At less than $400 it's pretty rare to find a laptop with a 1080p display and yet, the Aspire is just that. The display offers sharp images with vibrant, accurate colours.
The display produces 159% of the RGB colour gamut which is well above the 94% average for laptops. At that score, it also vastly outperforms direct competitors for this price range.
The chassis is made of a sturdy black plastic with faux aluminium finishes. It has a great build quality with a sturdy body that does not creak or buckle during use.
The 720p webcam stands out as a poor one even in a market saturated with laptops that take poor images. Pictures taken under fluorescent lighting are filled with visual noises and details are hard to make out.
The charging port is located on the rear of the laptop. This means that there are less cables dangling around your laptop, and the power cable is out of the way.
A USB 3.0 port is present (unusual for laptops at this price range), as well as a 2.0 USB port, full HDMI port, SD card reader and also a Gigabit Ethernet port.
The Aspire E15's Celeron N2840 processor paired with 4GB of RAM scores poorly on benchmarks. GeekBench - a benchmark used to judge a computer's overall performance - scored 1919 points, less than cheaper options.
Weighing 5.29 pounds, it is as heavy as a lot of thick gaming laptops while not providing near the same level of performance or assuring build quality.
Microsoft Office 365 comes included for one year, which includes 1TB of OneDrive online storage.
As a separate bonus, Asus is offering 500GB of online storage though WebStorage.
This laptop can handle just over 12 hours of continuous web browsing, which shatters the ultaportable average of nearly 8 hours. This has been tested and verified by reviewers - it isn't a marketing number.
The 1.33GHz Atom Z3735 CPU paired with 2GB of RAM performed admirably. In GeekBench 3, the EeeBook scored 2212, beating out the HP Steam 11 (1804) and Lenovo S21e (1694). When it comes to hard number crunching, the EeeBook falls short taking 25% longer than the HP Steam 11.
The screen goes bright enough, and its color range is better than other laptops under $300 (it scores 68.2 on the sRGB color gamut, while competitive options typically score closer to 60).
The rounded block design isn't flashy, and the matte finish will get very oily from kid's fingers, and cleaning it isn't a simple affair either - it will take more than just a cloth wipedown if you want it to look shiny and new again.
Most laptops in this range don't have a full 1080p HD screen, while this one does. A full HD resolution allows for more content to be displayed on the screen at once, as each pixel is smaller. It also offers 70.4% of the color gamut, proving more colors than competing laptops.
The warmest part was the middle of the keyboard, and it reached 84 degrees. 95 degrees is considered the tipping point between acceptable heat and uncomfortable amounts of heat, so this laptop is very good when it comes to keeping its cool.
Two USB 3.0 ports, a USB 2.0 port, SD card reader, HDMI port, and VGA are all present. There's also the usual dedicated charging port, Ethernet jack, and combined headphone/mic jack and a CD/DVD drive.
The keyboard stays cool during use, and while the keyboard isn't amazing, for under $400 it isn't bad. There's noticeable keyboard flex while typing and 50g activation force is a bit low, however it has great travel distance for a laptop, and there's a full numpad.
Multitasking is decent, with 4GB of RAM able to handle 8 Chrome tabs alongside an OpenOffice document while streaming a YouTube video before slowing down.
However, Geekench (a general all-round benchmark) only received a score of 2080 while some cheaper options can provide more bang for less buck.
For basic tasks, such as browsing the web and working with text editor it's perfectly sufficient and very reliable. It doesn't freeze suddenly or heat up even running for hours at a time.
The computer has a 720p display, which provides decent image quality, but far from the best available. This is especially frustrating since you can get a similar Acer laptop with 1080p display for just extra $50.
The R 11 uses a fanless design, which stays cool when idling, however when in use it gets very hot. The highest temperature recorded was 118 Fahrenheit on the bottom near the hinge of the device. These temperatures can damage the internal materials if sustained. The top of the laptop fared a bit better - 109 Fahrenheit which is still significantly above the 'comfort threshold' of 95.
The system does thermal throttle down to 600 MHz, which will provide much reduced performance. If you require a laptop for prolonged heavy tasks, consider a different machine or at least look into a cooling system (if only a fan that blows warm air away from it).
The speakers deliver loud audio especially for an 11" laptop. While not superb audio quality, it didn't come out too distorted. The only downside is that these speakers have virtually no bass.
At under $300, you can't expect a lot, but the R 11 surpasses expectations. The TN screen offers poor viewing angles, however it is brighter than nearly all of its competition at 250 cd/m², and the 870:1 contrast ratio is acceptable as well.
Colors don't fare as well - the screen has a blueish tint, and only scores 36% in the Adobe RGB and 57% in the sRGB tests. It won't do for photo or video editing as colors aren't accurate, but for general users it won't be a big issue.
The keyboard provides enough travel distance to make it comfortable to use. the chicklet keyboard, and the keycaps provide some grip for added comfort.
The hinge on the R 11 allows the keyboard to fold all the way back behind the screen, letting you use it like a tablet. This is great for watching movies in bed, browsing the web on the couch, or doing anything that doesn't involve much use of the keyboard.
While ultra-portable, the 11" screen is very small for a primary computer. As a companion device (a very portable laptop you use on the road), it can do, however pulling up two windows on a screen so small will not make for a good experience.
The display is a TN panel with a resolution of 1366x768. This means that text won't be super crisp, and that viewing angles will be poor. Brightness is decent while plugged in, although while on battery power it reduces the brightness to levels virtually unusable outdoors. The screen has a very noticeable blue tint to it, and colors are anything but accurate.
Besides the DVD drive, all of the ports are on the left side. It has a USB 3.0, a USB 2.0, SD card reader, Ethernet jack, HDMI, VGA port as well as a combination headphone/microphone jack.
While many modern laptops forego the CD/DVD drive, Asus has included one here. It allows for easier installation of legacy programs, as well as playing DVDs.
The laptop can be opened with a single finger - a useful design aspect. The top cover also has an attractive radial reflective design, with many ridged circles. On the inside, the individual keys are placed inside of the case, making for an attractive uniform look.
TN panels are cheaper to manufacturer than IPS panels, and offer much worse viewing angles. You will want to be directly in front of the display when viewing it, otherwise you will start to lose colors. This isn't such a big deal when there is just one person looking at the screen, but when 2+ people try to crowd around it the viewing experience will be poor for anybody not directly in front.
Lenovo includes lots of pre-installed apps that nobody wants. MalwareBytes detects 79 issues on a fresh purchase which is unacceptable for a tier-1 manufacturer.
While it is still built out of plastic, the finish makes it look like black brushed aluminum. The SD card slot barely sticks out, and there isn't too much flex on the lid or keyboard. Overall, Lenovo designed the G50 pretty well.
Lenovo has some of the best keyboards on general purpose laptops, especially at the budget level. The larger size of the laptop provides ample space to type, and the chicklet style keyboard works well.
With 6GB of RAM, the G50 pulls way ahead of other laptops in it's price range. More RAM allows for more programs to be active at once. You will be able to manage many Chrome tabs, as well as other programs without suffering from any system slowdowns.
The TN display makes for poor viewing angles, and out of the box the screen was way too cool. It scored 65% on Adobe sRGB , and 48% for Adobe RGB. It uses a glossy panel, which will reflect glare.
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