Downsides
Earlier we fawned over the N50V's design, but there are negative aspects to its aesthetic pleasantness. Most of the laptop's surfaces are glossy, and readily attract fingerprints.
Within hours, our sample had lost its looks and turned into a giant, smudge-infested mess. Worse still, because the machine has a fingerprint reader, it's all too possible for a thief -- albeit a very skilled one -- to lift one of your prints and use it to log into Windows.
You'd think the N50V was teeming with ways to connect to the outside world, since it's a desktop replacement laptop. To an extent, it is, but the number and arrangement of IO ports isn't all it could have been. It only has three USB ports, for a start -- the same number as a 7-inch Eee PC.
One of these ports is situated on the right side of the laptop and will most-likely be dedicated to a USB mouse, leaving just two USB ports for connecting external devices. Asus has included an eSATA port, to which you can connect an external hard drive, but it's situated directly at the front of the laptop. Why not have it at the side or rear so it's out of the way?
The N50V has a large, 15.4-inch display, but we're not convinced by it. First of all, it's glossy, so it's unnecessarily reflective, and worse still, its vertical viewing angle is very limited. We had to tilt it to a 145-degree angle -- as far as it'll go -- in order to get an even picture. Once tilted to this odd angle, the picture quality was pretty good, but seeing the screen slanted so far back is a bit unnerving.
Outlook
The N50V is a great-looking, well-equipped laptop. It's not perfect by any means -- the storage is limited and the screen has issues -- so the Asus M70 might be a better bet. But if you want a stylish desktop replacement with plenty of power and features, it's worth a look. We'll have a full review of the N50V with performance benchmarks once Asus can supply one with all the proper drivers, operating system and software.
Edited by Marian Smith
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