ASUS K52F - Aimed at the Average User

Notebooks are not only meant for professional users. There’s a large chunk of people who are looking at notebooks for some very simple use like surfing the internet, watching movies, playing less-demanding games and so on. While people might be turning to Compaq, HCL or Acer for entry level notebooks, the K52F seems to be ASUS’ first entry in this segment.

Design and Build Quality
The K52F looks pretty big and that’s because it accommodates a 15.6-inch LED backlit screen. While it cannot be called bulky, at about 2.6 Kgs. the notebook definitely weighs quite a bit. The design is pretty standard and the model that came to us is black in colour and has a glossy finish on the lid making it a smudge magnet.

Sleek design

Opening the notebook, the screen also has an attractive glossy finish and the bezel around it doesn’t waste space, giving it a pretty sleek look. The keyboard has a Chiclet design and all the keys are well spaced out. An extra Fn key on the right part of the keyboard would be a good addition for single handed operation. However, on a whole the keys are well sized and easy to type on.

What adds to the comfort of typing on the K52F’s keyboard is the spacious palm rest. Also, the palm rest unlike the lid or the screen for that matter has a non-glossy finish and doesn’t attract smudges. At the centre of the palm rest lays a small depression for the notebook’s touchpad which wasn’t very impressive. While it responds well to touch, the single key for selection is not that good. The left and right side of the key work well but the centre also ends up registering a click, something that can be a little irritating at times.

ASUS claims that the touchpad has Palm Proof technology which means that while you’re typing on the keyboard, any accidental contact with the touchpad won’t result in the cursor going haywire. That unfortunately wasn’t the case and we noticed that it didn’t work too well. We rather recommend that you keep your palms away from the touchpad while typing on it.

comfortable keyboard but touchpad's button not so good

Build quality of the notebook on the whole is good, including the ports, the screen, keys and touchpad, as well.

Features
There’s nothing special that the notebook has to offer apart from an HDMI port, ability to play HD videos at the standard laptop resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and speakers from Altec Lansing. The Intel Core i3 350M has two cores and clocks at 2.26 GHz. Also there’s 3 GB of DDR3 SD RAM and a 320 GB HDD which is  somewhat sufficient but many notebooks nowadays offer 500 GB of disk space as well.

In terms of connectivity, there are three USB 2.0 ports and the K52F being an entry level notebook, even the Intel HM55 chipset doesn’t support USB 3.0. There’s an RJ45 port to connect the notebook to a wired network and the K52F also has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth. Apart from those, there’s a line-in port and a headphone jack, as well.

Air vent keeps the notebook cool

That pretty much sums up the features of the K52F, which – as we mentioned earlier, was nothing extraordinary.