2014 Asus N550JK -DS71T quick mini review and opinion so far

Does anyone know how to make the touchpad left click function while holding down the spacebar? Mine won't activate if space is being held down. This makes functions like panning through an image in Photoshop not possible. I know it's definitely not ideal to be working with a touchpad to begin with, but sometimes a quick edit or two is fine - or should be, provided things work correctly.

 

I have noticed if I fully charge the laptop and then fully shutdown the laptop, the next time I use it the battery has drained by ~10% and is down around 90%. Does anyone else have this problem or has notice this, might be a common issue?

 

It's common due to electronics still consumes power even though it's powered off.
If you wish to eliminate this, then it's recommended to take the battery out instead.

 

I managed to find a workaround - there doesn't seem to be any way to actually correct this problem... Unfortunately the driver settings are too limited.

In SmartGesture settings, go to Touchpad Button, and check "Switch Left/Right Button". The right click button will now act as a left click and will function while spacebar is being held down. Will take some retraining getting used to it and no one else will be able to use it correctly, but it's a solution.

Edit: Upon further inspection, this seems to be a palm rejection feature... wherein if a key is being pressed, left clicks are disallowed. There's also a short time after pressing a key (1 second or so) where clicks are not allowed. Still, I wish there was a setting to disable this.

The proper way to implement this would be to only affect touch-clicks and not press-clicks. Unfortunately it affects both types and as a result can hinder some application use.

 

What are you talking about, the battery is not user removable! Unless you undo 8-10 torx screws to get the bottom off every day to pull out the battery which no one need to do with any laptop "everyday".

The laptop that is only 2 weeks old, not months or years old.

From a complete and full shutdown (not sleep mode or anything else) with power connector disconnected and laptop packed into my bag for portability:

~18 hours after shutdown with a 100% full charge, around 94% battery level

~2 days after shutdown with a 100% full charge, around 88% battery level


I can't have the battery discharging at a rapid rate, if I was to leave it any longer (4-7 days) and get it out to use, then I there going to be not much battery to use when on the go.

Not only that, this would also mean the battery even while be being plugged in will be cycling every two days or so once drops under 95%, which will mean the battery will be unnecessary charging more than its needs to.


Doubt that a shop will address this issue, e.g. If I sent this into your store, you would send it back saying "it works, we cant see anything wrong with it, drrrr just take the battery out"

All I need to know if this is pretty much normal for this model, are others having the same issue or is this a hardware/battery issue?

 

I don't think he knew this laptop's battery wasn't user removable, but he is right that laptops can have discharge even when they're off. However, I'd say yours is higher than normal, even though I haven't had the chance to test it myself... Just based on my own research and whatnot.

Have you checked the BIOS for anything suspicious? That's the first place I'd look. Another suggestion from a different thread:

"Open ethernet driver properties in device manager and uncheck: "allow the device to wake up the computer" and disable all "wake up" and "magic" packets in the properties. Good idea to check the other devices if disable "allow to wake up" flags if any."

Haven't ever tried that myself, though.

 

Yeah I had a look in the BIOS in case there is something like USB charging (even though I don't leave anything plugged in here) is off, although there was no option here. I will have a look at the network driver, although I wouldn't expect this to be on my default, even then it really should only work like a switch without significant power draw.

I have had a seal like battery in a brand new HP Envy 14 which the battery went flat but at a much faster rate. I swapped this with the store (after much arguing before they gave be a replacement) and the next unit I got I could charge to 100% and use days to a week later with next to no battery loss in charge.

I can fully understand that battery do naturally discharge of a longer period of time, but the Asus N550JK that I have is losing charge fast just overnight.

 

There is USB charging but it is driver driven and not BIOS driven. But if you don't have any devices plugged in then that shouldn't be an issue. I just fired my laptop up after 4 days of disuse. It was fully charged when I last shut it down and was just at 95%. I'm running Windows 7 but I can't see that making a difference. I'd say your battery is discharging a bit fast on its own.

 

Seriously. In this day and age if you're going to put a dvd in it it's likely to be bluray. PC makers just need to stop selling non-bluray players.

 

Those who say the battery drain in shutdown mode; Here is why is that:
Windows 8.1 actually doesn't SHUTDOWN the laptop but instead hibernate it by default,
The high battery drainage during shutdown is simply caused by windows hibernation.

