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Written by Sasa Pantelic
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Wednesday, 28 October 2009 |
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Page 2 of 3
Webcam is good, but it is obvious that ASUS relied more on software components than on hardware. When it comes to picture quality it is not impressive, but on the other side, there is LifeFrame applications that will provide good webcam control and lot of interesting real-time effect.
Intel Pentium Dual Core T4200 at 2GHz is acceptable solution for most users, since K50IN is not intended for passionate gamers, nor video professionals. NVIDIA GeForce 120M is interesting graphics card choice because it does not use system memory, but instead it has 512MB DDR2 memory of its own. Of course, this is standard DDR2 not GDDR2 which does have impact on final performance levels. Nevertheless, you should not harbor illusions that some of the new games can be played on this model. For example, Doom 3 with ultra settings and 1024x768 offers acceptable 32fps, but any new game title will be too much for this graphics card.
Hard drive has nice capacity, but its speed is below today standards. Warming up is hardly noticeable, only near the Enter key and area above it. Most important fact is that palm rest will remain cool, no matter what you are doing with your notebook. ASUS claims that IceCool cooling solution that was implemented into this model is main culprit for such situation, but on the other hand, Dual Core CPU and NVIDIA 120M are not huge thermal dissipaters. Bottom line is: users will be pleased with the fact that this notebook will stay cool even during most intensive work.
Sound speakers are very good, which is no surprise since Altec Lansing singed them. Although there are no low frequencies, middle range offers enough power to satisfy average user.
When it comes to connectors, ASUS K50IN can be described in one word: modest. We expected more from a multimedia notebook, and at least HDMI port or Express card slot. Users that still rely on modem for Internet access should avoid this model. Connectors, that are present on this model, have nice layout.
Maximum autonomy that ASUS K50IN can achieve is slightly over tree and a half hours, which is average result in this category. If you decide to watch a HD movie with maximum brightness and contrast, you can expect that battery will provide around hour and a half of autonomy. DivX movies can be watched for two hours without direct access to power source.
ASUS K50IN comes without any OS preinstalled but, a disc with Windows Vista 32bit and 64bit drives is present in package. One of the most important applications that we found on this model is very good driver update utility.
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