This Lower Cost Fast Ultra Book Can Actually Game! Thin, Light & Powerful Hands-On

**A Review of the MX 450 Ultrabook: Performance and Battery Life**

The MX 450 ultrabook is a compact and lightweight device that packs a punch when it comes to performance. We put this laptop through its paces, testing it with a range of games and applications to see how it holds up.

One of the first things we noticed about the MX 450 was its display. The 14-inch IPS display looked great, even at lower resolutions. On our test drive, we ran Street Fighter 5 at high settings in 1080p resolution, with a frame rate of 60 FPS. This is some impressive performance for such a thin and light laptop.

We also tested the MX 450's ability to play games at lower resolutions and frame rates. In GTA 5, we achieved an average of 82 FPS at normal settings, which was impressive considering the game's demands. The Witcher 3, on the other hand, required us to scale back the graphics settings to achieve a stable 78 FPS at 900p resolution.

The MX 450's performance is not limited to gaming alone. We also put it through its paces with more everyday tasks like web browsing and video streaming. In these tests, we achieved around 10 hours of battery life when streaming video at a brightness of around 60%, which is impressive for such a compact device.

However, not all games performed as well under the MX 450's power. Eldest Ring, for example, struggled to achieve a stable frame rate above 47 FPS at 720p resolution and low graphics settings. This is a common issue with lower-end GPUs, but it's still disappointing to see such a high-performance device struggling in this way.

Finally, we tested the MX 450's battery life under various conditions. In web browsing mode, we achieved around 6 hours of battery life, while gaming modes saw a slightly shorter lifespan of around 4-5 hours depending on the game and settings used.

**A Great Option for Gamers On-The-Go**

Overall, the MX 450 ultrabook is a great option for gamers who need a compact and lightweight device that can keep up with their gaming needs. While it may not be the most powerful device in terms of raw performance, its ability to deliver smooth frame rates at lower resolutions makes it an excellent choice for those who want to play games on-the-go.

The MX 450's display is also worth noting, as it looks great even at lower resolutions and brightness levels. The compact design and lightweight build make it easy to carry around, while the backlit keyboard and single-zone trackpad add convenience features that will appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike.

If you're in the market for an ultrabook that offers decent GPU performance in a thin and light package, the MX 450 is definitely worth considering. However, if you can catch it on sale for around $430-450, it's even more of a great value proposition. With this deal, the MX 450 becomes an excellent option for anyone looking for a compact gaming laptop that won't break the bank.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, the MX 450 ultrabook is a great option for gamers who want a compact and lightweight device that can deliver smooth performance on-the-go. While it may not be the most powerful device in terms of raw performance, its ability to deliver smooth frame rates at lower resolutions makes it an excellent choice for those who need a laptop that can keep up with their gaming needs.

