Lenovo IdeaPad U450 Review

By Brett Weinstein (NBR forum user Nrbelex)

The Lenovo IdeaPad U450p is a thin-and-light, 14” widescreen notebook introduced in August 2009 to the brand's preexisting line of U-series portable, consumer laptops. The U450 fills the gap between the 13” U350and 15.4” U550. The U-series notebooks are advertised as stylish, portable, multimedia machines with Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage (CULV) chipsets and thin LED screens. So has Lenovo managed to blend the perfect mix of performance and portability? Read on to find out!

Lenovo IdeaPad U450 Specifications:

• Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
• 4GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz (2x 2GB)
• 14.0 " HD AntiGlare (glossy) 1366x768 LED backlight screen
• 320GB 5400 RPM hard drive
• DVD Recordable (Dual Layer) disk drive
• Intel Wireless Wi-Fi Link 5100
• Gigabit ethernet, RealTek 8111L
• Bluetooth
• 1.3M Webcam & microphone
• 6-cell Lithium-Ion battery (5200mAh, 57Wh)
• One-year standard warranty
• Dimensions: 13.3" x 9.3" x 0.9-1.1"
• Weight: 4.62 lbs

The configuration reviewed here is the 33892GU which features an Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 Processor (1.30GHz 800MHz 3MB) and dedicated ATI Radeon HD4330 512MB video card.

Build and Design
The Lenovo U450 is black with a plastic casing and gently rounded corners and edges. The lid and area surrounding the keyboard (including the palm-rests) have a tactile, checkerboard-like pattern which resists smudging, fingerprints and scratching. Some may find this pattern distracting or annoying after prolonged use, but we see it as a nice design choice which gives this the otherwise plasticky case a bit of class and differentiates it from the shiny plastic all too common recently. The screen lid has a metallic, plastic Lenovo emblem embedded in the upper left. The bezel around the screen is shiny, smooth, black plastic and the hinges connecting it to the body seem fairly typical – plastic on the exterior and not overly tight or loose. The laptop is held closed by the tension of the hinges. A fan is located on the left. The back has no ports and simply holds the battery in place. White indicator LEDs for A/C power, the battery, wireless status, hard drive usage and the touchpad (on/off ) are on the bottom left of the case. The power button is to the left of the keyboard and the Lenovo OneKey (for recovery, backups, etc.) is directly above it.

Overall the laptop is well put together with every component fairly sturdy. The palm-rests and casing hardly flex and are well supported. The screen flexes and can be twisted slightly, but this is expected for a laptop of this thinness - a screen this thin simply can't be perfectly rigid. The fan is well positioned (for right-handed people) and has never gotten overly hot.

As a 14” widescreen, the area around the keyboard is fairly expansive, and Lenovo has struck a pretty good balance between useful buttons and clutter. If anything, the layout is a bit spartan with only the keyboard and five additional buttons. The power button (beside the keyboard on the upper left), Lenovo OneKey (just above the power button), volume up/down and mute buttons (beside the keyboard on the upper right) and speakers (above the keyboard) are intuitively placed.

The hard drive and DVD drive are considered “fixed” (non-removable) and upgrades and repairs will therefore be tough, requiring some navigation through the laptop's internal components. After working with Thinkpads and Dell laptops with easily removed hard drives and CD-drives (often in a swappable port), this was a bit of a bummer, but is pretty par for the course for consumer laptops.

The underside provides access to one RAM SO-DIMM via two easily removed screws, a plastic-dummy-plugged SIM card slot via a simple lid, and three screws for access to the keyboard and internal components below it.

The hinges could be a little more sturdy and the materials could be a little more high-end, but the actual build quality is high. The most striking elements of the design are the cross-hatched pattern throughout the entire case and the laptop's thinness. While somewhat wide at 14”, the front of the laptop is actually less than 1” off the desk. We've found 14” to be a great size for a laptop, and this is no exception; its dimensions combined with its very manageable wight make it perfect for travel and airplane tray tables, but equally usable daily on a desk.

