It has been pointed out time and again that we are living in a world of smaller laptops and bigger smartphones. And I don’t really have anything to complain about if these devices increase my efficiency, keep me entertained and are portable enough to carry around everywhere. Unfortunately, for most people like me who like a full keyboard and a decent processor in a compact and sleek form factor, there aren’t many reasonably priced options out in the market.

So I often end up asking – why can’t anyone fit in mid-range specs with a good screen, acceptably portable form factor and a stylish packaging? And as if to answer that question, the Asus VivoBook F202E landed up on the Smartbuy test bench. Needless to say, we’ve been going through this ‘answer’ as professors would do over subjective essays.

Design and build

Usually, we’d associate netbooks or less-than-13-inch laptops with an average, plastic build that isn’t too appealing. But the 11.6-inch VivoBook F202E is a far cry from those kinds. Au contraire, it is a beautiful device. The top lid is mainly brushed aluminium, not unlike its high-end cousins, and metal seems to be the primary choice of construction material throughout the device.

And because this is a Windows 8 device, it has a touchscreen and Asus has thoughtfully put just the right amount of bezel around the screen to accommodate touch gestures while not being imposing on the screen. The lid has top-quality hinges, that snap shut the screen softly but reassuringly. The F202E is just 21.7mm thick and weighs 1.4 kgs – that, in my opinion is a compact form factor right there.

Beneath the lid is a full (for a laptop) keyboard with decently big keys and enough space for finger travel. This probably one of the few 11-inch laptops which have keyboards that aren’t cramped. In fact, I enjoyed chatting for long hours on this notebook. And in spite of its compact form, the palmrest and trackpad are big enough for long and comfortable hours of surfing. They keys aren’t backlit, but at this price it’s asking for a bit too much.

Tech and performance

The VivoBook F202E is outfitted with a 3{+r}{+d} Gen Intel Core i3 processor that clocks in at 1.8 GHz, and is further augmented by 4GB of RAM. This can be expanded up to 8GB and the board has two DDR3 slots. It isn’t among the fastest laptops that we’ve tested, but we got an acceptable 248 points on an average on Novabench, our standard benchmarking software. This means that the notebook is good for everyday usage like surfing, video chatting (the front camera is really good), light gaming, word processing and light to medium media consumption.

The screen, although not full HD (it is a standard 1366x768 pixels) is quite a brilliant one. I did miss my full HD content on the laptop, but videos up to 720p ran quite smoothly and the processor also did not struggle to render the frames. What made my day was the set of SonicMaster speakers. For a laptop of this size, they are brilliant and quite clear. The maximum volume level could’ve been a bit higher, though.

Because the VivoBook comes with a standard SATA HDD (500GB), you miss the extremely fast boot up times. Sleep to wake time, though, are still fast. An SSD running in tandem in a hybrid setup would’ve added more speed, but I think Asus was trying its best to offer as much as it could to keep the price at what it is now.

The F202E also has a decent number of ports that you would need for everyday use – two USB 2.0s, one USB 3.0, one each of HDMI, VGA and 3.5mm headset ports and a full RJ45 Ethernet port. And you also get the usual Bluetooth 4.0 and WiFi compatibility. I could squeeze out a bit more than 4 hours of everyday work usage which included surfing, media consumption, word processing and chatting (usually all of them together). That’s quite a good show for a small battery in a small form.

Verdict

No, it’s not one of those number crunching high performance laptops, and Asus has aptly chosen not to call this an Ultrabook. Doing so would just be deceiving the consumer. And for its small (not to mention beautiful) form, the VivoBook F202E gives just about everything that you would need for everyday use. If you’re looking for a sub-40k laptop, this might be a good choice.

Rs 39,999

Love - Sleek, light and stylish form, good multimedia experience

Hate - No optical drive, average processing power

sabyasachi. b@thehindu. co. in

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