What do you think? ASUS K53U-DH21 LAPTOP

Link. Hard to find any reviews. It'll do for what I need hardware wise, just need to know quality. ASUS put out great mobo's but I need to check anyways.

 

All I will say is, one of the cheaper ASUS notebooks came into my shop recently, and they are sure assembled weird/differently. The motherboard has built-in RAM and only one RAM stick slot... so limited on upgrading there (I'm guessing it's similar, as this laptop is less than a year old). Also, it's in my shop because the motherboard failed... I personally wouldn't get it.

On the other hand, their higher end models I've heard nothing but good stuff about.

 

Personally I have mixed opinions about Asus. My old board was Asus A7N8X-E and that was awsome. Rock solid for 5 years. I kept with Asus when I upgraded and got an M2N series board. Never even got it booted up. Got various error messages and then eventually it just went pop and died. seemed to be quite a common problem with that board, but this was nearly 5 years ago.

Looks nice spec for the money so I would be tempted to take a punt on it. worth checking out about the RAM slots. The GPU is shared so you may find performance is limited when your GPU starts eating into your 4GB. I would be tempted to drop another 4GB stick in to beef it up.

 

The problem with trying to rate ASUS as a whole is that they are everywhere. If you buy a Dell or an HP, you may end up with an ASUS built board.

If you look at that $450 notebook, look at what you are getting for $450 that is NOT made by ASUS. They outsource the display panels, RAM, CPU, chipset, graphics, HD, DVD, audio, and Windows too. They have to make money on it to pay wages and overhead. Plus, they have to be competitive to survive, AND they have to provide free tech support for the length of the warranty (which includes 1 year support for OEM Windows).

Computer makers, notebook makers, and even motherboard makers are really in large part, just assemblers of parts made by other manufacturers. If the memory controller made by Intel fails on an ASUS motherboard, it is really ASUS's fault?

I personally wouldn't get ANY notebook that only cost $450. But if that is all my budget would allow, I would take a $450 ASUS over a $450 HP or eMachines any day.

 

[QUOTE='Digerati]I personally wouldn't get ANY notebook that only cost $450. But if that is all my budget would allow, I would take a $450 ASUS over a $450 HP or eMachines any day.[/QUOTE]That was my thinking too. It all depends on the quality control of the incoming parts and quality assurance at the other end. I've loved all my ASUS boards these last 10 years, rock solid and never a DOA after some 50 builds. At any rate, I pulled the trigger yesterday. I hope my loyalty is well placed.

 

This is absolutely true, along with everything else you said. I suppose I didn't really think it all through. Good points all around!