Decent gaming laptop but some annoyances.
348905
Okay machine but some disappointments.

Yes, the display isn't great, but I use it with an external monitor at home so haven't been motivated to replace it.  For on-the-road use it's adequate.

Over time got rid of most of the bloatware that Lenovo loaded into it, especially the Superfish ad-delivery stuff with its serious security flaw.  (note: Lenovo got burned big time with that, has now announced they've stopped preloading crapware entirely)

The hybrid drive is interesting concept but its firmware logic needs work.  The idea is that it learns from your using it, puts the frequently used files on the solid-state portion of the unit for superfast access.  Apparently you do NOT want to move files around on your own.  I did, and spent two weeks cursing the frequent half-second game freezes playing World of Warcraft.  Conventional drive defragmenters don't work on hybrid drives.  Solution was brute force, delete all 27 gigs of WoW, move massive photo files onto laptop, then reload game (2.6 hour download).  Seems to have made the drive AI start over, things work okay now.

Other annoyance also Warcraft related.  The laptop has Intel chipset graphics and supplements this with an NVidia 860M card for graphics-intensive stuff like gaming.  The resulting frame rate with games is quite good for a laptop, but the combination seems to further complicate problems of keeping games compatible with all the different graphics solutions out there.  Every time I start up Warcraft, I have to alt-ctrl-del to see an error message telling me that a Windows DirectX file is incompatible with Windows.  Click Close and no further problems till next time I start up WoW.  Have reloaded DirectX entirely, have latest drivers for Intel and NVidia, looked all over for fixes, and finally just learned to live with it.  Like the hybrid drive problem, can't really blame Lenovo, just that both of their hybrid solutions need further refining.

4 stars as I'm 80% happy with the machine, still looking for a 100% one.
1067495
Pro's - The specs for price is pretty great. The graphics card hogs a lot of energy but allows for multi monitor support from a dock, so you can place it down and use mulit monitors (only in windows), and rip it up.
Keyboard is awesome

Con's - Here we go!

Screen - fishnet effect, awkwardly lit and the 1920x1080 res does not do much when you can see a grid from a normal distance from the computer.

Battery Life - Terrible, at most maybe a 4hr battery life, and I am not even playing games! even with a text editor and chrome up the bl is crap. I have the 9-cell battery and it acts like a 6 cell.
2816464
I like the resolution, the processing speed the quality of the webcam and the fact that it is a pretty light laptop for its size. My biggest complain will be the keyboard - while I'm typing, it jumps to other places for no apparent reason. Also the mousepad is not flush with the surface - it's somehow of slanted (never seen this in any other PCs). Using it to perform tasks like right, left or double-click is kind of unnatural and not always easy.
1528272
I strongly advise against getting this laptop.  I received a new one in place of the first one I got and experienced the exact same issue arc.  Here's exactly what will happen:
First, you will open nVidia geforce experience and attempt to update the drivers.  Then you will realize that for some reason your computer cannot connect to nvidia site.  You can try ASUS support, thats what worked better for me.  Expect to spend an hour or two doing this... and it will be frustrating that your brand new laptop isn't working properly.  Don't contact nvidia, they don't know what they're talking about.  Hopefully that will be it for you, but both of my computers had graphics issues constantly.  They are called livekernalevents.  Basically, my computer kept not responding and having critical hardware errors for some reason consistently.  After a while it will get worse, as applications will crash and stop responding due to the graphics timing out.  On top of all this, the computer just really wasn't worth the price.  The graphics are pretty good when they work, but for some reason the factory settings are not configured properly and it will begin to crash.  Second, the battery life is pretty bad.  I didn't need much battery life, but I mean really.  Like, an hour or maybe an hour and a half playing a game and less than a day on hibernate.  The keyboard leaves smudges that are really visible and detracts from the aesthetics...  I don't know.  I plan on returning this computer and getting a new one.  If you want this computer, go ahead and buy it.  Start off with contacting ASUS support chat when you get the errors about your graphics card not responding and hopefully you will have a better experience than me.
102963
Okay, well all the positive parts of this laptop have been told so i'll be negative and concentrate on the cons. (keep in mind im comparing it to the compaq 1720us i returned and my old gateway 3150XL)
Con:
-Heat. This gets a bit warm. Especially compared to the compaq with the same processor
-Hard Drive. I read the complaints and they are right. Click click click. Its really annoying and is a major part of why i got rid of it. The compaq is so super quiet its amazing. Like when you hear a new car and cant tell if the engine is on or not
-Video Out. I don't know if this is standard but you have to reduce your laptop screen to 800x600 to do video out to a TV. The compaq didn't require any resizing so i played counterstrike on TV. Cool!
Pro:
-GeForce2Go in this thing is great but that 800x600 out is the other reason why i am getting rid of this.
-Great trackpad. much better than the compaqs
-8X DVD is very cool
1649944
This is a great laptop and good value for money. That said, there are some design quirks that kind of dampens the quality of the product.

