The Asus N56VB-S4050H is a solid multimedia laptop at $1300 (Approx. £837) price range. There’s surely some room for improvement with the casing stability. The lid and maintenance cover could be more rigid. On the sides, users can find Kensington lock socket, optical drive, four USB 3.0 ports, audio combo jack, HDMI out port, Gigabit LAN port, RJ-45 LAN port, VGA out port and subwoofer port.
The chiclet keyboard makes some good impression and users should appreciate the decent-sized key. At 360 cd/m2, the 15” display shines so brightly that users need to reduce it during indoor uses. The Asus N56VB-S4050H is powered by the relatively speedy Intel Core i7 3630QM, which clocks up 3.4GHz thanks to the Turbo Boost feature. The 750GB WD Scorpion Blue 5400rpm HDD delivers average transfer rate of 90 MBps, which quite satisfactory, but users can replace it with an SSD if their budget allows.
The Nvidia Optimus graphics switching feature allows the laptop to move between the dedicated GeForce GT 740M GPU and the integrated Intel Graphics HD 4000. The configuration works flawlessly, allowing users to get both reasonable battery life and performance level.