This is probably the best laptop deal for Prime Day under $300 — you simply can’t get a 6-core notebook for less and businesses will love it
A thin rugged laptop that’s faster than more expensive ones
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Asus Vivobook 15 laptop:was $369.99 now $269.99Save $100If I was looking for a laptop under $300, this is probably the one I’d go for. It is fast, upgradable, has a big screen and got plenty of ports. Yes the display is not as bright and the battery life average. But I can live with that, especially at this price. Two thumbs up from me.
Asus andAmazonhave dropped the price of theVivobook15 for Prime Day to a tiny $269.99, that’s a $100 saving or 27%. Now, I am not usually wax lyrical about cheap laptops but this one certainly caught my eye for a number of reasons.
It features a 12th generation Core i3 CPU, the criminally under-rated 1215U, the cheapest in it category to feature that processor. Now that’s a special processor as it is a 6-core, 8-thread model, which makes it far faster than more expensive, rival devices.
For example, it is faster than the Ryzen 5 7520U (anAMDCPU that powers the Asus Vivobook Go) or theIntelCore i7-1195G7, a top-end 11th generation CPU that can be found in premium laptops such as theDellXPS 13OLED.
There’s also the fact that it has 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD; you’d be lucky to get half the RAM and a real SSD (as opposed to slower eMMC). What’s even more enticing is that you can stick another RAM stick and replace the SSD. I also liked the fact that it has plenty of ports (seven in all but no microSD card reader) as well as Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.1.
Users looking for a basicbusiness laptopwill appreciate the fact that it has a dedicated numeric keypad, a privacy webcam shutter and is MIL-STD-810H rated. Asus also says that its antimicrobial guard plus treatment will kill 99% of viruses and bacteria. I also liked the fact that it uses a single large hinge which makes the screen more stable and is a mere 0.7-inch thick, a tiny bit thicker than the 16-inchAppleMacBook Pro.
Just bear in mind that the F1504ZA-AS34 (as it is known) does have some shortcomings according to user reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. It is built using plastic mostly and its display - a full HD 15.6-inch model with thin bezel - is not as bright at only 250 nits. Ditto for the battery life, one review fromDigitweekmentions the less-than-stellar battery life at less than seven hours (continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness).
Oh and one last thing; it runs onWindows 11S which can be easily transformed into a more traditionalWindows 11Home for free.
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Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.
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