asus had included its own Splendid screen application on the X552CL, which lets you choose from four different colour profiles. They’re very similar to the picture modes you’d find on a monitor, and you choose from Normal, Vivid, Theatre or Manual mode, the latter of which lets you adjust the colour temperature of the screen to make it appear warmer or cooler depending on your preference. It’s fairly basic, but it’s unusual to see this kind of software on a laptop and we appreciate having the chance to tweak the picture quality slightly to help improve the appearance of our images.

The Asus X552CL is a superb budget laptop. It may not have a great battery life, but its powerful hardware, dedicated graphics and excellent screen put it head and shoulders above almost every other £500 laptop we’ve tested in recent months. It wins a Best Buy award.