ASUS N56VJ-Opinions

[Mostly Harmless]

In my never ending ongoing search for a windows laptop with a decent build quality I have come across the ASUS N56 series, this one in particular:

ASUS N56VJ-DH71 15.6" Laptop. ASUS N56VJ-DH71

looking for opinions on it or any other recommendations. Looking to edit photographs and GoPro videos mostly. Good buy?

 

[Speed Daemon]

I have an ASUS laptop of an earlier vintage, and except for a problem that puts in phantom keyboard inputs when I use the very deep front deck in front of the keyboard as a hand rest, it has performed flawlessly for me. One of the selling points for me was the Sorbothane covered work surface, which has a better feel than plain plastic, and an aluminum cover to protect the display. I don't know if the Sorbothane had anything to do with the phantom entries or not. The keyboard problem is one of those things that comes with increasingly thin notebooks. I don't know if you can be sure to not have problems like that, so a good return/trade policy is a must.

I edit and transcode AVCHD/H.264 video from my GoPro and other video cameras, and although it can be done on CPU alone, it's nice to have a mighty GPU to take advantage of software with CUDA acceleration. The GeForce GT635M GPU is a bit light on cores compared to other laptop offerings. OTOH you can buy 5 of the ASUS you're looking at for the price of the Rain LiveBook V2 that I'm looking at right now.

I think I paid $400 or so back on 2010 for my ASUS laptop at Best Buy. hopefully one that costs $1000 on the Internet is going to be a higher end model than what I had. If you can't find a local store where you can get your hands on that model before you buy, I'd say it's a better than average bet that you'll be happy with what you get quality-wise. I'd still want a good return policy...

 

[Mostly Harmless]

Thanks speed, I will look for something with a better GPU.

Was also looking at a Lenovo:

Newegg.com - lenovo IdeaPad Y500 (59359560) Notebook Intel Core i5 3230M(2.60GHz) 15.6" 6GB Memory DDR3 1600 1TB HDD 5400rpm Dual NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M SLI

It has dual GT650M. Guessing that has to be better then a single GT635M.

I only wish money was no object.

 

[Mostly Harmless]

Would I be better off looking at a MacBook Pro? At least I could get financing through them.

 

[Speed Daemon]

I wish stuff was free! But I'm not holding my breath.

Myself, I'm going to have to get the fastest i7 CPU short of the Extreme, so my video apps that don't have CUDA acceleration will perform the best they can. I don't know what apps you're running, but you might want to have a minimum CPU standard. Mine is i7 or bust. Anything modern will be enough for audio, but for photos and video I'd want to be sure that the CPU and FSB doesn't become a bottleneck even if the GPU is doing all the heavy lifting.

The trick dual-GPU laptop setup looks interesting, but I worry about such high end graphics with only an i5 CPU. It doesn't seem balanced to me. It's also not a lot of RAM (6GiB), and if you want to add more later you'll be throwing away some or all that came preinstalled. Something about that whole package doesn't seem right. I may be wrong though...

 

[Speed Daemon]

Would I be better off looking at a MacBook Pro? At least I could get financing through them.

No!!! If you do that, they'll eat your brain and you'll owe your soul to the Company Store!



Seriously I don't know enough to be helpful on the Macbook's performance. You'd need to factor in buying Mac versions of all your apps, and any interest rate above 1-2% is a rip-off. I have twice the cash on hand (I don't want to be left with no savings) to buy my now $4100 laptop (I'm putting off buying the accessories) or else I wouldn't be looking at it. I can't tell you not to, but I'd avoid buying on credit if I could help it. If it's helping you earn a living, that's one thing (as is my case). But if it's not, I wouldn't go into debt for it.