ASUS K501UW-AB78, it’s said to be a gaming laptop, and look at the price: much less than your usual notebooks meant for players cost! At a glance, this kind of package looks perfect – FPS will be good, price will be low. But is it so simple? Perhaps not, we must take a closer look before making the final decision.
Gaming performance in nutshell
ASUS K501UW-AB78 includes a dedicated graphics engine, the GeForce GTX 960M (2GB GDDR5). It is a gaming card, sufficient for keeping frame rates and settings high. Speaking about more demanding games, GTA 5 will run at ~50FPS using Full HD resolution and high details. With a similar setup, Fallout 4 will get +30FPS. Far Cry 4 will also give closer to 40 frames per second.
How about other important components?
ASUS K501UW-AB78 has a low-voltage processor, the Intel Core i7-6500U (two cores, 2.5GHz base frequency, 3.1GHz turbo). So despite its TDP is 15W (= low voltage), the chip still gets a fairly good CPU Mark score – around 4300. It’s sufficient for serious gaming, you can also throw any kind of software at this computer and all will be handled smoothly. The 8GB RAM seems to be soldered, although there should be a free slot so you can upgrade the memory to 16GB.
Storage selection is golden here, a 512GB solid-state drive. Because of the SSD technology without moving parts, boot-up times of this rig will be some seconds (also programs will load quickly). The half a terabyte should also accommodate plenty of games; and nothing is stopping you from upgrading the drive if you’re running out of space.
Ports and connections
The laptop houses several ports so you can spice the computer up with peripherals. There are two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports to begin with; for example, a gaming mouse can be connected to those. You can also utilize the HDMI-out if you want to hook up another monitor.
For networking, you can choose either the RJ-45 LAN port or 802.11AC WiFi + Bluetooth 4.0 adapter.
The notebook does not come with a DVD burner, but SD/SDHC/SDXC card reader is included.
Other features and benefits
The screen size is 15.6 inches, the cookie cutter one indeed. Resolution is the gaming-friendly Full HD (1920×1080), and the panel has anti-glare coating. The display doesn’t support touch. The top panel has an embedded VGA webcam.
The included battery features three cells and 48Whrs, it’s going to net you 4-5 hours if not gaming – and considerably less (around 2 hours) under gameplay.
The keyboard is backlit.
Wrapping it up
As somebody put it, ASUS K501UW-AB78 comes well equipped: there is a decent GeForce GTX960M for gamers keeping FPS high, and SSD & Core i7 for making general use smooth. There are ports if you want to plug in peripherals of your household, even HDTV is supported. At 4.4 pounds, this unit is also quite lightweight for a 15-incher. Lastly, as the price is rather low considering the features, I’d recommend this ASUS for gamers & power users out there!
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