Screen and Speakers
The screen is a 14.0" WXGA (1366x768 - 16:9 aspect ratio), TFT LED backlight glossy. Lenovo measures it at 220 nits with a 500:1 contrast ratio. A 1.3-megapixel, fixed focus webcam sits above the screen in the bezel. The screen is free of dead pixels, fairly bright at its brightest setting, and can be turned off by hitting Fn+F2. Whites are slightly cooler and possibly more accurate compared to a couple older laptop screens – likely a characteristic of the relatively new LED backlighting. Colors are vibrant and text is sharp. The native resolution is pretty much ideal for a laptop of this size. A casual inspection in an unlit room reveals no light leakage or hotspots.

Left to right viewing angles are surprisingly good, but up to down viewing angles are typical to slightly weak. The “sweet spot” is large enough that it shouldn't cause problems. The screen can only fold backwards to about 125°– a bit of a surprise, but hardly a problem. If WXGA and glossy screens work for you, this laptop's screen doesn't fall short. The ATI Catalyst Control panel (included with the discreet graphics card) gives plenty of tweaking options. Combined with the video card, the screen is great for multimedia, light gaming and anything requiring a mid-level GPU.

Two speakers are positioned to the left and right directly above the keyboard. Lenovo calls this a “Dolby Home Sound Room premium audio system with two stereo speakers,” but it would be more accurately characterized as slightly better than typical for a laptop. They get fairly loud, but the louder the volume, the tinnier the sound. Bass is lacking at best. The headphone jack or HDMI port are going to be essential for any serious music playing (more on this later). Volume up, down and mute buttons adorn the right side of the case beside the keyboard. To be honest, the speakers aren't terrible for a laptop, and probably a bit above average, but when external speakers are available, they will obviously be preferable.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard on this laptop is slightly better than average. The spacing, size of the keys and the feel of the keyboard are all strong. Stroke distance and the feel of the movement are ideal and clearly influenced by the Thinkpad design. The sound of the keys is solid while slightly muted. There is some flex in the keyboard when serious pressure is applied, getting worse from left to right, but nothing noticeable under normal typing usage. Unique features of the keyboard include a shrunken, narrow Windows flag key between Ctrl and Alt on the left of the space bar, and an Fn key as the leftmost key next to Ctrl. The caps lock and num lock (F8) keys have white LEDs in them to show when activated. There is no number pad, but the orange Fn key gives access to a variety of additional buttons including volume and brightness controls on the arrow keys. Overall, it could have a little less flex, but generally it exceeds the quality of most consumer laptop keyboards.

The Synaptics touchpad is typical with a fairly wide area for movement and two separate oversized, metalicized plastic buttons below. The material is smooth, slightly matte plastic and comfortable and easy to run a finger across. The speed is appropriate out of the box. The rightmost section of the touchpad has a line of barely tangible orange dots which indicate that a finger can be slid up or down to scroll. Multi-touch is supported. The touchpad is nothing special, but gets the job done. A microphone is located just to the left of it, so recording sound while using the touchpad or typing might cause some conflict.

Input & Output Ports
On the left side are two USB ports next to each other (but decently spaced for wide USB dongles), a Gigabit ethernet port, an HDMI port (HDCP-compliant), a VGA port, the fan, the AC plug and a lock slot.

The back has no ports and holds the battery in place.

The right side has the DVD burner, a wireless on/off switch, another USB port, a microphone jack and headphone jack.

A 4-in-1 MultiMedia Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Secure Digital (SD) card reader is in the front left. There is no fingerprint reader.

This is a pretty good mix of ports in good locations. The headphone jack could cause problems for people who use a mouse immediately to the right of the laptop, but otherwise, nothing essential is missing or poorly placed. The laptop lacks expansion ports like an express-card or PC-card slot, but 3 USB ports basically excuse this. An S-video port, FireWire port and swappable bay would also be nice, but certainly aren't essential – especially in a laptop in this class.

