5.0 out of 5 stars

A great portable machine for daily use. Mediocre gaming machine.

I bought this as a replacement for a Dell Inspiron that decided to abruptly fail. I had been wanting to get a laptop that had a dedicated graphics card, a backlit keyboard, good system specs, upgradeability, at a good price.Throw in the fact that Asus includes one year of ACCIDENT PROTECTION, and this is a winner!! While only having this laptop for a couple of days (Edit: Weeks now) now, I am so far, not disappointed with the purchase. Here are my initial impressions, the pros and the cons. Pros: Audio: The onboard speakers are quite adequate. While not some of the “loudest” they are more than needed for watching youtube, hearing system alerts, recreational music, video calls, stuff like that. I have not yet tried the speakers while gaming. [Edit] Ok these speakers are definitely high volume. Watching youtube, I have the speakers at 50% and the audio of the video at 5% ! And I’m worried that the people across the hall might be kept awake while I insomnia the night away. Also for the fact that these are laptop speakers, the quality is REALLY good. I’ve been listening to MP3s on this machine and its been quite satisfactory. I had a soundbar on my older “gaming” laptop, because the speakers were crap. Definitely not the case here. The screen: The screen is very good resolution, quite bright, and very comfortable to read on. Whether in regular daylight, a lit room, or in the dark. I have not yet tested it as far as gaming. CON: This screen is SMALL. Coming from laptops with 17.3″ screens, this is quite an adjustment. The screen does have very small, thin bezels, so it does a good job giving you the most screen for footprint. However, as somebody who does a lot of video and text editing, this is not what I would really want. If I were working with 3d models, I would definitely want an external monitor or two. It also does NOT fold flat. This is no problem at all for me. But for those that are looking for a device that will do so, this is not it. [Edit] Finding the settings to adjust saturation, color balance, stuff like that, I can’t find it! And when I’m editing images, this screen has a very high yellow saturation. So unless I can find, or download something that will let me see colors the way their meant to be, and external monitor is going to another costly expenditure. (Edit: After a lot of web searching, I’ve fixed the problem with too much yellow saturation. It’s a windows 11 problem, not the machine. Poorly implemented color scheme files by Microsoft in the windows 11) Build Quality. So far, this machine is quite sturdy. The materials are good, and it doesn’t feel like I am going to break it. Or worry about having problems with it in my backpack. Everything fits together very nicely. Also when removing the bottom shell to get into the guts of the machine, I didn’t feel like I was going to break it, or anything else, while using the spreader to pop the clips apart. I do recommend the proper tool for the job tho. Don’t just try to jerk it apart after taking all those screws out. Keyboard: As with any new laptop, getting used to the key layout is almost always a chore. There is no unified layout for the specialty keys. For just typing, the layout is REALLY good. The keys are spaced together Just Right, and doesn’t cause me to make as many typos as my larger machines, where the keys are spaced further apart. They are very tactile, and make very little noise. They don’t have the feel of mechanical keyswitches. They may be membrane keys, or a combination. [Edit] Membrane keys. I would rather have switches personally, as it’s less to replace, if one key, or a couple of keys fail. But they work really well in this machine.Other than when I have the machine sitting awkwardly on my lap, I have absolute NO problems typing on this, and can hit the keys that I’m aiming for quite intuitively, with very little in the way or typos induced by the machine. The backlighting is GREAT. I can very clearly see and read the keys in low, and no light. I do wish that they could use combined colors, so that I could set one part of the keyboard to one color, and a different part to a different color. Which really assists in gaming, using keyboard shortcuts. But for me, that’s not a dealbreaker. I can read them in the dark, and that is what I was wanting. The layout for the specialty keys is “Fairly” standard. Tho the sleep mode key being on F11 and especially the airplane mode being on F12 is something that is not a wise choice as those are pretty common shortkeys for quite a few programs. Mouse: The mouse functioned quite well, right out of the box. I do wish that it was set a bit further to the left, in an offset style. As the butts of my thumbs do pass across the pad. But for a laptop this size, you get what you get. The cursor sweeps across the screen quite well, with minimal effort, right out of the box. Big plus. It also uses hardwared mouse buttons. Not corner clicks on the mousepad. Honestly, thats a HUGE win, IMO. The corner click system I’ve never really liked, its an area that collects dust and crud, and has to be cleaned. Whether this suits you or not, well, that’s individual taste ;)CON: This mousepad collects oil. It collects oil REALLY bad. Weight: This machine is VERY PORTABLE. The weight is quite light. I was actually very surprised when I opened the box. I almost wondered if there was something missing. Between the machine itself, and the power brick, this is QUITE light. My Sager laptop is a brick. The powerbrick is huge and weighs a ton. This machine is most definitely a very welcomed upgrade from that! Noise: This machine really surprised me as far as the (lack of) noise from the fans. I have had cooling pads with fans in them that have made more noise than the cooling system in this machine! ASUS has really outdone themselves with the cooling system. Tho as stated, I haven’t tried gaming on this thing yet. But so far, the noise level from this is quite pleasant, and very unobtrusive. [Edit] Ok, so the fans have kicked on. They are no means loud, compared to some of the other laptops that I have owned. It’s actually pretty subdued, for laptop fans.Somebody else had mentioned that they sound kind of like airplane turbines. Yeah! They actually kind of do! 