Laptop-Review.eu

With the K-series, Asus deliver a line of heavy multimedia laptops. Mobility is not exactly the focus on this hety K70IO; instead it gains its strength from its rock-solid hardware. The price is reasonable and this laptop should be able to meet whichever demands the average user may have. With a large 17.3” display and surround sound, this laptop requires quite a bit of space and will not fit in just anywhere. We take a closer look to see if it can give us everything we hope for.

The product was kindly lent to us by Asus

Specifications

Category:
Multimedia

Processor:
Intel Core 2 Duo T4200 2.0 GHz 1MB 800MHz FSB

Chipset:
Intel MCP79d chipset

RAM:
4 GB DDR2 800MHz

Storage:
320GB SATA HDD

Display:
17.3" 16:9 WXGA+ 1600x900 glossy

Sound card & speakers:
Built-in Altec Lansing speakers with SRS surround sound

GPU:
nVidia GT120M 512MB DDR2 VRAM(MXM) 

Battery:
6-celled lithium-ion battery (Li-Ion)

Optical drive:
8X DVDRW DL Super Multi  

I/Os:
4x USB 2.0 ports
1x VGA port
1x HDMI port
1x RJ45 LAN port
1x microphone-in
1x headphone-out
1x Card reader: 3-in-1 card reader, supports SD, MMC, MS
1x 1.3MP Webcam

Wireless connectivity:
Built-in 10/100/1000 LAN
Built-in 802.11 Wireless a/b/g/n

Dimensions:
467 (W) x 315 (D) x 46 (H) mm
About 4.3 kg incl. battery

Support:
Support is available via Asus

Warranty:
1 year

Operating system:
Vista Home Premium 32Bit with a Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade Voucher

Software included:
- Assorted Asus software

Price:
The reviewed model costs about £585.00 including VAT.

Package contents

The package contains manuals and driver CDs. There is plenty of help available, though it is mostly there simply because it has to be…the computer is quite ready for use once it arrives.
There are also an adapter and a battery you will have to insert into the notebook yourself. The package has all the necessary accessories but there are no additional surprises.



Included:
- AC adapter
- Manuals and driver CDs

Physical aspects

First impression



The very first thing you notice is the size, because it is pretty big. This is definitely a laptop that requires a good amount of space, just like most other 17 inchers. It seems like a very sturdy machine, thick and tall as it is. When I lifted it up, I learned weight and size come together...4.3kg is hard to get around. It is rather heavy and certainly not made to be carried around all the time. You can imagine this laptop as a desktop replacement staying in place, thus becoming a sort of desktop itself. At least that is the impression I get from the weight and size.




This model will never win an award for design or innovation. While far from ugly, it is quite bland. No originality, just a safe bet. That can be perfectly fine, but then all it has to fall back on is hardware and software.




It is cast in a smooth plastic and has a tendency to covered by fingerprints and dust. That it is black helps with the dust, but you cannot get around the fingerprints. The material seems strong enough, if a bit “plasticky” – at least the plastic helps with the weight. Since the plastic is so glossy and smooth, some mirroring/glare is bound to occur.

The plastic around the keyboard is textured, resulting in a much better look. Oddly enough they decided to contrast it with the smooth plastic, but it works well with the keyboard.



To be fair, I ought to mention the plastic on the hinges (which you may have spotted in the pictures) is removable. I left it there because it was attached too tightly and I was afraid to scratch the laptop.
As always it has plenty of stickers to show off its features. They are located just to the right of the touchpad and are just about manageable.



The lid:



The lid seems very heavy and relatively thick. The hinges are exceptionally strong – they have to be to uphold this lid – and they seem very durable. The hinges themselves are cast in plastic like the rest of the chassis, though they appear more hardened.

The logo is written in silvery, both on the inside and outside of the lid. The plastic in the lid has some darker spots that create a bit of texture, but the very smooth surface counteracts this.




There’s also a built-in 1.3MP webcam and microphone on the inside of the lid.

The front:



There is nothing of interest at the front, but looking at it you get an idea of just how thick the laptop is.

The rear:



At the rear there are a couple of lock slots if you want that extra security, some ventilation, and a rather anonymous HDMI port. It actually took me a while to find it, all lonely here on the rear, but it is great to have.

The bottom:



The bottom there are some lids for the different components. All we tinker with is the battery, otherwise there is nothing of interest.
The right side:

The left side:



Overview:



It is absolutely awesome they managed to fit an HDMI port on this model – that they hid it away on the rear was presumably for practical reasons.

There are also plenty of USB ports, but nothing special besides that – the average family will probably appreciate the SD card reader though.

Diodes:




The diodes are very discreet on this model. They are located by the power button, showing the status of WiFi, Caps Lock, and Num Lock. All shine with a green light, as does the power button. The rest of the diodes are located by the touchpad and shine with a red or green light. Nice the indicators do not play a very prominent role.

Keyboard and touchpad:




The keyboard is of great size, and the addition of a numpad is much appreciated; it is something you often miss on laptops if you work with numbers. The buttons are quite silent and have a comfortable “click” feeling. A bit of backlight would have been nice for when you use it in the dark though.