The 3.5mm headphone/audio jack gives a tiny bit of high pitched feedback at all volumes when plugged in to the wall. When unplugged the pitch drops and becomes slightly more noticeable. This isn't a major problem and is fairly typical for laptops, but it's worth noting for the audiophiles out there. An external sound card will be necessary for unadulterated sound.

Performance and Benchmarks
This configuration came with an Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 Processor (1.30GHz 800MHz 3MB) and 4GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz (2x 2GB). The computer runs Windows 7 and typical programs – word processing, web browsing, photo management – with no problem. Being an ultra low voltage processor model, however, there are a couple trade-offs. While the battery life is extended beyond normal Core 2 Duo processors, the chip buckles slightly under load. There are rare hangups when going between major programs or performing CPU intensive processes. Configurations with lesser CPUs will probably struggle even more, and may have some performance issues with multiple demanding programs running. Video editing and serious gaming on this computer are not advised (though the GPU can definitely handle modern games at average to low settings), but given its size and target audience, this shouldn't be a problem, and everyday office tasks should not be at all challenging. Startup is decently fast and 4GB of RAM is more than enough for basically every installed program to run simultaneously yet smoothly. The 5400 RPM hard drive is typical and may be a good target for an upgrade to 7200 RPM or an SSD for those seeking the best possible performance.

All benchmarks were run after removing the bloatware, on high performance energy management mode, and after a fresh restart. Catalyst Control center was set for performance and the default resolution was used. A virus scanner remained on in the background.

The laptop takes 37 seconds to reach the Windows login screen and about a minute to reach a usable, wireless-connected main desktop.



The U450p calculated 32 million digits of π in two threads in an average of 63.975 seconds – slow in general, but average for a CULV.

The U450p scored 3333 in the PCMark05 test suite – an average score for the class which was no doubt hurt by the CULV processor.

The U450p scored a surprisingly good 3DMark06 score of 2592, making it one of the best graphics performers in the CULV class, exceeding the Dell Studio 14z by over 300 points. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 512MB makes light gaming possible and will give a boost to GPU accelerated programs (i.e. Photoshop CS4 and the upcoming Flash 10.1). This comes at the expense of some battery life. Nonetheless, the pairing of a dedicated video card with a CULV processor is slightly strange unless multimedia is going be a major focus for the user.

Heat and Noise
This laptop doesn't get hot and never gets loud, even under load. The hard drive is nearly silent and the fan stays fairly quiet even at its fastest. One could easily sleep with this laptop nearby even at its loudest. The hottest spots are under the touchpad and at the vent. Neither gets more than warm to the touch. When operating, the CD drive is audibly noticeable, but no more so than most laptops. This is a very quiet laptop.

Wireless
The Intel WiFi Link 5100 11a/b/g/n wireless card works better than many other wireless devices we've worked with, picking up dozens of local hotspots we usually don't see. Windows 7 cooperates with it perfectly, making wireless connections easier than ever. Bluetooth comes all set up, and pairing a device is intuitive. A Bluetooth mouse required simple pairing and no extra drivers. The computer may have an antennae for 3G connections, but the SIM card slot it would connect to is permanently sealed. This isn't a major loss, but again, a slight annoyance. Wireless works very well overall.

Battery
The battery is a 6-cell lithium-ion with 5200mAh, 57Wh. It slides into the back and has a lock and spring-loaded, plastic lever keeping it in place. Running the computer on Energy Star power management mode – the factory default – yielded 239 (3 hours, 59 minutes) minutes of power while browsing the web (with wireless and Bluetooth on), playing some videos and keeping a couple programs open. This is a decent time for a computer with a dedicated GPU, but weak for a CULV laptop. Stricter power settings, turning off the wireless transmitters and closing processes and programs would undoubtedly add more time, but with a low voltage processor, we were hoping for a good deal more.

