Asus N550JV - user review and owners lounge

Just don't boot, use sleep mode. U get back to Windows within 2 secs even with HDD. Complete shut down and sleep mode suck both 3W at the wall anyway.

 

Has anyone bought the laptop from this site?
Asus N550JV-DB71 15.6" LED Notebook, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD N550JV-DB71

Does it really come with a i7 4702hq and not a 4700hq? How does performance differ when it comes to gaming with the 4702 instead of the 4700?

States that it has a 24 gb ssd cache. Is this correct?

Also states it has Intel GMA HD GPU instead of an Intel HD 4600.
Not sure if these are mistakes on Adoramas part but considering buying it from them.

 

Anyone recommend trusted resellers?

 

No to SSD.

Yes to 4600.

 

I use my i7 4700HD without cpu turbo (so running at 2,4 ghz), not that the N550JV can't handle cpu turbo, i just don't like cpu turbo, i'm green and also use a framerate limiter at 50-60 fps via nvidia inspector to reduce temps and power consumption. I had this habit with other notebooks to reduce noise but the N550JV is friggin' silent under load so it's not as necessary as it was but hell, i don't like running at 100 fps when it's not necessary. It's fun to play at barely 60W max with such powerfull hardware.

I don't think the i7 4700HD is limiting the 750M even at 2,4 ghz so with turbo on, not at all, same for i7 4702HQ.

 

I was looking at how hot the Lenovo Y510p gets. +55°C on ASD keys is insane. While Asus has ~35°C under same full load. OK, Lenovo has greater GPU power, but still, I would not like to use it like that. The entire middle-upper left part even in idle state is ~35°C on Lenovo. That is one hot laptop, anyway you take it.

 

The palm rest does not get hot during gaming which is sweet (only slightly warm).

While I haven't yet run a prime95 stress test, playing games with turbo on doesn't really hurt gameplay, and the CPU temperatures are looking just fine (barely hitting 80C, around 77C). The GPU is always like 3-5C behind the CPU temperature, so seeing GPU temps at around 74-76C is normal.
(Core #3's temp sensor is around 4-5C hotter than the other 3 cores at idle, whereas Core #1's temp sensor is lowest, Core #2 and #4 are both about 1C higher than Core #1 at low temperatures. During high load, the sensors are all about the same.)
Idle temperatures at 0.77ghz are about 29C to 34C
Idle temperatures at turbo boost are around 33C to 39C
Light browsing at turbo boost gets temperatures of around 37C to 42C.

 

The reason I got this N550 is because I previously had a Lenovo Y570 and just like you are saying c_man, the palm rest and keyboard get very hot when gaming, but that is basically all laptops when gaming. I have not yet tried any games on the N550, but it sounds like a really good cooling system to keep all that heat away from the keyboard and palm rest. I just got so tired of sweaty palms even in the winter time.

Amazon took all of 22 hours to ship me this laptop and for less than $9. So far the matte screen is actually just fine by me. It appears sharp as the matte is not too over powering like it is on so many monitors these days, especially Dell desktop monitors. I only wish the screen was not recessed into the bezel as I think that looks way more classy and it is 2013, but no real biggie. I was prepared to ship this right back if I did not like the matte and I usually hate matte, so it says a lot that I am not thinking about shipping it back.

The hard drive is the standard version of these Hitachi's, so no hybrid SSD. I was surprised at how thin this laptop is. I thought it would be similar to my Y570 that I pawned off to my wife, but it seems like it is easy 33% thinner and much lighter.

 

I just got the N550JV-DB72T from Adorama which is also listed as having the 4702HQ. This is wrong. It has the 4700HQ. It also has no SSD. The display is 1920x1080 FHD; kinda glossy due to the touch screen but not so bad.I used to hate when people touched my screen now I can't stop! It does have Intel HD 4600 along with the 750M DDR3. Adorama has a no return policy after opening; but i'm happy with it after ditching the 1TB 5400 rpm dog of a drive for an SSD. Very solid notebook. Highly recommended despite the spec confusion.

 

Anyone try throwing a 72 intel AC duel band into this thing ? Does it even have two antenna ?

I hope it doesn't have that stupid whitelist like the Lenovos .

Something else, can you mess wtih the CPU with XTU like the 15 Envy ?

