Is this good.
It is a bare bones basic laptop computer. Not a gaming pc, not a speed demon, just basic.
Would be fine as a starter pc for a student to read, do homework, watch You Tube, etc. The price would be hard to beat. It is NEW, not used or refurbished. Selling on the mothership for $230. Since it is Back to School time and $100 off, they will probably sell quickly.
Check the AI assistant (Rufus) for a general summary of the reviews. Here is the link.
Not for much.
It’s a working Windows 11 computer, but is extremely underpowered. It’s possible (if not likely) that this would have trouble just browsing 1 webpage at a time. At least, the busy or complicated pages. Very simple pages should be fine.
The processor used in this laptop, the Intel Celeron N4500, was released 4 years ago as an ultra low-power processor. Only uses about 6 watts of power. This means it will last longer with a smaller battery, but it’s WEAK.
The 4 GB of RAM will barely run Windows. If you open more than 1 program at a time, the system is likely to run out of memory. If that happens, it’ll run even slower.
The “hard drive” is 128GB eMMC storage. While it should be faster/better performance than the old fashioned spinning hard drives, it’s probably the slowest of the solid state drive technologies. It’s also probably not upgradable.
I personally wouldn’t touch this. You could almost definitely get a used/refurbished laptop with far better performance for about the same price. It probably wouldn’t be as slim/sleek, but it would run everything better.
I got a refurbished business desktop unit for $100 a while back that puts this laptop to shame.
Garbage.
Half the RAM anything should have nowadays, Windows S mode (S as in 
), crap processor with crap intergrated graphics - basically lowest end everything. Good enough for web browsing and the absolute basics (good luck with multitasking). With Black Friday/Cyber Monday coming up, there’s a great chance at something much better for not much more $$$.
Might be good for a student (since they couldn’t run any modern games on it), but would need to be replaced in a year or two given the essentially disposable specs.
Here it is up against the processor in a 10 year old iPhone:
Intel Celeron N4500 vs Apple A9 [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software
FWIW, I have a laptop with the CPU. The salesperson at Micro Center wanted to make sure – with absolute certainty – that I knew how slow it’d be. Only after I assured him that my only purpose was to run a single car diagnostics application did he put the order through. I commend them for making sure folks weren’t buying strictly because of its price without knowing just how little performance one would get for the price.
(Note that I am not staff. I just volunteer to help out on the forums.)
I once had a Micro Center employee do the same thing on a cheap laptop. I just wanted to see the specs – unless there was a pleasant surprise, I had no intention of buying it – and they weren’t listed. The salesperson outright discouraged me from buying it. He was willing to open one for me to look for the specs, but I told him not to bother.
It wasn’t that Maestro something or other, was it? Those went as cheap as $60, but they were so poorly made (and had many negative reviews of them failing after a few months) that I decided against them.
Seems like a fair price for a monitor and keyboard - I presume there’s no locked-down boot mechanism that would stop me from installing ubuntu on this to use as an X server to a Pi stuck to the back of the screen? (The PC in my frankenputer died a few years ago and I’ld like to rebuild it…)
I previously bought a used Lenovo laptop here for about $50 ( Lenovo N24 Laptop ) for use as a display for my 3D printer and it was great value for money. You could fold it all the way around and use the screen as a touchscreen. If another of those turned up I’ld snap it up right away without a second thought. But $120 is just on the verge of needing some thought before making the call.
I grabbed one of them open box for $47, and yeah, processor and build quality are pretty terrible. However, it’s still surprisingly decent - some of the models (including mine) have a SIM slot and an LTE radio for mobile data, which you normally don’t get in any laptop.
4GB DDR4 on board
Max Total system memory up to:4GB
Cannot upgrade the RAM on the ASUS L510KA-ES04 model because the memory is soldered directly onto the motherboard. You can, however, upgrade the internal storage by replacing the SSD with a larger one, as this is the only user-upgradeable component in this laptop.
Expansion Slots (includes used)
1x M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0x2
The L510KA-ES04 comes with a slow 128GB eMMC flash drive, but it includes an unused M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 x2 expansion slot for a faster SSD. This is the most effective upgrade you can perform to significantly improve the laptop’s performance and storage capacity.
Not even worth buying.
So… there’s potential for it to be a hotspot/router (though it could also blow up doing that)
“This is a doorstop”
Not NVME so if you do get this expecting to throw an SSD in it, make sure it’s compatible and check the keying too.
I bought one of the ones that doesn’t have the SIM slot or LTE radio (which, allegedly, can be removed in favor of an M.2 drive, though since I don’t have one I can’t conform), and let’s be honest – it’s exactly what you’d expect for a $60 computer. I have it running an extremely stripped-down build of Arch Linux, and even running the bare minimum, it struggles. But as a novelty – or as a laptop I can take somewhere to do very basic tasks and not worry if it gets broken or stolen – it’s worth the price.
Honestly, if this just had one simple change – non-soldered RAM – this might be worth it if you had some spare RAM on hand and could pop this guy up to 8GB or 16GB. As it stands…ehh. Everyone else has hit on the salient points already. Probably not worth it for Windows, don’t know about Linux support but it would probably fly on some lightweight distro/DE if there are no compatibility issues.
Should be a Chromebook
this is e-waste right out of the factory. shame on asus.