Well after the rather disappointing experience I had with a Toshiba laptop I am pleased to see that the Asus is rather excellent in most respects. Compared to the Toshiba it is tons better and extremely good value indeed. I bought it from ebuyer who so far have proved to be an excellent company to deal with. They delivered on time and at a great price. I am not linked to this company in any way but it is so rare that a company impresses me with its efficiency and competence that I had to say something!

For the price, this is an excellent computer. For a start the screen is very good with a realistic rendition of colours. It has three USB ports which really must be considered the minimum these days. It has a card reader (SD) and even a HDMI connector and a web cam!

The keyboard still has a separate number pad but I was pleased to see that although it is there, it is not too prominent and because of this, the rest of the keyboard is not too far to the left. This may not sound like much of a big deal but if you use two laptops and one of them does not have a key pad, you might find that you keep pressing the wrong keys. The keyboard is a bit rattly but the key action is good.

The Asus X52F has a few lights on the front that are very helpful to know what is going on. This is something the Toshiba was missing. This computer works well and is quiet using a special 4 speed fan. It came with 4 gig of RAM but can be doubled if needs be. It has a 320 gig Hard drive and a 2 GHz chip which is fast enough for most needs.

It is sturdy and solid yet doesn’t feel excessively heavy. It has a moulded plastic finish that looks up to date and shouldn’t look old before it’s time. Access to the hard drive and RAM chips is excellent and another nice touch is the fact that the cooling fan is easily accessible for cleaning, something that many computer makers deem unnecessary. Battery life is good and everything works as it should.

It came with a fairly impressive software bundle although this is not really a selling point for me as I like to remove all Microsoft programs from a computer as soon as I can and use the many free programs that are available for Windows.

The only downside that I have noted so far with this laptop is that you will need 5 DVDs to make your recovery discs. That seems like a lot to me. Also the sound card is not very good quality at all. The sound that comes out is listenable but not great at all. If you are planning on using this computer to listen to music you might well be very disappointed. The built in speakers are very tinny and quiet and there is a very limited range of adjustments that can be made.

Some may not like the fact that the screen does not fold completely flat but stops at about 120 degrees but it opens enough for my needs. For the price, this is an excellent well thought out and engineered laptop. Well recommended.