ASUS L406MA-WH02 14-inch Laptop: A Budget Champion

Taiwan-based ASUS is back with another budget-friendly Windows 10 laptop. This time it’s ASUS L406MA-WH02 – a 14-inch laptop with impressive performance and surprisingly great battery backup for a budget laptop. If you were looking for a laptop under $250, ASUS’ new offering will be worth having a look. And in this detailed overview, GizmoGIGA will tell you exactly why.

ASUS L406MA-WH02: Look and Feel

There was a time when whatever money you spent on a laptop, chances were, you would get a laptop that looked like a big, black suitcase. Times have changed and we are seeing not only sleek and lightweight laptops, they also look good. The definition of what looks good may wary but for us, this budget ASUS laptop is good enough.

The first thing you notice after L406MA-WH02’s minimal slate grey finish is the narrow bezel. Unlike many budget options, ASUS has designed a laptop with narrow bezels that give you more display in a 14-inch screen offering 76.5% screen-to-body ratio. With minimal looks and narrow bezel comes smooth curves, durable body and a smooth, streamlined finish. Concisely, this ASUS laptop offers pleasant look and feel that we are not yet used to see in value laptops.

Internally, the most noticeable change ASUS has made is the fanless design. Much like a smartphone or tablet, this laptop does not have a fan. That makes it less noisy and less power hungry. Moreover, it also allows the laptop to avoid dust-related issues. To keep things cool in there, ASUS has instead used thin heat pipes designed to maintain temperature even during long use sessions.

Users who have to carry a laptop everywhere they go will appreciate the small 14-inch body weighing 1.30kg (2.87 pounds). A budget laptop with sleek looks, small form factor and lightweight build? Consider us impressed. Other things worth mentioning are a chiclet keyboard that’s comfortable to type on and hinges that don’t feel loose or cheap. The overall build of this ASUS feels in place.

ASUS L406MA-WH02: Tech Specs and Performance

Alright, looks are not everything. And we agree. You can’t judge anything by its looks, definitely not a laptop. ASUS L406MA performance does, however, impresses us as much as its looks. Powered by a 1.1 GHz Intel Celeron N4000 dual core processor with 4M cache and boost up to 2.6 GHz, this laptop has enough processing power to handle more than just daily Office tasks.

To help you run multiple apps at the same time, this ASUS laptop carries 4GB LPDDR4 RAM. Many budget laptops under $500 still carry DDR3 RAM. ASUS has opted for the latest instead. You will appreciate being able to work on a Word document while multiple tabs are open in your browser and music playing in background.

A 64GB eMMC storage does not leave much room for documents and other files. So you will rely on a memory card or an external hard drive to store all your data while the operating system and other programs reside on internal storage. With external storage – especially SD cards available at small price tag, we don’t consider this as a big drawback. Changes are, you already have an SD card lying around and that can instantly increase your storage.

The 14-inch anti-glare matte display with 1366 x 768 pixels resolution does good job at outputting graphics with optimum brightness. Intel UHD Graphics 600 graphics are of course, integrated, and this laptop should not be expected to run those 8K videos or high-end games.

Running on the impressive hardware is Windows 10 S operating system – a bloat-free and lightweight sibling to Windows 10. You can upgrade it to Windows 10 Home or consider running Linux if you prefer. The preinstalled operating system performs without much lag but we don’t expect to run it super-smooth everytime, anyway.

With the given hardware and software combination, ASUS L406MA-WH02 provides great overall performance. You will feel it’s responding slow at times, but you really should not expect a super computer at this price.

With great overall performance comes all-day battery backup that ASUS claims is 12 hours. That of course, will depend on how you use the laptop but we expect around 8 to 9 hours of backup in daily use cases that is a combination of web browsing, music, spreadsheets/Word docs etc. – and that’s a lot in our opinion. Thanks to fast-charge technology, this 3-cell, 56 Wh battery charges up to 60 percent in around 50 minutes.

ASUS L406MA-WH02: Ports and Connectivity

There are no ports on this laptop? One would wonder if they looked at the left side. Because they all reside on the right hand side. ASUS has provided two Type-A USB 3.0 (USB 3.1 Gen 1) ports, one HDMI 1.4 port, multimedia card slot, and headphone jack.

We do miss an Ethernet port but it’s nothing we can’t manage without – thanks to the superfast WiFi 5 (802.11ac) wireless connectivity. Bluetooth is also present – just in case you have Bluetooth-compatible peripherals that you’d like to use with this laptop.

ASUS L406MA-WH02 Budget Laptop Review: Overall Impressions

So, what do you make out of this review? We think ASUS has made a wonderful budget laptop that’s powered by efficient Intel processor, plenty of DDR4 RAM, pleasant look and feel and surprising battery backup. All that for $250 – a price that we find too good to be true but it’s real. For an ultra low value laptop such as this, ASUS has manged to offer great value for money.

At its price tag, performance and lightweight build, ASUS L406MA-WH02 makes an ideal option for students, office executives and home users whose use is mostly limited to web browsing, Office projects, music and movies, online streaming etc. We find it to be a good alternative to Chromebooks for users who are used to Windows systems.

Users who would rather prefer an HP laptop with AMD processor should have a look at HP 14-FQ0020NR which is pretty much similar at the price tag around $280.