We highly recommend considering the MX 450 if you're in the market for an ultrabook that offers decent GPU performance in a thin and light package. And if you can catch it on sale, it's even more of a great value proposition. With its compact design, lightweight build, and impressive performance, the MX 450 is definitely worth considering for anyone who wants a great gaming laptop without breaking the bank.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on everybody it's eta prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at an awesome little ultra portable laptop that i recently picked up if you're a regular viewer of the channel it's no secret that i love the ryzen apus and that's exactly what this is powered by but when it comes to the built-in ryzen graphics there is a little more to be desired at least with the vega graphics and the 4000 and 5000 series chip but with this one here we've actually got a dedicated nvidia gpu in this super small form factor and this is actually something i haven't taken a look at on the channel really haven't given it two thoughts but this has an nvidia mx450 gpu with two gigabytes of gddr6 vram real quick i'll give you a size comparison this is my normal carry around laptop and this is the zen book 14 which we're going to be taking a look at in this video the size here really is dramatic especially when holding them or putting them inside of a book bag and the tough laptop that i usually carry around does have a lot more power but when i'm on the go i never utilize it a hundred percent i think that's where the zen book 14 is really going to come in handy but before we jump into the specs and test this ultrabook out i do want to mention that this video is brought to you by urcd keys i've actually been using this site for a couple years now they do offer steam keys origin uplay they even offer microsoft applications like office but the main reason that i use urcd keys is for their windows keys right now their windows 10 pro oem key is 19.84 but if you use code eta at checkout you can get 25 off now there is one thing to keep in mind when upgrading your pc using a key like this you can change your gpu you can change the ram the hard drives the cpu the only thing that'll stop this key from working in the future is swapping out the motherboard but they're definitely cheap enough and another great thing about buying from here is they do accept paypal i just did this build here i need to activate windows i'm going to head over to my updates and security we're going to go to activation as you can see i've got windows 10 pro but it's not activated so i'm going to change product key i'm gonna paste it in here choose next choose activate and windows is now activated we're ready to go my warning is totally gone and basically that's it they'll email your code once your payment is processed and that's basically it if you're interested in picking up cheap windows 10 keys for your new pc builds i'll leave a link in the description this is known as the zenbook 14 and they were recently on sale over at best buy for 5.19 but i went to my local store and i was able to pick up an open box in great condition for 438 dollars you can actually check the website for open box near you i'll leave a link in the description and i've been doing some testing with this ultrabook and performance is actually really great for what we have here it's powered by a ryzen 5 5500u for the dedicated graphics we've got the nvidia mx450 the only real downside to this unit here is the ram is non-user upgradable and i picked up the 8 gigabyte version but they do make a 16 gigabyte version i do love the design of this ultrabook it's constructed of aluminum we've got a huge trackpad backlit keyboard and a 14 inch ips 1080p display when it comes to io over here on the right hand side we have a full size usb 3.1 port micro sd card reader and a 3.5 millimeter audio jack moving over to the left-hand side we get a full-size hdmi port and two usb type-c ports these are usb type-c 3.2 ports when it comes to the specs for the cpu this is using the ryzen 5 5500u we've got six cores 12 threads with a base clock of 2.1 gigahertz and a boost up to 4.0 right out of the box this is running at 20 watts but in performance mode this will go up to 30. you can get this with either 8 or 16 gigabytes of lp ddr4x it's running at 4 266 megahertz and along with the 5500u we've got the built-in radeon 7 graphics but we also have a dedicated nvidia mx450 with 2 gigabytes of gddr6 vram this came with 256 gigabytes of storage it's using an nvme m.2 ssd it also has wi-fi 6 built-in bluetooth 5.0 and out of the box this was running windows 11. we've got a 1080p ips display 50 watt hour battery and it only weighs 2.9 pounds when it comes to everyday pc performance this thing is really snappy and in the past we've tested the 5500 u on the channel six cores 12 threads i mean it's got plenty of power to get you by as long as it's clocked correctly and out of the box this is running at 20 watts but you can go into the asus settings and turn it to performance mode it'll take it up to 30 watts but it only works at 30 watts on ac power but 20 watts is plenty you want to get some web browsing out of the way email checking some light photo editing light video editing the 5500 you can definitely handle it another thing it's got going for it is full-size hdmi out which will do 4k 60. so if you did want to plug it into a bigger monitor you could use hdmi but we've also got video