 

XTU is the devil. A lot of people damaged their laptops with it. BAD idea!!!

But yes, you can.

Two WLAN antennas, you are covered.

Not sure about the "white list" and what you can put in it, but N2230 works great, tested here. I guess there is none (list), but can't tell you if everything/anything will work.

Cheers!

 

Cool .

Yeah the Whitelist for the Lenovo are the only thing turning me off from them .

XTU is good when people figure to test configs that work, run cooler .

 

How cooler do you want? It already is most part in full load as cool as Y510p is at idle.

More battery life? Just use something else to keep the CPU at 800Mhz (even Asus has a program for this). Like I've said before, one wrong setting with XTU and the laptop can be damaged for good. The failsafe is crap, changes are made at BIOS level so that is out as well. Asus BIOS reset is also a pain and might not work. You get a brick. Not worth it here.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...user-review-owners-lounge-14.html#post9320846

two antennas yes.

And yes u can mess with XTU, i just use it for undervolting afaic.

Best laptop i ever own, cooling system is just awesome, religious silence.

 

I'm testing idle battery life with wifi enabled. Projected 6 hours. I started the test with a 96% charged battery. It has gone for 5 hours idle with the screen at min brightness, and it is 19% charged now.

 

Am pretty sure i can web surf for a solid 5 hours with my actual settings with max screen brightness.

 

Did you buy the N550JV-DB71 from Amazon and is it the 1080 display since Amazon list it as 1366x768 and it's going for $940 right now.

 

Survived the final hour. Full six hours battery life + Wifi + min brightness (96% to 4% charge) at idle. Very reasonable which does equate to around 5:30 hours light surfing with higher brightness settings.

As for XTU, undervolting might yield slightly increased battery life.

 

Yes, that is the exact model that I just purchased and I love it. The screen is 1080p, processor is the 4700. Just no hybrid like was listed, but the HD is the only thing that sucks and I would be replacing it even if it was the hybrid model. I do think the screen is a lot better than what people have stated for color accuracy. I am pretty big into photography and the colors on my photos match pretty well with my other calibrated desktop monitors. They are just slightly off, but I have no calibrated this monitor or adjusted anything like that yet.

The speakers are truly the only real dumb thing about this laptop. I use an APC pad with the laptop on my lap so I can use a real mouse and it is really easy to muffle the speakers if it gets up against your body and I am not overweight with a big belly (you can tell by the picture of me below my username on the left ) trying to push up on it. It just is most comfortable where the speakers are blocked off.

 

Does that come with the 750m ?

 

It sure does.

 

As cool as I can get

How much turbo can you guys get on it ? I'm reading the Y510p is having problems when one core goes above 2.4g all the others stay at 2.4g .

 

What about throttling? Notebookcheck found out that CPU throttles a lot.

Can someone:

1) Run Prime95 and FurMark and post graphs with cpu/gpu frequences/temperatures.
2) And then play a heavy game and again post graphs with cpu/gpu frequences/temperatures.

 

i run at contant 3,2 ghz on 4 cores with turbo on, giving me 7 points in cinebench 64 bits. I made some 1080p encoding, dat's fast.

As for throttling, don't think it happens for games as notebookcheck mentioned : "Such an extreme load is not likely in practice. Therefore, the frame rates are as high as expected for this hardware in the tested games", furmak + prime is a hardcore scenario. Didn't try games yet though. One thing is sure, there is no way it would throttle in games with turbo off. it's not like it will limit the 750M a lot. And there's also undervolting which is quite spectacular, i went from 50W to 40W when the cpu is stressed at 2,4ghz by shaving 100mv in XTU. Temps barely goes up and the fan is not even spinning faster than when idling...

Funny thing is fans barely kick in even under load and cpu throttling appears as soon as cpu reach 80°C according to notebookcheck...Asus aimed at silence. If fans were spinning just a little faster, they would manage heat easily.

 

What about crackling sound issue that exists on n56vz/n56vj/n56vm. Does this issue exist on n550jv? It's really easy to reproduce this issue. Just start any youtube video, stop it and listen carefully to speakers. If there will be "pfff" after 20 seconds then Asus didn't fix anything..

