4:02 PM
ito
Last week, we looked at one of our final Arrandale laptops in the ASUS U41JF, a worthy follow-up to the U-series’ legacy. Today we have another ASUS laptop, this time one of the first dual-core Sandy Bridge systems to grace our test bench. The K53E comes to us via Intel, and they feel it represents what we’ll see on the various other dual-core SNB laptops coming out in the near future. Unlike the Compal quad-core SNB notebook we tested back in January, this notebook is available at retail, and it comes with very impressive performance considering the price. Ah, but as usual there’s a catch.
As we just mentioned, the test sample comes courtesy of Intel; as such, it’s not entirely stock. The regular K53E starts at $625 with the i3-2310M, or $715 for an upgraded system with 6GB RAM and an i5-2410M. Our particular unit comes with the i5-2520M instead, which boasts higher clock speeds and Turbo modes, which means the starting price would be about $800 (give or take). Other than that small discrepancy, this will be a good reference point to see how the new Core i5 stacks up to other laptops.
