The ASUS Laptop L210 Ultra Thin Laptop may be a budget Chromebook alternative that gives a full Windows 10 (S Mode) experience at an equivalent price you’d buy a basic Chrome OS device. For learners and students, this impressive entry level notebook reinforces why Asus is one among the fastest growing laptop brands across all categories. Get more in ASUS Laptop L210 Ultra Thin Laptop, 11.6 Review.
It’s an ingenious combination of features, starting with a light-weight body shell to the decent 10+ hour battery, and therefore the decent 11-inch screen. To that, add a slim profile and a cleverly designed 180° lay-flat hinge, something rarely seen in entry level laptops, and you’ve got an incredible basic PC for a learner to use reception and at college , or a university student researching and writing assignments.
Design & Features – ASUS Laptop L210 Ultra Thin Laptop, 11.6 Review
All the bodywork on the Asus L210 is plastic, but the lid features a thick layer that appears and seems like an improvement over the Asus VivoBook L203MA, that had thin plastic that wouldn’t withstand classroom shoves and pushes. Even with the thicker layer, it remains pretty portable at only 2.31 pounds and 0.67-inches thick. The fanless CPU and eMMC storage also are weight savers and contribute to the portability of the package.
The 11-inch display, however, isn’t nearly bright enough for our liking. It boasts an HD (1366 x 768), and therefore the matte finish may be a good selection for working outdoors, but it makes for a reasonably dull screen that appears colorless. This isn’t a deal-breaker if you’re data processing or web browsing, only that it makes photos and video look a touch lifeless.
Port selection is well rounded, including: USB 2.0, USB 3.2, USB Type-C, HDMI, audio jack combo and micro-SD card. Wireless connectivity comes in way of Wi-Fi 5(802.11ac), and an included webcam on the upper bezel. All of those ports will prove useful for docking all of your peripherals.
Keyboard & Touchpad
On the Asus laptop L210 keyboard, you don’t have variety pad on the proper side of the most keyboard. While this isn’t uncommon on more compact notebooks, including this Asus L210MA-DB01, Asus cleverly worked this onto the trackpad. It sounds unbelievable, except for sure you’ve got a virtual number pad on the touchpad, that you simply can activate and off via a button on the touchpad.
Having variety pad might not benefit everyone, except for those studying maths, science and business, it’s an excellent addition on a budget laptop. Nonetheless, the keyboard is sort of basic with Very light keys and really little tactile response. The Enter key alone, is colored in luminescent yellow, and it does give the otherwise plain deck some little style accent.
ASUS Laptop L210 Ultra Thin Laptop, 11.6 Performance review
With Intel Celeron processors, expectations are always low, but with today’s Celerons matching yesterday’s i3 CPUs in performance, we can’t invite more. The Celeron N4020 may be a slight upgrade over the bottom 4000 model with more cache but, while it’s capable run office applications, multimedia editing and gaming are going to be a touch of a stretch.
This fanless CPU is ranked amongst the mid-range mobile processors, is partnered with 4GB RAM, 64 GB eMMC storage and Intel UHD Graphics 600 chip. this is often adequate enough for web browsing and office application, and therefore the very simplest games in fact . For budget gaming, you’ll consider the Asus TUF FX505GT-AB73, with a fanatical Nvidia GTX 1650 graphics card.
Again, the Asus L210MA will do the fundamentals of running two or three apps simultaneously provided you’ll not be opening dozens of windows at an equivalent time. The 64GB storage may be a bit lean, but it’s double the 32GB storage you discover on most Chromebooks and competing Windows 10 notebooks.
Battery Life
The low power fanless CPU and low-res screen all contribute to remarkable power savings. On our review unit, you’ve got a mid-size battery, and if you retain things light, you’re getting 11 hours of battery life. That’s excellent.
Bottom Line
For college students and residential users, the Asus L210MA packs enough features and performance than most similarly priced laptops. It boasts class-leading battery life, is extremely portable, timeless design and good connectivity for all of your peripherals.
However, the screen’s low resolution and average keyboard hold it from earning our Editors’ choice award for budget college laptops. a couple of dollars more with get you an Acer Aspire 5 or a Lenovo IdeaPad 3, both offer better performance and have bigger screens.
However, if you’re on a decent budget and strictly need an 11-inch laptop, the Asus L210MA-DB01 offers all the worth you would like for many college tasks.
Can you do ASUS laptop L210 RAM upgrade?
I found the eMMC disc drive to be fast, the pc boots during a few seconds. there’s a Micro SD slot. 256GB micro sd card is merely around $25 and is immensely helpful in increasing available storage (buy a reputation brand only; i.e. microcenter, sandisk, pny, crucial, kingston, etc etc). the interior eMMC drive or the RAM can’t be upgraded.
ASUS Laptop L210 Ultra Thin Laptop, 11.6 customer Review
Fantastic Laptop, and yes – it CAN run Crysis (!)
This is a long review, so here’s the summary for those who don’t want to read much – I would highly recommend this computer if you’re willing to do a little bit of work to ensure the best experience. It’s a great deal for the price and makes a fantastic travel computer or second computer.
I actually own two of these. Both are the versions with the Celeron N4000 and 4GB ram, but one has 32GB eMMC memory, and the other has 64GB eMMC memory (I don’t believe that configuration is sold at Best Buy).
