Asus f8va windows 7

When you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Design The Asus F8Va is like the prized pig at the fair, it's not winning any beauty pageants and is better appreciated when served hot on a sandwich during Christmas dinner.

Confusing metaphors aside, the F8Va is hardly eye-catching — its glossy piano black lid is such a fingerprint magnet Asus has thrown a soft towel in the box to wipe it clean. However, as with most laptops, it's what's inside that counts, and it's here that the F8Va shines.

The F8Va sports a As with the Asus M51Va, this webcam is swivel mounted and able to rotate to face towards the user or away. It is also used with Asus' mostly useless SmartLogon facial recognition security software. We say useless, not because it doesn't work, but because it is actually significantly slower to log-in with the webcam than it is to type in a password. For those who refuse to remember a password and find SmartLogon cumbersome there is also a fingerprint scanner sitting between the left and right mousepad buttons.

This stainless steel trackpad is large and easy to use; however, the material isn't as pleasant to use as soft-touch plastic trackpads, and the selection keys click loudly when depressed. Features For the money, Asus has packed in quite a bit of well performing hardware. The F8Va runs a 2. This adds up to some pretty beefy performance that is more than capable of most day-to-day tasks and is handy as an entertainment unit as well. We also noticed the heat vent on the right-hand side of the F8Va, which means right-handed mouse users will more than likely get sweaty paws under the processor after burn.

For entertainment the F8Va employs a combo Blu-ray drive and DVD burner, and the aforementioned hardware is more than sufficient to play back media effectively.

They sound great with the laptop, which is powered by Realtek HD Audio. I have also used external speakers, mainly my Zs, which also sound great with the laptop. While the integrated sound is great, the speakers are just mediocre.

The bass is almost non-existent, but the highs and mids get the job done. While I would recommend using headphones or external speakers, the audio is surprisingly good for a laptop. Fortunately, Intel has released the impressive P which delivers a pretty solid bang-for-the buck that I am very pleased with.

The processor is great and zips through photo shop, HD movies, and obviously daily tasks. The processor also does well when throttled down to conserve battery life. I usually use the battery saver plan, which keeps the processor between 5 and 20 percent of the maximum. I ran a quick test with super pi with Word , Chrome with nine open tabs, notepad, and windows media player with a song playing and 2 million digits were done in 2 minutes and 21 seconds.

However, when you do need the processing power, the P fails to disappoint. Super Pi finished 2 million digits in just 52 seconds. The HD Tune results are solid for a rpm drive.

The hard drive seems fast and the extra space is really nice to have. The webcam is a nice feature to have, especially when it swivels. You can use it to record lectures or use it as a webcam for video chatting.

My favorite part, though, is the fact that you can use it to log in. ASUS has a facial recognition program for the windows logon that actually works pretty well. Personally I think this is more useful than recording the user and is a rare feature not found on most other laptops. You can also logon using the fingerprint reader, but it only works about half the time for me.

You can also use the reader for website passwords, but I find that to just be annoying. The keyboard is pretty nice. It does not flex and is pretty responsive. It is neither mushy nor stiff; ASUS struck a nice compromise with the keyboard. They touchpad is also solid. It is very responsive and double tapping along with tap and drag work well. Personally I use an external mouse most of the time with laptops, but it is not a problem to use this one. Personally I really like having most of the ports on the back as it makes cord management easy when using an external monitor.

Bottom: nice access to everything and some important stickers. This laptop does not include an S-Video port.

The front only has speakers and an infrared port, and can be seen in the bottom pictures thanks to the sleek angle of the front itself. This laptop features both Bluetooth and WiFi. Both work well and without a hitch with numerous routers and Bluetooth devices. They also their own respective buttons to turn them on and off, and LED indicators on the left.