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A Year With the ASUS X205TA

I just spent a year using the ASUS X205TA laptop as a daily driver, and I was really surprised by how much I ended up loving it. To start off my evaluation of it as a laptop I want to share my use case.

 

I'm a college student pursuing a BS in Computer Science and my old laptop was just too heavy and the battery life wasn't long enough anymore (new I got 4-6 hours, and I was only seeing 90 min at best). Here's what I needed in order to buy a new laptop:

  • minimum 4 hour battery life (enough to get through 2 lectures without charging)
  • light weight (less than 3 lbs)
  • durable enough to go in a backpack with textbooks
  • under $500

I couldn't find anything nice in the price range I was looking at and out of curiosity, I went on Amazon and sorted the laptops from lowest to highest price. I found this laptop:

  • Atom 1.33 GHz processor
  • 2 GB DDR3 RAM
  • 32 GB internal SSD
  • 11.6 in 1366 x 768 LED display
  • Windows 10
  • Advertised 12 hr battery life

I know an Atom processor doesn't seem that powerful, but I ended up buying it. I figured worst case I could use it for office and web browsing, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could throw at it without running into any major problems.

 

I've done everything from the lightest web browsing and document editing to running 3D modeling software and Android Studio and this little laptop just kept going. The build times for my larger android projects did end up taking some time to build and install the app on my phone, but even under heavy load, the laptop stayed at a very low temperature. After a while I got tired of how long the builds would take and I ended up using the laptop to remote into my desktop at home. This effectively gave me a laptop with a 12 hr battery life, a 6 core i7 and 32 GB DDR4 RAM. While my use case ended up being a little more than it could handle, I would definitely recommend this laptop, for the average college student (or non techie family member). 

If all a person needs to do is run an office suite and web browsing, you really don't need much more than what this laptop has to offer, and ASUS released a new version of this laptop, the E200HA (4GB RAM and a newer processor).

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Thread moved to Member Reviews.

"It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out." - Carl Sagan.

"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you" - Edward I. Koch

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