Asus K52F-BIN6

Asus K52F-BIN6

The Asus K52F-BIN6 ($479.99 list at Best Buy) is a basic laptop for day-to-day computing tasks for less than $500. While it will not offer you the latest in processing power, its Intel Pentium P6200 CPU is good enough for word processing and Web browsing. But content creators looking for a budget system will have to dig a little deeper into their wallets ($170 more) for something with more power, like the HP Pavilion dv6-6013cl ($649.99 list, 4.5 stars) . Given its low price, it's no surprise that the K52F-BIN6 sports a plastic chassis. The plastic is Mood Indigo in color and sports a crisscross pattern of textured resin, giving it some flair. This pattern carries over into the interior palm rest and the touchpad. The touchpad is indented to distinguish it from the rest of the palm rest. The mouse button is one unified bar, rather than two separate buttons. It still retains its left- and right-click capabilities. Personally, I found the mouse movements a bit sluggish, and the textured pattern began to wear-away at my fingertips. The full-size keyboard is in the chiclet style, much like Apple's MacBook Pro line of laptops, and has an adjacent numeric keypad. The 15.6-inch screen has a 1366-by-768 resolution, which lets you to watch your video in 720p HD.