Asus X553SA review
Most people can’t afford to spend £1000 on a laptop. Workhorse budget laptops that make up that bulk of what you’ll find on high street shelves rarely get much attention, though. Today we’re here to ask: what does £280 get you in 2016? Here's our Asus X553SA review. See also: Best budget laptops 2016.
The Asus X553SA is a cheap laptop, with a good great of entry-level features across the board in a ‘proper’ laptop frame. Asus would readily admit there are compromises at this point, but should they put you off a buy?
Having spend a good while the laptop, there’s only one major issue here: performance. Intel has made amazing progress with its Core M series processors over the last 18 months, but the Celeron chipset used here is slow. Matched with a slow hard drive, you’ll need patience to get on with the Asus X553SA.
Also see: Best laptops 2016 UK
ASUS X553SA REVIEW: PRICE
At £279, the Asus X553SA is not too far off as little as you can spend on a new, full-size 15.6-inch laptop that has a large hard drive rather than a tiny Chromebook-style wedge of solid state memory.
It’s also available cut-price at £249 at the time of writing, clearly with its eye on the bargain hunter
A laptop with a shoestring budget, you’d hope the Asus X553SA wouldn’t make any silly design moves, and it doesn’t. This is a very normal-looking laptop with a plastic shell.
In pure aesthetic terms it’s pleasantly simple. While the lid is plastic, there’s still a texture of concentric circles fanning across it, mimicking the brushed metal style Asus uses in its higher-end ZenBook laptops.
Asus sent us the sober, all-black version. It’s a good look for those who want a low-key computer. However, there are colourful models too. It comes in pink, white and purple, each radically altering the impression they’ll make while changing nothing but the colour.
Build quality isn’t too impressive, though. Press down on the keyboard and you’ll see flexing, a sign of a less-than-tough laptop. Little build issues like this are all the more grating now that tablets have made us expect expensive-feeling devices for similar money.