More information about the issue here: Crackling problem on Asus N56VZ - video1 - YouTube (a popping sound in the middle of the video) or here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/677999-asus-n56vm-popping-sound.html

I had Asus n56vz with this issue. It was really annoying. I tried all solutions that I found but none of them helped me. Luckily I was able to return the laptop...

 

I'm installing from scratch, ordered w/o a hdd. Right now the keyboard light keys don't work and I'll need to install some of the Asus software.

Those of you who ordered with the OS installed, which Asus utilities would you get rid of? Thanks!

Was weird that the nvidia site could not detect the GPU model. I'll just try my luck with the 750M drivers.

 

Well first of all if you installed from scratch make sure you install the latest drivers/utilities from Asus's downloads. The keyboard light keys probably don't work along with the other hot keys if you haven't installed the ATK package.

I've tested that the Nvidia driver 320.49 works. However, I've stuck with the standard 311.54 driver that Asus provides since Autodesk Inventor 2014 crashes with newer drivers.

 

Well so far I do not think I have heard any unexpected popping sounds from the speakers. I have the subwoofer plugged in, played a silent youtube video with the volume set at 100% and the only out of the ordinary sounds that I can hear come from the hard drive arm clicking back and forth every couple of seconds and the always-on fans (which sound around the same as the hard drive spinning).

 

Quick question; did the laptop from Adorama come with the external subwoofer?
Thanks

 

There are no problems with the sound.

You have some info on my OP here, go to page 1.

Note that the cooling might be good, but you need to read a few pages behind to see what someone found in his laptop.

At normal full load on the CPU (I do a lot of video encoding), it stays around 3Ghz and that is just fine after hours of usage.

During games I haven't noticed any drops in performance, even with the laptop hot. My guess is no game asks 100% from all 4 CPU cores.

It's s shame we cannot use the 4600+750M yet, a lot of power wasted.

 

Almost all lol. I just let "Asus instant key menu" and "Winflash". I flashed the bios to the last 205 btw. piece of cake but doesn't know exactly what's new about this bios haha.

No "pfffff" issue on the speakers no.

 

So is the connector for the DVD drive the same as a SATA connector on this laptop? I want to replace this crap drive that comes with it and would like to hook up the hybrid drive into the spot the DVD usually goes just so that I can then clone directly to it before I tear out the stock HD for good and replace the DVD drive. Is this something that is possible?

 

You need an optical bay to do that :
http://blog.superuser.com/files/2011/04/obhd-sata-sata-b.jpg

Better buy an usb 3 hdd case for peanuts on ebay and then clone. Usb 3 is as fast as sata especially from a limited HDD that does not break 100mo/s...

i think i will put this ssd :
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Toshiba-HG5d-256-GB-SSD-THNSNH256GCST.96446.0.html

Not the fastest, albeit very decent, power consumption is amazingly low under loads, not the best at idle but hell, it's not the worst either. I tried a 840 samsung in my lenovo, didn't amaze me at all.

 

What in the hell do you mean by that?

 

Asymmetric CrossFire is just for Amd APUs, and giving the fact it works like garbage, i'm glad intel don't mess with it.

Using HD4600 while gaming would impact bad cpu power anyway because of the 47W thermal enveloppe restriction.

 

Well now. But consider this, Intel gives better and better graphics and at some point it would be great to be able to use both. Nothing is impossible.

Samsung makes great SSD as they last a lot (well, the Pro series now). That is it, they do not offer the best performance. They are more of a million mile averagare car.

 

Can anyone confirm they recieved an N550jv-db72t (touchscreen model) with a matte screen? From any retailer?

Xoticpc used to have it advertised as matte, and now they have changed it to glossy. I e-mailed them and they said they were actually glossy the whole time Asus just gave them the wrong specs.

Prostar still has it advertised as matte, but says they can't check because they are sold out and might not get any more for a couple weeks.

If you do know another reseller that you have recieved a matte screen touchscreen from, let me know!

 

The touchscreen model has the same screen as the DB71 non-touchscreen model, however has the glossy glass protector for the touchscreen goes over the original matte IPS display. Therefore, it will not act as a matte screen - it will be glossy.

