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ASUS X205TA-DH01 11.6-inch Laptop (Dark Blue)
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| Price: | $179.99 & eligible for FREE Shipping on orders over $35. |
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com
Average customer review:
Product Description
ASUS X205TA-DH01 11.6" Laptop (Dark Blue), Intel Bay Trail-T Z3735F 1.33GHz (Turbo up to 1.83GHz), 2GB DDR3L (1333 MHz) on board, 32GB EMMC, 802.11AGN, Bluetooth, Windows 8.1Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #45 in Personal Computers
- Brand: Asus
- Model: X205TA-DH01
- Released on: 2014-10-03
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .70" h x 11.30" w x 7.60" l, 2.20 pounds
- CPU: Intel Atom 1.33 GHz
- Memory: 2GB
- Hard Disk: 32GB
- Display size: 11.6
Features
- Intel-level performance with a lightning fast quad-core processor
- Thinner than the diameter of a penny at only .69 inches and weighing only 2.2 pounds with a full Chiclet keyboard
- Long 12 hour* battery life with 14 day standby power
- Dual band 802.11 a/b/g/b Wi-Fi for faster web browsing
- 500GB of ASUS Webstorage for 2 years and 64GB expandable through microSD
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews181 of 189 people found the following review helpful.
Very light weight but slower than HP Stream 11 and Acer E 11 - Can also damage wood desks
By Lon J. Seidman
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3231YIWI9JA3J UPDATE: I shot the video before pricing on this notebook began to fluctuate, it's possible to purchase it for less than $199 depending on what the market is for it. I've seen it for as low as $139, with some black Friday deals at $99.
Asus is joining the sub-$200 Windows PC market with their new X205TA laptop.
This one differs from similar priced offerings from HP and Acer in that it's powered by a quad core Intel Atom processor at 1.3ghz. The Acer and HP both have a faster Intel Celeron N2840 processor. But because the Atom processor uses less power, the Asus is able to put a smaller battery inside their PC that reduces weight and lasts longer than the competition. The result is a PC that can run for approximately 12 hours doing light tasks and weighs only 2.2 pounds.
The Octane javascript benchmark puts the Asus X205TA considerably slower than the HP Stream 11 and Acer E 11. It's also behind most Chromebooks. But it doesn't feel as slow as its benchmark scores indicate. I think that might be because its quad core processor can handle more browser rendering tasks than the N2840's dual core processor can.
The display is the nicest I've seen on one of these sub $200 Windows computers so far. It's crisp and clear and much nicer to look at.
There is a significant design issue with two metal protrusions on the back of the display. When the screen is opened and on a desk the metal can dig into wood, leaving scratches and dents on the desk surface.
Like its competitors it doesn't have much available storage. After the windows installation and recovery partition there's only about 15-17 gigabytes of free space available. This can be supplemented by installing a microSD card to add additional storage. The card sits flush to the case when installed.
I think the HP Stream 11 still remains the best value among the sub $200 Windows PCs, primarily because it's faster and comes with a full year of an Office 365 subscription.
But if portability and weight are a factor the X205TA wins out.
75 of 77 people found the following review helpful.
Almost perfect for the price, but close enough!
By Sean
I ordered this laptop the day after it was released. As time would have it, I was looking for something light weight to use for school that could run office and didn't cost $300-$400. This fit the bill nicely. Time to jump right into the review, please note that some people have different opinions and I am solely basing mine on the fact that I got this for $179.99, so docking stars will be tough.
The Screen: Great quality, plenty bright enough at the highest setting to view in the sunlight, or dark enough that it won't blind you in a dark room.
The Keyboard: Awesome. I was worried about getting a smaller laptop that would have a cramped keyboard. I have large hands and typing on certain laptops I make tons of errors and end up bumping the touchpad. I have no issues with this.
My only complaint on the keyboard is there is only one tiny light for the caps lock, and it is located next to the battery and charge lights (on the front). You really don't see this when you are typing. A tiny light in the empty space at the top of the keyboard would have been an ideal place for this (like most keyboards). Windows 8 does not have any sort of screen prompts to let you know if caps is on or off that I am aware of.
The Touchpad: Some say its finicky, I haven't had any issues with it. The Asus Smart Gesture works fine, I disabled the pinch to zoom though as I sometimes do that accidentally.
Tiny complaint: Having the clicker integrated into the touch pad makes it difficult to find in the dark sometimes, I sort of wish it were raised up a little, or the divider between the left and right mouse button was something you could feel (like the home keys have).
