Battery Life and Portability
ASUS N53S Core i7-2630QM Sandy Bridge 15-in Notebook Review - Mobile 27


Laptops of this size generally aren’t the pinnacle of portability, and at a weight of about six and a half pounds, the N53 is actually a bit heavy for a laptop of this size. It’s not a thin laptop, either, as it measures over an inch thick at the rear.

Like most PC laptops, the N53 tries to look slimmer than it really is by tapering and rounding the front of the chassis, but there’s no getting around the fact that this laptop is a bit chunky. You’ll need a large bag to carry this guy around, as most messengers aren’t large enough for it, and the weight of this laptop won’t be comfortable to carry long distances with a single-strap bag. The bulk becomes even greater on longer trips, as the power supply of the N53 is about three inches wide, an inch tall and seven inches long.

ASUS N53S Core i7-2630QM Sandy Bridge 15-in Notebook Review - Mobile 28


You may not need that brick as frequently as you’d think, however. I wasn’t expecting much from the N53 in terms of battery life, as it comes equipped with a dinky 48Wh battery pack. However, in real-world usage with ASUS’s energy saver software set to battery stretch, I was able to achieve just over 4 hours of battery life. That’s not jaw-dropping by today’s standards, but for a modern quad-core laptop with discrete graphics, that’s great. The N53 comes with Nvidia’s Optimus graphics switching technology, which turns off the discrete GPU when it is not required and conserves power, and this no doubt has an impact on the battery life. But Intel also deserves credit for creating a mobile quad-core that’s miserly about power. When these two enhancements combine, the result is battery life that exceeds what you’d normally expect from a powerful laptop.

These results do come with a small cavet, however, courtesy of the ASUS software used to achieve them. The software is extremely aggressive, and as a result the N53 refused to run our standard Battery Eater benchmark. I had to rely on the standard Window’s power saver scheme instead, and this provided somewhat less impressive battery life. This glitch means the N53 is the only laptop I’ve ever tested that performed better in real-world usage than it did during the Battery Eater Reader’s Test.

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