Operating System and Software
The computer comes preinstalled with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit which runs very smoothly – Lenovo calls it an “Enhanced Experience” since they apparently made some adjustments and tweaks, though exactly what isn't immediately obvious. No recovery disks are included. The Lenovo OneKey Recovery console allows for the creation of recovery disks (requiring two DVDs or multiple CDs) and system backups to an image file. The computer has a hidden partition to enable recovery at the touch of a button to the factory state and a separate partition just for drivers.

That said, the factory state included a surprising amount of bloatware. The computer came with a ton of trial-ware, adware and useless utilities. It took about 30 minutes to uninstall the useless programs, leaving only the required Lenovo utilities. Changing the default energy management performance profiles can make a difference in the overall speediness of the system. Changing the setting from the default of “Energy Star power saving” to “high performance” changes the screen brightness and CPU usage markedly.

With a bit more time, we might download a clean copy of Windows 7, install it using the key on the bottom of the laptop, and install each driver and piece of software individually from the driver partition or the Lenovo website. This would almost certainly result in a slight performance boost.

The breakdown of the partitions of the 320GB hard drive are a hidden 14.75GB OEM partition, a hidden 200MB partition, the 252.88GB C: and a 30.25GB D: for drivers. All are NTFS formatted. About 90% of C: is free upon arrival.

Customer Support
The laptop comes standard with a 1-year parts and labor ➫warranty. This laptop was purchased with an additional one year Lenovo Onsite Repair Next Business Day policy. There's also 24x7 toll-free support for warranty issues during the warranty period at 877-453-6686. This service has not yet been tested, but Lenovo has a decent reputation for support and the on-site repair is generally considered good.

Conclusion
The Lenovo U450p is a thin, well built, fully featured CULV laptop ideal for consumers looking for a balance between performance and portability. At the price-point, the U450p is competitive with similar systems (i.e. the Dell Inspiron 14z and Dell Studio 14z), and probably has them beat on styling and thinness. Heavy users of the web, office software and multimedia will appreciate that they can roam with a machine able to handle basically anything thrown at it. The configurations with video cards are a bit of paradox, since adding a power-hungry GPU defeats the point of getting a CULV, but they do allow for more media handling. Serious gamers need not apply (though configurations with discreet graphics make many games a possibility). It lack some bells and whistles, is a little pricey, and has some minor annoyances, but they're reasonable trade-offs for one of the more powerful and stylish CULVs currently on the market.

Pros:

• Thin, portable, stylish
• Well designed, built
• Dedicated GPU, among best graphics performance among CULVs
• Has an optical drive (many CULVs do not)

Cons:

• Comes from the factory with an inordinate amount of bloatware which hurts performance
• Somewhat plasticky
• Mediocre battery life for a CULV
• Slight fuzziness in audio jack
• Missing some niceties, options (i.e. non-removable hard drive and CD-drive, no fingerprint reader)

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Review Lenovo G450

The Lenovo G450 is a 14-inch screen laptop designed for buyers that are on a budget but still want a laptop that is of decent quality and portable enough to take places outside of the home or office. The Lenovo G450 could be a good laptop for students as they certainly have to be cost conscious and portability is necessary to be able to easily carry a laptop in your backpack. I recently found the G450 for a great price so decided to pick it up and try it out for some of the school work I do.