1. Touchpad is a extremely annoying. Lightly tapping on it will only work sometimes for a click. Sometimes you have to actually press down the touch pad; which feels like pushing a wall switch and feels uncomfortable.
2. Space bar started squeaking after couple of weeks of use :)
3. Does tend to run hot if you keep it flat on a table. Use a laptop stand whenever possible.
4. External sub woofer is purely a gimic and doesn't really have much use.
1501033
I've had this laptop for about 3 days now and I have to say that it is everything that I wanted in a gaming laptop and just a laptop overall. However, because I had this for such a limited amount of time I cannot say how well it performs after months of use. I do, however, plan on updating this review oncesome time has passed.
The only  concern so far is that sometimes while gaming I get lag spikes where my frames per second (FPS) drops really low for just a second or two and then goes back to normal. I have no idea as to why this happened exactly since the game I was playing wasn't very demanding on my GPU. My best guess was that there was dust in the GPU so I wiped the table that I had my laptop on and dusted out the dust. Hopefully this issue doesnt reoccur. Or I may have to return its since a laptop for this price should not have any lag spikes on such a low graphic game.
Last thing is that the delivery time was fast. It came several hours earlier than the described time.
All in all great, just a bit concerned about the 2 lag spikes that occurred.
1813233
This is a good laptop for the price. It was pretty much what I was looking for. Having said that these are my thoughts:

Good:

The touch screen is a win. Helps a lot with the user experience in many apps
The fingerprint reader is pretty convenient.
The cuad core AMD processor is pretty fast and the ATI graphic card is pretty good
8GB of RAM is great. Provide a really good multitasking experience
Design, even being a not so good copy of a mac. it looks really good

Bad:

HP pretty closed custom UEFI boot loader. That turns booting other SOs a nasty nightmare.
Keyboard layout. It's a bit uncomfortable to work with it. Even being a laptop with a decent graphic card, the keyboard definitely doesn't help on gaming experience.
Poor opening and viewing angle angle.
Heavier than it looks (even thought the weight informed is correct).
No Bluetooth. Not sure why they are still making laptopts without bluetooth. Anyway, I knew this before purchasing.
No keyboard backlit, I also knew this before purchase but still is a feature these laptos should have.

Besides the bads, I highly recommend this laptop. It's pretty good for the price and has really good specifications.
4942167
I bought this laptop about a year ago, Oh I have the Alienware 15 which just has an I7, 2.5 GHZ, 16GB Ram, still going fine but wanted to let others know what they where buying. If you are looking for a gaming laptop look elsewhere. it plays Civilization on low to medium settings and standard size  map and still runs slow as the game gets going, and yes runs very hot. I did not pay attention to the pecs which said (Oh I assumed it came with a CD player and It did not.)  UP TO 3.5 GHZ and the14 says the same UP TO 3.4 GHZ which means if you over clock it (and trust me I tried and my comp runs completely unstable and just crashes, not to mention that Alienware, err Dell doesn't want you in the Bios which if you don't know is where you would configure the overclocking. There is software for this but that's another story.) The graphics card is good for a laptop but not good enough for the name "gaming laptop" err,  quality of a laptop you think your buying. The NVidia 950 sounds great right? That's what I thought I already told you how it runs on games and on games like Skyrim or Arma 3 even on the lowest settings the game will run but eventually crash. Dell
wants you to buy this laptop and if you want to run good games buy a separate monstrous external graphics card that will help your laptop handle games like those but then I'm sure these laptops will over heat and crash so my advice is buy an Asus gaming laptop and make sure if you want to game "make sure the CPU is at 3.5 and the graphics card is not an NVidia 950M" ( M, being the one that wants you to buy the extra external graphics card) like we don't spend enough on this stuff. Do your home work people before you Invest lol in a laptop especially a "gaming laptop".
Well I hope this helps at all
3720655
It's an alright laptop. It looks nice keyboard feels nice, and I just use it to write down notes, and does what I want it to do. SURPRISINGLY it can run League of Legends at a good 40-50 frames with everything on low. SO that was p cool.
3863639
I ordered this laptop less than a week ago so it's fairly new; I'm just formulating a review based off what I've experienced so far and what other customer complaints were.

