Asus's EeeBook X205T is a budget buy, at Rs 14,999

With the influx of smartphones and tablets over the past couple of years, netbooks died a slow death and laptops began losing their charm. Since then, the manufacturers have hit a wall in creating a product that failed to pack a punch. The only options they had was either to glamorize these machines, which made them expensive and niche, or to strip down that nothing was left as a performance tablet. Asus has done a great job with its EeeBook X205TA as it has got the best of both the worlds.

The X205TA is a beauty to look at and to hold. My review unit in dark blue colour had Asus branding etched at the centre of the soft panel. The machine has a 11.6-inch glare panel with 1366x768 pixel resolution and weighs only 980 grams. The keyboard is fullsized (minus the number pad) and with a trackpad. Side hinges are neat with the card reader, 3.5mm jack, a micro HDMI port and charging port on the left and two USB 2.0 slots on the right.

Considering the price tag of Rs 14,999, this one is a loaded machine. It runs on Windows 8.1 and has an Intel Atom Z3735F processor clocked at 1.33Ghz.

It has 2GB RAM and 32GB eMMC storage. While the onboard storage is a bit too less, Asus does offer 500GB cloud storage on this device. To make it slim and light, Asus has done away with the CD Drive. While the Windows 8.1 operating system is designed for laptops with a touch interface, this one doesn't have the latter.

The X205TA doesn't take much time to start. It powered up in less than 15 seconds and had a tile-based interface.

A plenty of apps came pre-installed on the machine. The EeeBook isn't the best notebook in terms of performance but given the price it comes for, I am not complaining. It handles basic tasks brilliantly. It didn't slow down while multi-tab browsing, working on presentations or watching HD videos. However, it wasn't able to handle full HD videos as smoothly.

Asus claims 12 hours of battery backup but I got close to 10 hours on this machine. The company has a proprietary charging port. Thankfully, the charger is compact, and matches the design of this device.

Rating: 4.5/5
Price: Rs 14,999
Plus: Price, Design
Minus: No Touchscreen, Battery, USB 3.0

Bag it or Junk it: Asus is back to reclaim the long-lost fame for laptops with its X205TA.