Laptop - Asus X53E

redstern · June 21, 2015

I have had this laptop for 3 or 4 years now.

Quick specs (specs I got, may vary):

Intel i5-2450M with HD 3000
4GB DDR3 (I upgraded to 8GB immediately)
750GB hard drive
15.6 inch 1366x768 screen

So let's start with the physical appearance. When you first look at the laptop the body and back of screen with made of black textured plastic. Opening it up you will find that all around the keyboard, with the exception of just above it, is aluminum, which does a good job at keeping your palms cool. There is the very smooth trackpad with also aluminum buttons. The screen bezel is a gloss coated black plastic. On the sides you will find my first complaint, the I/O. It's pretty basic with power, ethernet, VGA, HDMI, and USB 3 on the left, and 2 USB 2s and 2 audio jacks on the right. To start, they are all positioned at the front of the sides, which I personally do not like. There is also an SD card reader on the front that is pretty awkward to try to use. The other problem is that the VGA and HDMI are right next to each other, making it impossible to plug in both at the same time, however I don't actually know if the CPU is even capable of outputing to 3 displays at once anyway, so that might not matter.

When it comes to using the keyboard and trackpad they really could have done a better job with those. The keyboard has way to much flex to it, and the trackpad buttons are the absolute loudest buttons I have ever heard. I am also find the trackpad pretty iritaing to use for anything other than single finger movements. 2 finger scrolling is rediculously picky and unless you are used to it, you will probably find it difficult.

Going back to the build of the laptop, one thing that drives me crazy is how there are gaps between everything. There is a gap between the trackpad and main body, a gap between the trackpad and the buttons, gaps all around the keyboard and on the edges of the top panel, and gaps between the screen bezel and the screen. These gaps trap dirt and particles very easily and you will not be able to clean them out easily. Right above the keyboard there is what looks like at first glance, a grille for the speakers. Upon looking closer you will find that it is just a solid panel with the same pattern as a speaker grille. I opened it up later to make sure, and the speakers are just sitting below the keyboard with no grille to project the sound directly out. Are you kidding me?! As a result the sound quailty is pretty bad, the laptop will also get rattling vibration above ~75% volume. Very bad design. The screen also does not feel very sturdy at all and there is very noticable flex when pressing on the back and opening and closing the screen.

As for servicability/upgradability, on the bottom there is a door secured by 2 screws that when you open it up reveals the hard drive bay, a mini pcie, which is populated by the wifi card, and 2 ram slots. If you care to fully open the laptop, the internal build is pretty infuriating in multiple ways. For the most part it is the same procedure to open as most other laptops. However, once you get the top cover off is when it gets worse. To start off the board is mounted face down. So you have to completely remove the motherboard to get to anything. Asus also seems to really love tape, because there is more tape than screws on the inside. The speakers, fan, and cables are secured with nothing except tape. The fan is taped to the heatsink with no screws holding it in place. The speakers are taped to the chassis with no screws holding it in place, only posts and the case when it is closed. On the inside of the screen shell, the camera board and wifi antenna boards and held in place by glue and tape, no screws. This is just plain lazy design.

Quicky summary of main points

black textured plastic body with aluminum wrist rests
screen is not sturdy
keyboard has way too much flex
trackpad is very picky with scrolling, and also has the loudest buttons ever created
Nothing is flush, everything has a gap between it and something else, traps dirt very easily
poor sound quality, no grille to project sound directly out from speakers
servicabilty/upgradability of basic components is easy.
Internal design is very lazy with most things being secured with only tape.