Asus A7J 17-inch Core Duo Notebook Review

The Screen

I’ve already mentioned the physical aspects of the display in the Design section earlier, and now we’re going to look at the quality of the panel. The only reason why you would buy a laptop of this size is for the 17″ display, as such the display on the A7J does not disappoint.

After seeing the colours of the A7J it is as if Asus took a good desktop display and attached to a laptop base. The panel, made by AU Optronics (model B170PW01), delivers colours that are consistent and properly lit across the entire screen. It’s bright and sharp. The screen is legible at almost 180-degrees with very little distortion in image, which is unlike most other laptops where the viewable angle is about 30-degrees on either side.

I know in my last laptop review I said that the Asus W5F was sharp and had good colour reproduction. Well, since we’re ramping up our laptop coverage and we’re all learning about different laptop technologies here in the lab, I’m willing to admit that I may have been too certain in my description of the W5F  because there’s really no comparing the 12″ W5F to 17″ A7J in terms of picture quality — the A7J is superior in colour, brightness, view angle, consistency, and sharpness.

Asus A7J on the left has much better view angles and color reproduction
than the 12″ Asus W5F on the right.

The image above shows you how good the view angle is compared to the Asus W5F on the right.

Controls

To top this off, the Asus Splendid Video software allows you to tweak the visual settings to your personal preference, or you can use the predefined settings for different applications like soft, vivid, or theater.

I found Theater to be the best profile to use as it gave the best contrast against the background when viewing images and video. But if Theater is too dark for you, then Soft mode lightens highlights a bit and details look a bit brighter. Vivid mode gives the brightest and most defined background which is excellent for text contrast and best viewability in different lighting conditions. If none of the profiles fit your taste, you can always define your own.