 

Are you sure thats how it works? that doesnt sound right. I dont think they put a glossy touchscreen cover over a non-touch matte screen and call it a glossy touchscreen. I think it has to do with the finishing on the glass

anyone who revieced their N550jv-db72t model please confirm matte or glossy, and let me know the retailer you purchased it from

 

check the post made by BubbaRob in the other thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/720651-new-asus-n550-multimedia-series-ips-panel-25.html

 

Ok so yet to be confirmed by a retailer but there is no matte version of the touchscreen model

thank you @F35_Lightning_II

 

Yes, it came with a subwoofer. Actually sounds decent for what it is.

 

Check it out.

 

ok i played a little with XTU

So by putting 34x on four cores and -100mv on voltage cpu offset, i can maintain 3,4 ghz on four cores forever since it doesn't get above 75°C at full load. i doubt it could take that in games though, maybe it might take it cause gpu and cpu have dedicated pipe and fan, didn't try, don't have games installed right now. But i just made three hours of 1080p encoding without any issue. and it's very silent, a Clevo would sound like a chopper at this point. 64W at the wall.

If you don't undervolt while at 34X, then it's more 70W at the wall and temps will go to the 80°C throttling point and start to downclock progressively at 3,2 Ghz then 3,1, 3 etc to keep temps just below 80°C. Therefore no hard throttling just a smart progressive downclock. I'm sure that just by improving the airflow a little, this lap could take 3,4 ghz on 4 cores easily even without undervolting. Aka rising the laptop a little or put some mini adhésives copper heatsink on the pipes.

Best lap i ever own. Again.

 

You are right. There is no way they are slapping a glossy panel on top of a matte screen. Robs comparisons clearly show the brightness on the glossy screen to be a lot better and if they both had a matte screen, the glossy panel would do nothing to recover the brightness loss due to a sandwhiched matte screen, that would also look horrible beneath a glossy panel. I wouldn't get your hopes too high for a touch matte though. I don't think anyone has a touchscreen matte model that I have ever come across. I would get the matte and be done with it. Touch on a laptop is only going to be a novelty for a couple of days before you realize it is actually a huge pain the to go from mouse to screen when Windows 8 already makes simple tasks more complicated, requiring more clicking to get what you need. If only I had an extra W7 key laying around...

 

I like the idea of an enclosure so I can also use this crappy drive I have now just as a backup for important files. I went ahead and just ordered a hybrid. All the testing and reviews I see show no discernible difference with an SSD unless you are performing very large reads and writes. I do all of my picture and video editing on a much beefier desktop, so no need for it on my laptop. Saves me about $100 and I'll get a lot more storage space.

I am like you in that I have been disappointed when switching to SSD drives from 7200k drives. My platter drives are still very fast and making the switch didn't do much to improve anything other than working with those large multi media files and I am usually stuck waiting for the CPU or GPU to render for long periods of time anyways. It is an unpopular opinion, but I think SSD's are overrated. If you have a nice setup with 7200k drives and don't install a ton of bloatware, you should already be getting extremely quick boot times and fast-loading programs.

 

Which hybrid drive you got ? Momentus XT 7200 rpm or Seagate SSHD 5400 rpm. While the momentus performs better, it makes more noise than the SSHD which is one of the most silent HDD out there according to reviews. I did try a momentus, it performs well but it's quite noisy also and consumes a little more than the average HDD. It's not prohibitive but you can clearly hear it.

I will make tests on Battlefield bad company 2 later, multiplayer and all to see how the lap handles it temperature wise. I'll keep you updated.

 

@stezzus

who knows what windows will do next with touch, they are pushing it quite hard
I just feel like its safer to have it in case something crazy comes out in the next few years, I usually have the same laptop for 4+ years so trying to make it as future proof as possible
I'm going to go with the db72t, thanks for the opinion though

 

There is no matte glass cover on any screen to date (laptop, phone, whatever). It's the same panel, to control brightness is easy.

Since I own one Clevo, yep, it's a killer noise. One of the main reasons I got the Asus G series. After the silence of those I've put my Clevo to sleep. It's backup now.

Also I agree, N550 it's one clever laptop. I like it a lot myself. Has more of everything than any other laptop I had so far.

 

i own a Clevo too (W170ER) and while i love their modular way of thinking (easy access to components), i was disappointed by the sober plastics and design, lame sound, cheap cooling system, erratic fan behaviour and noisy as hell etc...Asus is definitely above, another class of laptops. The only thing i didn't like with Asus laps was their high idle power consumption but it's past now with Haswell (at least for the N550JV)