Configuration and Performance

The Lenovo IdeaPad G450 model I purchased came with the following configuration:

• Processor: Intel T4300 2.10GHz processor, 800MHz system bus, 1MB l2 cache
• Screen: 14-inch, 16:9 format LED backlit (1366 x 768 resolution)
• Memory: 3GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Hard Drive: 250GB (5400RPM)
• Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500
• OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
• Wireless: Broadcom 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi
• Optical Drive: DVD Recordable (dual layer)
• Webcam: 0.3-Megapixel
• Ports: ExpressCard/34 slot, Three USB 2.0 ports, monitor-out port, Ethernet port, headphone out and microphone in
• Weight: 4.9lbs

The Intel Pentium T4300 dual core processor that comes with the IdeaPad G450 clocks in at 2.10GHz, although it’s not branded as a more fancy Core 2 Duo processor, the Pentium T4300 actually performs well and if you look at a chart from the benchmarking site CPUBenchmark.net you’ll see it actually performs ahead of some older Core 2 Duo processors:

So you have no need to worry about the G450 being underpowered if you get the Pentium T4300 processor. In fact, I recommend this processor because it is a lot cheaper than the G450 with the Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 2.40GHz processor.

The Lenovo G450 configuration I have comes with 3GB of RAM, which is ample to run Windows 7. The hard drive storage is 250GB and the spin speed is 5400RPM, which is a standard rotation speed for a budget laptop hard drive. The graphics are taken care of by an Intel integrated X4500, this won’t allow you to do any high-end gaming but for most people running productivity applications on their laptop (email, web, Microsoft Word) this will be more than enough.

Overall I found the performance of the Lenovo G450 to be really quite good, especially for a budget laptop that has a low price of around $500. There is never any slow down when using the computer, though the most I demanding thing I did was watching HD video on sites like YouTube and Hulu.com, the processor had no problems keeping up with the demanding flash decoding that has to be done for HD video.

For those interested in benchmark results, here’s a comparison to the Dell Inspiron 14 and Dell Studio 14z competing 14-inch laptops and then the benchmark results screenshots for the Lenovo G450 are pasted below that:

	Lenovo G450 (Intel Pentium Dual Core 2.1GHz, 3GB, Intel Graphics)	Dell Inspiron 14 (Intel Pentium Dual Core 2.0GHz, 3GB RAM, Intel graphics)	Dell Studio 14z (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.1GHz, 3GB RAM, Nvidia 9400 graphics)
PCMark Vantage	3,243	2,437	3,520
3DMark 06	783	751	2,081
Windows Experience Index	3.3	3.2	4.8

PCMark Vantage	PC Wizard Benchmark results
3DMark06	Windows Experience Index

Lenovo G450 Design and Build Quality

The Lenovo G450 doesn’t exactly provide an eye catching design, it’s a little bland to be honest. The lid is gray in color and has what Lenovo calls a “hairline finish”. Basically it looks like a brush metal finish but quite obviously the lid is made of plastic and not metal. The lid is also glossy and as you will see in the picture below this means that it reflects a fair amount of light and will pick up fingerprints:

Inside the laptop the finish is the same as the lid, a gray hairline finish but with a black screen:

The keyboard is black. One nice design finish is that the white indicator lights have a pleasing look. At the top of the keyboard the volume control buttons are touch sensitive and when you press them the buttons glow to indicate they have registered a touch:

The indicator lights below the touchpad indicate from left to right in the above picture that power is on, battery is charging, wireless is on and then finally hard drive activity.

The build quality of the Lenovo G450 is surprisingly good, though the case is made entirely of plastic it is quite rigid and you won’t find much flex to the body. There is some flex in the palm rests, but not enough to notice while you type. The weakest point of the laptop seems to be on the bottom underneath the optical drive, I can push in quite a bit there, due to the fact the optical drive is mostly hollow space this is not an unusual thing. Overall I would give the build quality of the Lenovo G450 a B-, it’s not the best but it is a bit better than I would expect for a budget laptop that cost me under $500.

Lenovo G450 Screen

The screen for the G450 is nice and bright, Lenovo rates it at 220-nits, which is good. The display has a glossy finish, meaning the colors are bright and vibrant, but you do get some reflection from the display because of the glossy overlay. For an example of the reflection you get on the screen from bright windows/lights in the room check out the image below:

The display is very wide, having a 16:9 ratio and 1366 x 768 resolution, this is good for watching movies in widescreen format but it’s a pain if you have very tall web pages as it involves a lot of scrolling. You can fit a lot of stuff on the screen horizontally, but not vertically. I can’t complain too much about this though, most every notebook made these days has this same 16:9 widescreen format, there’s no getting away from it.

