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Review: ASUS N55SF

by Parm Mann on 17 February 2012, 14:30 4.0

Tags: ASUSTeK (TPE:2357)

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Final thoughts and rating

As a laptop, ASUS's N55SF is flawed in a couple of key areas; battery life is mediocre, it gets uncomfortably warm with a lot of GPU use, and it isn't particularly portable, either.

But if you can forego the benefits of extreme portability, you'll find that the N55SF excels as a desktop replacement; where power, performance and generous dimensions are more important. The N-series laptop's bright 1,600x900 display provides a strong foundation, and ASUS builds on that with a potent Intel Core processor, gaming-class NVIDIA GeForce graphics, a good keyboard and trackpad combination, and truly outstanding audio.

Bottom line: The ASUS N55SF isn't without its faults - and battery life is chief among them - but it excels as a multimedia desktop replacement.

The Good

Solid CPU and GPU performance
Crisp 1,600x900 display
Good full-size keyboard
Excellent trackpad
Blu-ray drive
Outstanding audio

The Bad

Disappointing battery life
Lots of bloatware

HEXUS Rating


ASUS N55SF

HEXUS Where2Buy

The ASUS N55SF laptop is available to purchase from currys.co.uk.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.


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HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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Posted by Smudger - Fri 17 Feb 2012 14:54
This range is confusing. I got the i7 with 1600x900 for £750 from Comet, with a 640Gb disk. Now the only one you can buy is the 750GB model, with a 1366x768, at £999. £250 for 110Gb? Although the website said mine had the lower res screen, it actually has the higher res one, so I will ignore that stat…
Posted by Major_Trouble - Fri 17 Feb 2012 18:10
I bought mine from Currys. Got the i7, 1600x900 and 640Gb HDD for £750 like you. What a steal. Sometimes Currys just don't know what they have. I don't believe there is another laptop out at this time that can touch it for performance / cost. I cloned the original HDD to a Seagate Momentus XT 750 (which has a 8GB SSD cache) and dumped the bloatware and my boot times are less than 20 secs. If this laptop had twin HDD bays it would be close to perfect.

My only gripes are….not to keen on the keyboard. Looks cheap, hard to read and being silver with black behind it really shows the keys not being perfectly straight and level. I am no touch typist and find it hard to speed type on. The USB ports are to close together so two fat sticks won't fit on the same side. Boy does it kick out some heat when stressed. I use a Belkin N52 gamepad when gaming. Always have to save my laptops keyboard and the inevitable cramp you get playing on them. The machine kick out lots of hot air on the left side and you have to keep your hand well away or the hairs on your hands will shrivel. It's pretty heavy. I am often travelling and lugging it around is a pain in the shoulders. However I've done the small and light and they just don't cut it for doing gaming and serious work on.

I really like the performance. I chucked in a matched 4gb sodim to replace the 2gb to give me the max 8gb total as I often run virtual machines. The HDD change also made an already fast machine even more responsive. The sound is fantastic. Better than any laptop I have ever heard. It's very quiet when your not poking it with a demanding game like Deus Ex:HR.

The reviewer complains about battery life. Not sure how they're testing it but I can get over 4 hrs when I flick it to Asus Power4gears Battery Life profile. I don't think that's to bad. I didn't buy the machine to watch movies on the go anyway. I bought it for the performance and have not been disappointed.
Posted by miniyazz - Fri 17 Feb 2012 21:15
A good deal, no doubt, but I'll still take mine:
Technically refurbished but in reality new, from Dell Outlet Store
Base - XPS L502x
Operating System - Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
Processor - Intel Core i7-2820QM processor 2.30 GHz
Hard Disk Drive - 640GB Serial ATA (7200RPM)
Memory - 8GB (4x2GB) 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory
Media Bay - 8X DVD +/- RW DRIVE
NoteBook Screen - 15.6" Full HD B+RGLED True-Life (1920x1080) with 2.0 Mega Pixel Integrated Camera
Video Graphics - 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M Graphics Card
Laptop Battery - Primary 9-cell 90W/HR LI-ION
System Color - LCD Back Cover : Silver WLAN
for £783.05. Now upgraded with 750GB HDD and 256GB SSD :)
Posted by Noli - Sat 18 Feb 2012 00:31
That 555GT is pumping out some good performance - significantly more than nvidia's own 525. I'm surprised the battery life isn't much better though (thks for your bench major trouble) - so is it using Optimus or not?

1600x900 definitely more desirable than 1366… silver keyboard looks pretty ridiculous to me though…

If you did a fresh install of windows 7 without bloatware, would you at least be able to selectively install asus's power4gears?
Posted by Major_Trouble - Sat 18 Feb 2012 11:47
They're using Optimus and it's easily configurable in the Nvidia control panel. I believe Optimus is part of Nvidia driver package so even with a clean install of Windows it will be enabled with the driver install. At least Asus are signed up with Verde and you can download and use the latest driver posted by Nvidia and not have to wait for the manufaturers (cough, Sony, cough) interpretation like my last machine. It was a pain hacking the drivers to work all because of a product code.

1600 x 900 is good enough for movies and perfect for the GT555 to run most stuff at native res. It's even good for work. The best compromise I think.

You can do a fresh install of Windows quiet easily to rid it of the bloatware but I didn't bother. I wanted to keep the recovery partition functional just in case I had a serious problem when away from home. All the Asus software is in a directory called eSupport on the C drive so saving and installing the bits that you need / want after a fresh install is no biggie. It's freely available on Asus site to. Using the factory install, cleaning out the dross and then running CCleaner, Auslogic Registry Cleaner and TuneUp Utilities 2012 on a regular basis keeps it clean enough for me. Running those I've never had to do a re-install because my computer is running slow.

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