If you're really that concerned with the battery drainage then disable hibernation in windows by:
Open CMD (Admin) and type: powercfg.exe /hibernate off
If you want to re-enable it then simply replace "Off" with "On".

Hope that helps.

 

I just bought and installed the Panasonic UJ272 9.5mm bdxl writer in mine. Cost less than a $100 and was a pretty easy install.

One tiny thing that bothers me though is the bezel I bought from the online Asus store. It says it's the bezel for the N550JV, which is supposed to be the same body as the N550JK. However, half of the bottom curved part of the bezel is not flush with the body of the notebook. Not sure if it's a warped bezel or if the bezel between the JK and JV aren't identical after all.

 

When "Shut Down" doesn't actually mean shutting the system down.

Only on Windows 8.

Thanks a ton for this tidbit. I am flabbergasted at MS's stupidity. What's the point of having a shut down option if it's going to do the same thing as Hibernate?! Unbelievable.

 

I have the same BluRay bezel as I intend to replace my ODD with a BluRay drive soon. I just took the DVD bezel off and compared the two and they are identical in every respect except the logo printed on the trim. The only thing I can see causing a problem would be the drive not seating quite properly or it having a misaligned clip point for the bezel.

Compare it to the bezel on you DVD drive if you still have it. Who knows, maybe you just received a defective part.

 

So you installed it and yours is perfectly flush with the body? When I compared them by looking they seem identical, but once I installed the one with the bluray logo, it just wasn't flush.

These are pix of the bluray bezel installed. The first one is the side closest to the front.


The second is the side closest to the back.

 

That's definitely off a bit. I don't have my BluRay drive yet but I went ahead and snapped the new bezel onto the factory drive. Mine seems to fit just fine...

 

Thanks for the quick response and pictures. Very helpful. I just finished sending an email to the Asus estore to ask if mine was defective. Hopefully I'll get a response.

Only problem now is, if they're willing to ship me a replacement, they're gonna have to send it to me in Japan as I just returned from the States yesterday. I still can't believe they charged me $9 to ship that little package while I was in Atlanta.

 

Have you made sure the mounting bracket for the odd is on square?

 

I'm pretty sure it is, but I may check again just to be sure. But if you look closely at my pix, you can see that every other corner is perfectly flush except for the bottom curve part closest to the rear of the machine. I'm not sure that's possible if it was just misaligned. At least one other corner would be out of place too.

 

For anyone who has a HDD installed in the optical drive bay, does your hard drive constantly spin? I have tried numerous things to try to figure out what is causing this, but nothing seems to work. As soon as I even open up the files on the secondary drive through file explorer, the drive starts spinning and does not stop until 10-15 minutes of idle. This can't be normal right?

 

I have the IPS matte version, when I tilt the screen backwards a little bit, the screen look like a greyish hue. The colours don't flip like a TN panel but there is a greyish hue, I don't have this on any of my other IPS panels.

Is it normal for the screen to have like a grey area hue when the screen is tilted backward?

 

Completely normal. Not to worry.

 

If you mean about the IPS panel I had mentioned, then this is very strange, although nice to know that mine is the same as all the others.

In that case the IPS panel on the Asus has exactly the same viewing angles and greyish hue backward tilt as the HP 840 G1 with 1080p that features a AHVA panel which I currently have also.

I know the hardware make and model are not an AUO AHVA but the Asus IPS have a very uncanny resemblance to that of the HP in it characteristics.

AUO - AHVA

 

So I realized it isn't my fan clicking, it's that the HDD is constantly turning on for a split second then shutting off again. Anyone have any idea why this would be happening? It's very annoying, and happens no matter what I'm doing on the computer (unless the HDD is running for something else)

Thanks!

 

I can't find the correct info on this one, seems to be a mismatch in the size of the optical drive HDD caddy that fits this machine.


Is it 9.5mm or 12.7mm?

 

Anyone has any idea why this keeps happening to me: Almost everythime I wake up the laptop, wifi stops working. Adapter seems to be working but cannot connect to any wifi network. After I reset network settings via troubleshooter, it starts to work again. What could this be?

