Asus M50vn Review: The Low Cost Gaming Laptop

With looks that can kill and a gaming performance that will delight the elite, the Asus M50vn is the perfect low cost gaming laptop. Though it may not have the charm of the Dell XPS series, it is still a must buy, especially if you want to buy a product on an affordable rate.

Build and Design

Upon touching the Asus M50vn, you get a feeling that the entire laptop is made of plastic! However, if it is picked up from a corner, it feels solid and steady, which seems to be quite a paradox. The lid of the laptop has a reflective design similar to other products that are released these days.

Screen

What stands out in this laptop is its extremely crystal clear screen. The images displayed on the Asus M50vn have no grain, are bright, with perfect contrast and almost HD-like impressions! The display is also of the glossy type. Horizontal viewing angles are pretty good, so you can watch movies with your friends without any hassle. Vertically, it is pretty decent too and viewing from the top is much better than viewing from the bottom, so you may have a problem if the laptop is seated on a table that is above your line of sight. Another fantastic feature of this display is its automatically light sensor that adjusts the display settings like contrast and brightness automatically depending on the light that surrounds it. This enables superior viewing of movies and images in both good and bad light. This also prevents reflections from falling on the screen.

Moreover there are preset ambience settings that you can choose depending upon the application you are going to use, such as gaming, imaging, movie watching and power saving.

Keyboard & Touchpad

The keyboard of Asus M50vn feels a bit plastic, but is actually pretty strong when you use it. The touchpad, which is on the left on the other hand is extremely responsive. Like some other Asus laptops, it is also provided with a media centre panel that has various functions. The scroll side serves as a volume control device.

Performance and Benchmarks

The ASUS M50N has been tested with many current games and all of them worked just fine with its 2.4 GHz processor. It can support multi tasking with ease too. One annoying thing with this laptop is the sound of the fan can be heard quite easily, but the only consoling bit is that it does not go too high when being over clocked. Even at high performance levels, the sound is pretty ok to manage.  It stays put on your lap without slipping or sliding and the keyboard never gets hot. The temperature never goes more than 60 even if you over clock it to the limit using GPU software which is a very good thing to take note of.

Battery Life

It doesn’t seem that any special work has been put in to increase the battery life, but the laptop lasted a respectable 2 hours and 20 minutes in the battery test. The Asus M50 possesses a 4800 mAh battery, but you can also purchase an add-on battery or use low display settings, if you want to extend the battery life.

Specifications of Asus M50vn

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 / 2.4 GHz

OS: Windows Vista 32-bit

Memory: 4GB (2×2) DDR2

Display: 5.4″ WXGA+ (1440 x 900) glossy

Hard drive: 500GB 5400rpm

Battery: 6 Cell 4800mAh

Weight: 5.5 lbs (with battery)

Dimensions: 14.2″ x 10.5″ x 1.6″

Pros: Fantastic price for a well equipped gaming laptop, the feel of the laptop is quite wonderful

Cons: Not a very high end gaming laptop, Sound of the fan can be annoying

MSRP: $1,550 (basic price)