Asus X553SA-BHCLN10 15.6″ Laptop with Intel Celeron / 4GB RAM / 500GB Hard Drive

The Asus X553SA-BHCLN10 is a cheap entry-level notebook with a 15.6-inch HD display, Intel Celeron processor, 4GB of system memory, and a 500GB hard drive.

The Celeron CPU included in the X553SA-BHCLN10 is the N3050 from the latest power-efficient and cool-running Braswell chip family. The N3050 indeed consumes low amounts of power – 6 Watts versus 15W of the popular Intel Core series CPUs. But, computing performance is good only for the common basic tasks like web surfing, email checking, work in Word, Excel, and other Office applications, or movie playback. It won’t perform so well during intensive duties such as video editing, which remain the domain of the faster Core-series processors. For more info on the CPU, you can check out this Celeron N3050 review.

RAM and HDD capacities of 4GB and 500GB respectively are standard for the budget notebook category. 4GB RAM is enough for basic multitasking and will satisfy most of the home and office users. The hard disk offers enough space for common programs and users’ files but it’s generally a slow storage device and you won’t experience blazing fast program load times with it.

As for the display, it doesn’t stands out from the crowd in any sense. The HD 1366-by-768-pixel resolution doesn’t deliver sharpness of Full HD screens and the panel doesn’t provide wide viewing angles since it lacks IPS technology. However, the screen specs are typical for a low-cost notebook like the Asus X553SA-BHCLN10.

The laptop doesn’t lag behind the competition when it comes to other included features. It has a full-size keyboard with numeric pad, one-piece trackpad with integrated “mouse” buttons, a DVD burner drive, and stereo speakers. Furthermore, it incorporates a low-resolution VGA webcam for video conferencing programs like Skype, the popular HDMI video output connector and old-school VGA port for older external displays and projectors, a media card reader, combo audio port, a USB 3.0 port, and a USB 2.0 port. For getting you online, the laptop uses Wi-Fi 802.11N wireless module and wired Ethernet network jack.

Components of the X553SA-BHCLN10 are encased in a plastic but attractive looking black chassis. The finish on the palm-rest resembles brushed metal, while the lid sports radiant metallic-looking pattern. Thinness of the chassis of 1″ adds to the elegance of this affordable laptop. With a weight of 4.9 pounds this model is averagely heavy.

The provided 2-cell 30 WHr battery isn’t capacious by no means. But given the CPU doesn’t consume too much power, you can expect a relatively decent battery life of 4-5 hours.