Asus EeeBook X205TA-HATM0103 11.6 inch Notebook

Asus EeeBook X205TA-HATM0103
via Amazon

Asus X205TA-HATM0103 is an aggressively priced 11.6 inch notebook that stands out with its awesome battery life, good quality display and better processing power and speed than its budget competitors for basic day-to-day tasks and seems to offer a great Windows OS alternative to many cheap Chromebook machines that are on the market right now and despite its small negatives it is probably the best value computer we have seen so far at this price level but will come down to your personal preferences, such as would you be OK with a Chromebook or a tablet?

Asus EeeBook X205TA has the tablet-like technical specs as it is offered with the Intel Atom Z3735F processor at 1.33 GHz up to 1.83 GHz with turbo boost but no hyper threading as it already has four cores, 2GB of RAM for some multitasking power, 32GB flash storage that is expandable by the user and it can comfortably run the Windows 8.1 operating system as confirmed by many customer reviews on different websites. 11.6 inches with 1366 x 768 pixels max screen resolution appears to be a solid display described by Asus as a ‘glare panel’, you’ll hear good quality sound through its stereo speakers when you’re listening to songs or streaming videos on YouTube or playing lighter games- for example you will not have any problems with playing Minecraft smoothly and if you want better sound you can use external Bluetooth speakers or headsets. Slim and attractive dark blue Asus X205TA weighs 3 pounds- is very lightweight, thin and compact for traveling and has that premium feel without the high price, lithium ion battery, 802.11bgn wireless, Ethernet 100Base-T, 2 x USB 2.0 ports (no USB 3.0 port). Screen, keyboard, touchpad, speakers and batteries over deliver on this model but you need to experience them first hand and not by written specs.

Conclusion: Asus X205TA-HATM0103 is a great fully functional low-cost laptop overall that looks great in the professional dark blue colour and its biggest advantage over a high end tablet is having a proper ergonomic keyboard and over a Chromebook is naturally the Windows 8 operating system if that is what you prefer. Intel Atom Z3735F has the Passmark benchmark of just 888 at the time of this review which places it in the low to mid range CPU group but still gives you a proper Windows PC experience if all that you will be doing is the not very demanding things like spreadsheets, word processing, internet surfing, checking emails, playing songs, videos and light games. We like its sleek and minimalist design, decent display, proper sound through the stereo speakers, long battery life ( expect up to 10-12 hours) but the RAM- memory is not upgradeable by the user, touchpad is reported to be a little inconsistent so you may opt for a Bluetooth mouse, OK quality webcam and it is offered with a 12 month limited parts and labour warranty and you even get a free 12 month use of Microsoft Office 365 and you may need to uninstall some of the junkware that comes pre-installed. Asus is definitely a good brand for laptops and desktops and this one seems to be hard to beat at this low price level.

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