I have the 32GB one running Linux Mint 19.1 without any issues. It’s mostly an unmodified install, though I’ve add a couple of things like Pithos, Bleachbit, Steam and a few games. All hardware was recognized by the OS and everything is running smoothly. But I realize many (most?) people reading this are not interested in changing the OS from Windows to Linux, so I will write mostly about the other one I have, which is running a fully up-to-date version of Windows 10 Pro Build 1809 (the computer comes in Windows S mode, so you’ll want to activate regular Windows 10, which is free to do).
The first thing I do with any Windows computer is to do a fresh installation of Windows using Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool to get rid of any bloatware. This tends to free up around 10 GB. Then, I perform any needed updates (to Windows, to Windows store apps, BIOS, etc.) and then uninstall those things that come with Windows itself for which I have no interest (Candy Crush, Office Apps, etc.). I also use Revo Uninstaller and CCleaner to keep the “drive” and registry tidy and to prevent unwanted things running at startup. I’m also using Windows 10 built-in antivirus software. Finally, I put a 200GB micro SD card in there to load up on programs/games. (The micro-SD card slot is spring loaded, and cards fit entirely within the laptop itself. This is extremely useful.) My thoughts so far are below.
Positives: *Bang for the buck* – I managed to pick up each of these laptops for $110.00 on sale (the 64 GB one was an open box in like-new shape going for more, but I was able to talk the price down to the $109.99 sale price of the 32 GB, 2GB RAM version) and for the price, I think they are fantastic. They perform well enough to stream music in the background while I’m, say, browsing the web with a few tabs open. They can stream HD video without a problem also and can even be used for gaming (yes, it CAN run Crysis – more to say about gaming later). Thanks to the eMMC memory “drive”, boot up is very quick on my Windows machine (<10 seconds).
*Display* – the screen is “only” 1366 x 768 HD resolution, but that is exactly right in my opinion for an 11.6” computer. Anything more would just decrease battery life for no real gain on such a small screen. The display itself is matte (which I prefer), very bright and I have no complaints. Also, the lid folds flat (180 degrees) which can occasionally be very useful when sharing your screen with others.
*Battery Life* – excellent. I always go into Windows’ settings to tweak my laptops for maximum performance on battery power and despite this, battery life is excellent. Windows estimates over 10 hrs on a full charge, and while I haven’t pushed it that far before plugging in, I can easily get through an entire day of use. Not having to bring a charger along is really quite nice. *Weight* – this laptop barely weighs two pounds. Incredibly light. *Wi-Fi* – dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi is fine. No issues at all. (There are computers for sale now at 3-4X the price of this one that still don’t have dual-band.)
*Ports* – surprisingly good for the price – USB-C, 2 USB 3.1, full-size HDMI, and micro SD. (spring-loaded, and micro SD card fits entirely within the laptop. This is incredibly useful).
*Audio* – sound is very good on this laptop as long as you’re not expecting much bass. Max volume is surprisingly loud, and acoustic music sounds great. Acoustic steel-strung guitars sound particularly good, with nice detail and clarity. For the type of music I tend to listen to, this is good enough that I no longer travel with a Bluetooth speaker – I have a 200GB micro SD card onto which I load all of my programs and quite a bit of music, so I just play tunes off this laptop instead.
There is one downside that made me briefly consider placing audio in the “neutral” category and that is speaker placement. This is one of the many laptops that has the speakers fire down instead of up. This is not the greatest choice for sound quality. Lifting the front of the laptop up shows just how much more detail you can get our of the speakers when they are not being muffled by the surface upon which they’re sitting. Still, overall the positives definitely outweigh this negative and I consider the audio a positive item.
*Keyboard* – chicklet style keyboard with decent travel depth and no issues. Neutral: Build quality – there’s nothing actually wrong with the build quality, and it feels quite sturdy; it’s just plastic rather than metal. That’s not surprising given the price, but I’d always prefer metal builds. The lid is also a fingerprint magnet. Negatives: None. This is a fantastic laptop for the money, and has exceeded my initial expectations. A word about gaming: yes you can! So many times I read reviews of laptops where someone then asks
“can it run game X?”, only to be told that “no, it’s not a gaming laptop.” While it’s definitely true that you’re not going to run the latest AAA titles on something like an N4000 that lacks a discrete video card, I think people would be surprised at just how much you can do without one. As I like to say, any laptop is a gaming laptop if you choose the right games. 🙂 There are many many great titles from that past that are more than capable of being on perfectly on this hardware, including things like first-person shooters running at over 60 fps.
I am personally running the following games without incident: Unreal Gold Unreal Tournament 1999 Unreal Tournament 2004 Half-Life Half-Life 2 Far Cry Silent Hunter III Counter-strike Source Counter-strike Condition Zero Painkiller-Black Painkiller – Overdose Pinball Arcade Clive Barker’s Undying F.E.A.R. No One Lives Forever No One Lives Forever 2 Freespace 2 Medieval II: Total War Civilization IV Age of Wonders Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Crysis (this one is on low settings and in Win 8 compatibility mode, but it plays just fine and quite frankly, it amazes me that I can run this at all.) Nox Android Emulator (to enable me to run some classic games I love, including Chess, Backgammon, Go, Gin Rummy and others.)
Other software I am running on this computer without any problems includes: LibraOffice 6.1 (a free alternative to Microsoft’s Office Suite) Pandora Spotify Amazon Music TablEdit (a great program for creating sheet music or tablature) Firefox Chrome Overdrive Cloud Library Amazon Kindle Final thoughts: I love this thing, and it’s become my favorite travel laptop. The combination of performance, light weight, good audio, bright screen, and excellent battery life makes this an easy choice for traveling, or as a second computer. I would highly recommend it.
By DNADoc at Besy Buy
Note
When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
