Asus K53S review

The last K-series laptop we saw from Asus was its K52JC, which impressed us with its smart design and switchable graphics – it was one of the first laptops we’d seen with Nvidia’s Optimus technology. The K53S follows in its footsteps, with a new Nvidia graphics card plus a new Intel Core i3 processor.

The i3-2310M may be the slowest of the new chips, but a score of 41 in our new benchmarks puts it on a par with middle-range chips from only a few months ago. With two cores and Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology, it doesn’t slow down much when multiple applications are running.

There’s a dedicated graphics card in the form of an Nvidia GeForce GT 520M. Although it has 1GB of memory, it performed poorly in our Call of Duty 4 test, scoring only 22fps. This may be twice the speed you’d get from an integrated chip, but it’s still not powerful enough to play most modern games unless you turn off most of the fancy effects. The GT 520M also supports CUDA, so it will speed up certain operations in GPU-accelerated programs such as Photoshop.

The glossy 15.6in screen has good image quality, although the backlight isn’t amazingly bright and a slight blue cast makes flesh tones and reds lose impact. With fussy vertical viewing angles, you’ll have to tilt the screen carefully to get the best picture. If you’re planning on watching catch-up TV or movies, you may need some external speakers, as the internal pair is weak and tinny.

Some may find the K53J’s textured lid a bit boring, but it does help you grip the laptop when you’re carrying it. Inside, the dark brown keyboard panel has a brushed-metal finish which we found stylish. The Chiclet-style keys are flat-topped and have a light action but lack bite in the keystroke, so there’s less feedback than we’d like.

As with the K52JC, the K53S also squeezes in a numeric keypad on the right, and its keys are far too small. If you use a numberpad regularly, you’ll be annoyed that the “0” key, which is normally double-width, has been chopped in half to fit the cursor key in. Otherwise, the layout is good, with a row of page navigation keys above the numberpad. The touchpad is large and responsive, and its two buttons are large and have a light action.

Although the K53S seems thinner than other 15.6in laptops thanks to its tapered case, it weighs more than most. At 2.7kg, you’re not going to want to carry it around for too long. However, the battery lasted four hours and 39 minutes in our test, so you won’t need to stay near a power socket.

The lure of a dedicated graphics card may be tempting, but if gaming is a priority, the K53S isn’t the best choice. It might be faster than integrated graphics, but not by much. Its inclusion doesn’t justify the £50 premium over the Dell Inspiron 15R, especially as the hard disk is 180GB smaller and there are no USB3 ports.