Asus UL50AG-RBBBK05 Review

Laptops — By Ricky on November 19, 2009 at 1:10 am

A below average laptop. This computer cannot handle faster applications, slow processor and outdated RAM make this computer good for only basic activities.

Sum and Substance

Thumbs Up

Very thin, good battery life, easy to carry.

Thumbs Down

No bluetooth, Slow processor, Outdated RAM.

Inside the Trunk

Power cable

The Whiz Kid Speaks

Processor Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 / 1.3 GHz, 64 bit, Data bus speed 1066 MHz, Chipset Mobile Intel GS45 Express, L2 cache 4 MB, RAM 4 GB (non expandable) DDR2 800 MHz, 500 GB SATA Hard drive, DVD±RW (±R DL)
Display – 15.6 in TFT active matrix, Widescreen Display, Resolution 1366 x 768 (WXGA), Graphics – Intel GMA 4500MHD Dynamic Video Memory Technology 5.0, Altec Lansing speakers.

5 in 1 card reader
Supported flash memory cards – xD-Picture Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, MultiMediaCard, SD Memory Card.

Expansion slots
1 x Headphones – Output – Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm, 1 x Display / video – HDMI – 19 pin HDMI Type A, 1 x Network – Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-TX – RJ-45, 1 x Display / video – VGA – 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15) , 1 x Microphone – Input – Mini-phone 3.5 mm, 3 x Hi-Speed USB – 4 pin USB Type A,

Battery
8-cell Lithium ion
Software – Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition, Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.0

Razzle Dazzle

Asus UL50AG-RBBBK05 is an all black laptop, and it is indeed all black! White color of the trackpad buttons look great on the all black laptop background. The laptop is also very thin as compared other laptops. Of course, it is not as thin as Apple’s Macbook Air but it is just an inch thick which makes it a great portable computer.

Asus ul50ag-rbbbk05

Inside Dope

The screen of the Asus UL50AG-RBBBK05 is 15.6 inch screen which gives you a 1,366X768 resolution, now we have seen 15.6 inch screens have a better screen resolution than this. A bigger resolution will give you a bigger place to work and a big lcd is of no use if it doesn’t have a large resolution.

There is a webcam at the top of the screen and the less said about it, the better, the quality is awful.

Below the display is the keyboard which is quite comfortable to type on. The keyboard is glossy which mean cleanliness freaks will sit with a cleaning cloth while using it because it gathers a lot of finger prints. The all black color of the keyboard goes great with the tone of the rest of the laptop.

Above the keyboard there are two power buttons which might confuse a newbie. The first power button is for booting up the computer and the second one is for quick booting where you don’t want to start the computer for all applications and all you want to do is start it for simple programs like web-browser, e-mail or other such simple applications.
We don’t know if this feature is helpful or not because we seldom switch off our computers we just keep them in sleep mode or hibernate.

One thing that we were glad about in this laptop is the sound quality. The speakers are Altec Lansin Company which is renowned for good sound quality. Music sounded great on this laptop. The computer has a huge 500 GB hard disk built in to store your music, data, videos, etc.

The RAM of the laptop is four GB, it is good, no doubt about that but why is Asus using DDR2 chips when there is DDR3 technology in the market? Outdated RAM goes a long way in slowing the speed of the computer. The processor included is a low voltage CPU. The result is that you get slower speeds but better battery life. Asus wanted better battery life than a fast computer.

This is certainly not a gaming laptop, even occasional gamming may stutter due to the lack of a discrete graphic card. Video quality is not that bad though and you can watch movies on this notebook. The bundled software is Windows 7 which doesn’t tax the hardware like Vista did, so you can be assured that there is enough speed in this computer for doing basic activities.

The laptop is powered by eight cell Lithium ion which has enough juice in it to last a little longer than five hours thanks to the economical processor which is battery-friendly.

Nitty Gritty

Asus UL50AG-RBBBK05 is an average laptop for your everyday needs if you are not a gamer. This computer isn’t fast and pushing it to do so will be in vain. The outdated RAM further contributes to the slow speed. The only thing that is great from our, reviewers, point of view is the presence of Altec Lansing speakers where the sound quality was quite pleasing.