Kogan gets back into laptops with a $329 15 inch machine

Aussie e-tailer Ruslan Kogan has his hands in lots of different pots: phones, tablets, TVs, and appliances, and this week, it’s a return to laptops as Kogan launches a budget laptop.

Branded with the name of the e-tailer, it’s clear that Kogan is launching a laptop, the first in, well, we can’t exactly recall. This journalist remembers reviewing one some time ago, but that was several years ago, with an Agora laptop.

But while we’ve seen the Agora name grace phones and tablets recently, the new Kogan laptop won’t be an Agora, but rather an Atlas, which appears to have taken the manufacturing reigns of this one.

Called the Atlas X1510, it’s a budget laptop plain and simple, pairing a 15.5 inch HD screen (1366×768) with more budget innards, including the Intel Pentium N3540 2.16GHz chip, 4GB RAM, a 500GB conventional hard drive, and four USB ports, one of which is a USB 3.0.

“There’s now no excuse for why every school kid in Australia shouldn’t have a laptop and be given the tools to discover that the Great Wall of China was not built to keep the rabbits out,” said Ruslan Kogan.

“Inside we have put one of the latest Intel CPUs, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB HDD and it comes with a high definition 15.6 inch screen. We haven’t skimped on the features that will make this the perfect laptop for work, school or university. There are plenty of cheap, runout, laptops available in Australia but we wanted to do more than just stuff a few mediocre features in to hit a price point.”

Based on spec alone, we’re not sure we agree with Kogan that this does more than “stuff a few mediocre features in to hit a price point,” but we’re willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, especially since it will also come with 802.11ac WiFi support, something few laptops below $500 tend to arrive with.

We’ve checked with Kogan on upgradeability, too, which has said that RAM can be upgraded and that it’s not soldered in place, which will likely improve it in the eyes of people who find that 4GB RAM just a touch limiting.

Kogan’s Atlas X1510 laptop is priced at $329 (plus shipping) and will be available from Kogan’s online store near the end of December, though we’re hoping to have a review online sooner.