The touchpad is integrated in the plastic of the chassis as an indentation. They did give it a bit of texture so you can at least feel it, but nothing else. In my opinion they could have done a little more than that. The buttons work well enough and are sufficiently large, as is the touchpad itself.

Display:



The display is nice and big, being 17.3 inches large. It might be a bit overwhelming for some, but I think it is nice with a big one that allows you to, well, see more and run a higher resolution – 1600x900px to be exact. It is razor sharp with vivid colours, but very glossy and suffers quite a bit from glare. That is pretty annoying, especially if you work outside or by a window.




The microphone and webcam work well, and 1.3MP is more than enough for video conferences.

As a new part of our reviews we now test displays for pixel errors and faults in the backlighting, using a program called MonitorTest. It works by, for example, blackening the entire display which will expose pixel errors, i.e. areas that do not change colour. This will also allow you to see if the backlighting is uneven.

I found no errors whatsoever on this display...nothing wrong with the colours, backlighting or any dead pixels. Great stuff.




Sound and speakers
The audial aspect is very impressive. You actually do get the surround sound in this model, and it plays music beautifully, especially when you consider it is just a laptop. It can definitely replace a couple of smaller desktop speakers, which greatly helps in justifying it as a multimedia laptop.
It plays both the higher and lower notes well, and you really get a sense of surround sound when you listen to music or watch movies that incorporate that effect.
This also goes to show this computer can easily meet the requirements of the entire family, from music and gaming to working and surfing, as well as photos and videos.
Noise, heat and power consumption

The computer is fairly silent and hardly annoying when loading away atop a table, which is good. It dissipates heat very well, at least it is not something you will really feel, for it blows out all the hot air at the rear.

It balances quite well in this aspect all in all, however it uses a lot of power when running and the battery test further down will show how quickly it can drain the battery.

Benchmark

All benchmarks are run at highest performance settings on the laptops. All other settings are left alone.

Windows Vista Experience Index:



The Index has not been classified, but I would guess it lies between 4 and 5, which is pretty good. Still, it is only a guess based on personal experience.
I have decided to use the Toshiba Satellite P300 as my basis of comparison, as it is also a multimedia laptop. I suspect it will run a bit smoother for gaming and the like, but it does cost a bit more. We will see how it goes.

Toshiba Satellite P300 has the following specifications:

Processor:
Intel Centrino - Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 / 2 GHz ( Dual-Core )

Chipset:
Intel® GM45 Express-chipset

RAM:
4.096 (2.048 + 2.048) MB DDR2 RAM (800 MHz)

GPU:
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3470 supports HyperMemory™-technology, 256 MB GDDR2 (500 MHz) Video RAM (Video RAM and system memory combined)

Hard drive:
320 GB - Serial ATA-300 - 5400 rpm  

Display:
17" TFT 1440 x 900 ( WXGA+ ) – TruBrite
Battery:
Lithium ion
Up to 3h00min (Mobile Mark™ 2007)

Connectivity:
Network adapter - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11g, IEEE 802.11n (draft), Bluetooth 2.1 EDR

Inputs/Outputs:
1 x DC in
1 x external monitor
1 x RJ-11
1 x RJ-45
1 x TV-out (s-video)
1 x i.LINK® (IEEE 1394)
1 x external microphone
1 x headphones (stereo)
1 x SP/DIF (optical) shared with headphone jack
1 x 1.3 megapixel integrated webcam with integrated microphone
1 x HDMI-CEC (REGZA-link) supporting signal format 1080p
1 (shared with a USB-port) x eSATA
1 x 5-i-1 Bridge Media-port (supports SD™-card up to 16 GB, Memory Stick® up to 256 MB, Memory Stick Pro™ up to 4 GB, MultiMedia Card™ up to 2 GB and xD-Picture Card™ up to 2 GB)
4 (left 2, right 2) x USB 2.0 (supports USB Sleep-and-Charge)

Wireless connectivity:
Wireless technology : Bluetooth®
Compliance : Wi-Fi™
Network support : 802.11a/g/Draft-N
Wireless technology : Wireless LAN (802.11a/g/Draft-N)
Topology : Fast Ethernet LAN
Speed : 10BASE-T/100BASE-TX
Topology : international V.90-modem (V.92-ready)
Speed : 56 Kbps data and 14.4 Kbps fax

Dimensions:
39.8 cm x 28.8 cm x 3.9 cm
3.4 kg incl. battery
Operating system:
Original Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition (pre-installed, Toshiba-HDD-restore)
Price:
About £750 (depending on configuration) incl. VAT.

Boot times and out of standby:





Boot and out of standby times are measured from when the power button is pressed and the Windows desktop appears.

The two laptops are quite even here, taking about a minute to start up, which is decent enough. Both are quick to get out of standby, no problems here.

Battery life:



Idle times are measured at the lowest power profile on the tested models while Classic times are tested at the highest performance profile. Both are tested with BatteryEater 2005 to find the maximum battery life at the given settings.

