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At first glance the Asus K53SV looks very stylish and fashionable yet very practical and simple design. The lid is in a textured pattern and made of durable plastic in a dark brownish/gray color with a nice ASUS logo centered. We like the design of the ribbed pattern on the lid which not only looks good, it also helps to make traces of fingers and such pretty indistinguishable. According to Asus the K53SV model will be available in other colors as well.
Upon opening the asus keeps it’s minimalistic design now with rounder edges. The inside is also quite nice, with the black glossy LED screen surrounded with a black frame. The chassis around the keyboard is made of textured aluminum similar to the lid color and stays quite cool even after hours of work on that Intel i5 processor. There are led lights on the power button and the Wi-Fi, battery indicators and such right in front of the touchpad. Dimensions for a 15.6″ notebook are quite acceptable as well as the weight of 2.6kg. Like most of the Asus notebooks, the chassis seems to be constructed pretty well, and the hinges seem tighter on this one.
Keyboard & Touchpad
Can you show how high the temperature gets after hours of usage?
What is the temp of the CPU and GPU on idle mode and when gaming.
Does the IceCool Technology Help with keeping it cooler than other models or is it just the feel on the palm rest area?
Thanks
Hello shoshin01,
Unfortunately I just gave the notebook away and I don’t have it in possession anymore, but I’m sure I will get it in near future again and test that for you.
But from what I remember while I was testing, it got pretty hot while benchmarking the alien vs predator and the 3dmark’s.
I remember one night I left it powered on with the AvP running, and when I got up in the morning the cooler and the part where the heat comes out was pretty hot, not alarming but it was more than usual. But the palm rest area was cold and not even nearly hot as the cooler was, so yeah that part of the marketing is true.
I hope I will get my hands on the Asus K53SV soon enough so I can give you some accurate numbers.
I am thinking of purchasing this laptop a week from now, any pointers you would like to share? Like things concerning the packaging, sound volume, OS installation etc?
thanks in advanced!
Hey Hal,
If that is your price range, you have made a good decision. Well firstly as a must is a windows 7 64-bit. Not only you will squeeze the maximum performance of this notebook, but the drivers for 32-bit OS’es aren’t available at their website.
When you install your windows, expect that most of the drivers won’t be recognized automatically. You have to download all of the drivers previously and install them from an USB stick, or use the drivers DVD provided with the contents when you buy the Asus K53SV.
I suggest you to install the AI Suite, a piece of software by Asus, which enables you to switch between modes depending on how you use your notebook. Definitely a must.
Sound volume brightness are controlled with the Fn key and the F1-F12 keys.
Also one recommendation would be to be very careful not to block the vents, because it can get very hot, especially if you are using the nVidia graphic card.
One other thing would be to pay attention which software uses which graphic card. Usually it’s the right one that is selected by default, but sometimes it can get confused. So if you’re in doubt sometimes about which graphic card is started with the software you use, you should check by right clicking. I have a screenshot in the benchmark section of that.
I can’t remember anything more specific about this notebook that might be of use. Maybe if you ask me I could answer.
I hope I helped you with my tips. Maybe you can come back and share your experience after you get your hands on the Asus K53SV. Great choice!
hi folks….have small doubt n need clarification for the same…i recently bought asus k53sv-sx520v laptop…but in a manual they hv given it has illuminated chicklet keyboard…what does it mean…? some sort of backgroun light which comes out from de keys which helps in typin in dark…? but in my laptop i dont see such thing…how to turn it on…?
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Does the Altec Lansing speaker make a good sound quality especially when in full volume?
Also, I know you have a Brown unit but I am interested in the black/silver one. I have seen videos of the brown which is not finger print magnet Lid cover and I have seen the black/silver and I think it is a bit shiny. Could it be a finger print magnet or is it just in videos. Did they use the same type of material, just different colors?
Thanks
The Altec Lansing speaker does have great sound quality at full volume, but it is not VERY loud, well as much as you can expect from a notebook. I’ve ordered a sound level meter device, so I can show you some exact measurements again of this model in near future and make some comparisons. I hope it will arrive soon.
There are more colors of this model I think, and they are all made of shiny material. I’m not sure if they will be more available colors of the same material as the brown in future, but for now it seems that is the only model with that “carbon look” type of lid, which I personally like.
What can you say about the battery life both in simple computing and gaming. Thanks
I’m also interested to hear if you can tell anything about the battery life. But also I what did you think of the display? It has a glossy display if remeber correctly. Did you find it bothersome in any situation and are the viewing angles good?
Oh but of course the battery life is something I missed to mention. So while using a browser for sufring the net with the WLan on it lasted about 2:30-40 hours, which is not that bad for a notebook of that class, especially because it has a mid/high end graphic card. But with much heavier load, like benchmarking all the time it did last about 70-75 minutes.
The LCD screen is glossy and it’s really sharp, but I did find the angles a bit low. While trying to look from tje side, the angles it gets dark pretty quickly.
hi, got a small problem with my asus k53sv, i have installed tune up to help me clear the junk softwares that came preinstalled, but my problem is realy annoying, i hade no dvd-s with them, and i would like to reinstall the sistem (Win7 64 bit home premium) because it s kinda full in registers with some softwares that i try to install – didnt work and so on… can u please redirect me to a tutorial, or a helpfull link that explain how to reinstall a fresh windows.
Thank you, and i must specify that i didnt found the partition where the backup sistem is …
I like this laptop and highly considering the A1 version of this in a choice between the MSI FX620DX which has better speakers, webcam and features with the same specs but lacking in the keyboard, touchpad and quality/warranty department or the Acer 5820TG which has better battery life and webcam but has lower specs i5-480m | HD 6550M and equal in quality to the Asus. So hard to decide as all the laptop are the same price range.