out of the usb ports on the side here but overall it's a really snappy experience asus didn't hold the 5500 euback in this machine at all i'm definitely going to be jumping into some pc gaming because the performance on this is really impressive for what we have here but the first thing i did was run some benchmarks let's go ahead and check those out first here we have geekbench 5 and remember the 5500u is a zen 2 cpu single core 1105 multi 5269 not bad at all for a low powered mobile cpu moving over to some gpu benchmarks with that mx450 here we have 3dmark wildlife this is a vulcan benchmark we got a total score of 8865 for 3dmark night raid 19762 and finally time spy with a 1914 so obviously these scores aren't looking that impressive when you compare it to a full-fledged gaming laptop or a gaming desktop but for an ultra portable coming in at 2.9 pounds these scores are looking pretty decent now it's time to see how this thing can really game the first game we have here is forza horizon 5 and this is really impressive performance for what we have here we're at 1080p with a low medium mix no resolution scale going and i got an average of 76 fps by the end of my run here not bad at all and if you did want to take it down to 900p we could do all medium settings and get an average of around 64. basically what you do with this is just lock the sync on and be content playing this at 60fps medium settings but to tell you the truth i still think this little mix that i got going on with low medium at 1080 looks good enough especially on this smaller ips display we're only working with a 14 inch display here it looks really good and it's playing perfectly fine next up we've got street fighter 5 very high settings 1080p no resolution scale it's going to play through this at 60 all day really great performance out of the mx 450 paired up with that 5500 view especially when it comes to fighting games here we have gta 5 and i completely understand that this is an older game still a great one to play though we're at 1080p normal settings and i got an average of 82 fps out of this little laptop for being such a thin and light little unit we're seeing some really good performance when it comes to gaming on the mx 450 here moving over to the witcher 3 we're at 900p with a low medium mix we could do this at 1080p low but there's a few settings that i personally like to change and we were dipping under 60. it was few and far in between but overall taking it down to 900p on a display like this still looks really good and we're getting an average of 78 fps out of this one next up we've got god of war and if you don't mind playing this at 30 fps you can set it to original settings 1080p and it's going to run at 30 all day just lock it right there but i went down to 720p we're still at the original settings and with a setup like this i'm getting an average of 68 fps going into this personally i thought we'd be in the mid 40s maybe a low 50s with it even at the 720p original resolution here but 68 fps on this laptop is really great performance and again at 1080p you can lock this at 30 and it looks absolutely amazing i had high hopes for eldon ring i was really hoping we could get a steady 60 out of it at 720p low but unfortunately we only averaged 47 fps and this has kind of been the case across the board with these lower-end gpus whether it's a dedicated gpu like the mx 450 or even integrated graphics like the radeon 8 graphics overclocked as much as we can with a desktop cpu at least we're over 30 here it's still playable like it is and finally we have cyberpunk 2077 with the latest updates this has been working really well on lower-end gpus not quite at 60 now with resolution scale turned way down we could probably get around 60 out of this but the way i've got it set up right now is 720p low settings and i'm only averaging 45 fps when it comes to battery life you can get around 10 hours of video streaming with the brightness set to around 60 6 hours web browsing kind of medium use just messing around with everything and when it comes to gaming it's going to depend on what game you're playing and how hard it's pushing the system you can get one to four hours it just really depends on how hard you want to push it with that game but i gotta say i'm really impressed with this little laptop and i think this is gonna be my new carry around i've got that 14 inch ips display it's a non-touch display backlit keyboard it's only a single zone it's a white led backlit keyboard with about four points of brightness looks great definitely gets the job done we've got a big track pad here and when it comes to gaming on the go personally i don't mind playing at 720p this screen does look really good even with something like god of war only running at 720p here with those original settings it still looks great because we have that compact display if we were to scale that up on a 50 inch tv it wouldn't look so good but on this 14 inch ips display i can definitely get by playing these games on the go so yeah if you're looking for an ultrabook that has some decent gpu performance in a thin and light package this is one that i could recommend but i wouldn't pay over 500 dollars for it if you can catch it on sale over at best buy or wherever you want to shop or get an open box for around 430 to 450 then i'd say this would be totally worth it if you're in the market for a laptop like this but that's gonna wrap it up for this one really appreciate you watching if you're interested