Asus K55VD

By Craig Simms | August 28, 2012 | 3

The K55VD gives decent performance for the price, but the clickpad and battery life are left wanting.

7.0
CNET Rating

4.5
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Price

AU$999.00

The Good

Decent specs and performance
Clickpad aside, good build quality and design for the price segment

The Bad

No Bluetooth
Clickpad was loose and clacky on our review sample
GeForce GT 610M is underpowered enough that you may as well just run Intel
Ordinary battery life

Quick Specs

Display

Diagonal screen size : 15.6 inch

Drives

Primary hard drive : 750 GB

Graphics

Graphics hardware : GeForce GT 610M

Memory

Amt of RAM : 4GB

Processor

Processor type : Intel Core i5
Processor speed : 2.5 GHz

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About The Author

Craig Simms

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CNET Editor

Craig was sucked into the endless vortex of tech at an early age, only to be spat back out babbling things like "phase-locked-loop crystal oscillators!". Mostly this receives a pat on the head from the listener, followed closely by a question about what laptop they should buy.

Asus has long played well in the affordable laptop sector, bringing generally good build quality to an end of town that has traditionally tried to cut a few more corners than it should have.

Connectivity

USB 3.0: 2
USB 2.0: 1
Optical: DVD±RW
Video: VGA, HDMI
Ethernet: Gigabit
Wireless: 2.4GHz 802.11n

Things are changing though, as prices trend ever downwards, with greater competition in the quality-for-affordable-price stakes. The K55VD still manages to hold its own, with a mix of bronze, faux-brushed metal, dark brown and black plastic that's worked well for it for quite some time.

Asus usually does a good job of balancing specs for price, and the K55VD is no different, featuring a Core i5 3210M @ 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM, a 750GB HDD and a GeForce GT 610M. You get a pair of USB 3.0 ports, a single USB 2.0 port, VGA, HDMI, gigabit Ethernet, headphone and microphone jacks, an SD card reader and a DVD± drive for your money, with 2.4GHz 802.11n but no Bluetooth. Only Acer's offering gives more bang for buck, and it's afforded extra wiggle room by using a last-generation CPU.

Keyboard use is pleasant enough, but the top-hinged clickpad on our sample was a little loose, bouncy and clacky, even when simply tapping. Right clicking, in particular, is annoying, as you have to make sure your finger is at the very bottom of the pad for it to actuate. Good thing, then, that the Elan pad included supports simultaneous double finger tapping as a substitute.

The TN, SEC-supplied, 1366x768 15.6-inch screen isn't anything special, lacking the vibrancy of the competing LG panels. That's not to say it's bad, just that, much like the audio on the K55VD, it doesn't rise above the pack. The latter is certainly serviceable, but you'll get better quality out of headphones.

Choose a benchmark: Handbrake | iTunes | Photoshop | Multimedia

Handbrake encoding (in seconds)

352
HP dm4 3114TX (Core i5 3210M, 4GB RAM, 640GB HDD, AMD Radeon HD 7570M)
353
Asus K55VD (Intel Core i5 3210M, 4GB RAM, 750GB HDD, Nvidia GeForce 610M)
378
Acer Aspire V3-571G (Core i5 2450M, 8GB RAM, 750GB HDD, GeForce GT 630M)
380
Toshiba Satellite C850/02D (Core i5 2450M, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, AMD Radeon HD 7610M)
386
Sony Vaio E SVE14A15FGB (Core i5 2450M, 4GB RAM, 640GB HDD, AMD Radeon HD 7670M)
541
HP Envy 6 1010TU (Core i5 2467M, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD + 4GB SSD cache)
763
Dell Inspiron 13z 5323 (Core i3 2367M, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD)
766
Dell Inspiron 14z 5423 (Core i3 2367M, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD + 8GB SSD cache)

(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Thanks to the third generation Core processor inside, Asus' laptop tussles with HP's Pavilion dm4 for pole position in the sub-AU$1000 category.

