The expense of entry into the planet of touch-screen Windows 8 laptops has been dropping because the initial $ 1,600-plus systems you previewed inside the fall of 2012. Many of the early examples were north of $ 1,000, however by the time the christmas buying season got into gear, Black Friday specials brought a some standard models down under $ 600.

The 11-inch Asus VivoBook X202E is $ 549, even aside from christmas sales (officially the list cost is $ 599, yet it’s generally accessible for $ 50 less). For which, we receive an Intel Core i3 processor — instead of the more popular Core i5 variation — and a 500GB HDD plus 4GB of RAM.

That CPU downgrade is the X202E’s largest concession to affordability, plus it’s anything to really consider. There’s a definite performance difference between this along with a touch-screen Windows 8 computer with an Intel Core i5 processor, that will expense we regarding $ 210 or even more additional. On the alternative hand, we’ve additionally tested a few of Windows 8 systems with Intel Atom CPUs, plus despite not costing any lower than this, those Atom systems are slower about the performance tests with a big margin.

The bodily shape is a bit of the mixed bag. The X202E is comparatively skinny, with a part-aluminum body, nevertheless wider than you could anticipate inside today’s ultrabook-centric planet. The keyboard is tiny yet practical, nevertheless the touch pad is frustratingly unresponsive sometimes, requiring frequent utilize of the touch screen because a backup.

I’m confident which we’ll see a lot more sub-$ 600 Windows 8 touch-screen laptops inside 2013, plus hopefully which might include Core i5 systems too (maybe with Intel’s upcoming fourth-gen adaptation of the i-series chips). In the meantime, the X202E is regarded as the greater bargains about when you’re shopping for a low-cost method to receive Windows 8 along with a touch screen inside a largely usable package.

Design plus features
Asus has lengthy been a leader at taking lower-end machines plus creating them look pricey than they are. You are able to see the influence of high-end laptops, including the Asus Zenbook series, inside this model, that is tagged with all the VivoBook name (a name you’re unlikely to ever hear anybody walk into a retail shop plus ask for).

The back of the lid has a brushed-metal top layer, with different metal accents throughout, though there’s more plastic found on the body than you’d discover inside a higher priced computer. At 0.8 inch thick along with a hair below 3 pounds, it’s both chunky plus thick for an 11-inch computer, at minimum inside today’s ultrabook-obsessed marketplace. A couple of years ago, this might have been the body of the $ 1,000-plus ultraportable computer.

Whenever you’re dealing with a chassis this little, the keyboard plus touch pad input normally involves severe compromise. In this case you have a keyboard that’s tiny, nevertheless functions effectively, along with a touch pad that’s big, however, underwhelming.

The island-style keyboard has keys which are found on the little side, incredibly when you’re utilized to the bigger keys about 13-inch ultrabooks (11-inch laptops are uncommon these days). The keys are equally a bit shallow, nevertheless significant ones, like the Backspace, Enter, plus Shift keys are provided additional area, generating keyboard navigation simpler. F-key functions, including amount plus screen brightness controls, are unfortunately nevertheless mapped to the Fn+F-key combo, generating it a hassle to, for illustration, mute the speakers found on the fly.

Despite these restrictions, typing was convenient plus largely error-free found on the X202E, once you take a limited minutes to change to the design plus key spacing. For a these a little ultraportable, it’s a quite great typing experience.

I want the same can be mentioned regarding the touch pad. It’s big, plus of the clickpad design, meaning it lacks separate left plus appropriate mouse buttons, therefore offering the pad itself more surface location. However, it’s additionally frustratingly unresponsive, specifically whenever two-finger scrolling from Internet pages plus documents, or navigating the conventional Windows desktop view. In the tile-based Windows 8 UI, it was fine, however, there’s just a limited amount of swiping plus clicking you’ll be doing there.

It’s not fair to anticipate each Windows computer to have a touch pad because beneficial plus sensitive because the ones about Apple’s MacBooks, however, I found navigation to be a continual headache, plus frequently ended up resorting to the touch screen to communicate with all the program.

The 11.6-inch show has a 1,366×768-pixel native resolution, that is found on the low side for a contemporary computer, yet well fine for a tiny screen like this. The show is covered with an edge-to-edge glass overlay, however it nonetheless has a really thick bezel beneath the glass, generating the screen appear small than it really is. Touch reaction within the screen is great, plus off-axis watching angles are additionally great.