While clicking through some of our more favorite technology sites (besides our own of course) I came across a deal for an Asus x205 Laptop. $150 dollars for a laptop with windows 8.1. With a one year subscription to office 365 (a $99) value. This actually breaks the through the “should I purchase this” barrier! The local Staples store had several in-stock and we picked a couple up to try out.
I have to say I’m impressed. Let’s take a quick step back though. If you’re looking for laptop that will run your powerpoint and photoshop at the same time, this is not the laptop you’re looking for. Move on.
Now that that’s out of the way…WOW. It’s a cool little machine. It has one of the longest battery spans of any laptop out there right now. Some people are claiming a 12 hour runtime off one charge! Asus claims you have a 14 day standby as well!. How do they get battery to run for that long? Great question, and there is a trade-off here. The x205 only has 2 gigs of RAM and a 32gig SSD for storage and no touchscreen. It’s tiny.
Here’s the actual specs:
- Display-11.6 in HD LED-backlit (1366 x 768)
- Processor-Intel Atom Z3735F 1.33 GHz with Intel Burst Technology up to 1.83 GHz
- Memory-2GB DDR3L 1333 MHz
- Hard drive size-32GB eMMC
- Operating system-Windows 8.1 with Bing, 32-bit
- PC type-Laptop
- Optical drive-None
- Media drive-MicroSD
- Audio-Realtek HD Audio
- Video-Intel HD Graphics with shared graphics memory
- Ports-2 USB 2.0 • Micro HDMI • Headphone output/Microphone input combo
- Battery-2-cell lithium-ion (up to 12 hours)
- Camera-480p webcam
- Wireless-802.11a/b/g/n (Miracast enabled)
Bluetooth-Yes - Dimensions-11.25 x 7.61 x 0.68 in (286.00 x 193.30 x 17.50 mm)
- Weight-2.11 lbs (0.95 kg)
- Color-Dark Blue