The wifi adapter is: Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260

 

Try the latest version from Intel's website.
Wireless driver 17.0.6
BT driver 17.1.1406.01

 

hey guys, i am interested in n550jk. can u wirte a short review about it ?
i am also interested about the display quality (non touch)

 

Looking for a mini review? How about you check the first post of this thread? *eye roll*

 

I just bought a N550JK too (CN341H), with 4710HQ, GTX850M, 8GB ram and 750gbx7200rpm hard disk.
I am just testing the battery after the first charge, but I guess it takes some cycles to get full capacity.

I would like to test it and know more, especially the screen. I looked for hours without being able to find an UTILITY to know the manufacturer of the screen more detailed information, osv. Especially I want to understand if this is IPS or not.

What software do you suggest to test this laptop? Thanks

 

I found it hard to test the abilities of the CPU and gpu especially since I had few games available to try out. I had nothing that would even kick the fan into high gear.

I used 3dmark graphics testing software and compared to other scores with the same CPU and GPU options. It didn't matter to me if they were slightly higher or lower than anyone else's.

 

I'll also try 3dmark, I see they have a free version. Do you know some tool to find out screen's manufacturer and/r other details? If it is IPS?

 

Give this a try. Monitor Asset Manager 2.9

This is the info I received..
Monitor
Windows description...... Generic PnP Monitor
Manufacturer............. LG Display
Plug and Play ID......... LGD0323
Data string.............. LP156WF4-SPB1
Serial number............ n/a
Manufacture date......... 2012, ISO week 0
Filter driver............ Monitor
-------------------------
EDID revision............ 1.4
Input signal type........ Digital (DisplayPort)
Color bit depth.......... 6 bits per primary color
Color encoding formats... RGB 4:4:4, YCrCb 4:4:4
Screen size.............. 350 x 190 mm (15.7 in)
Power management......... Not supported
Extension blocs.......... None

 

Hey rebelhell, looks like the Asus eStore where I bought my bezel from has just basically told me to go jump in a lake. Did you buy your bezel from them or somewhere else? When I explained that I was no longer in the States, the CSR became almost fiery in explaining that they don't serve customers outside of North America.

They said they would send RA materials to my address in the States so I could send the defective bezel back to them at my own expense. By the time I get my family to forward me the RA stuff and then ship it back to Asus, I would have spent probably well over $50 in shipping for a purportedly $6 part. It's just become a bad experience and I'll probably just write it off as a loss. Right now I'm only out $17 bucks, but I still don't have a bezel I'm happy with. What's worse is that the part has been sold out on Asus eStore since at least the end of July. I doubt they would be able to replace it even if I did send it back to them.

Kinda sucks, but for anyone thinking of purchasing from the Asus eStore, I would suggest trying to find what you're looking for elsewhere. Their customer service and return policies are not good, and from my brief experience, they don't seem very reputable or reliable. Your mileage may vary.

 

I purchased mine from the Asus Website same as you. However, I was able to find one with the same part number on eBay. Here's the link.

 

I can't open the link, but if it's the same one from the seller in Miami, I think I've seen it.

 

Yup, that'd be the one.

 

Well thanks anyway. Not sure what my next move is, especially since it's mostly a cosmetic thing. But being stuck with a deformed part that I actually went out of my way to purchase is a little upsetting.

I wish they would give me the benefit of the doubt since I've already sent them photographic evidence of the deformity and just ship a new one to me without requiring me to spend more money to ship mine back. Or if they're adamant about getting the part back, the least they could do is send a replacement WITH the RA materials so I don't have to wait for weeks on the whole back and forth. Just seems like a lack of courtesy.

 

I wouldn't expect anyone to do anything about it unless the drive itself stopped working. I have an HP that has a similar problem from new, just have to get over it.

Changing the bezel may not fix it, it could be the actual drive housing or the containing bracket. Likely why I wouldn't send out any parts either if I was selling laptops.

 

Here what I got. no idea how can I check if it's a IPS and if the brightness is in order. It seems it is based on registry keys....however, I contacted Asus and they told me that they can try to go back to the manufacturer if I provide the serial number. But they cannot guarantee they can give a certain answer...

