ASUS S400CA-DH51 14-Inch TouchScreen Laptop

I can’t say enough good things about this laptop. Sure there are a few minor glitches, but for less than $700 I am shocked at how good this laptop is. Let me start by explaining my expectations when I choose this laptop. I have a big bulky Dell laptop for work, and a small netbook for travel. The Dell was too big, and the netbook was too slow, so I only used them when I had to. A year ago my wife convinced me to buy her the new MacBook Air. We keep it at home on the coffee table and she lets me use it. I’ve never been a big Apple fan, but after using it for the past year I am convinced that it is some of the best hardware out there, period. Although I love the hardware, I absolutely can’t stand the OS. I almost bought an Air for myself and loaded Windows on it (you can do that in several different ways) but after reading many reviews that was glitchy at best. Besides that, it would be a very costly package at $1300 for the laptop, and then you still have to buy Windows separately. Bag that idea.So I started looking for a comparable PC laptop to the Air. Throughout my extensive research, I realized that if I was going to get a PC, it would come with Win8, and to really get the true experience out of this OS you need touch-screen. I used Win8 at work without touch and it’s awkward at best. As I researched and researched I stumbled upon the Asus S400CA, but at only $670 I thought there was no way it would perform anywhere close to my Air. I decided to take the chance and buy it after further research and long story short, it does. Now don’t get me wrong, there are some differences, and on a bench test I am sure the Air would produce better numbers, but the Asus machine is so darn close in side-by-side comparisons (literally) that I hardly notice the difference. A few milliseconds here, meh, no biggie. Besides, the Asus was nearly half the price of my Air!So let’s talk specifics on the Asus. First off it is sleek, compact, and feels solidly built. It is slightly bigger than the Air, but considerably heavier. Even still it is small and light in comparison to a standard laptop. The boot up time is extremely fast, and if you set it to sleep-mode rather than shutdown, it wakes back up in less than 2 seconds. If you are using it at home and don’t need routine security on it, turn off the "require password on wake-up" and it comes to life even faster and is ready to go. That is super nice to be able to grab it, flip open the top, and be working almost right away. This feature is one of the things I really loved on my Air. The touchpad is smooth and precise, but a bit shakier than the Air. The huge 500GB usable total storage is split into two partitions, one for programs, and one for storage. Be careful though, by default the Docs storage location is set to the "programs" partition out of the box, so if you dump a bunch of pictures, music etc. in here by default, it will fill up the programs partition too fast. It’s easy enough to change to point to the storage partition though, just do it before you copy all your stuff onto the new laptop.So, a couple of minor issues that should be noted. No matter what all the websites say, Amazon says, and even Asus says, this laptop does NOT come with Bluetooth as other reviewers have mentioned. And, it only has a single band (2.4 GHz) Wi-Fi. At first I was annoyed, but then I found a combined dual-band Wi-Fi & Bluetooth internal card on Amazon for only $22! I ordered it, installed it in about 5 mins and now I have dual band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. I also bought another 4 GB of ram for only $29! I installed it at the same time I did the Wi-Fi, and it was also super easy. Now I have 8 GB of ram which makes things much snappier. Total cost $721.The battery life is not so great, I only get about 3 hours tops of continuous use out of a charge as compared to my Air which gets nearly 5. I imagine this may have to do with the extra power requirements of the touch-screen? As long as you are at home or near an outlet, it won’t be a problem. And if you set it to sleep after 10-15 minutes of non-use, the battery will last for days unplugged. The screen isn’t the best because the glass is a bit too shiny, and in high-light situations it produces too much glare. Minor but annoying, and again it may have to do with the touch screen? Last thing, I wish this laptop had a backlit keyboard, for times when you are working in low light. The Air has one, which I really liked.So overall I love this machine. Sitting on the couch next to my wife with her Air, me with my Asus, I like to poke fun that I have touch-screen, 4 times the storage (her Air has the 128 GB ssd), twice the RAM, and still nearly $700 in my pocket. The only thing she comes back with is how cool the little light-up Apple is on her lid.

Update: This laptop died on me about two weeks ago. I've since returned it to Amazon and plan on purchasing another machine. The machine would randomly turn off for no reason. I googled around to search for solutions to the issue, but the hardware is too new to find much information online. I finally decided to return it when I was in a meeting with a client when my machine randomly turned off and then would NOT turn back on. Very embarrassing. I may have just gotten a dud, but considering I've never had this experience with my Dell or Apple notebooks in the past... I can NOT recommend this product any longer. See my original review below...*****I received my this laptop about 2 weeks ago. I've been using it daily ever since. Background: I'm a Mac OSX and Linux Ubuntu/Mint/Arch user regularly. I wanted to try out a Windows 8 machine since the new OS seems pretty innovative.Most of my criticisms of this computer relate more towards Windows 8 than the actual hardware. The hotkeys being changed are a bit difficult to adapt to, and the e-mail interface by default is bulky. I use Gmail for all e-mail still. I'm trying to adapt to the new start screen. I like the aesthetics of it, but it's still not overall that intuitive. Regardless, the more I use the operating system, the more I adjust to like it. I'm going to stick with it for a bit.Now - with that said - to the actual hardware. It runs incredibly well for the low price. The touchscreen is very intuitive. The speed of apps launching, and running multiple programs, is very impressive. The keyboard is not as great as a Macbook Pro, but very, very close. I'm actually more impressed with the keyboard than anything else. The overall case and hardware looks and feels very professional. Most folks won't believe you when you tell them the price is less than $1000. The sound is great - and surprisingly loud. The keyboard and speakers alone make this notebook worth the price. The touchpad is a little sensitive, but overall okay.For hardware the only negative is the screen, but it's still not the worst on the market. It's very clear that this is where they cut the most to hit the price/cost. Again, the touch screen is intuitive, but the actual quality of the screen is fairly low. Not very bright during the day, and it just looks fairly cheap compared to the rest of the machine (you won't be able to watch movies/shows from odd angles).Overall this is a very solid buy. Actually - for those looking to try out Windows 8 on a fairly low price touch screen laptop, this would be my top choice. I've played with both the Lenovo Yoga and Microsoft Surface and NEITHER is as good as this machine.