in learning more about this ultrabook i will leave a few links in the description and if there's anything else you want to see running on this thing just let me know in the comments below like always thanks for watchinghey what's going on everybody it's eta prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at an awesome little ultra portable laptop that i recently picked up if you're a regular viewer of the channel it's no secret that i love the ryzen apus and that's exactly what this is powered by but when it comes to the built-in ryzen graphics there is a little more to be desired at least with the vega graphics and the 4000 and 5000 series chip but with this one here we've actually got a dedicated nvidia gpu in this super small form factor and this is actually something i haven't taken a look at on the channel really haven't given it two thoughts but this has an nvidia mx450 gpu with two gigabytes of gddr6 vram real quick i'll give you a size comparison this is my normal carry around laptop and this is the zen book 14 which we're going to be taking a look at in this video the size here really is dramatic especially when holding them or putting them inside of a book bag and the tough laptop that i usually carry around does have a lot more power but when i'm on the go i never utilize it a hundred percent i think that's where the zen book 14 is really going to come in handy but before we jump into the specs and test this ultrabook out i do want to mention that this video is brought to you by urcd keys i've actually been using this site for a couple years now they do offer steam keys origin uplay they even offer microsoft applications like office but the main reason that i use urcd keys is for their windows keys right now their windows 10 pro oem key is 19.84 but if you use code eta at checkout you can get 25 off now there is one thing to keep in mind when upgrading your pc using a key like this you can change your gpu you can change the ram the hard drives the cpu the only thing that'll stop this key from working in the future is swapping out the motherboard but they're definitely cheap enough and another great thing about buying from here is they do accept paypal i just did this build here i need to activate windows i'm going to head over to my updates and security we're going to go to activation as you can see i've got windows 10 pro but it's not activated so i'm going to change product key i'm gonna paste it in here choose next choose activate and windows is now activated we're ready to go my warning is totally gone and basically that's it they'll email your code once your payment is processed and that's basically it if you're interested in picking up cheap windows 10 keys for your new pc builds i'll leave a link in the description this is known as the zenbook 14 and they were recently on sale over at best buy for 5.19 but i went to my local store and i was able to pick up an open box in great condition for 438 dollars you can actually check the website for open box near you i'll leave a link in the description and i've been doing some testing with this ultrabook and performance is actually really great for what we have here it's powered by a ryzen 5 5500u for the dedicated graphics we've got the nvidia mx450 the only real downside to this unit here is the ram is non-user upgradable and i picked up the 8 gigabyte version but they do make a 16 gigabyte version i do love the design of this ultrabook it's constructed of aluminum we've got a huge trackpad backlit keyboard and a 14 inch ips 1080p display when it comes to io over here on the right hand side we have a full size usb 3.1 port micro sd card reader and a 3.5 millimeter audio jack moving over to the left-hand side we get a full-size hdmi port and two usb type-c ports these are usb type-c 3.2 ports when it comes to the specs for the cpu this is using the ryzen 5 5500u we've got six cores 12 threads with a base clock of 2.1 gigahertz and a boost up to 4.0 right out of the box this is running at 20 watts but in performance mode this will go up to 30. you can get this with either 8 or 16 gigabytes of lp ddr4x it's running at 4 266 megahertz and along with the 5500u we've got the built-in radeon 7 graphics but we also have a dedicated nvidia mx450 with 2 gigabytes of gddr6 vram this came with 256 gigabytes of storage it's using an nvme m.2 ssd it also has wi-fi 6 built-in bluetooth 5.0 and out of the box this was running windows 11. we've got a 1080p ips display 50 watt hour battery and it only weighs 2.9 pounds when it comes to everyday pc performance this thing is really snappy and in the past we've tested the 5500 u on the channel six cores 12 threads i mean it's got plenty of power to get you by as long as it's clocked correctly and out of the box this is running at 20 watts but you can go into the asus settings and turn it to performance mode it'll take it up to 30 watts but it only works at 30 watts on ac power but 20 watts is plenty you want to get some web browsing out of the way email checking some light photo editing light video editing the 5500 you can definitely handle it another thing it's got going for it is full-size hdmi out which will do 4k 60. so if you did want to plug it into a bigger monitor you could use hdmi but we've also got video out of the usb ports on the side here but overall it's a really snappy experience asus didn't hold the 5500 euback in this machine at all i'm definitely going to be jumping into some pc gaming because the performance on this