The screen actually has pretty good viewing angles for a laptop, so overall I’d say this screen is slightly above average and most people will think it’s just great.

Lenovo G450 Port Selection

The port selection on the Lenovo G450 is fairly limited, it comes with 3 USB ports, an ExpressCard 34mm expansion slot, one monitor out port, an Ethernet port, headphone and microphone port. I miss having a media card reader built-in, as that makes it easy to transfer images from a camera via SD card, but you could buy an accessory to put in the ExpressCard that acts as a media card reader. The G450 probably has enough ports for most people, but I know some people won’t buy a computer without an HDMI port for high-definition video output, but you can’t expect that in a budget laptop. Below are pictures of each side of the laptop and a description of the ports you will find there:

Front side: headphone and microphone port

Left side: Ethernet, Monitor out, two USB ports and an ExpressCard 34mm expansion slot

Right side: USB port, optical drive, power jack

Back side: Just the battery

Lenovo G450 Battery Life

The advertised battery life for the Lenovo G450 is 5 hours. You could probably get that amount of battery life setting screen to the lowest setting and turning off wireless, but that’s not how most people use a laptop. For a realistic test I charged the battery to 100%, then pulled the plug and put the screen brightness at half and left a web page open that refreshed every two minutes. Doing this, the computer shut down with 5% battery life remaining after 3 hours and 55 minutes. You can assume you can get about 4 hours of battery life using the G450 under normal conditions, if you’re doing a lot of tasks it might be closer to 3.5 hours.

Lenovo G450 Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard for the Lenovo G450 is comfortable for typing, the keys are actually very “desktop like’, they’re chunky and are protrude up more than an average laptop keyboard with flatter keys. The keys also have a matte finish, they’re not glossy and slippery like some consumer notebooks. The keyboard is solid with no flex, there’s nothing worse than a mushy springy keyboard.

There are some useful buttons above the keyboard worth mentioning. The touch sensitive volume up, down and mute buttons on the top right are nice and responsive. In addition, the power button on the top left side has a backup system button next to it that makes it very simple to launch an application that allows you to backup or restore the G450 to a previous state.

I’m not a huge fan of the touchpad, it uses a glossy surface that I find is hard to glide my finger across and it just doesn’t feel very responsive, there is sometimes lag. Using the scrolling areas of the touchpad also proved challenging, sometimes working and sometimes not. I’d recommend plugging in a wireless mouse if you’re at a desk or table, otherwise you’ll just have to get used to using the touchpad and it’s quirks.

Lenovo G450 Speakers

The speakers for the G450 aren’t much to write home about, they’re loud enough but tinny sounding like many budget laptop speakers end up being. They’re actually positioned on the screen, right at the bottom where the hinge area is. I don’t know how Lenovo crammed them in there, but needless to say since there isn’t much space there’s no way you’re getting any bass from these speakers. The speakers are fine fine for system sounds and spoken audio, but I recommend using headphones for any music.

Lenovo G450 Web Cam

Worth mentioning is the fact that G450 comes with a 0.3 megapixel web camera. While that is low resolution, it worked pretty well in low light situations and Lenovo provided some nice software for using the web cam so that’s easy to do. Also included is facial recognition software so you can setup Windows to log you in when it recognizes your face instead of having to type a password, pretty cool!

Conclusion

Overall the Lenovo G450 is a good laptop for the price. When spending a limited amount on a laptop you know there will be certain sacrifices such as not having all the ports you might like and a design that isn’t exactly stunning. I like the fact the G450 has a solid feel to it and seems it will last some of the bumps and bruises that come with getting carried around in a backpack. The performance from the Intel T4300 processor and 3GB of RAM was just fine for my needs, the system never experienced slowness when using productivity applications or even during multimedia use. I recommend the G450 to those on a budget, if you can spend $200 more you can find more appealing laptops, but for the price of the G450 you can’t go wrong.