The K70IO comes with Asus’ power saving system SHE (Super Hybrid Engine). It consists of two parts: a program that regulates power via different power profiles on the computer, and a unit that actually processes the power. The end result should be an optimal allocation of power and an increased battery life.

As can be seen here, that is very much needed for this kind of laptop uses an awful lot of power. It lasts only a little more than an hour on high performance, and while you can squeeze a little more out of it at low performance, it doesn’t go far above 2 hours. Like the Toshiba, it’s a laptop that has to spend most of its time running on AC.

The processor:

SuperPi:



Super Pi calculates the number Pi with 1 million decimals. The result is a time in seconds, meaning that the lower the number, the better. This can be used for direct comparison with other laptops that have run the same test.

You can see the processor is slightly slower in the Asus, although it is far from slow and still a good deal above average. As it should be, if you look at the numbers and the theory behind it - you can never go wrong with 2.0GHz processor.

SiSoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic:





SiSoft Sandra’s Whetstone and Drystone benchmark tests the processor’s ability to do pure number crunching, which occurs during gaming or different forms of picture editing. The measure is in Mflops (Millions Floating Point Operations Per Second) – the higher, the better.

Here we see the same tendency as above, though the Asus still delivers some fine results.

SiSoft Sandra CPU Multimedia:





The multimedia test in SiSoft Sandra is calculated on a 2D figure. The output (it/s) is Mandelbrot iterations per second, i.e. the bigger the better.

A slight improvement here compared to the previous test, but the results are still very close and probably not noticeable outside benchmarks.

RAM - SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth:





Sisoft Sandra’s Memory Bandwidth benchmark is used to measure the speed of the RAM – the higher the value, the better.

The Asus really falls short here; the Toshiba delivers much more performance, even though both have DDR2 RAM. Keep in mind the test is only calculated on one RAM module though – the Asus has two modules of 2GB each for a total of 4GB, so only half the RAM is used in this test.

Hard drive performance - SiSoft Sandra Hard Drive Read:



Sisoft Sandra’s hard drive test module is used to measure the performance of the hard drive. Sisoft Sandra runs a number of tests on the surface of the hard drive and calculates the average reading speed.

The hard drives in both laptops read data pretty fast, although the Asus is slightly faster.

GPU performance - 3Dmark:





The 3Dmark tests show the performance in DirectX 9, and paint a picture of the performance in newer games and applications. 3DMark 2005 and 2006 are based on DirectX 9 and show the performance under contemporary games and 3D applications. No tests have been run in DirectX 10.1 (which both cards support).

You can see performance varies a lot with the Toshiba, depending on whether it runs on AC or battery. It beats the Asus K70IO on AC, but the two are pretty even on battery. At least the Asus performs evenly, regardless of whether it runs on AC or not.

Overall performance:



The PCMark 05 results can be compared directly with other laptops that have run the same PCMark version. The program produces a score from a test that includes the performance of the processor, RAM, hard drive, GPU, etc.

The more expensive Toshiba performs slightly better all in all, but considering the higher price, the difference should be more pronounced. You have to conclude that you do get a slightly faster processor and a better laptop when it comes to graphics if you are willing to pay extra for it, but for most purposes and as a family computer, the Asus is sufficient.

Conclusion:
The Asus X70IO-TY021C is in many ways a fine product, and certainly a multimedia laptop for the whole family.

It is on the large and heavy side though, and is thus better left in one place to be shared by the entire family, something it can do quite well.

The GPU is decent and can handle most tasks, maybe not always at highest settings but not at lowest either. It should cover the needs of children and perhaps younger teens until they are old enough to get their own computer.

The display is nice and big, and the resolution is great for both working and gaming, certainly high enough to give you a good overview. If that is not enough, you can always connect it to a larger, external display. In my opinion it is big enough for watching movies though, not in the least because it supports the widescreen format.

The audial aspect complements this rather well. With built-in surround sound it delivers impressive audio, good for both movies and music. It is even good enough to replace the popular, smaller desktop speakers. It can really handle all aspects, including gaming and Skype. Very nice with a laptop that can handle sound properly.

They could have done a bit more with the materials and the design; the laptop is very anonymous and blends in with most other standard products, even though it does have some exceptional features.
The presence of HDMI is very nice if you want to connect to a TV for example, and webcam and microphone are always nice for a multimedia laptop. It would have been nice with a blu-ray drive just to get with the times...that would really have made it a true multimedia laptop.

All in all, it is a good all-round multimedia product which falls into a reasonable price range where most families can participate. Spending a bit more will typically get you a faster processor and better graphics performance, but most should not need it.

A satisfactory product, even if it will never score any points for originality. Well, they cannot all be original.

Pros:
- Display (except for glare)
- Performance
- Silent
- Heat or lack thereof
- Price
- Sound
- HDMI

Cons:
- Weight
- Materials
- Battery life

Battery: 2,5 / 5Graphics: 4 / 5Construction: 3,5 / 5Mobility: 4 / 5Software: 4,5 / 5Overall: 3,5 / 5