Kogan is a company that produces hardware and peripherals based in Australia and is “100% Australian Owned”, as stated in their website (here). The company is founded by Ruslan Kogan in 2006 and has its HQ based in Melbourne, while they also serve their products in the United Kingdoms. They mainly deal via online retail and is currently the largest online department store in Australia, selling nearly tens of thousands of products through its online Direct-to-Consumer model. They are a rapidly growing and while serving other devices such as the Apple iPhone, Samsung smartphones and even DSLRs they have their own home cooked brand of Kogan brand devices, such as the Agora 4G.
We have the Kogan Atlas x1510 which was sent to us for review, and we couldn’t wait to get it out of the box.
Out of the box, Kogan includes the Atlas x1510 unit itself as well as the 32Wh battery that promises to give 9 hours of battery life, warranty card, wall plug and the power brick. The laptop came with the battery pack and the unit disconnected from each other and installing it was a little finicky cause you had to slot the battery into these really hard to see rails.
The unit has a very nice metallic finish on the top and the plastic finish you usually find on the bottom of any laptop. The panel on the back is totally removable, if you need to clean out the intake fans and bottom also features the SD card slot as well as the stereo speakers.
The SD card slot is tucked under the front of the laptop which I think is a very nice place to put it as well as the status indicator lights for the laptop.
On the right, we have two audio jacks — one for input and one for stereo output and two USB2.0 ports.
On the left, we have one USB3.0 port, another USB2.0 port, a HDMI port, the fan exhaust, a VGA port, the Ethernet port and the power socket. Really good for an entry-level laptop.
This laptop is really light and really slim, and with a promise of up to 9 hours battery, I can see why it’s sold out on the Koganwebsite. The keyboard doesn’t give me a lot of confidence and the corners holding the keyboard in place can be flexed inwards. The tracking on the touch pad is really terrible but can be easily overlooked with a mouse. The hinge on the screen is tight at one angle and then loose on the next, so just bear in mind it’ll stay in place if you’re using it like a normal person would. The power button sinks inwards when you click it. The screen is nice and bright, it’s pleasant to look at and has a very nice dim level if you want to use this in the dark. The fan and hard disk noise were non-existent when I was using it but we’ll see after I run some bench marking software on it. The outer shell of the laptop feels really well built and the finish on this sleek machine is very nice. It did not have any problems running Windows 8.1 and at $329(AUD), this would be a great laptop for work or study.
There’ll be more on this laptop for those of you who are interested when my full review comes out. Stay tuned!
