Auusda 15.6 Inch Laptop, 32GB DDR4 1TB NVMe SSD Windows 11

 

I was somewhat nervous about buying an unknown brand with no customer reviews of the particular model, but shipping from Amazon and their excellent return policy, I thought it was worth the risk. Happy to say that overall, I’m pleased with the decision.

Buying this at full price (~533) would be a poor choice when you consider the Ryzen based alternatives that have much more powerful CPU and iGPU, and have better capacity battery and higher quality webcam. But with the 50% off voucher, this becomes a potentially compelling value proposition – assuming your intended use is relatively lightweight. This is an “everyday” laptop, not a gaming rig or content creation machine, and given the relatively poor battery capacity, you will not want to be too long away from a power point.

EDIT: I have now purchased two of these – both with the 50% discount.

Webcam: Very basic low-def 480p (0.3Mp). If you are intending to do a lot of video calls you’ll want to invest in a USB webcam.

Keyboard: Nice to type on, good sized keys. The backlight is great for use at night. The only complaint is the US keyboard layout. Although they provide a rubber sheet of keys, the problem is there’s no pipe or backslash! (| and ). So its better to stick to the US keyboard and deal with the symbol via ALT+156, or switch to a second keyboard layout via Win+Space, hit Shift-3 and then back to the US layout.

Trackpad: Good size, and fairly responsive. Would have preferred actual buttons rather than just the bottom area for left/right clicking. The trackpad also has a fingerprint reader, though I’ve not tried using it for Windows sign-in, so cannot comment on the accuracy or ease of use.

Physical appearance: Apart from the manufacturers logo on the front, the machine certainly looks nothing like its budget price – its very clean (no branding stickers stuck to it) and looks much more expensive than it is. It comes well packaged, and there’s plastic wrapping over the back and inside so it is in pristine condition when you open it.

Screen: Perfectly bright for indoor use. It would be hard to see outside in strong daylight. But its pixel perfect, clear and standard 60hz 1080p resolution.

Audio: The speakers are not very powerful – you will want to use headphones if you are listening to music or streaming TV/movies.

Performance: The N95 is a quad-core Alderlake E-core chip. It’s roughly equivalent to an i5-6500 from 2015. It won’t let you power through video editing etc, but for web surfing, streaming media, office work and light apps (not games) it is very responsive. The 32GB of RAM, whilst being single channel (a limitation of the N95 chip), also helps to keep things responsive. The 1TB NVME is Gen 1 – so not blindingly fast, but at ~800MB/s sequential read and write, 302MB/s random read 271MB/s random write at Queue 32, its still significantly faster than a SATA SSD. Again, the machine feels responsive in booting up and launching apps. The RAM and SSD are both good sized in terms of capacity.

Temperature: The laptop does get a bit hot – you can feel heat through jeans. Its not uncomfortably hot, but you certainly know its there. Would recommend a laptop cooler if using on lap for prolonged periods of time.

OS: Windows 11 Pro, with the installer supporting offline account creation. No bloatware or adware installed. Full marks.

Ports: There’s 2 x USB 3 ports, headphone socket, mini HDMI and a MicroSD reader. So you will need a USB hub if you need more than 2 devices connected.

Wireless: WiFi performance is poor – 19 MB/s transfer rate on a full strength Wifi-5 connection with no other traffic in-use. The 50GB test file would have taken 45 minutes to transfer – far quicker to copy to a portable disk, then read off the disk. Its certainly fast enough for streaming FHD content, but it would be painful to transfer large files over wifi. This was with the power options set to maximum performance.

Battery: This is not an all-day laptop. The battery is good for light use for about 2 hours – you will want your charger with you and access to a power supply. This isn’t suitable for students unless the classroom has power sockets for running off the mains. The charger is a barrel cable straight from the plug – which is unfortunate as it means there’s no option for getting a longer kettle or clover cable into the (non-existant) power pack. You would need a plug on the on the tabletop as the lead won’t stretch far.

EDIT: App Issues – None!
(In my original review I raised an issue with the Disney+ App – the latest version now runs fine on this laptop).

Overall, for what I wanted it for, this is a nice laptop and value for money at the 50% off rate. Its responsive, easy to type on and easy to read screen. The generous RAM and SSD capacity are great selling points. It will handle office apps, surfing, streaming shows at 1080p etc. Its lightweight and yet feels sturdy. The downsides are poor battery life and extremely poor WIFI performance.