Asus VivoBook X202E-DH31T: The first touch enabled Windows 8 Notebook

Ever wonder what a notebook PC would be like if it had a touch screen with the keyboard convenience of a notebook, and combined it with Windows 8’s new-found love of touch navigation? So did us. Go personal with Windows 8 via ASUS VivoBook X202E-DH31T, carefully designed around the concept of personal feel and involvement.

Featuring an 11.6″ LED Backlight HD (1366X768) capacitive touch panel with multi-touch functionality, Windows 8 Home Premium, 3rd Gen Intel Core i3-3217U processor, the ASUS VivoBook X202E-DH31T puts life at your fingertips, carefully designed around the concept of personal feel and involvement.

The ASUS VivoBooks X202E-DH31T allows customers to become one with technology through responsive touch panels and intuitive input, offering an ultra-light and extra-thin style that’s easy to carry. For every use, ASUS VivoBook enables Windows 8 immersion, while ASUS SonicMaster audio adds lifelike vocals, a wider sonic range, deeper bass, and powerful output.

Ever since tablets, with their convenient touch screens and tactile interactivity, graced the computing scene, notebooks have battled to prove themselves as stylish and cutting edge as their keyboard less counterparts. For their part, many manufactures seemed intent on pointing out, notebooks boasted superior processors and loads more storage space.

Built to impress

As we have become accustomed to by Asus’ tablets and notebooks alike, the notebook is a well-built beauty. Elegantly robed in a mixture of chrome and black, the notebook looks, and more importantly, feels, extremely solid and well crafted. Suffice to say, neither the keyboard nor the screen flexed when we applied pressure, while the hinges held the screen firmly in place.

Speaking of the screen, we have come to expect bright, contrasty and glossy screens from Asus, and on this front, the VivoBook X202E certainly delivers. With a resolution of 1366 x 768, text and images on the 11.6″ screen looked sharp, while colors ‘popped’ and the overall brightness of the screen, when cranked to the maximum, and was above-average. As for the touch screen’s responsiveness, it is no less fluid and fast than the latest tablet to cross our path.

No less appealing is the chiclet keyboard, which has well spaced keys that exhibited a very comfortable combination of springiness and depth. It is accompanied by a generously sized, responsive trackpad that sits flush with the palm rest, and incorporates its two mouse buttons in the touchpad.

Fast on the draw

While our review model sported a 500 GB hard drive, what we really loved about the Windows 8 notebook, is that start-up times were negligible. This applied to whether we were booting up the machine from a powered off state, as well as when waking it from a sleep state, On Windows 8, with the absence of the Start menu, we found the most elegant ways to shut down and set the machine to sleep, respectively, was via the power options. Admittedly, this is a facet of the new operating system that lakes some getting used to, especially for those of us who have become accustomed to Windows’ Start menu since Windows 98.

The net result: we eschewed trying to time how long Windows took to be ready for action in both scenarios on the VivoBook X202E – it was simply too fast to time accurately, and was comparable with iOS and some Android tablets.

The small details

As befitting the overall quality of the notebook, we found the sound to be similarly good, loud and clear, and certainly more than sufficient to watch movies and play games. Two USB 2.0 ports, a USB 3.0 port and an HDMI and Ethernet port are all onboard.

Great value, right price

A dual-core Pentium CPU 987 clocked at 1.50 GHz, with 2 GB of memory can be found here, which is certainly not the greatest on the processor side, but is amongst the more recent mobile processors made for longer battery life. Nonetheless, we still found performance to be fast enough, certainly when scrolling through the various tiles on the Windows 8 desktop, while opening programmes didn’t exhibit unbearable lag either.

This is not surprising, considering that Windows 8 is apparently more resource friendly than previous Windows operating systems. Additionally, it must be born in mind that the VivoBook X202E is aimed at the mainstream market, as evidenced by the fact that it is coming in at below $549.00.

Technical Specifications of Asus VivoBook X202E-DH31T:

• Display: 11.6 in LED-backlit TFT LCD (1366 x 768), 10-finger multi-touch support
• Processor: Intel Core i3-3217U 1.80 GHz
• Operating System: Windows 8 Home Premium (64-bit)
• Graphics: Intel GMA HD
• Memory: 4 GB DDR3 1333 MHz
• Hard Drive: 500 GB SATA 5400 RPM
• Camera: HD webcam
• Optical Drive: None
• Media Drive: 3-in-1 memory card reader (MMC/SD/SDHC)
• Audio: ASUS SonicMaster Lite
• Video: Intel HD Graphics 4000 with shared graphics memory
• Bluetooth: Yes
• Wireless: 802.11b/g/n
• Ports: 1 USB 3.0 • 2 USB 2.0 • HDMI • Headphone output/Microphone input combo • VGA • RJ-45 (10/100) • Kensington lock slot
• Dimensions: 11.92 x 7.87 x 0.86 in (302.77 x 199.90 x 21.84 mm)
• Battery: 2-cell lithium-polymer
• Weight: 2.86 lbs (1.30 kg)

Features of ASUS VivoBook X202E-DH31T Touchscreen Notebook:

• Windows 8 lets you easily switch between apps, zoom to the stuff you want, rearrange tiles, and so much more
• Intel Core i3 Ivy Bridge processor delivers speedy system performance, uses less power, and enables sharper graphics
• Movies and music sound great with SonicMaster Lite technology for powerful sounds and richer bass
• 500 GB hard drive and 4 GB of system memory give you smooth computing and ample storage for all your movies, music, and photos

To the point

Besides from the excellent build, touch screen, and very good display and keyboard, the VivoBook X202E further cements its distinction by, when going to print, being the only Windows 8 touch-enabled notebook available in South Africa for the mainstream market. We certainly cannot imagine nay user being unhappy with what is on offer here, we certainly were not. It would be all to easy to recommend this to students, or those looking for the Windows 8 experience and yet don’t want to break the bank. The VivoBook X202E is currently only available at Incredible Connection for less than $549.00, although we are told it will be making its way to other channels in due course.