Jenneth Orantia02 March 2008
If it’s value for money you’re after, the ASUS F5R is a worthy candidate, offering a great mix of style, performance and functionality. Indeed, we had to double-check initially to ensure we’d gotten the right RRP.
For your well-spent dollar, you get a 1.86GHz Intel Core Duo T2130 processor, 1GB of RAM, ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 graphics, a 160GB hard disk, Windows Vista Home Premium and a 180-degree rotatable 1.3-megapixel webcam.
The generation gap between Intel’s Core Duo and Core 2 Duo chip is evident when you compare the ASUS’s performance with the Core 2 Duo notebooks reviewed. While the ASUS scored 217 with the Radeon video card, the MSI achieved a much higher score of 380 with its integrated Intel graphics. The MSI’s 1.5GHz Core 2 Duo chip also fared much better in PCMark05, scoring 3,238 versus the F5R’s 2,871.
Still, we found the F5R’s performance to be more than acceptable for day-to-day tasks like web browsing and email, and, while its slick two-toned grey-and-silver design is more corporate than consumer chic, it’s well-equipped for home use thanks to the generously sized hard disk, integrated webcam and excellent multimedia performance.