Intel Core i5-2520M and The Asus K53E Notebook

Name: Intel Core i5-2520M and The Asus K53E Notebook - Page 2
Brand: Intel

by Dave Altavilla — Wednesday, March 23, 2011, 10:04 AM EDT

The Asus K53E - Sandy Bridge In Stylish Skins

Page 2: The Asus K53E - Sandy Bridge In Stylish Skins

We told you the Asus K53E was stylish and we weren't messin' with ya. The notebook is encased in an all plastic shell and augmented nicely with an aluminum wrist rest area that is easy on the fingerprints. The top lid of the machine has a textured, almost herringbone style finish on it that also resists fingerprints and scuffs. The construction of the K53E has a high quality feel to it that will be aesthetically pleasing to most folks we're sure.

The K53E's chicklet style key caps have a solid feel to them with just a hint of flex in the keyboard area. There's plenty of travel in the keys as well. With a compact numpad added to the full-sized traditional QWERTY layout, there's plenty of room to pound around on this machine, and rather comfortably we might add.

The rather large multi-touch trackpad on the K53E also provides for comfortable cursor control. The split mouse button bar design also handles a lot better than previous Asus machines we've tested that have a single bar with a rocker in the middle that controls left and right mouse clicks. The split, two-bar design on the K53E is definitely much nicer, though admittedly, the tactile feel of the click mechanism inside it, still isn't quite up to the feel of some higher-end machines we've tested. It's not bad and certainly not uncomfortable per se; it just could be a little more polished.

Finally, just looking at the machine strictly from a styling perspective, we're pretty fond of the copper look and feel that adorns this model of the K53E. Some may call it metallic brown but we'd beg to differ. In addition to its DVD/CD RW drive, the machine also sports three USB2.0 ports, an HDMI port as well as VGA output, a Gigabit Ethernet port, line out and mic inputs, along with integrated 802.11n wireless and bluetooth radios. Need anything else? Not really, actually. Maybe a backlit keyboard?