X555LA at Best Buy

It's been a while since I jumped on one of these deal-of-the-week budget laptops or posted here. Seasons Greetings. I got a solid holiday bonus today and couldn't resist spending some of it on this ultra budget Netflix funnel. I would have passed it up at $350, but found an open box for $280 that was just a bit dusty.
Be aware that I'm a bit out of touch with how crappy budget systems are as it's been a while since I did this. So color any negatives with that.

Exact model: x55la-hi31103j (there were several similar models there as well)
CPU: Intel i3 5020u
RAM: 1x4GB @ 1600
HDD: a super crappy 1TB drive!
Screen: What on god's green Earth is this? @ 1366x768
Win10 blah blah, who cares

So I bought this because it will be great hidden in the cabinet in my living room and-hey I bet it can run WoW on low. It totally does, no problem. I'm actually pretty impressed with the performance of the ULV i3. It's not amazing, but it seems to have no trouble with any of the casual games and MMOs at low settings I've thrown at it. Full HD playback is perfect, but that's not really an issue as much recently with lower end cpus.

But the screen, oh my god the screen. It's horrible, just horrible. Like those screens we would see in Gateway Costco back-to-school specials in 2007. It's the ugliest TN panel I have seen in like forever. Maybe my eyes are just spoiled by Retina and other UHD screens all around me, but this hurts ussss.

Battery life seems pretty decent. Haven't had time to fully test, but I would guess about 5-6 hours max. Not bad for this price category. The keyboard is a very similar island chiclet keyboard to every other sub-$500 Asus I've seen. It's not bad, but I honestly would not recommend working on a keyboard in this budget range unless you have no other choice.

Not motivated enough for a full review, but there's at least a hands-on report. I'll take some pictures after I clean it.

 

$280 is stellar for a new-ish laptop with that base configuration, no matter how bad the screen may be. Thanks for the synopsis.

 

I tuned the screen a bit with the driver calibration tool. It's slightly better now.

The main question anyone should ask when buying this model at any price is how important screen quality is vs. how much do you want in specs if you plan to use it as-is and never upgrade it. There is a very similar model on Amazon's Asus store that has only a 500gb hdd and a slightly weaker i3 5010u, but a 1080p screen for $349.99. That's the normal price for that one so you can get it any time.
The hard drives are a non-issue for notebook enthusiasts, because most of us have other, better drives lying around to swap in. The CPU is only a 100MHz difference, but as these CPUs have no turbo, that is the highest ceiling for performance, making it slightly more relevant.

Personally I will have mine connected to a TV, so the screen isn't a big deal. The slightly better CPU was more important and I might actually leave the drive and be grateful of the space since it will be mostly playing movies and emulators.

 

There is a range of systems and at that point they make different compromises, the CPU speed would be something I would sacrifice for a decent 1080p panel. But that's a personal decision.