Asus K60I-RBBBR05 – Good keyboard

Laptops — on March 9, 2010 at 5:23 am | Comment Now

Thumbs Up:

Multi-touch pad; excellent battery life; large hard-drive; energy-efficient, big and brigh LED backlit display; stylish and unique design; solid built.

Thumbs Down:

Various bloat-ware; uncomfortable and stiff mouse buttons; no HDMI.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Asus K60I-RBBBR05 laptop is powered with 2.2GHz Intel Pentium T4400 dual core processor. The laptop has 500GB hard disk drive, DVD±RW (+R DL) optical drive and 4GB DDR2 SDRAM that is upgradeable to 8GB. The operating system is Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition. The K60I laptop has Intel GMA Dynamic Video Memory Technology 5.0 graphics card, integrated high definition sound card and 0.3-megapixel camera.

16 inches TFT display of Asus K60I-RBBBR05 features LED backlit and antiglare. The laptop has card reader that supports SD memory card, Multimedia card and Memory stick. Preinstalled software are Face recognition software and Adobe Reader 9.0.

Network adapter of Asus K60I-RBBBR05 supports wired networking protocols of Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet. In addition, the wireless card supports wireless standards of IEEE 802.11 b/g/n. The laptop has two interfaces: 1×RJ45 network – Ethernet 10Base – T/100 Base – TX/1000Base-T and 4×4 pin USB Type A – Hi-Speed USB.

Asus K60I-RBBBR05 has six-cell lithium ion battery. Asus is providing one-year limited parts-and-labor warranty.

Razzle Dazzle:

Asus K60I-RBBBR05 has unique look. There is hounds-tooth pattern on the keyboard deck and lid. It features multi-touch pad and chiclet type keys. The laptop is 1.7 inches tall, 14.6 inches wide and 10.1 inches deep. It weighs 5.9 pounds and 6.7 pounds with power adapter, which is bit more than other laptops.

Asus has selected deep black and brown color scheme for its K60I laptop. The small logo is located in the lid’s center and top left corner of screen bezel. The laptop’s chassis provides solid feel. The wrist rest beneath keyboard is wide. The hinges are solid and sturdy enough to hold the display securely.

Inside Dope:

Asus K60I-RBBBR05 will draw your attention at any store like Best Buy with its $529 cost for dual core processor, 4GB RAM and 500GB hard drive. In addition, $499 priced Toshiba Satellite L505-ES5018 and $529 priced Dell Inspiron i545-4266iBU also draws your interest because both of them offers similar Intel Pentium T4400 dual core processor. Although the T4400 is not the latest one, yet it is one of most used processors for budget-friendly laptops.

Asus k60i-rbbbr05

Asus K60I-RBBBR05 has unique design, superior feature set, and more battery life as compared to that of Dell model. The Asus model offers Wireless-N Wi-Fi as compared to IEEE 802.11 b/g of the Dell laptop.

16-inches display of Asus K60I-RBBBR05 is a bit larger than common 15.6 inches display of other laptops. It has 1366×768 pixels resolution and uses LED backlight that is more energy efficient than typical fluorescent tubes. Moreover, it helps to create much brighter image on the display. Despite of being glossy, the display screen has antiglare coating that helps to minimize reflections and distracting glare. 0.3-megapixel Webcam is located above the display.

Asus has included chiclet-style and wide spaced keys and separate numeric keypad. You might know that chiclet style keys are famous because of Apple MacBook. Overall, Asus K60I-RBBBR05 provides comfortable and appreciated typing experience. If you have to spend hours daily for data punching and continuous typing, then we will recommend selecting this new Asus K60I laptop. For including the separate numeric keypad, Asus had narrowed the arrow keys and off-centered the keyboard. Some users may not like this change.

Asus K60I-RBBBR05 has small touch pad. Again like Apple MacBook, It supports multi-touch motions like two-finger scrolling. Chrome-finished two mouse buttons are very stiff to press. You will get Altec Lansing speakers on Asus K60I-RBBBR05 laptop. The speakers do not provide loud sound like that of Dell Inspiron i545. We will recommend using headphones for better sound quality.

Asus K60I-RBBBR05 has one media card reader slot, VGA port and two USB 2.0 ports. The laptop does not have ExpressCard slot, eSATA and HDMI ports. You will find HDMI ports on a bit more expensive HP Pavilion dv4-2145dx and Gateway NV7915u laptops.

Asus offers various preinstalled trial applications and other offers. It provides Windows 7 Home Premium and some utilities also. While testing, Asus FastBook utility enhanced the booting speed. Windows 7 booted in 50 seconds, which was better than booting speed Dell Inspiron i545.

Asus K60I-RBBBR05 features 2.2GHz Intel Pentium T4400 dual-processor, which is an entry level processor. It features 4GB RAM as compared to 3GB in Toshiba and Dell models. On the contrary, Asus is using 667MHz that is less than 800MHz of both Toshiba and Dell. Gateway NV7915u laptop is providing Core i3 330M CPU for $599 and performed 31 times better than Asus K60I-RBBBR05.

Asus K60I-RBBBR05 performed better than Acer AS5532-5535, Compaq Presario CQ60-615DX and Toshiba Satellite L505-ES5018 in our multitasking, Photoshop and iTunes test. Dell Inspiron i1545-4266iBU, Toshiba Satellite L505-ES5018 and especially Gateway NV7915u performed better than Asus K60I laptop.

The annual power consumption cost of Asus K60I-RBBBR05 is $4.66, which is better than %5.08 for Toshiba Satellite L505-ES5018, $5.17 for Gateway NV7915u and $7.16 for HP Pavilion dv4-2145dx. However, Dell Inspiron i1545-4266iBU succeeded with $4.47 in annual power consumption cost.

Asus K60I-RBBBR05 laptop is using standard six-cell battery that has a life of 3hr 24min of continuous vide playback.

Asus is providing one year standard labor-and-parts warranty. The accidental damage warranty will not be applied to the only K60I laptops only purchased from Best Buy. So, we will recommend you to purchase this Asus K60I-RBBBR05 laptop from any other store.

Nitty Gritty:

If you need a budget-friendly laptop with large display, more hard drive capacity, better keyboard, good battery life and does not mind average performance, then you can purchase new Asus K60I-RBBBR05. However, we will recommend you to check Gateway NV7915u that offers Core i3 processor for better performance in only $70 more.