ASUS K401 Laptop Review

One of the faster ultrabooks today is ASUS K401. It sports a 14-inch display, smaller than your usual 15.6-incher. Furthermore, the notebook is powered by Intel Core i7-5500U, a top-of-the-line (if low voltage) mobile processor. Let’s see what this laptop is good for, and whether it’s a recommended choice for you or not.

General performance

I’d say the processor is very decent in ASUS K401. It’s the Intel Core i7-5500U, a 5th generation model featuring two cores, 2.4GHz clock speed and a turbo of 3.0GHz. If you’re into benchmarks, let me tell you the unit receives around 4000 points in CPU Mark – hence it’s capable of running more advanced software, such as Adobe programs, as well. 8GB RAM is installed on this model (4GB on board and 4GB on a stick) which is plenty for power users.

I wouldn’t give many good points to the hard drive here. It’s indeed a spinning disk drive with 750GB capacity and 5400RPM spindle speed. Often, especially for this price, you get at least a terabyte HDD or even a solid-state drive. Regarding the latter, you can surely install SSD – you’ll just need to remove the current HDD (2.5″) first.

Good for gaming?

Surprisingly, ASUS K401 isn’t that bad for games. The graphics card GeForce 940M is a faster model than those entry-level integrated Intel HD ones. In real life, you can expect that most games run, however some will require less eye candy on. For example, GTA 5 will run at +50FPS in medium settings and 720p resolution. On a similar setup, Fallout 4 would get around 25FPS. Counter-Strike: Go will have stable and smooth frame rates even on high settings.

What ports and connections are included?

All in all four USB ports are available; two of them are USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0. The video output is served by HDMI; a PC display or HDTV can be hooked up. There is RJ-45 port for cabled network connection, and you can also use the AC-level WiFi + Bluetooth 4.0 card.

To move data locally to and from the laptop, you can use the media card reader for SD(HC/XC) cards. As far as I know, there’s no internal DVD burner.

Other important things

ASUS K401 contains a smaller (14 inches) display but the resolution is still nice Full HD, in another words 1920×1080. It doesn’t support touch. The webcam on top features VGA (640×480) resolution for video.

The battery operates on 3 cells and 48 Whrs, you’ll get 5 hours with a single charge if browsing the web.

The notebook is quite a lightweight one, just 3.6 pounds.

A bad thing for some, there is no backlit keyboard on this unit.

Verdict

The most essential things about ASUS K401 are the weight and performance. See, at just above 3.5 lbs and 14 inches it’s quite perfect for people on-the-go, travelers also. And the another thing, performance, is solid with the i7 processor and 8GB RAM – even a demanding program wouldn’t put the system on its knees. The laptop is also decent for gaming. Bad sides would include non-backlit keyboard and perhaps the missing DVD burner, but if you can live without those (or get an external DVD drive), do take a closer look at this ASUS!