The Asus K46CB Review

I was amazed the first time I saw the K46 series. Nice alluminium look, albeit with the black plastics framing the screen and underside. What is most interesting to me is the fact that at 21mm, Asus has managed to somehow shoehorn a DVD writer in the model, although most other ultrabook using series has long ago abandoned the DVD writer in their designs for thin and light.

The first K46CM model also had the distinction of being able to include a discrete NVIDIA graphic in the form of a 635M. In effect, it turned what should have been a lightweight ultrabook into a lightweight ultrabook that could play some games.

The K46CB, is basically the old K46CM with a faster Ivy Bridge ultrabook processor, with the newer 740M discrete graphic. So, is it still a good laptop.

The Review

The K46CB still uses the old 1366 x 768 standard TN screen. Nothing much can be said, but I like the fact that the sturdier construction eliminated the annoying sway I find on most other notebooks especially the Lenovo’s. Even a slight wobble of the table translate into a wobble on the screen, something the stiff although thin design of the K46CB has. As for viewing angles, they’ve mostly solve the side by side but look up and down and you’ll still find the colors washing out pretty bad and pretty quick. The display is not as bright as what you would find on top of the line TN screens but, I would say it falls on the industry standard anyway. The back screen is black/almost brown aluminium but the whole thing tends to be a fingerprint magnet. Oils stick easily there.

It has, for an ultrabook, a good selection of ports, HDMI, VGA, an ethernet port, USB, headphone jack and the aformentioned DVD writer, which thanks to the thin design you tend to pick the unit by and hear it grate against the body. I’ve learned to be a bit careful picking the unit up to avoid this. I do think that Asus might as well go and eliminated the drive altogether, and just use the space/cost saving for improving the design.

It has aluminium, or faux aluminium, I couldn’t tell for the keyboard area and palm rest. The keyboards are black, and do have nice placing and size relative to each other, but as a result of the thin design don’t have too much travel, so some may have difficulties in adjusting to the shallow press. That being said, I had no trouble adapting to using the keyboard, but if you need that long travel when pressed, you’d hate the keyboard.

The trackpad, is not perfect. But it is the best one I have used on a Wintel machine these days, which thanks to Windows 8 made it more important than ever. In a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being the trackpad on an Apple Macbook Pro, I’d give it a 7.

Runs on an intel i5-3337U, a newer ultrabook ivy bridge processor with faster turbo speed. Nothing much can be said, but the more interesting part is the 740M. Now, supposedly faster than the last gen’s 635M, but you are running it to a HD screen anyway, so you should get a decent frame rate anyway. Diablo, Skyrim ran fine, as was Civ V. In a pinch, absolute nice and decent mid to lower range gaming. And it does have Optimus, but..

Having an ultrabook processor in this case didn't help battery life much however. With a rather small battery, the K46CB lasted between 4-5 hours standard wifi browsing using the browser.

What you do need to look out for is the fact that it still uses your standard HDD and single channel ram. So performance do get dragged down by these two factors.

Heat dissipation is quite nice also. At no time during my gaming/prime 95 testing did the laptop became too hot to touch, although the fan, located on the left side of the laptop was loud noticeable.

Sound was nice also, with Asus using its own enhancement called SonicMaster. Songs that I’ve played managed to bring out the normally quieter parts of songs that I would miss with some Acer’s Dolby implementation.

In the midst of all this, Asus did make some compromises. The amount of memory that came with the base K46CB is still the same 2GB RAM. What’s even worse is the 2GB RAM is located under the backplate, while a free slot located under the easier to remove HDD / RAM backplate. So if you wanted to replace the 2GB RAM with a faster model, you need to practically take off the whole backplate. A single slot 2GB RAM also meant slower memory performance, so you may need to splurge a bit on getting the RAM upgraded. At least the HHD / RAM backplate allows easy upgrade to the HDD as well.

Considering all that though, if you wanted something thin, a bit light and portable, and with enough horsepower to do some light gaming, take a look at the K46CB. Priced at between RM1999-2099 with memory upgrades, it has some imperfections, but all in all a very useful laptop.

Well, the K46CM and the K46CB is practically the same, the only thing different is the processor (an upgrade) and the discrete graphic (also an upgrade). Just make sure you have the correct NVIDIA generation sticker and you're set.

Yes, the closest rival would be the Vostro 5460. Unfortunately, thats not a model a lot of people stock outside of Kuala Lumpur, so the K46CB is practically the one we are pushing out a lot.



Attached thumbnail(s)

K46CB
Intel Core i5-3337U (1.8Ghz Turbo Max 2.7Ghz - 2 Core 4 Threads)
NVIDIA GT 740M 2GB DDR3 Dedicated RAM

K46CM
Core i5-3317U (1.7 Turbo to 2.6Ghz)
NVIDIA GeForce 635M 2GB Discrete RAM Display

Only difference between the two model, rest would be the same.

Yep. The standard 11-11-11-28

Not really lar, but if you ask me, it is a few features short of brilliant for a thin and light laptop.

High, not Ultra.

When you play games, or if you tax the cpu/gpu, the fan is a bit loud, but not overpowering.

In all honesty, I have stopped recommending the K46CB already, since Haswell models are beginning to show up. Look for Acer V5-473PG which vents air to the back that meant better cooling compared to the side venting of the K46CB.

Plus the V5's memory upgrade is much easier than the K46CB.

Tried it with Tomb Raider - Performance was good on the default screen resolution (1366x768).

Every laptop, from Acer to Apple if you want to think about it, has heat problems, namely on how best to actually remove said heat. There is nothing to say that Asus is hotter than Acer or Lenovo is hotter than Apple.

I bet that if your friends all use Asus they would point out that it also have heat problems.

In the case of K46CB vs the Acer V5-473PG the difference happens to be how the hot air is vented out. The K46CB vents out the heat from both CPU and GPU to the left side of the laptop running under the keyboard, and with your arm placement you would actually feel the heat. It is the same with the Y400/Y410P from Lenovo, again venting out hot air to the left of the notebook.

The V5 vents out hot air via the back. Hence the better cooling feeling as one would say.

Strange. Mind passing me the models and the specs of the Acer that has such a problem? Because I haven't encountered such problems, since, well, a long time. Most modern CPU's now have thermal throttles, dating back to I think 2005. Too hot, and the CPU throttles down to keep temps down.

They use to make programs to stop throttling behaviours.

Different generations, the Acer has Haswell while the K46CB has Ivy Bridge. Cinebench puts the Acer 4200U faster than even a 3517U (Operating at 1.9Ghz!)

4GB should be enough, if you want there is an extra slot free for you to upgrade the RAM. My suggestion is to test out 4GB RAM first, then see if you do need the extra power. My use, seems to not really need the extra 4GB for gaming, but if you do other work then maybe you do.

Yes, Acer starts off with 1 year but you can extend when you purchase.

The i5-3230 is a full bore 35W processor compared to the 17W this one sports, however you look at it, the Z400T is going to run faster, and it is going to run hotter than the K46CB so whether it has two or one fan does not in either way a good comparison, since other things such as thermals and design will come into play.

It is more of a "salesman" talk if the reason he pushes the Z400T is because it has two fans. Heck, I'd say it has two, carrying a 35W processor.

Then again, I do stress that the K46CB will be a pain if you intend to upgrade ram since only one slot is easily accessible.

Safe to say that K46CB, Z400T will get the Haswell refresh, and my advice is if you can wait, do wait. So far Haswell's launch is being staggered into the marker, with few models from several manufacturers.

Probably bunched together around September to October, when Apple releases their new products.