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amazon Asus BR1100F reviews
The first product in the Asus Education laptop series for students, the 2-in-1 Asus BR1100F model offers a very flexible design, high durability, configuration enough for learning needs and cost reasonable. Is this the perfect laptop for young people to study online during the pandemic?
It is no exaggeration to say that the Covid-19 pandemic has turned the lives of all of us upside down. Until now, when many provinces and cities are planning to reopen their economic activities, students are still learning online. The sudden increase in demand, coupled with a global shortage of chips, has caused many laptop models to “sold out” in the market, buying a “moderate” laptop for their children to study online also makes many parents have to headache.
Understanding that need, Asus has launched the Education product line, providing optimal solutions to meet the requirements of everyone from students, teachers, parents to school administrators. The Asus BR1100F 2-in-1 laptop model, the main character in this article is the first representative of Asus Education, designed for elementary and secondary school.
“Durable” design for hyperactive girls
Forget the flashy, thin laptops you’ve seen Asus launch before, because the BR1100F has a completely different design from the rest of 2021. About 95% of the side case. The outside (dark gray) of the Asus BR1100F is made of flexible plastic with scratch-resistant and sweat-resistant embossed textures, while the remaining 5% (light gray) is a rubber band that surrounds the edges of the device to reduce aftershock impact. Thanks to that, the grip of the Asus BR1100F is very good, soft but still firm.
But the durability of the Asus BR1100F doesn’t stop there. The screen hinge and the entire connection port are reinforced with steel, the screen cable is increased in durability to limit underground breakage, the keyboard life reaches 10 million keystrokes. The machine meets the US military MIL-STD 810H durability standard with shock resistance up to 1.2m, about the height of many modern desks, so parents and teachers can completely rest assured if your child accidentally bumped into the machine or dropped it while being active.
Above the lid, the Asus BR1100F is equipped with a “Good to go” LED that allows teachers and parents to detect if the machine has problems. Specifically, LED status – On: The machine is operating normally; Flashing slowly: The device has less than 20% battery left; Flashing quickly: The device is not connected to the Internet.
As a 2-in-1 hybrid laptop, of course the Asus BR1100F will have a special hinge to open the device up to 360 degrees. Children can use the device like a regular laptop, switch to tent mode for presentations, or fold it completely to use as a tablet.
Asus BR1100F is the rare laptop that I have ever experienced with two different webcams. The first webcam is located on the edge of the screen as usual, has a resolution of 720p and is equipped with a privacy switch so that no thief can spy on your children.
The quality of this webcam is quite good, in the photo I took, it is backlit, but the image is still not inferior to other laptop models on the market and is sufficient for online lessons.
With a second webcam, this is a 13MP camera located above the keyboard, so that children can take pictures of objects when using the laptop in tablet mode, for learning, and sending photos of assignments for teachers, for example. Hard to compare with the camera quality on smartphones, but this can be considered a pretty good approach of Asus.
For learning needs, the connection ports are indispensable on the Asus BR1100F. Specifically, the device is fully equipped with USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C (supports Power Delivery), USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, HDMI port, 3.5mm audio port, RJ45 network port and even a stylus slot, microSD card and sim tray, but the version I evaluated is not equipped with a memory card slot, stylus or SIM, so these ports are blocked with plastic buttons.
Flip to the bottom, Asus BR1100F follows the ‘fanless’ design, you can see that the machine has no heat dissipation slot because there is simply no cooling fan, the machine will dissipate heat passively. In addition, Asus BR1100F is also designed in the form of a module, you can easily remove and replace components such as SSD, RAM, … with only a 4-sided screwdriver is enough.
Screens and potentials waiting to be discovered
In order to maximize its durability, the Asus BR1100F is forced to make sacrifices when this may be the laptop with the thickest screen border today, with the thickest point up to 2.4cm. The 11.6-inch screen size, but combined with thick bezels and a weight of 1.4kg, the Asus BR1100F is about the same size as many 13-inch laptops on the current market.
The screen of the machine uses IPS LCD panel, HD resolution (1366 x 768 pixels), maximum brightness of 250 nit and TÜV Rheinland certification in limiting blue light affecting children’s eyes. Personally, I find the Asus BR1100F’s HD resolution screen to be a bit low, upgrading to Full HD will be much better, and this is a pity because the screen panel has good display quality, vivid colors and no quality loss when cross-view.
