The Exterior

The Exterior doesn’t look all that bad, even in this dark brown color they have given it. It is finished on nearly all sides with a textured finish. Cheaper models usually have this finish opposed to a shiny finish, so that minor imperfections are harder to spot. It also has the benefit that fingerprints and scratches that might cover this device after some time will also be hard to spot. This will ensure that the exterior of this device will look good even after many years of use.
The top cover is kept very simple with just the ASUS lettering in chrome in the upper middle of the cover. On the inside I am happy to report there is a complete keyboard with numeric keypad. It might not be the raised tile design we see on recent models but I am sure it will do a good job. Also the texture around the keyboard is different form the rest of the chassis with a brushed aluminum look. The tochpad is the only contrasting thing on it, with it’s silver click buttons. Also underneath it we find the status LEDs.
All the connectivity is located on the side of the case, with the power port, Ethernet port, HDMI and VGA out, and 2 USB ports on the left side, and the DVD-RW drive and an USB port on the right side. As far as I can find this device has no memory card reader on it. On the inside it also does not have Bluetooth. On the plus side it has high speed WiFi Wireless N connectivity. If you need Bluetooth you can buy a Bluetooth dongle for around 10-15$ and connect it to a free USB port.
Considering that optical drives are slowly becoming less and less frequent on laptops, it’s really nice to find one on a laptop as cheap as this.

The Performance

Now we come to the main reason why this device is priced so low, the performance. Do not expect this device to be very fast. It will handle most everyday browsing, chatting, movies, music and so forth, but it will not be able to cope with other serious activities. Don’t get me wrong, it will do them, but I don’t think you would be willing to wait a minute or two to start Photoshop for example, and then more time for any small change you make.
It comes with an AMD E-Series Dual-Core E-450 running at 1.65 GHz with an integrated Radeon HD 6320G graphics chip. Even if the combination doesn’t sound like much, it seems it’s capable enough to play games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and Crysis.

This setup is really surprising, because the E-450 itself isn’t a very powerful processor but I guess the Radeon and the E-450 compliment each other to achieve this gaming ability.
The preinstalled 4 GB DDR 3 RAM will be more than enough for casual usage, like explained above. The graphics card and the CPU use the same RAM for processing and as such, gaming may be limited on this device. Also AMDs are prone to overheating and a cooling pad is definitely a must if you plan on playing an occasional game on it.
The 320 GB HDD offers enough storage space for most users and can be changed later on for a bigger unit if needed, or can be supplemented with an external HDD on USB.
The ASUS A53U-AS21 comes with a 6-cell Li-ion Battery pack, with 56WHrs, 5200mAh and offering up to 4 hours of battery life. This is a reasonable value for any laptop.

In conclusion I think the ASUS A53U-AS21 is a very good alternative to a 10-Inch Netbook, which for the same price offers less performance, a smaller screen and keyboard. The ASUS also has an optical drive, numeric keypad, has a lot more RAM, and is superior in almost every way. It even is capable of some gaming witch is very rare in laptops under 350 dollars.