a few questions about the Asus M50

I'm thinking about picking up an M50SV-A1 at some point in the next few days. I basically have a few build quality related questions about the M50 for anyone who owns one of these.

1. Is it pretty sturdy or does it feel flimsy?

2. Is the keyboard comfortable to type on?

3. This one's pretty important. I've read that a few of these laptops have keyboards that come with a few unresponsive keys. I was just wondering if this is a common fault in this laptop.

4. Lastly, how hot does it get when video editing or doing other intensive tasks? Does it ever get uncomfortable to use without a cooling pad?

Thanks in advance!

 

1. It's very sturdy. Although the exterior is plastic, it's extremely rigid. The only noticeable flex on the laptop is on the right side near the '3', '6', and '9' keys on the numberpad (directly above the DVD drive).

2. Keyboard is average to above average in terms of comfort. Nothing spectacular, but not bad either.

3. I've already responded to this issue here. It's a Vista problem, and the issue happens in other brands of notebooks as well.

4. You won't need a cooling pad at all

Idle temps:
CPU: 45-50C
GPU: 55-60C
Hard drive: 35-40C

Temp while running 3dmark06:
CPU: 62C
GPU: 79C
Hard drive: 41C

 

Okay Thanks a lot!

 

Well I do not own the A1 model but the B1 but its the same just slightly less powerful CPU in my case.


1.- From my experience, the M50sv feels pretty sturdy, I find no real flex on the notebook at all. Evertyhing seems on place and with a very nice surface finish that seems very hard. Opening and closing of the notebook is fairly easy.

So far the keyboard has given me no problems. I tend to type without any issues, but I did have some time to fully get used to having a full numeric pad. I think the keyboard is pretty decent and as the rest of the laptop I have not experienced much flex, if at all.

The unresponsive key is apparently a Windows vista thing. I read a solution on this board, disabling the mouse smooth movement or something like that. Ever since I did that, I have not had that "unresponsive" keystrokes, and everything so far has worked great.

this laptop is quite the "cool and quiet" one. It does get hot but not to an unconfortable level I would say. Mostly on the left palm rest gets warm. The cooling solution is very good as it gets rid of all the heat easily and fast just dont rest your hand on the heat exhaust! haha. Most of the notebook remains at an ok temperature even after hours of gaming. And as soon as I stop gaming the notebook quickly returns to normal temps on the left palm rest which is the hottest area. I don't use cooling pads at all ever since I got this Asus. I had to use them for every other laptop manufacturer, specially on Acer machines that got boiling hot.

This is a very cool and quiet laptop as I mentioned earlier. If not on heavy usage, just normal, you can use it very comfortably on your lap (with "quite office" settings or "battery saving" settings).

So in summary:

Excellent build quality with sturdy/hard design and no real flex.
Excellent cooling solution that allows cool and quiet operation.

 

Thanks, I think I'm going to buy this laptop.

 

I concur with everything the posters above said. I'm really enjoying mine and have no problems with build quality. Considering the many problems that plague laptops, I'm very, very pleased.

 

So the keyboard doesn't feel cramped? My concern that they had to squeeze the keys together to get the numeric keypad in there.

 

I'm also considering purchasing an Asus M50

I figured I would just add some questions to this thread if that if the op doesn't mind.


1. how bad is the battery life? everyone says it's "below avg"

2. any concerns I should consider before purchasing this laptop?
ie. screen issues...


Thanks

 

About the keyboard-- It doesnt really feel cramped up to me. It seems they made the laptop a little more wider than usual, and reduced the key sizes about 10% to ensure enough space to the numeric pad.

The end result? a very working keyboard. Nothing spectacular, but works well and is fully featured with the numeric pad and all. And at least in my case, I do not have any problems typing right now.

For the other questions. Yeah this notebook has below average batterly life. on max battery settings I get near 3 hours, but usually I remain at max performance yielding about 1:40 to 2 hours of battery life. (with wireless and bluetooth enabled).

About the concerns... Well what can I say? maybe the sound? at least for me the sound, altho great, has weird high pitch noises when enabling some of the High Def Realtek features (like Live, or Rock type sound etc). I usually need to set everything to default in sound settings to have excellent quality alto not so high volume. The simulated surround sound is awesome with headphones, but it seems to reduce overall sound a little.

I think the volume of the sound is rather poor compared to other machines, which I personally expected more out of it. Other than that, I really have no complaints! everything is awesome, and so far Im really enjoying my purchase.

 

I agree with most of the positives up there. Though if you're getting it to do video editing or (3D work like I'm using it), I would recommend using a separate HDD and use the eSATA. Everything else though is fair game.

Are you going to use XP or Vista?

 

Really? What are you comparing it to? "Poor" never came to my mind.

BTW, I'm using the REALTEK utility to set the EQ and it sounds very good. Nothing else though.

 

The spacing is just right. Spacious for some. I can spread my palm, starting with my thumb on the FN key and ending with my pinkie at the F12 key, and it's almost a reach.

 

A few tips to stretch battery life: 1) Turn off Wifi. If you aren't going to be online, turn off Wifi connectivity. 2) Dim the screen. The brighter it is, the more power it draws. 3) Disable utilities. If you have a lot of garbage running, the cpu is drawing power, the fan runs more and the HDD reads/writes and is drawing power. Finally, 4) Change your power management settings to turn off the screen if you are not using it for five minutes or more. You'll be surprised at how getting a cup of coffee, answering the phone or going to the terlet can drain your battery while those precious minutes are wasted. 5) Recalibrate your battery. You may not be achieving full run-times if your battery calibration has gone out-of-whack. 6) Keep out of extreme heat or cold. Batteries perform best in moderate temperatures. 7) Charge your batteries prior to use. If you let 'em sit too long they may not have the full-throttle juice when you need 'em. In tandem these things may save power for you.

 

warm left pad? is the HD there? cause that would probably explain it... (the c90s has the HD there and it gets warm)