Asus VivoBook S500CA

amazon Asus VivoBook S500CA reviews

Design and Features

Asus VivoBook S500CA have similar design to other products with a combination of silver and black. The lid on the machine is sturdy black aluminum case with Asus logo in the center but easy to fingerprints.

Inside is a silver aluminum frame, the display is protected by a layer of black glass with Asus logo below the screen. Touchpad is designed slightly to the left by the keyboard with additional keypad design clusters.

With relatively thin design so VivoBook S500CA will not be integrated optical drive, but still supports a full range of communication ports. The left side includes an SD card reader, headphone jack / microphone, 2 USB 2.0 ports and a security lock slot.

Right edge.

While the right side includes USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, VGA and Ethernet slots. Of course, the machine will also support wireless connectivity is now commonly used as Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11n Wi-Fi.

383.54 x 259.08 size x 20.32 mm, S500CA wider than the Acer Aspire V5-571P-6499 (381 x 254 x 24.38 mm) and Dell Inspiron 15z (381 x 248.92 x 22.89 mm). However, the machine that weighs just 2.17 kg, lighter than the Aspire (2.45 kg) and Dell Inspiron 15z (2.35 kg).

Thus if a user must frequently move will not feel uncomfortable to carry around with you.

Screen and webcam

S500CA equipped with touch screen size 15.6 inch, LED backlight with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels standards capable of displaying video images and bright, crisp and clear.

Real test when viewing HD-resolution trailer of the film “Life of Pi”, the image displayed in very impressed with the bright colors of the different scenes in India as well as the sharpness of every drop water came up from the waves in the chaos at sea.

Angle of the screen a bit narrow, dark picture when the screen started working an angle of about 45 degrees and the screen of the machine mirror will make the image displayed impaired when used outdoors or where there is strong sunlight.

S500CA screen brightness is quite low when measured only 147 lux, but still brighter than the screen of the Acer Aspire V5-571-6499 (139 lux) and Dell Inspiron 15z (146 lux). But this brightness significantly lower than the average brightness (226 lux) of mobile laptops.

The manipulation of the touch screen on the Windows 8 performs very smoothly, users can quickly clawed hand on the screen to navigate through the application and tile screen of Windows 8. Like touchscreen of the other laptops, fingerprints and smudges on the screen will be saved when manipulating glass so users will have to regularly clean after a few days of use.

0.3 megapixel webcam shots of S500CA often much more yellow and still pretty much noise ratios. It is also the most common drawback of other laptop models.

Sound

Backed by SonicMaster audio technology, the speakers provide audio S500CA with high volume, easily fill a small room. This is by design on the underside speaker should sound towards the floor creating spillover effects, especially clear sound even at the highest volume levels.

To improve sound quality, Asus also installed together with AudioWizard utility, allowing users to change settings on-demand audio such as music, movies, gaming or voice chat / recording.

where can you get a Asus VivoBook S500CA online

ASUS VivoBook S500CA-US71T Touchscreen Ultrabook Windows 8: Buy it now

ASUS S500CA 15-Inch Laptop (OLD VERSION): Buy it now

ASUS S500CA 15-Inch Laptop (OLD VERSION): Buy it now

Keyboard and touchpad

Island-style keyboard design with black buttons style, creating a silver stand out from the chassis. Unfortunately, this will be no keyboard backlight option, but the key phrase is integrated fully. But experience typing with this keyboard does not really leave much impression.

Asus also replaced Num Lock on cluster dedicated numeric keypad with a special button that allows users to adjust a few settings.

The touchpad has large size and smooth surface so things like zoom in / zoom out the content when browsing, photo viewing made very easy. Similarly, when moving two fingers very accurate. The two left and right mouse buttons integrated work flexibly and responsive.

Gestures with Windows 8 on the surface of the touchpad is very good but a lot of times when moving the mouse, the touchpad to “get” command confusion with gestures of Windows 8 and activate the menu even though it just move the mouse. For example, if only want to move the cursor left, the system re-activate the Charms bar.

But with the Asus Smart Gesture tool users can disable gestures on the touchpad and Windows 8 users can use the touch screen to switch applications and activate the Charms menu.

Efficiency

Testing of the machine configuration includes Core i5-3317U processor, integrated graphics Intel HD Graphics 4000, 6GB RAM, hard drive combines a HDD 500GB speed 5400 rev / min and SSD 24GB memory serves buffer (cache).

Test results showed that by PCMark7’s overall performance is very good when VivoBook S500CA scored 2527 points, slightly higher than the average (2584 points). Also score higher than Acer Aspire V5 (2377 points), which uses Intel Core i5-3317U machine speed 1,7GHz, 4GB RAM, but still lower than the Dell Inspiron 15z (4184 points), although the machine has the same processor and RAM as VivoBook S500CA.

Good performance of VivoBook S500CA also achieved when using the tool Geekbench test. Machine scored 6061 points, lower than the average (6577 points) and Dell Inspiron 15z (6147 points), but higher than the Acer Aspire V5 (5553 points).

VivoBook S400CA’s impressive point is the boot time in Windows 8 is very fast, since pressing the power button until the Modern UI interface in just 17 seconds, faster startup time of the Acer Aspire V5 (19 seconds) and Dell Inspiron 15z (21 seconds).

Using data storage solutions combining HDD and SSD data transfer speed is pretty good, the copy test packets 4,97GB including multimedia files. Machine completed the task with a period of 1 minute 18 seconds at a speed of 65.3 MBps. Significantly faster than the Dell Inspiron 15z (30.5 MBps) and Acer Aspire V5 (24.8 MBps).

Integrated Graphics Intel HD Graphics 4000 is only enough for the machine that can handle graphics tasks of ordinary or game requires medium configuration.

For example, the 3DMark 11 test, S500CA reached 632 points, lower than the average level of graphics points (1175 points). Dell Inspiron 15z scores slightly better graphics with 641 points, but the Acer Aspire V5-571P lower scoring 536 points.

Experiment with the game “World of Warcraft” with effects in the game is set in Autodetect mode. The unit can play well with the average speed achieved 13.4 frames / second (fps), par with the Dell Inspiron 15z’s 33 fps and Acer Aspire V5-571P-6649 (31 fps).

When you change the settings in the game to the maximum, the frame rate dropped to 14.1 fps.

Battery life

Regarding battery life test recorded through continuous web surfing via wireless connection with Wi-Fi and measurement tools Laptop Battery Test. The machine can operate lasted 4 hour 43 minutes. This time was longer than the Dell Inspiron 15z (4:40) and Acer Aspire V5-571P-6499 (4:09). All three machines have shorter battery life with an average of 5 hours 44 minutes.

Application

In addition to the application comes Windows 8, Asus also install other applications for both machines. VivoBook control panel allows users instant access storage drives and memory usage, switch the power saving mode and touchpad, allows access to the Audio Wizard and Asus Cloud.

Splendid Video Enhancement technology also allows users to easily change the color balance of the screen display when watching video.

Machines will be installed apps like Asus Calculator, Asus Converter, Skype, Fresh Paint, Microsoft Office 2010 and Power4Gear Hybrid, allowing users to switch between modes best performance or optimized to save battery power.