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Review ASUS K40IN

ASUS' K-series notebooks promise a blend of value and performance. The K40IN is a 14-inch notebook with Nvidia graphics and an $800 price tag. How did it hold up in our testing?

Our ASUS K40IN-B1 review unit has the following specifications:

• 14-inch 720p (1366x768) display with LED backlighting
• Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit
• Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 (2.1GHz/2MB L2/800MHz FSB)
• Nvidia GeForce G102M integrated graphics card w/ 512MB DDR2 memory
• 4GB DDR2-667 RAM
• 320GB 5400RPM hard drive (Seagate Momentus 5400.6/ST9320325AS)
• 802.11n wireless (Atheros AR9285)
• DVD Super Multi drive
• Two-year warranty w/ one year accidental coverage
• 6-cell Li-ion battery (11.1v, 4400mAh, 46Wh)
• Weight: 5.3 lbs
• Dimensions: 13.4” x 9.5” x 1.4-1.5”
• MSRP: $799.99

Build and Design
The K40IN has a traditional notebook design and shape; it looks like an ordinary notebook and is visually uninspiring. Corners are rounded off to give the notebook a soft look. Nearly all surfaces of the K40IN save for the keyboard are glossy plastic, which is a dual-edged blade. On one hand the glossiness makes the notebook look more attractive, but on the other hand it reduces durability and makes it a real chore to keep clean.

The physical build quality of the K40IN is satisfactory. The quality is consistent; no particular area seems to be stronger or weaker than another. The base of the notebook resists twisting well and the palm rests barely flex under pressure. This lid is one of the better-reinforced lids I have seen on a value-oriented notebook; it is resistant to flexing and pushing in on the back of the lid does not yield any ripples on the screen. The hinges anchoring it to the base of the notebook are strong and display wobble is minimal.

Overall the build quality meets expectations; it is not outstanding and matches up to the competition at the very least. The design is rather plain though not unattractive. However, the glossy plastic will be a turn-off for some.

Screen and Speakers
The K40IN has a 14-inch diagonal display with LED backlighting and a 16:9 aspect ratio. The overall quality of the display is 'very good'. Brightness is excellent and contrast is reasonable. Pictures and movies are a pleasure to view on this display. The viewing angles are above average; side-to-side are nearly flawless, and while the colors wash out and darken from above and below respectively, the picture is fine for about thirty degrees vertically off center. The backlighting is not even with a significant amount of bleed at the bottom; fortunately it is not noticeable during normal use.

The display's 1366x768 resolution is a standard resolution for mainstream notebooks. The horizontal resolution is adequate, however only 768 pixels of vertical space means a good deal of scrolling while surfing the Internet and only enough space to view about one-half of a page in a Microsoft Word.

The K40IN has Altec Lansing speakers located underneath the palm rest. Simply put, the K40IN has two of the worst speakers I have heard on a notebook; my ears cringe every time a sound gets played. The speakers are muddy, tinny, and too quiet. Using the included SRS WOW software enhancer distorts the sound and put this odd pressure on my eardrums that I cannot stand. The headphone jack is fortunately static-free and the best way to get audio signals out of the notebook.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The K40IN's full-size keyboard is responsive and pleasing to use. The keys are large and flat and have a matte texture, which may wear over time. There is no noticeable flex unless a lot of pressure is used. A nice aspect of this keyboard is its quietness; it does not click or clack. It is also good to see the keyboard has a standard layout; all keys are more or less in their expected places.

The touchpad is a mixed bag. The glossy surface can be difficult to track on with moist fingers and the touchpad buttons are loud. Another complaint is the lack of a dedicated scroll zone.