First things first: It's NOT 750 GB
I don't know maybe it's just my laptop but when I got it about 32 GB had already been used for pre-installed programs. Under disk management this is exactly how much space it says it has
OS (C:) 279.45  the 32 GB is taken out of this
Data (D:) 394.18
25. GB which is unusable and I have no idea where its located but in total it all adds up to 698.64
Which leaves and extra 50 GB or so floating in space
I tried looking in BIOS for more information but it doesn't state anything about hard drive space
I don't know maybe it is 750 GB and you just can't see it all

Complaints you may have read about in other reviews, I read them all I'm just going to talk about the ones I can remember off the top of my head

The design:  I remember reading about someone saying they ordered a black laptop and got brown. Someone else said the design was ugly and rugged!
Well I ordered a black laptop and that's exactly what I got
The design isn't ugly or rugged

The speakers: the speakers work fine, I can have music on in my room walk into the next room and still hear my laptop

The track pad: Also works fine, no issues

The keyboard: yes it's a little awkward but I've seen worse there are maybe one or two keys that always seem to throw me off

Battery life:  it can last up to five hours in battery saving mode in full entertainment mode maybe about 3-4 hours! Battery life isn't the greatest
It also never overheats and doesn't make loud awkward noises

Last thing I'm going to talk about: Gaming

So anyone who has ever gamed before knows that Intel graphics and gaming is one of the worst possible combinations ever but since this laptop has so much ram and a 2.3 Ghz processor it can pass most gaming compatibility test
If it fails the compatibility test it's always because of the Intel graphics but everything else will pass the test

I game sometimes I only put one game on here though that's the sims 3 and about six expansion packs because this laptop is for school not gaming

If you're looking for a laptop just for gaming look elsewhere, don't even look at laptops at all if you want hardcore gaming unless you have 1-3 thousand dollars to waste

If you have the name of a game in your head I'd be more than willing to run a compatibility test for you, I might even go as far as playing the game if its one I already own
856824
This is a decent laptop for the price. I don't do any serious gaming and I know just enough about the parts inside to be dangerous. With a couple easy hardware upgrades and then tweaks to Windows 10 (I'm used to Windows 7), I like this laptop even more.

DIFFERENT RAM
The specs listed on Amazon say that this has 8GB DDR3, which I preferred because I would be able to take the 16GB out of my old laptop and put it in here. Well, I opened this up to do that and the RAM is DDR4. This won't be a problem for most people, but it meant that I had to buy different RAM to upgrade this to 16GB. The following link is the exact RAM that comes installed in this laptop (I already ordered it and installed it and it works flawlessly):&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Samsung-M471A1K43BB0-CPB-8GB-DDR4-2133-SO-DIMM-Memory/dp/B01A1EFKPY/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Samsung M471A1K43BB0-CPB 8GB DDR4-2133 SO-DIMM Memory</a>

NO ACCESS PANEL:
I'm not a computer expert, but over the years I've owned a number of laptops and opened them up and taught myself how to change out quite a variety of hardware, whether it was to replace something faulty or to upgrade it. While most laptops have a panel on the bottom that detaches by screws and/or switches, this one doesn't; you have to removed the ENTIRE bottom to access the hardware, even the basic things like the hard drive and memory. It involves taking out every screw and peeling off the two glued-on rubber feet because there's screws under those for some stupid reason. Then you have to be careful and gentle as you pop plastic latches around the entire device. Do whatever you want down there (I replaced the hard drive and added another RAM stick) and then tediously snap all the plastic latches back, insert screws, and re-glue the rubber feet on. I haven't re-glued the feet yet, I knew I was going to open it back up a second time once I had the correct compatible RAM on hand; so I simply pressed the feet back on and they stay on decently if you're not moving the laptop around much. Again, the lack of an access panel won't affect most folks, but it's rather annoying to me.

