Asus N53Jn review

If you think of Asus just for Eee netbooks, it's time to think again. With its sleek curves, Blu-ray drive and Bang & Olufsen audio the N53 is a high-end 15-inch notebook intended to compete with the HP Envy and Dell XPS; but this excellent specification doesn't quite deliver a winning system.

As usual with the switchable Nvidia Optimus graphics, battery life is harder for the system to predict accurately because it depends so much on what you're actually doing and the tradeoffs between using power for more complex graphics and saving power with GPU acceleration. The four specific Power4Gear profiles change settings significantly so initially you'll see predictions ranging from 4 hours down to less than 2.5. In use, with the balanced profile and a mix of browsing, streaming video, playing music and general computing that 2 to 2.5 hours is what we measured. That's shorter than other, similar systems and it's disappointing for a system with Optimus graphics; the problem is that although you get a 6-cell battery, the capacity is lower than on other systems - it's always a question of price and there is an optional 9-cell battery but we'd like to see Asus increase battery capacity on its high-end models.