ASUS X550ZA-WB11 15.6 inch Laptop Review

15.6" ASUS X550ZA-WB11 Laptop
via Amazon

Asus X550ZA-WB11 is a nice budget priced mid range laptop with a powerful AMD A10 CPU, multitasking power, large hard drive, good connectivity and a 1 year international warranty. It is good for school and office tasks, entertainment and basic gaming and has enough power for more demanding stuff than the basic daily tasks as long as huge graphics power is not needed for those tasks, with a powerful fast higher mid range AMD processor with a Passmark benchmark score of 3733 at this moment. Small cons include the lack of Bluetooth, average battery life and Win 8 operating system.

ASUS X550ZA-WB11 includes the Kaveri based quad core AMD A10-7400P processor (4MB Level 2 cache) at 2.5 - 3.4GHz with turbo core technology and no hyper threading (4 cores and 4 threads), 8GB DDR3L SDRAM at 1600MHz to run several apps at the same time without delays, 2.5 inch 1TB Serial ATA at 5400rpm spindle speed (very large in size for most customers and at average but adequate speed) and the latest 64 bit Windows 8.1 operating system which is not a very popular OS by many but gives you the right to upgrade to Windows 10 free of charge when it is out.

15.6 inch high definition matte display with 1366x768 pixel resolution and 16:9 image aspect ratio and Splendid technology to adjust the color offer decent picture quality overall (just not FHD with IPS) and the integrated AMD Radeon R6 graphics card is good for running apps and programs like Adobe Photoshop and is capable of handling current games at low to medium settings and at at 1024 x 768 or 1366 x 768 pixel resolution. It has a VGA camera that is adequate for live video chats and great sound output by SonicMaster through the integrated stereo speakers and you can adjust the modes via MaxxAudio- Music, Movies and Games (sound quality seems to be one of the strengths of this machine).

Dark blue Asus X550ZA weighs 4.98 pounds and has the dimensions of 9.90 x 15 x 1 inches- is lightweight and portable with also the 15 inch display. It has a chiclet style keyboard with ergonomic design with 10-key numpad for much easier data entry (if you prefer having one) and touchpad with Smart Gesture technology. Battery is a 4-cell 44 Whr lithium ion that lasts up to 4 hours maximum but charges rather quickly- battery life will depend on how you use the laptop and the brightness settings. Connectivity options include the Super Multi DVD±RW/CD-RW on the right hand side, 802.11bgn wireless, Ethernet with RJ-45 connector, SD/MMC card slot, 2 x USB 3.0 ports, 1 x USB 2.0 port, an HDMI and a VGA port, a Headphone-out / Microphone-in combo, 65 watt AC Power adapter jack and a Security lock slot (almost all ports are on the left side).

Conclusion: ASUS X550ZA-WB11 is a fast and powerful enough computer for daily and more demanding stuff with the AMD A10 processor and 8GB memory and like other Asus products you get 1 year warranty that is valid around the globe and that includes a year of Accidental Damage Protection. It includes the trial version of Microsoft Office which you can choose to pay and extend when it expires in 30 days. It starts up pretty fast and wakes up from sleep or hibernation in only 2 seconds, we like the good range of connectivity ports (most on the left hand side) but there is no Bluetooth by default and you just need to use a USB adapter which you can get cheaply on Amazon. June 2014 release AMD A10-7400P is quite a decent upper mid-range processor with a Passmark score over 3700 which indicates its level of overall power and speed, hard drive is quite large at 1024GB but with only 5400rpm spindle speed, replacing it with an SSD is an option if you’re after speed, given that they are also coming down in price. Battery life is OK and not great, image quality is as good as you can get at this price level (quite satisfactory) but sound is reported to be impressive, loud and clear with the Asus SonicMaster. There is really not much wrong with this Asus brand machine and we’d highly recommend it at the current price.

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