ASUS K50IJ-B1 vs. Toshiba Satellite A505-S6973

Hello,

I need a new inexpensive laptop for Word, Excel, internet surfing and email. I do not play any computer games. Looking at these two options at Amazon:

ASUS K50IJ-B1 ($569 with carry case and mouse and 2-year warranty)

or

Toshiba Satellite A505-S6973 ($649 with 64-bit and more RAM and hard drive space, and sounds like better audio and graphics).

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

I bought the Asus this past Sunday and so far, so good; it's on sale at Best Buy for $479 this week, $200 less than the Toshiba A505 they had in the store.

That said, the A505 scores trounce the K50 all around: faster performance scores in every category and longer battery life. However, each model won its category in the CNET 2009 Back-To-School roundup - the Asus was the "Entry Level" top pick, the Toshiba the "Budget" winner.

 

Thanks for the insight. I greatly appreciate it. I'm leaning toward the Asus, as I'm not a gamer. Thanks again.

 

Exactly my reasoning - the Asus is cheaper, and while it's a bit slower than some laptops it's much faster than anything I've owned to date, and more than up to the tasks I need it for (MS Office for working from home, video playback). In fact, I may be showing my age a bit, but it blew me away you can get a 2Ghz machine for under $500. I remember when a 75Mhz ThinkPad was $4000.

If you're going to go with the K50, I'll expand on my experience. The keyboard is clacky, but the feel is good and the large keyboard is easy to touchtype on. I work in banking with lots of spreadsheets, so the numerical keypad is nice, something I've always wanted on a laptop. I'm used to my mouse buttons being at the very edge of the laptop, so I keep missing the ones at the edge of the touchpad, but I think this design is superior; I just have to get used to it.

The display is nice - this is my 2nd laptop with LED backlighting and you can't beat them for uniform illumination. The contrast isn't as good as my Sony VAIO, but it's sharp and clear, though sensitive to angle - if not directed right at you, it begins to look washed out. The glass is also very reflective, so with any sort of dark background there's no chance of anyone sneaking up behind you. Video playback is excellent from online files and DVDs.

Performance has been excellent for my uses - even my largest spreadsheets load quickly, as do hi-res photos. The disk is slower than I like, so I may upgrade to a 7200rpm 500GB model down the line, but this is good for now. Despite the 5400rpm drive it copied 65GB of data from my VAIO in about an hour, perhaps helped by the fact that Windows Vista is 64-bit on the K50, compared to 32-bit on most laptops.

Battery life is decent, though not a patch on more expensive systems. With battery saver mode on and wifi off, I've managed just over 3 hours, but 2:30 - 2:45 has been the average. Not a big issue for me, as it will never leave the house. I'd never put up with that if I were taking it on the road, but I've still got my TZ150 for that.

The cons? If you research other online reviews, you'll notice that everyone mentions this system is a fingerprint magnet - they're not kidding. The glossy surface shows every touch. If you're fastidious about such things, plan on wiping it down with a microfiber every day or so.

My biggest criticism would be that the speakers are incredibly weak during video playback. I've never had a laptop with such poor speaker output, and I've owned dozens. Not a deal breaker as I can use headphones, but if you plan to play video for more than one person you'll need external speakers. Music playback seems fine, but I use Rhapsody for that and it was always kind of loud on my other laptops so it might be just them. Even the SRS software doesn't seem to help.

Overall, I'm pleased with the machine's performance, and think I made the right choice getting it as a home desktop replacement.

 

Thanks again for the great info. So your K50 is a 64-bit? Do you know if they all are? I've been confused by the fact that the one I'm looking at comes with 4GB of Ram but also comes with the 32-bit Vista OS. My understanding is that you can't get actually use more than 3GB of Ram with a 32-bit machine, so I wonder if it's actually a 64-bit machine.

 

It's definitely 64-bit, though oddly mine only came with 3GB RAM and I don't see a way to upgrade; no clearly-marked slot, nothing in the skimpy owner's manual.