Great review! I’m looking to get this for the upcoming school year. My two concerns are the screen and battery life. Do you know how long the battery lasts when not using the internet? For example, word processing, excel, listening to music, etc? Also, how is the screen when outside in bright light? I’m not too worried about how wide the viewing angle is, just when looking at directly. Do you constantly get annoyed with reflections and such or is pretty much the same as other comparable laptops? Thanks so much for this review and any information would be super helpful!
Hey, Thanks for the review, i found very inresting. as i was thinking in buying this model, i have a question. i am not planning to play games on it, i just need to do some work and watch videos. becuase it would be my fist asus, i would like to know about the quality. if i buy it, it will be my pc for the next 3 or 4 years. could you please tell me about the quality? thanks in advance,
michael
Thanks for the review. I’m thinking of buying the K53SV-SX146V, which is the same as the one reviewed, only 4gb. This definitely made me decide to buy this.
Thanks for the update on the costs. Same analysis, but various variables. As far since baseline rates, check out these pages. You need to come across your county, then multiply your daily baseline by quantity of days in the calendar month. Lisa Moses
Hey, thank you for the review.
I have a question : I’m a student and I need a laptop that has both portability (for school to home etc.) and performances. I would like to know your opinion for this asus k53sv. I am very interested in it because of the great performances for the low price.
Ty for replying.
Thanks for the review. I’m in the market for a new laptop, but need one with Linux support. Do you know if this supports Linux?
Thanks
Hey there Aaron, I haven’t really installed any linux dist on this myself, but I’m sure it’ll work without any problems, because there’s an option to purchase the Asus K52SV without windows OS, and in that case it comes with linux installed. Not sure which distribution was because I wiped it as soon as I got it. :)
be careful with this answer! This laptop have various problems with linux. Including Nvidia Optimus technology.
That can´t have any problems with linux.. there are so many distribution of linux and that´s what must work :)
I tried to rollback the drivers to XP, there are no drivers for this computer, this unit is becoming a boat anchor rather quickly. I used Dual boot and when I have XP running I found out that all the drivers are written for 64 bit operating systems, I still do not have ethernet port or NVIDIA graphics running. I would not recommend this computer for ENgineering Purposes !!
I tried to rollback the drivers to XP, there are no drivers for this computer, this unit is becoming a boat anchor rather quickly. I used Dual boot and when I have XP running I found out that all the drivers are written for 64 bit operating systems, I still do not have ethernet port or NVIDIA graphics running. I would not recommend this computer for ENgineering Purposes !!
Hi.
I’ve recently bought this notebook (mine has Intel Core i3 and 4GB of RAM) I can say it’s definitely best buy in that price range. In normal usage (surfing&stuff) it’s pretty quiet and cool (good heat dispersion is Asus’s strong side), only when playing games it gets a little noisier and then hot air is flowing trough heat sink. Thanks to NVIDIA GT540M you can do even some serious gaming (it runs fluently Black Ops at high settings :-) ).
Another great thing about it is battery life (almost four hours surfing trough WiFi). Cool thing is 2 year warranty (most other brand’s give 2 year warranty only in higher price range models).
I’ve spent month and a half searching and comparing prices, pros and cons, reviewing models to find the best one and I couldn’t find better notebook than Asus-K53SV for about 830 $ (that’s how much I’ve paid for it in Croatia)
So if you’re looking for a’ neat-looking, quality notebook with latest Intel Sandy Bridge processor and a’ fast mid-range graphic card… look no further. :-)
i’ve bought this laptop two days ago and i put to a test.. i leave it on for about 24hrs with games on black ops and cabal online and it did’nt even break or overheat..the speakers are very good and i love the keyboards and the screen..btw i choose this asus k53sv over msi fx620dx because it’s more faster specially the cache ^_^..and you can work multiple applications too with very ease..battery life depends on how you use it but for me battery life of this laptop is awesome :D
hey dude,
thx for the review,
Im from malaysia, n im looking for smooth&faster plus a 15inch gaming laptop,
I tink this suitable what im looking for. ;)
but by reading ur conclusion, if i reformat this laptop, where can i upgrade the nvidia driver like urs?
Thx;_
I have a question for you
Is it worth getting the i7 version of this model with the GT540M, or is it not worth it? The price difference is around $200 between i7 + GT540M and i5 + GT540M. Then, is the i5 core able to fully utilise the GT540M? Because I see i5 + GT520M, which is about $300 less than the i7 + GT540M.
Hope you haven’t been confused…
Hi my name is vaibhav,
i am from Mumbai (India)
i want to Buy this laptop but after seeing your remarks on Last page, i find myself in confusion.
Is this a good laptop which can play hard games like Crysis 2, Modern Warfare, GTA 4, Assassin’s creed etc ?
Will it sustain for continuous gaming for long time ?
If not so can you please suggest me which one to buy ? i want gaming kind of laptop which should be in my budget
My budget is Rs 40,000 to 50,000/-.
my email id is [email protected]
please reply soon.
Hi..I have purchased the same laptop…I want to upgrade its memory. Is there anybody here who would be as kind as to address me to the best memory I can buy for such a system?
Thanks!
houh
hi folks….have small doubt n need clarification for the same…i recently bought asus k53sv-sx520v laptop…but in a manual they hv given it has illuminated chicklet keyboard…what does it mean…? some sort of backgroun light which comes out from de keys which helps in typin in dark…? but in my laptop i dont see such thing…how to turn it on…?
Thanks for sharing this honest and unbiased review. Keep it up!!