Gaming performance


Batman: Arkham Asylum
NOT PLAYABLE
FPS
Max	Avg	Min
71	55	22
1366x768, 0x AA, Detail level: Very low, PhysX off.


Metro 2033
NOT PLAYABLE
FPS
Max	Avg	Min
82	35	8
1366x768, DirectX 9, 0x AA, Quality: Low, PhysX: Off.


The Witcher 2
NOT PLAYABLE
FPS
Max	Avg	Min
15	11	7
1366x768, low spec.


Skyrim
NOT PLAYABLE
FPS
Max	Avg	Min
46	31	24
1366x768, low detail.

The GeForce GT 610M is most certainly not a gaming chip — even for, usually, forgiving games. Given that gaming only starts becoming feasible at the GeForce GT 630M level, there may as well be just Intel's HD Graphics in here, to save on cost.

Battery life (time)

Heavy battery test
Light battery test

4h 15m6h 11m
HP dm4 3114TX (Core i5 3210M, 4GB RAM, 640GB HDD, AMD Radeon HD 7570M)
3h 34m5h 10m
HP Envy 6 1010TU (Core i5 2467M, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD + 4GB SSD cache)
3h 25m5h 0m
Sony Vaio E SVE14A15FGB (Core i5 2450M, 4GB RAM, 640GB HDD, AMD Radeon HD 7670M)
2h 37m4h 9m
Acer Aspire V3-571G (Core i5 2450M, 8GB RAM, 750GB HDD, GeForce GT 630M)
3h 13m4h 7m
Dell Inspiron 13z 5323 (Core i3 2367M, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD)
2h 51m4h 3m
Asus K55VD (Intel Core i5 3210M, 4GB RAM, 750GB HDD, Nvidia GeForce 610M)
2h 54m3h 49m
Dell Inspiron 14z 5423 (Core i3 2367M, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD + 8GB SSD cache)
2h 36m3h 32m
Toshiba Satellite C850/02D (Core i5 2450M, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, AMD Radeon HD 7610M)

(Longer bars indicate better performance)

While application performance is hot, battery life is dead ordinary on the K55VD. Sony and HP still look good though, riding the top of the charts.

Conclusion

The K55VD gives decent performance for the price, but the clickpad and battery life are left wanting.

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Rating

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The Good
The Bad

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1
Rating

"piece of crap"

BarbaraB posted a review 7 days ago
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Germany

The Good:nothing

The Bad:everything

Asus K55VD has the shittiest touchpad in the whole universe! Keeps disabling itself and it's going on one's nerves. I will brake it into the smallest pieces as soon as I can afford a Mac.

8
Rating

"Love it."

StephanieP2 posted a review 1 month ago
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Australia

The Good:Fast, nice screen, good design, thin

The Bad:Could be a bit lighter, clickpad is a little sensitive

The K55vd was a great buy. Design is excellent, and feels well made; it's nice and thin, not the lightest but not overly heavy, and has a responsive clickpad (not loose at all like in the review), but I've noticed a couple of times when I'm typing that brushing the clickpad can accidentally click out of the window.

The best thing in my opinion is that It's FAST. I don't try to play any cpu-intensive games on it, but it's able to run Photoshop CS6 reasonably well, and is super quick to resume from sleep and for general use which is important to me. Screen is vibrant and clear, laptop stays cool and battery to me seems pretty good.

I paid about 2 x for a Samsung laptop about a year ago, and despite the premium price, it's super slow and lags. I'll stick with Asus!

ShivaS posted a comment 3 months ago
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gr8 lapy

User Reviews / Comments Asus K55VD

BarbaraB

Rating1

"Asus K55VD has the shittiest touchpad in the whole universe! Keeps disabling itself and it's going on one's nerves. I will brake it into the smallest pieces as soon as I can afford a Mac."
StephanieP2

Rating8

"The K55vd was a great buy. Design is excellent, and feels well made; it's nice and thin, not the lightest but not overly heavy, and has a responsive clickpad (not loose at all like in the review), ..."
ShivaS

"gr8 lapy"