ASUS X555LJ review: Decent for gamers, students, office executives
ASUS is known for its high-performance gaming laptops, and another such model has been added to its series of premium notebooks. The ASUS X555LJ-XX132H disrupts the realm of basic notebooks with its power packed performance and chic looks.
The ASUS X555LJ is a 15.6-inch notebook with a beautifully patterned top panel, which sports the ASUS logo in the centre of the panel. The top panel of the laptop is made out of plastic, although the notebook gives a brawny first impression, when you grab the notebook firmly the lid of the laptop flexes a little bit.
The notebook weighs about 2.30 kg and has a 2.58cm thick chassis. At a time where every laptop is being made lighter than the other, ASUS X555LJ is annoyingly heavy, making it almost impossible to lift it safely with one hand.
The ASUS notebook sports most of the IO ports on the left, which includes a Kensington slot, a charging port, VGA port, Gigabit Ethernet port, HDMI port and two USB 3.0 port. On the right side, sit an SD card reader, an audio jack, a USB 2.0 port and an optical drive.
The ASUS X555LJ features a full-size chiclet keyboard, which like the conventional desktop ones, houses a numeric keypad. The keys are well spaced and easy-to-use with a conveniently placed touch pad. The tactility of the keyboard is up to the mark.
It sports built-in Sonic Master speakers under the fold of the display lid of the notebook.
The notebook runs on a pre-installed 64-bit Windows 8.1 operating system. It is built around a 2.2GHz Intel Core i5-5200U processor with 2GB of DDR3 system memory (RAM) and a 1TB hard disk drive. An Intel HD Graphics 5500 graphics processor is included, which helps increase the performance of the notebook while gaming and using graphic-based applications.
The ASUS X555LJ sports a 15.6-inch high-definition 1366x768 LED back-lit display with an aspect ratio of 16:9. A VGA webcam is also located at the top of the display. The display opens up wide enough to conveniently work in different positions.
The ASUS notebook looks chic and is and smart, and has a very convenient screen-size, which enhances the user experience of the laptop, however, the size and weight of the laptop could tend to come in the way when it comes to portability. In short, while the notebook is portable, the tad heavy weight and the larger size could restrict it to more of a desktop replacement.
On the performance front, the machine runs decently smooth, and is good to work on. It plays full HD videos flawlessly and the viewing angles are good with no colour blending or inverting from any angle. The notebook caters for gamers and high graphic software users. The speakers of the notebook are not too impressive. Although its sound quality is fine, the speakers aren’t loud enough to enjoy any audio on them. We recommend headphones or an external speaker set for a better experience.
The ASUS X555 is fuelled with 2-Cells 37 Whrs Polymer battery pack. The battery survives for about 7 hours on regular use. Therefore, one can expect around 2-3 hours on heavy usage.
At a starting price of around Rs 29,000, the ASUS X X555LJ-XX132H is a good value for money. The large screen offers a good display realty, convenient for spreadsheets and alike. However, the bulky size could cause inconvenience while porting it around. We recommend this notebook as an alternate desktop computer for home or small office environments. The notebook a great deal for students and office executives. However, if your work profile requires you to be constantly on a move, and you require a portable laptop, we would suggest you go for a 12 or a 13-inch notebook instead.