The status lights on the K40 consist of three tiny circles below the touchpad buttons. From a functionality standpoint, they should be larger and brighter for better visibility.

Ports and Features
The K40IN suffers from a lack of ports relative to its competitors. HDMI is noticeably absent; the notebook's only video out option is VGA. Furthermore, there is no ExpressCard or PC Card slot for wireless broadband cards and other add-on devices. All picture descriptions are left to right.

Left side: DVD drive, 2x USB

Right side: headphone and microphone jacks, 2x USB, VGA out, 1000Mbps Ethernet, power jack

Front: Speakers, media card reader (SD/MMC/MS)

Back: Kensington Lock slots, exhaust vent

Performance and Benchmarks
The K40IN is a good performer thanks to its Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM, and speedy 320GB hard drive. This machine is more than capable of handling everyday tasks and even more intensive applications like Adobe Photoshop.

Wprime processor comparison results (lower scores mean better performance):

PCMark05 measures overall system performance (higher scores mean better performance):

3DMark06 measures overall graphics performance for gaming (higher scores mean better performance):

HDTune storage drive performance test:

Graphics performance from the integrated Nvidia G102M will only suffice for older games; newer games are out of its league. Despite having 512MB of its own memory the G102M simply lacks the processing power necessary to play modern games. I question ASUS' decision to use Nvidia graphics in this notebook versus Intel integrated graphics, which have lower power consumption. The extra power consumption of the Nvidia graphics versus Intel graphics is not justified since this machine cannot play modern games and its HD video acceleration capabilities will go unused since the K40IN lacks a Blu-ray drive.

Something to note about the Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 processor is its lack of VT (Virtualization Technology). This means that the K40IN will be unable to utilize the virtual Windows XP mode in Windows 7. For most users this should not be an issue.

Heat and Noise
The K40IN excelled in managing heat and noise. Even under stress the surface of the notebook never got warm and the palmrests remained completely cool – there is even a sticker on the palm rest showing this off stating "Feel the cool comfort – 25% cooler than body temperature." The bottom of the notebook also remained cool, only getting warm in a few areas.

The heat exhaust fan is located in the center of the back of the notebook. This is a convenient location since it keeps heat as far away from the user as possible. The fan is nearly silent even when under load, and is barely audible at idle in a silent room. Well done, ASUS.

Battery Life
In power saving mode with 25% screen brightness, the K40IN lasted for four hours, thirty-five minutes while surfing the Internet and using a word processor. This is a good number for a notebook that packs a six-cell battery, standard voltage processor, and Nvidia integrated graphics. If ASUS had used Intel integrated graphics instead of Nvidia, the battery life would likely have been a bit longer.

Operating System and Software
The K40IN comes with Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit and a ton of pre-loaded utilities. There are at least ten utilities installed – managers for this, monitors for that, and so on. Many of them are startup items which increase log-on time. If ASUS could consolidate all of them into a central control panel then this would not be such an issue. The sheer number of them at present is unnecessary.

Conclusion
The K40IN has good build quality, a pleasing keyboard and screen, and gets over four and a half hours of battery life. Unfortunately the K40IN's value proposition is questionable. It lacks an HDMI port and is priced $100-$150 more than competitors with the same specifications minus the Nvidia graphics. The Nvidia graphics are a puzzling choice for the K40IN; they are not powerful enough to play modern games and consume more power than Intel graphics. The only advantage the K40IN has over its competitors is better warranty coverage. Overall we like the K40IN but are hard-pressed to recommend it for the stated reasons.

Pros:

• Reasonable build quality
• Great screen and keyboard
• Four and a half hours of battery life
• Good system performance
• Runs very cool and quiet
• Two year warranty and one year accidental damage coverage

Cons:

• No HDMI port or ExpressCard slot
• Weak graphics
• Horrible speakers
• Price point too high versus competitors
• Glossy plastic difficult to keep clean
• Loud touchpad buttons
• Too many pre-installed utilities

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