HARD DRIVE:
The hard drive is a decent size at 1TB; it'll hold everything a majority of people will need it to. For me, though, I don't like that it spins at a relatively-low 5,4000 RPM (it's good because it doesn't use the battery up as fast, but it also means that it reads/writes relatively slower). I took my 256GB SSD out of my old laptop, cloned the new hard drive, and put the SSD in this one. By simply installing/doubling the RAM and putting in a solid state drive, this laptop is pretty dang fast and the battery lasts considerably longer; it goes from off and turns on and the desktop is up and ready to go in less than five seconds (plus the amount of time it takes me to type in the login password). The link to the SSD that I recommend and installed is here&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Crucial-MX100-256GB-SATA-2-5-Inch-Internal-Solid-State-Drive-CT256MX100SSD1/dp/B00KFAGCWK/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (CT256MX100SSD1)</a>

So, for most folks this laptop is everything you want and need it to be for a decent price. I figured out how to take off the bottom cover and added $130 worth of parts to make it much faster and now love this laptop.
2029291
The HDD is on the slow side, although this is a problem I was already familiar with. The build quality is quite good and the weight is nice.

i5 CPU is OK and the GPU is what someone might expect from Low-Mid range. The RAM can be bigger but 4 GB satisfy the normal user's activities.

I use this laptop with several virtual machines running on it at the same time. The laptop could take it :)

Overall, I recommend this laptop for the price conscious.
1651172
First the good.  It is well designed for game play.  This machine runs circles around my other PC with similar specs playing similar games.

Now the bad.  When I first booted it up, there was a horrible fan noise in the power supply.  After taking several pieces apart, I found a strip of plastic that was sticking into the fan.  Once that was fixed, the fans were still noisy.  One of the fans just vibrated with a low hum.  I was mostly able to fix that by tilting the machine about 20o to the side.  My last issue is the motherboard.  I have a very nice SSD card I wanted to install on the machine for faster boot ups.  The motherboard has only PCIe x1 slots except for the graphics card.  Can't run an SSD over that.  Now I'm going to wait a couple of year and upgrade again to a real machine.
4931003
Summary: Used daily for 2 weeks. It runs mainstream games on medium-high and is portable enough to carry every day. Most concerning drawback is blurry text. Paid $800 + tax in April 2016, consider it a solid investment but not a steal.

Performance: 10 second bootup time. 4 seconds to sleep, 2 seconds to wake. Microsoft Word and Excel 2016 each load in 1 second. Buttery smooth and running like a dream. No blue screens, graphics card crashes or other concerning issues. Runs Rocket League and Resident Evil 5 on high with decent fps.

Chassis: The body of the laptop is unbelievably thin and light. The backside of the monitor is visually appealing but feels flimsier than a Mac. It can pick up fingerprints but I would not call it a fingerprint magnet. The bottom half is 100% plastic and bends visibly when picked up by the corner or directly pushed on. I can see why other reviewers have had their touchpads bulge out of their sockets. My touchpad fits perfectly. As other reviewers have noted, the USB sockets are an unusually tight fit, but not problematic. The laptop requires two hands to open as the bottom half is too light to stay put.

Heat: Runs warm but not hot when playing games. Wrist-rest area remains cool. Fan is not loud. Have had a similar experience with a previous ASUS; if there's one thing ASUS has mastered it's their internal layout. Other reviewers have noted that the fan comes on when not needed. I have noticed it rev up for several seconds before stopping, but this happens rarely and is not terribly intrusive.

