ASUS L510 15.6" L510MA-DS04 Star Black 2022

The ASUS L510 is a $248 ultra-thin laptop with a surprisingly good 15.6-inch 1080p screen and a full Windows license. But the Celeron N4020 processor and 4GB of RAM are some of the slowest we've ever seen, making it a one-tab-at-a-time machine. It's best for writers or students on a strict budget who need Microsoft Office and nothing else. Anyone who multitasks should grab a refurbished business laptop or a Chromebook instead.

Let's be real about the Celeron N4020. In our database, this processor lands in the 2nd percentile, which is about as close to the bottom as you can get without falling off the chart. This is a dual-core chip from 2019 with a base clock of 1.1GHz that can boost to 2.8GHz, but in a fanless chassis like this, it'll spend most of its life throttled back to keep temperatures in check. For a single browser tab with a document open, it's fine. You'll type, it'll keep up. Open five tabs, a Spotify stream, and try to hop on a video call, and you'll be staring at a lot of spinning wheels. The integrated graphics are equally basic, putting this machine in the 19th percentile for GPU performance. You can forget about gaming entirely, our scores put that capability at a 5.3 out of 100.

The 4GB of DDR4 RAM is the real bottleneck here, sitting in the 2nd percentile. Windows 10 itself will happily eat up more than half of that just idling. The 128GB eMMC storage is also a weak spot, landing in the 7th percentile. This isn't an SSD. It's the same type of flash storage you'd find in a cheap tablet or a smartphone, and it's slow. Boot times are measured in minutes, not seconds, and large file transfers will give you time to make a sandwich. The one bright spot is the 15.6-inch 1080p display. While its overall screen score is in the 23rd percentile, having a full HD panel at this price is still a small victory. Text looks crisp, and spreadsheets have plenty of room to breathe.

The competitors listed for this product are a bit of a joke, honestly. The Lenovo Yoga Book 9i and Apple MacBook Pro are $1,000+ premium machines. They're not in the same universe. The real competition for the L510 is the sea of budget Chromebooks like the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook or the Acer Chromebook 315. Those machines trade Windows for ChromeOS, but they often come with better processors and actual SSDs for around the same price. You lose the full desktop Office suite, but you gain a machine that doesn't feel like it's constantly catching its breath.

If you absolutely need Windows at this price, your best bet is a refurbished business laptop. A Dell Latitude 7455 or an older Lenovo ThinkPad from a few years back will have a proper Core i5 processor, 8GB or 16GB of RAM, and a fast NVMe SSD, all for around the same $250. The screen might not be as pretty, and it'll be heavier, but the performance difference is night and day. The L510's only real advantage over those machines is that it's brand new, silent, and thin. For a certain type of user who values those things above all else, that might be enough.

At $248, the ASUS L510 is competing with Chromebooks and used ThinkPads, not MacBooks. And in that arena, the value proposition is tricky. You're getting a big, sharp screen and a full Windows license, which is more than a lot of Chromebooks offer at this price. The included year of Microsoft 365 is a genuine $70 value, effectively bringing the hardware cost down even further. If you need Word, Excel, and OneDrive and don't want to deal with web apps, that's a real perk.

But the hardware itself is so limited that you have to ask if the Windows license is worth the performance hit. A similarly priced Chromebook will often have a faster MediaTek or lower-end Intel processor with better real-world responsiveness for web-based tasks. The L510's value lives entirely in that 15.6-inch 1080p screen and the full desktop Office suite. If those two things are non-negotiable and your budget is fixed, it's a fair deal. If you can stretch even $50 more, the landscape of used business laptops with proper SSDs and 8GB of RAM opens up and will run circles around this machine.

The ASUS L510 is the kind of laptop you grab when you need something cheap, light, and just capable enough to get through a day of web browsing and document editing. At $248, it's priced like a decent pair of headphones, not a full Windows machine. And for a very specific type of user, that's exactly the appeal. You're not buying this for power. You're buying it because you need a 15.6-inch screen to type on and a keyboard that doesn't feel like a toy, all in a package that won't break your back or your bank account.

Who is this actually for? Think students who live in Google Docs, or someone who needs a dedicated machine for Zoom calls and email in the kitchen. The full HD display is a nice surprise at this price, and the 1.63kg weight means it's genuinely portable. But you have to go in with your eyes wide open. The Intel Celeron N4020 inside is a processor from a different era of computing, and the 4GB of RAM is basically the bare minimum Windows 10 needs to breathe. This isn't a machine for multitasking. It's a machine for one thing at a time, patiently.

ASUS ships this with Windows 10 in S Mode, which locks you to Microsoft Store apps. That's actually a smart move here. It keeps the system from getting bogged down by random software you don't need, and it helps that eMMC storage feel a little less painful. You can switch out of S Mode for free if you want, but honestly, on this hardware, you probably shouldn't. The included year of Microsoft 365 sweetens the deal a bit, making it a ready-to-go homework or light office machine right out of the box.

Anyone who keeps more than three browser tabs open should skip this laptop. The 4GB of RAM and slow eMMC storage make tab hoarding a painful experience, with constant reloads and lag. If you're a student who needs to research across multiple sources while writing a paper, or if you like to have music streaming in the background while you work, this machine will drive you up the wall. Look at a used Lenovo ThinkPad or Dell Latitude with 8GB of RAM and a real SSD instead. They'll be a little thicker and heavier, but they'll actually keep up with you.

Gamers, creative pros, and anyone who edits photos or video should also stay far away. The integrated graphics and Celeron processor are not built for any of that. Even light photo editing in a web app will be a slideshow. If you need any kind of creative or gaming capability, you need to at least double your budget and look for something with a proper Core i3 or Ryzen 3 processor and 8GB of RAM.

If you need a laptop for a single, simple task, like writing in a coffee shop or checking email on the couch, the ASUS L510 is a quiet, lightweight companion with a surprisingly nice screen. It's a dedicated writing machine or a homework terminal for a younger student who won't be juggling dozens of tabs. For that narrow use case, the price is right and the machine is perfectly adequate. Just keep it in S Mode and don't ask it to do more than one thing at a time.

For everyone else, this is a tough sell. The performance is so constrained that even basic multitasking becomes a test of patience. If your workflow involves more than a browser and a word processor, or if you ever want to install software outside the Microsoft Store, you should look elsewhere. A refurbished business laptop or a Chromebook will give you a much smoother experience for the same money. The L510 is a one-trick pony, and you have to really need that specific trick to be happy with it.