is really impressive for what we have here but the first thing i did was run some benchmarks let's go ahead and check those out first here we have geekbench 5 and remember the 5500u is a zen 2 cpu single core 1105 multi 5269 not bad at all for a low powered mobile cpu moving over to some gpu benchmarks with that mx450 here we have 3dmark wildlife this is a vulcan benchmark we got a total score of 8865 for 3dmark night raid 19762 and finally time spy with a 1914 so obviously these scores aren't looking that impressive when you compare it to a full-fledged gaming laptop or a gaming desktop but for an ultra portable coming in at 2.9 pounds these scores are looking pretty decent now it's time to see how this thing can really game the first game we have here is forza horizon 5 and this is really impressive performance for what we have here we're at 1080p with a low medium mix no resolution scale going and i got an average of 76 fps by the end of my run here not bad at all and if you did want to take it down to 900p we could do all medium settings and get an average of around 64. basically what you do with this is just lock the sync on and be content playing this at 60fps medium settings but to tell you the truth i still think this little mix that i got going on with low medium at 1080 looks good enough especially on this smaller ips display we're only working with a 14 inch display here it looks really good and it's playing perfectly fine next up we've got street fighter 5 very high settings 1080p no resolution scale it's going to play through this at 60 all day really great performance out of the mx 450 paired up with that 5500 view especially when it comes to fighting games here we have gta 5 and i completely understand that this is an older game still a great one to play though we're at 1080p normal settings and i got an average of 82 fps out of this little laptop for being such a thin and light little unit we're seeing some really good performance when it comes to gaming on the mx 450 here moving over to the witcher 3 we're at 900p with a low medium mix we could do this at 1080p low but there's a few settings that i personally like to change and we were dipping under 60. it was few and far in between but overall taking it down to 900p on a display like this still looks really good and we're getting an average of 78 fps out of this one next up we've got god of war and if you don't mind playing this at 30 fps you can set it to original settings 1080p and it's going to run at 30 all day just lock it right there but i went down to 720p we're still at the original settings and with a setup like this i'm getting an average of 68 fps going into this personally i thought we'd be in the mid 40s maybe a low 50s with it even at the 720p original resolution here but 68 fps on this laptop is really great performance and again at 1080p you can lock this at 30 and it looks absolutely amazing i had high hopes for eldon ring i was really hoping we could get a steady 60 out of it at 720p low but unfortunately we only averaged 47 fps and this has kind of been the case across the board with these lower-end gpus whether it's a dedicated gpu like the mx 450 or even integrated graphics like the radeon 8 graphics overclocked as much as we can with a desktop cpu at least we're over 30 here it's still playable like it is and finally we have cyberpunk 2077 with the latest updates this has been working really well on lower-end gpus not quite at 60 now with resolution scale turned way down we could probably get around 60 out of this but the way i've got it set up right now is 720p low settings and i'm only averaging 45 fps when it comes to battery life you can get around 10 hours of video streaming with the brightness set to around 60 6 hours web browsing kind of medium use just messing around with everything and when it comes to gaming it's going to depend on what game you're playing and how hard it's pushing the system you can get one to four hours it just really depends on how hard you want to push it with that game but i gotta say i'm really impressed with this little laptop and i think this is gonna be my new carry around i've got that 14 inch ips display it's a non-touch display backlit keyboard it's only a single zone it's a white led backlit keyboard with about four points of brightness looks great definitely gets the job done we've got a big track pad here and when it comes to gaming on the go personally i don't mind playing at 720p this screen does look really good even with something like god of war only running at 720p here with those original settings it still looks great because we have that compact display if we were to scale that up on a 50 inch tv it wouldn't look so good but on this 14 inch ips display i can definitely get by playing these games on the go so yeah if you're looking for an ultrabook that has some decent gpu performance in a thin and light package this is one that i could recommend but i wouldn't pay over 500 dollars for it if you can catch it on sale over at best buy or wherever you want to shop or get an open box for around 430 to 450 then i'd say this would be totally worth it if you're in the market for a laptop like this but that's gonna wrap it up for this one really appreciate you watching if you're interested in learning more about this ultrabook i will leave a few links in the description and if there's anything else you want to see running on this thing just let me know in the comments below like always thanks for watching\n"