The sluggish performer thats not for multi tasking. Review on Asus X553MA-XX289B

Bought this last year for my son and have been very aggressively trying to sell it off late .

The biggest lesson that I take away from this deal was I will never ever buy a machine with just 2gb of  RAM. Especially if  the RAM upgrade is almost impossible .

Every hardware component is completely encased   and not in any separate compartment, not even the battery and to upgrade the ram I will have to rip open the complete unit. One needs to dissemble every component before one can reach The DDR3  RAM .

What a waste .

I dropped  the idea of  upgrading it myself as I will have to dig deeper and calling Asus to do it means a very heavy expense .

Instead  I have put up an Ad on Olx  to get rid of it at 11k .

Not that its not worth what I paid for it.  This laptop came along with windows 8.1 Bing,  pre -installed was "free-update-upgraded" to a windows 10 about a month ago . It's a legal copy .

But the lack of support for   high end -gaming which my son wants and video editing softwares / web development softwares  running sluggish meant it was suitable only for simple jobs .

*Yes 2 gb of ddr3 RAM is enough to run simple application and slim games . But anything that's a memory hog or a graphic intensive tends to freeze  the lappy .*

Its okay for home users who just need to run maybe a windows  office or  watch youtube, browse the web and watch movies / listen to songs .

The lappy is powered by the cele_45ron Quad Core @ 1.83GHz  with turbo boost upto a 2.16 GHZ.

The HDD is a standard 500 GB and there is  no DVD drive . There is also a slot for for full size SD card.

There are 2  usb slots on the left one being usb 3.0 . we seriously needed  one more usb slot . We do have an HDMI out which is full size . An RJ 45 port for LAN connectivity and an audio 3.5mm  jack . It also has  a VGA port for Anasultanlog-video- out.

The 15.6 inch TFT screen is average and  the display blurs when we look at it from angles even minor angles . You will find yourself frequently tilting and adjusting the screen angle and swapping USB devices as its 1  port,  too short .

The VGA camera is as  ordinary as it gets and the sound output volume is so low,  it's mandatory to use an external speaker . The windows came preinstalled with a lot of Asus bloatware that I had  to either remove or suppress.

The battery back up is decent and under ideal condition can give upto 4 hours . though after 10 months of  usage its dropped to under 3  hours now .

Yes,   it has  bluetooth and wifi  connectivity,  that obviously is expected from any laptop

*This is a buy for students, housewives and for non- serious users . Those who are into some serious work that  demands good resources don't even think about it  unless you are confident of  upgrading the ram to a min 4 gb ddr3 . It has just 1  memory slot so if  you are upgrading you will need to dispose  the 2gb ddr3  that will come off .*

In a nutshell.Its a buy for simple tasks and single tasking only . It's capable enough of  working with multiple browser tabs but the performance starts  to suffer  the moment you open 2 or  3 applications .

You see  you get what you aishwaryasingh23 for and I paid  just 18.5K  for  this one . I still like this machine as  its  anyways a good value for money . One must know  that they get a legal of windows  8 copy preinstalled .

The build quality is  average . the keyboard is a chick let, island key type, big enough but seems a little fragile . The touchpad is good and wide enough .

The lappy is neither too slim nor too bulky, neither too heavy nor  too portable . Infact its average in most respects .

*A lessons or  2  to learn here - 1. never buy 2gb ram models   2. never buy machines that encase every hardware component and need to be completely ripped off for a simple upgrade like RAM / battery. We need  easy user accessible compartments at least for  the ram / battery and HDD.  Don't we? 3. never buy Units with just 1 memory slot .*

Pls leave your thoughts about it and let me know .

The day i'm able to dispose it off for 11k which is a good price I feel both for  the buyer and me i'm looking to buy the very compact HP Pavilion 300-010IN Mini Desktop(4th Gen Core I3/2 GB/500 GB/Win 8.1) or an Intel nuc the size of a tiffin box and upgrade them  which should be easy, having acquired some skills while working for  HP and Dell in the past .

We  are moving into an era where the Pcs fit onto a palm, palm-tops is  the new age buzz.I welcome this transition from the mammoth desktops to the ultra slim mini pcs like Intel Nucs and mac minis .

I use  the Asus laptop with:-

1. Gavik 8 way surge protector with 2 USB charging slots in-built . 2. Samsung Full HD 22 inches monBrianbalakumaranr, Syncmaster S22B370, connected via HDMI out. 3. F & D mini soundbar 4. Logitech K330 wireless combo with unifying support .