The Storage: This is where the laptop hurts. From the factory, you have 17.1GB of free space, not bad right? Well once you install all the updates for Windows, you are left with about 12-13gb. The recovery partition has a reserved 8GB file size, even though the file size itself is only 5GB. I did a trick that I will explain at the end of the review to gain that 3GB back. 12.1GB isn't a lot. Considering Microsoft Office is 3GB in itself before you install all the updates, you can be pressed for space.
Workaround: Micro SD. I bought a 64GB micro sd to put my music on. I had originally installed Office and Itunes to it as well, it worked fine but you could tell it was a bit sluggish. I will explain why next.
The Micro SD Reader: This is just my ignorance of not knowing how card readers worked. I had assumed that if it was onboard you could get the max speeds possible out of any card. This is not true. This card reader is limited to USB 2.0 speeds, so don't go spending a ton of money on a really fast micro sd. You will always be capped around 20-25 mb/s.
The processor and ram: The processor is plenty fast for this computer, and asus has tweaked windows 8 to only use 500mb of ram, so 1.5gb is a good amount of ram. I can run Chrome (with apps and extensions) with multiple tabs, itunes and office and hover around 1.5gb of ram in use.
The Battery: This is my only gripe. You do get excellent battery life on this laptop. However, it seems to be a common issue that the laptop is being shipped with around 10% battery wear. I have talked to a few others who own it and as you can see on some screenshots uploaded. Mine has went from 7% to 10% in a week, and I have only had 4-5 charge cycles (I charge at about 10-15% life). Definitely something to keep an eye on as times goes on.
The recovery partition: You can move this to a USB stick if you would like, I did this in hopes that it would delete the recovery partition. From what I can tell, there is no way to delete the recovery partition without using the command prompt. So When I created my recovery USB I booted from it to test to make sure it worked before I attempted to delete the partition. During the install it asks if you want to re-partition the drives, I chose yes. This took a bit but it gave me 20.1gb free and lowered the recovery partition to the 5gb it takes up.
Final notes: Nothing can be upgraded on this laptop, everything is soldered in as other reviewers have said. No fans make this thing noiseless. Don't expect to play 3D games on this, it's not built for that. Terraria runs at about 45 FPS.
The website says it comes with office 365, I can't confirm because I have my own personal office installed on it. There is no windows 8.1 key that I can tell, just a onedrive key in the box.
One final note: don't expect to get 12 hours of battery life unless you are just doing web browsing. Watching Twitch, Youtube, Or Netflix will run the processor at 90-100% constantly, which will obviously drain the battery a lot quicker. A lot of reviewers mention the two circular stabilizers on the back of the display damaging the desk. I can't say that I have this issue, i've opened it many times on my wooden desk and there are no marks to be found.
Also, not sure if it is a software or hardware issue, but the fn+f7 which is supposed to turn the display OFF, also stops any music that may be playing and essentially puts your computer to sleep. You can use a blank screensaver, or change closing the lid to do nothing to resolve this issue.
TLDR; Awesome laptop, has some small inconveniences. You can get it for $180-$200 and I think it is well worth the money if you just want a lightweight laptop to carry around and do work or browse the internet on.
EDIT: I just picked up the non signature version from BB for $140. Here are the differences:
Some bloat that can easily be uninstalled, free space on a fresh install is still 17.1GB
Recovery partition is still 8 GB, but actually 5.5GB (asus software probably)
A popup that asks you to register.
That's honestly all I can tell the difference. The microsoft signature edition came with some wallpapers.
A word of warning: Check for dead pixels - I went 2/2 on laptops with a dead pixel on the screen.
45 of 47 people found the following review helpful.
Shockingly Light
By Spoon
Brilliant little notebook. The storage is limited (advertised as 32GB, but more like 20GB usable after Windows), but it has a microSD slot that can easily be used to double or triple your storage. ASUS also has a little popup reminding you that they offer 2 years of 500GB cloud storage for free. It's a nice adder, but I can already foresee problems if I need a file while on a plane or someplace else without free WiFi. MicroSD will be my first option; I might even try to glue a microSD card in place permanently.
Windows update did take forever, but that's been my experience with most new computers. It took three rounds to get all of the updates installed (apparently some newer updates require older updates first, I guess?) Windows 8 is still Windows 8, and there's no helping that unless you want to drop the Windows 10 technical preview on here.
The screen is okay. It's fine if viewed straight on, but it can get pretty washed out if viewed even slightly off-angle; for this price, it doesn't really matter that much.
One other note: this notebook is extremely light... like, shockingly light. I have an ultra-high-end aluminum i7 notebook in this same screen size that feels heavier. The paint has a sort of grippy matte finish that feels much more premium than bare plastic or some of those glossy fingerprint-magnet finishes that you find on some machines. This would be a great option for kids or as a second personal notebook to take on business trips.
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