Monitor: Some text comes on blurry. Noticeably less crisp than other laptops I have used. I feel increased eye strain using this laptop.

Hard drive: Came unpartitioned, contrary to past reviews.

Keyboard: Beautiful chiclet style with your standard keyboard layout. I never understood why some companies switch the left ctrl and fn keys, resize the left shift key, relegate page up/down to fn or place the power button inline with the other keys. ASUS doesn't do any of this. You can zoom in on the pictures Amazon provides to see the keyboard layout yourself. My only complaints here are that the arrow keys are difficult to locate by touch and the num lock does not have an on/off indicator. Other reviewers have complained about the feel of key presses but it hasn't bothered me.

Touchpad: Works fine. Two minor complaints. The ASUS touchpad driver has a very inconsistent inertial scrolling "feature" where taking my fingers off the touchpad sometimes causes the document to rocket scroll. Inertial scrolling can be disabled by going to C:\Program Files (x86)\ASUS\ASUS Smart Gesture\AsTPCenter\model\InertiaSetting.ini and changing the "InertiaAlgo=0" to "InertiaAlgo=2". My other complaint is that there is no way to middle click with the touchpad using the provided ASUS driver; clicking with two fingers can only be processed as a right click. This seems to be standard as my previous Dell laptop also lacked this option.

Sound: It takes the driver 4 seconds to redirect audio after jacking in my headphones.

Battery: Does not charge when battery is at 95+%. This is a feature and not a bug. As a brand new battery, it lasts for 5+ hours of note taking and internet use at 40% brightness. May update as it ages.

Bloatware: Minimal and easily removed. Just be careful not to remove the important ASUS softwares.

Inconsistent system date/time: Many reviewers have commented on their system time randomly changing. Per instructions from the ASUS rep who has responded to these reviews here on Amazon, I upgraded my BIOS to 209 immediately out of the box, obtainable online from ASUS's website. I have not encountered this issue and believe that BIOS 209 fixes it 100%.
2085621
There are some good things about this laptop:
- The performance of this laptop's processor and graphics is pretty high.  I was able to play games at pretty high settings smoothly.  For the price, it is unmatched in performance
- The keyboard was very comfortable to type on and the keys had a good feel and responsiveness to them.  Better than most laptops I have used -- maybe the best actually.
- Battery life was higher than expected and pretty impressive for such a powerful machine.  I got roughly 4.5 hours browsing the web and 1-2 hours gaming.

However, This laptop has some poor design decisions:
- Not enough cooling.  I had some overheating issues and my laptop would sometimes shut off if on my lap.  I am not going to use one of those cooling pads underneath it.  Those are obnoxious.
- The screen is TN (not IPS as this laptop was originally advertised to have).  I understand why it's TN since those displays have much better pixel response times so they are better for gaming, but, did it HAVE to be the ugliest LCD panel I have ever set my eyes upon in my life?  The colors change drastically with only a small shift in head position and actually the viewing angle is so bad that the top of the screen shows a very different color than the bottom of the screen for the same color.  Also, the display is VERY VERY milky looking.
- The touch-pad is horrible.  Absolute misery.  It is a half-assed attempt and has very few options in the drivers to configure it to your liking.  Even though Synaptics touch pads that most laptops have are pretty crappy, this is even worse.
- There is a Home key but no End key (!).  WTF!  A power key replaces a potential End key on the numpad?  What is this -- a Mac?! Yuck.  They went with a power keyboard key instead of a power button since that's what Apple is doing.  Stupid copycatting.  Most people probably won't care but for someone who goes to the beginning/end of a line with the home/end keys instead of clicking or holding an arrow key and waiting an eternity it is pretty infuriating.

So in conclusion, if you intend to use this only for gaming it's not bad and performs well but for general use it's pretty bad.
2772705
Had this laptop for one year, bought from BestBuy. For the specs this laptop is very good on a decent budget, but there was some major flaws with it. The battery last from 2-3 hours and I always had to charge it. At one point I had drop it in my laptop bookbag and impacted the edges of laptop, which broke some of the holding plastic inside. Eventually the software became slow too.

I had my bad and good expericenes with this laptop but overall I give it a 3/5