Why You Can Trust CNET Asus N53SV review: Asus N53SV
The N53SV is the laptop to get if you want power, but you're on a budget. We'd love a higher-quality keyboard, but this is only a small bugbear in an otherwise excellent laptop.
It's surprising the sort of quality that you can get on a budget these days. Take Asus' AU$1299 N53SV — while the grey wrist rest with wood-grain pattern may be a matter of taste, the laptop is well constructed and of higher quality than you'd expect for the price bracket.
Asus N53SV
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
It still falls into the extremely common trap of providing a 1366x768 screen, though, something that with a screen size of 15.6 inches always seems a little too low. Still, the screen is reasonably bright, and the colour is just fine.
The typing experience is acceptable, although the keyboard base flexes a bit, which is a disconcerting behaviour. Asus has chosen to include Elantech's touch pad, which adds the brilliant ability to tap two or three fingers simultaneously to bring up the right-click menu. More than once, though, it got confused when using two-finger scrolling on web pages, engaging the zoom function instead — something that we recommend you turn off.
The N53SV offers a few things above the norm; a quad-core Core i7 2630QM and 6GB of RAM definitely boosts above the standard fare, while a Blu-ray reader gives the user more to work with. Asus also makes a point of difference in its warranty, offering two years rather than the more common one year.
The rest is reasonably standard for the category: a 640GB hard drive, 2.4GHz 802.11n, Bluetooth, four USB 2.0 ports, headphone and microphone jacks, HDMI and VGA out and an SD card reader.
Asus has bundled in its SonicMaster sound technology as well, which, along with some decent-quality speakers, brings better-than-usual sound. Just be prepared to dial back the "Vocal Clarity", "Surround" and "Bass" sliders in the SonicMaster app to regain high-end clarity.
Application performance
Choose a benchmark: Handbrake | iTunes | Photoshop | Multimedia
It's not surprising that with a quad-core, highly clocked processor, the N53SV does well in our application benchmarks, taking pole position in each test.
Gaming performance
Choose a benchmark: Metro 2033 | Batman: Arkham Asylum
While the quite common GeForce GT 540M doesn't quite catch the Radeon HD 7690M XT on average frame rate in our gaming benchmarks, it still puts in an admirable showing in Batman: Arkham Asylum. The incredibly taxing Metro 2033 is too much for the notebook, though; this is a game geared for the very high end.
Battery life
All of that power has to have consequence, and it's usually in battery life. Despite being at the bottom of the list, the Asus still performs well, especially when you take into account that it's running more powerful hardware than most of its competitors.
Conclusion
The N53SV is the laptop to get if you want power, but you're on a budget. We'd love a higher-quality keyboard, but this is only a small bugbear in an otherwise excellent laptop.