Monitor
Windows description...... Generic PnP Monitor
Manufacturer............. LG Display
Plug and Play ID......... LGD042C
Data string.............. LP156WF4-SPH1
Serial number............ n/a
Manufacture date......... 2013, ISO week 0
Filter driver............ None
-------------------------
EDID revision............ 1.4
Input signal type........ Digital (DisplayPort)
Color bit depth.......... 6 bits per primary color
Color encoding formats... RGB 4:4:4, YCrCb 4:4:4
Screen size.............. 350 x 190 mm (15,7 in)
Power management......... Standby, Suspend, Active off/sleep
Extension blocs.......... None
-------------------------
DDC/CI................... n/a

Color characteristics
Default color space...... Non-sRGB
Display gamma............ 2,20
Red chromaticity......... Rx 0,625 - Ry 0,355
Green chromaticity....... Gx 0,335 - Gy 0,570
Blue chromaticity........ Bx 0,151 - By 0,050
White point (default).... Wx 0,313 - Wy 0,329
Additional descriptors... None

Timing characteristics
Range limits............. Not available
GTF standard............. Not supported
Additional descriptors... None
Preferred timing......... Yes
Native/preferred timing.. 1920x1080p at 60Hz (16:9)
Modeline............... "1920x1080" 138,700 1920 1968 2000 2080 1080 1083 1088 1111 -hsync -vsync

 

This is interesting.....CPUZ and 3dmark system info show that I have 8GB RAM DDR3 with DRAM frequency at 800Mhz...but this laptop should only have DDR3 at 1600Mhz! On the asus webpage it says: DDR3L 1600 MHz SDRAM, DIMM up to 16 G ). I guess this is simply a ministerpretation of the results by me, right? Probably it needs to be multiplied by 2...

 

Yes, DDR actually stands for Double Data Rate. It has a multiplier similar to a CPU. In this case it is stepped on twice so you have to multiply by 2.

 

Well you have the manufacturer and the part number now...LG LP156WF4-SPH1.

The rest is just a short Google search away.

15.6 inch
1920(RGBY)x1080, FHD
IPS, Normally Black, Transmissive
Antiglare
Brightness: 300cd/m2
Contast Ratio: 700:1
Colors: 262K (6-bit)
Response Time: 35 (Typ.)(Tr+Td)
Viewing Angle: 80/80/80/80 (Min.)(CR≥10)(L/R/U/D)
Frequency: 60 Hz
Signal Interface: eDP (2 Lanes)
Input Voltage: 3.3V (Typ.)
RoHS

 

Thanks but I'm sure it's neither the frame nor the housing. It's the bezel I paid for from the Asus eStore. The factory installed bezel is perfectly flush.

Having said that, you're probably right: I just have to try and let it go. Still doesn't stop it from feeling like I got ripped off from the Asus eStore.

 

ASUS do not have a built-in factory recovery program/software to create restore media.

Anyone know how to make factory recovery disc set or USB drive with the ASUS?

 

800 x 2 = 1600.

 

I'm guessing its 9.5mm, but don't hold me to that! Can someone else please confirm?

Also, are there any recommendations regarding drive caddies? I noticed there are quite a few generic caddies available and also some branded as N550-specific (such as this one).

Can anyone recommend a caddy?

Also, even though I have the SSD version of the N550, i would like to add a further SSD drive where the optical bay is. Would there be any disadvantages to doing this as opposed to installing an HDD?

 

I purchased a 12.7mm caddy then reversed the order before it was to late. I can't confirm but I measured from the outside near as possible 9.5mm. In any case in 24 hours I will be replacing the HDD with a SSD, I will be measuring the actual optical drive.

I too are just going to use a generic caddy, but I am put off with comments that the laptop will not shut down correctly with that kind of caddy. If that is the case I will stick with my MX100 512GB drive that will be replacing the HDD tomorrow.

 

Hi everyone!

I have another question: Does anybody know whether the the N550JK's miniDP port can handle 4K output? There is a nice 4k monitor from Asus which I am eyeing closely...

 

I replaced my DVDRW drive with a BDXL drive. The first one I bought was 12.7mm and was too thick. The second one I bought was 9.5mm and it fit. I'm pretty sure it's the same for am HDD caddy.

 

The optical drive bay is limited to SATA2 (half of sata3 and much lower than an SSD) speeds so I wouldn't spend tons of money on an SSD unless it was going to replace the one in the main body.