Asus M70SA-X2

You always expect something special from Asus and they rarely fail to live up to their expectations. Asus M70SA-X2 is another such product from Asus’ labs. It boats of never heard specifications on a laptop. It isn’t priced exorbitantly which is the icing on the cake. So does this laptop make the cut as one of the best gaming laptop, lets find out.

Asus M70SA-X2 specifications :

• 
• Dimensions : 16.1″ x 11.7″ x 1.5″
• Display : 17″ TFT active matrix
• Display resolution : 1920 x 1200
• Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz
• Data bus speed : 800 MHz
• Chipset : Mobile Intel PM965 chipset
• RAM : 4GB DDR2 SDRAM 667 MHz
• Hard Disk : 1TB (2×500 GB) SATA ATA-II
• Optical drive : Blu-ray drive
• Graphics : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 (1GB)
• Webcam : 1.3 megapixel
• Battery : 8-cell Lithium-ion
• OS : Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
• Warranty : 2-years
• Approx. price : $2400

This one surely has impressive specifications with a TB of hard drive space, a gig of video memory on the graphics card and a blu-ray drive. And not to forget the state-of-the-art processor with 4 gigs of memory, perfect!

The 17″ monsters are always bulky and this one is even bulkier, so moving it around frequently isn’t an option. The build quality of the laptop is solid and its lid is made up of reflective material. The keyboard is gray in color which is glossy and attractive. The keyboard has a 10-digit numeric keypad which is becoming standard on 17″ inch laptops.

The display is exceptional as it supports full HD resolution ie. 1920 x 1200. Coupled with a Blu-ray drive, it will come it very handy while watching HD movies. The display has an ambient light sensor for automatic adjustment of the display brightness, sweet. If that was not enough, the display incorporates Asus’ Splendid Video Intelligence Technology for automatic adjustment of brightness, contrast, color saturation etc based on the application you are running. Webcam sits pretty on top of the display.

The touchpad is a beauty to say the least. It isn’t like those normal touchpads, it is a dual touchpad. It doubles up as a multimedia control with the touch of a button. It changes it color and reveals touch sensitive keys which can be used to control the media player. Scroll turns into a volume slider. It also has a couple of programmable buttons.

There are a whole lot of ports that it incorporates which includes HDMI port, eSATA port, S/PDIF out, S-Video in apart from the regular set of ports. The speakers haven’t been left behind the revolution, four speakers with subwoofer make the way for full balanced sound.

Performance isn’t something you would worry about after looking at the specs! It ships with 32-bit Vista, so only 3GB RAM gets recognized sadly. Also the graphics card isn’t the most powerful around. CPU has a lot of juice in it and that shows in CPU-intensive tests. Gaming performance isn’t top notch but still its very good. Battery will last more than 3 hours on normal usage which is highly acceptable.

Pros :

• 
• Top-line specifications
• Solid build quality
• Full HD 17″ screen
• Brilliant touchpad
• Awesome speakers
• Good performance
• Great battery life

Cons :

• Bulky and large
• 32-bit OS does not support full 4GB RAM
• GPU a bottleneck

Final Thoughts

The Asus M70SA-X2 is a hell of a laptop and offers awesome specifications at an aggressive price. Apart from a average GPU, everything else on this laptop is close to perfect. Be it the screen, speakers or even the touchpad, all them impress. So get this one if you can live with a bit lower frame rates in the games!

My Rating : 4.25/5