I don’t know about you but I like to use the sofa in ways that were probably never intended by its creators. No… I’m a bit too old and heavy to use the sofa as a trampoline but there is nothing as nice as spreading out on the sofa while surfing the web and listening to some music.
As the sofa wasn’t designed for this type of use some cushions are needed to make it really comfortable. The problem with that is that I don’t think that the creators of sofas were the only ones who never took this usage scenario into consideration. As mentioned in my previous post the Asus N50 has all its ports on the side with the exception of the headphone / mic plugs and the esata connector and although having your headphone plugs at the front means they are easily accessible it does have some drawbacks.
If you like to use your laptop in a less than upright position, like stretched out on the sofa or in bed with your knees up while using headphones, the headphone plug starts poking you a bit as it protrudes from the front of the case. Besides being slightly uncomfortable, it also means that a large part of the weight of the laptop is actually balanced on that port. Therefore I would have preferred to have seen it on the side of the laptop. Also why you would want your only esata port to be at the front of the laptop is a complete mystery to me, but I guess it had to go somewhere.
On a more positive note though under light use the laptop is extremely quiet and doesn’t seem to run hot at all. This changes a little when you start taxing the machine a bit more (gaming) but overall it’s still very quiet. After extensive use the area where your palms rest does becomes slightly warm but never to an uncomfortable level. The laptop never seems to become anything over mildly warm to the touch and it very efficiently loses its heat to the surrounding area. For all the guys out there do keep in mind that you are part of that surrounding area and after a while of having the laptop on your lap, you lap will get hot, but nowhere near a level where asbestos trousers are required.
The laptop isn’t exactly what I would call heavy either. It certainly isn’t “light” compared to most of the other laptops on test at the moment but it still clocks in under 3Kgs which means it’s easy enough to carry around, even for my girlfriend. The power brick is a little on the big side compared to other laptops I have seen recently but on the upside it slightly larger size helps it keep cool.
When you look at the power usage it’s not all that surprising that the laptop and the power brick stay relatively cool as under normal office use the power brick draws between 19 and 34 Watts from the mains averaging out at around 24 Watts. Not only does this generate a considerably saving compared to my old dinosaur, which lives under my desk, but it also doesn’t run anywhere near as hot which coming into summer is a definite bonus.
After using the N50 for over a week now it seems to be a nicely spec’ed laptop which comes in a very useable package at a reasonable price. Sure there might be some little flies in the ointment here and there but if you can look past those you are left with a very nice laptop for your daily use. Even to the extent that I haven’t had to fire up the old dinosaur for days now.
Now we have covered the looks, specs and ergonomics I’m going to look into how well the N50 handles itself away from home.