Asus BR1100F supports multi-touch, but the screen is glossy so it will be easy to stick to sweat stains. If possible, you should buy an additional stylus, they support 4096 levels of pressure sensing, fast charging in 15 seconds, allowing children more flexibility in writing, drawing or note-taking tasks.
Obviously, the screen of the Asus BR1100F still has a lot of potential waiting to be discovered. An upgraded version with higher screen resolution, thinner borders but still ensures certainty will attract the attention of more young people.
Anti-spill keyboard, typing quite “like”
Asus BR1100F has a chiclet keyboard with good bounce, when typing, you can clearly feel the tactile feedback of each key. The characters on the keycap are printed loud and clear, although the keyboard does not support backlighting. This time, Asus has applied a design called ‘gapless’, which will basically prevent users from using their hands to pry the keycap out. As a result, the Asus BR1100F can also resist spills up to 330ml, which is equivalent to a bottle/can of soft drink. I’m an adult and sometimes spill water, so this will be an essential feature for hyperactive kids.
The Covid-19 situation is still very unpredictable, so all protection is necessary. According to Asus, the entire C surface (the surface containing the keyboard) of the BR1100F is covered with an antibacterial layer, capable of limiting the growth of bacteria up to 99%.
The Asus BR1100F’s touchpad is quite large compared to the size of the entire body, clicks the bottom of the mouse, and fully supports the Windows Precision driver with swipes and scrolls. There is a touch screen, so when I experience it, I don’t use too much of the touchpad, generally enough to use at a basic level.
Performance suitable for online learning needs
The Asus BR1100F I have here is the version with the most advanced configuration, including Intel Pentium Silver N6000 processor, 4GB 2400 MHz RAM (not upgradable), 128GB eMMC internal memory. If there is a need, you can upgrade to an NVMe SSD up to 1TB.
Upgrading the SSD will significantly improve the speed of booting, opening applications or accessing data, but the default configuration setting with only 4GB of RAM will only be suitable for online learning needs, with basic applications like Office, Zoom or Microsoft Teams. With higher multitasking needs, users can consider choosing 8GB or 16GB RAM versions. In addition, the laptop without a discrete graphics card will make it difficult for young gamers to play their favorite online and offline games, adding a peace of mind for parents.
Benchmark results with PCMark 10 software, Asus BR1100F achieved an average score of 1,935. The Essentials and Productivity scores are quite high, showing that the machine meets the basic needs of office applications, surfing the web, but Digital Content Creation, the scores for tasks related to photo and video editing lag.
GeekBench results on 4 CPU tasks, Intel Pentium Silver N6000 processor reaches 2246 single-core points and 4259 multi-core points
While in GeekBench 4 GPU tasks, the machine reached 10,786 OpenCL points
Practical experience, I find the Asus BR1100F to be quite smooth when we focus on each task one by one, there is almost no congestion, lag if you only work with Chrome or Office. Sometimes when I get used to the quick operation like on my main machine, the Asus BR1100F takes a little more time to process the task, but only occasionally.
Long, durable battery life
Asus BR1100F is equipped with a 42Whr battery, but thanks to the HD screen resolution and energy-saving processor, Asus can confidently affirm that the machine brings up to 10 hours of use. During my experience, even when used with high frequency, continuously surfing the web, watching movies with Chrome and word processing, the on-screen time is still approximately 10 hours, equal to Asus’ statement.
Comes with the device is a 45W charger, to fully charge the device takes about 1 and a half to 2 hours, nothing to complain about except the power cord is a bit big, it’s quite embarrassing to bring it back. If you feel the same way, don’t worry, because the device supports charging via the Type-C Power Delivery port, so you have another more compact charger that can still be used normally.
where can you get a Asus BR1100F online
Asus BR1100F BR1100FKA-XS04T 11.6″ Touchscreen Rugged Notebook – HD – 1366 x 768 – Intel Celeron N4500 Dual-core (2 Core) 1.10 GHz – 4 GB RAM – 128 GB Flash Memory – Dark Gray – Windows 10 Pro –: Buy it now