If you like games… Not this one
If you are looking for a gaming laptop, Asus X553MA (15.6 inches) is not the solution. We are talking about a really cheap laptop, with the price to be below $300. Good for some basic operations but not for something more extreme. Let’s see what lacks.
1. Bad Display
Asus X553MA’s display is 1366×768 resolution, something common for that type of laptops. Also, after some tests, it showed that its contrast ratio was 416:1, something which is bad but we have seen and worse. In addition, some tests showed that colours in images lacked saturation and everything appeared washed out and lacking in contrast. Furthermore, backlighting was uneven with some backlight bleed noticeable at the bottom of the screen.
2. Two USB ports??
X553MA is equipped only with one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0. That means that if you are using a mouse then directly you have to work with only one USB port, which is something really bad and annoying. I am pretty sure that everyone agrees that every notebook should include at least 3 or 4 ports. No they are not too many if you are using a mouse and your flash or external disc, which it’s something common.
3. Do not expect the best performance
Reviews and comments “burn” X553MA about its performance. A main reason about that is the limited amount of RAM, because when 4GB of RAM and almost 2 of them are occupied by the system and you are using at least one application that is a bit “heavy”, then you ran out of memory too quickly. Moreover, it comes with an Intel Celeron N2830 dual core processor which frequency variegated to 2.1GHz. Also, it is noticed that it is really slow when you are installing applications.
4. Caps Lock sign?
On X553MA there’s nothing that will inform you whenever caps lock is on or off, and I am pretty sure that for the most people this is really annoying. For some of you that point may sound a bit stupid but have you ever start writing and watching just the keyboard and not the text, and in the end you have written 10 lines of text and then you realized that all words are in uppercase? I am sure that some of you agree.
5. Build quality
According to users, the material of Asus X553MA is cheap, something that we expected if you notice the price. The internal chassis, from where the base meets the lid to the palm rests, has an incredible amount of flex and the keys and touch-pad are really bad. As some reviews mentioned, the keys periodically stopping working, for example you type half of what you need and you continuously have issues just using the keys.