😀 Which is cool! But again, they’re fairly quiet. I seriously doubt that they would bother anybody except for maybe a fairly light sleeper. Heat: Again, a very pleasant surprise! I’ve run this machine a straight, solid 24 hours, and have not had the fans kick on high. There is no hot air blowing out of the side ports, and it’s extrememly comfortable on the lap. (One of my HP laptops has literally left bald spots on my legs from the heat!) Upgrades: There are two slots for RAM. Which are the standard open the clips, slide the new one in/out variety. This makes upgrading the RAM very simple. There are two slots for m2 type Solid State boards, which are spaced widely apart. This is not only making it very easy for install/removal, but also for heat control. Next to the battery, (NOT removable!) [Edit] (The battery IS removable. Just not externally like older laptops. You have to open it up, disconnect it, and then it can be removed/swapped. ) There is a connector for a 2.5″ SATA drive. Which included connectors. I myself don’t like the idea of putting a drive that close to the battery. But considering how little this machine is, and how little space there is inside… it has to go somewhere, right? And at least, we can add a 3rd drive! Boot up: With the operating system installed on a SSD, this machine boots up really fast. Granted windows will really slow it down when it decides to do a mandatory update. But without those, I press the power up button and within seconds, I’m typing in my password. Very nice! Edit 3/25/23: After installing 32gb of ram, the first boot up was a tad slow as the BIOS updated to the new system specs. However. After that. Oh lord! I hit the power button and I could log into the machine almost instantly. Speed: So far the processor/RAM/SSD combination is a winner. Even Adobe Photoshop CS6 fires right up. Haven’t tried it with gaming so far, but so far, my intensive programs aren’t suffering any kind of slow-down, stuttering, or lag. The exception to this is my browser. I run A LOT OF TABS when I am surfing. And browsers are heavy RAM hogs. Yeah, one of my browsers is getting a lot of hesitation. But that will go away when I upgrade RAM. Edit 3/25/23: I’ve just installed 32gb of T-Force Zeus DDR4 3200 CL-22 Memory to the machine. It was super easy as far as the computer was concerned. The packaging for the memory gave me more trouble than putting it into the laptop, LOL. But then, I’m also a computer technician, so your mileage may very depending on your experience level. The machine now boots up at 9% memory usage. The clockspeed is reporting at 2933. This is not a defect in the laptop. This is the BIOS not automatically being set to run memory at higher speeds. You can look up the instructions of how to do this online. It takes a few minutes. But do so on another machine, as you will need to be able to read the instructions while this laptop boots up. Look up “How to enable XMP to run your RAM at full speed”.CONS Size: As I said before, this is a very small, portable machine. In that aspect it is fantastic! However. The palm rest is small enough that if you use an external mouse there is VERY little room on the palmrest to put a mouse on it, much less use it. I am constantly running the mouse over the arrow keys and part of the numpad. This has caused me problems as those keys interact with programs, when I don’t want them to! This for me, is a huge con, as I really do use a laptop ON my LAP. The screen is also small. While I don’t have very good eyes anymore, it’s clear and easy to read. But for some of the applications that I use my machines for, a larger, external monitor is going to be a must. Windows 11: This is a personal choice. I myself believe that Microsoft went in a very, very bad direction with the latest release of their OS. I will be backtracking the Operating System on this machine backwards to Windows 10 at the very first opportunity. [Edit] I really do hate this operating system. The look of it is similar, but much different in ways that I don’t like. I also do not like the way that MS did the new taskbar. The right click context menus are also way, way different, and very much not to my liking. [Edit] I found how to revert the context menus, looking around on the web.Especially since the changes that they made to the right click context menus are NOT compatible with a lot of the software that I use. Disassembly: Ok. This is a pro/con situation. Taking this machine apart to get to the guts is actually really simple. There are 11 screws holding the plate underneath to the machine. They are easy to take out, and the plate is fairly easy to remove. HOWEVER. These screws are all different lengths! So you HAVE to keep track of which one goes where! NON-Removable External battery: This is an obvious con. Not only can you not carry around a spare, but you cannot easily replace the existing one, if it goes bad. [Edit] As I noted before, yeah the battery can be replaced, but you have to open up the lower shell. It’s not a hot swappable battery that we got used to on older machines. RAM slots. Ok, this was a huge let down for me. I was planning to simply take out the RAM from the machine that died, and put it in here to upgrade the low 8gb of ram that it comes with. It doesn’t FIT!! The pin arrangement is different, and the slot in the board is spaced further to the left. I will have to look up what RAM this thing takes and purchase new boards to perform the upgrade.HOWEVER. And this… this is awesome. There’s only ONE 8gb stick in this machine, when it arrived. NOT paired 2x 4gb sticks. What that means is that I can just throw another 8gb stick in here, and double the memory. Without having to sacrifice a stick that was already in it. Because it wasn’t already in it! Or, I could just throw in a single 16gb stick and instantly TRIPLE the ram, at significantly less coss. I’m reading conflicting information about how much this machine supports. Most say it’s 32gb, while some say 64gb.I am more inclined to believe 32, but I don’t know for sure. Expansion slots: Pretty much all of the connectors for USB, Video Out, and audio are all on the left side. This, since an external monitor is going to be a must, will cause some arrangement problems. It could cause problems for people that also will be using this on a desk. One thing that I love about my older Dell laptops is that they have some of the afore mentioned ports at the BACK of the machine. Or at the Rear Corners. More USB ports would also be a very nice addition. No Optical Drive. Maybe I’m just a dinosaur, but I do miss having an optical drive bay. Being able to watch DVDs or burn disk was a habit from way back in the day. Or just taking the tray out, and swapping in a 2.5 sata drive through an adapter was also a very seriously nice option. Ahhhh, progress LOL. 8 Gb of ram: This combined with Win11, the LOAD of software marked with ASUS, and that crapware McCaffee pre-installed… the machine is running at around 50% memory usage. The Asus Monitoring software, along with the bloated goat OS is taking up quite bit of the system memory. After uninstalling worthless McCaffee, I’ve cut it down to about 40% with 8gb RAM. And as stated above, this machine takes different RAM boards than those used by machines from a few years ago. 512 GB Solid State Storage: Ok. This is a pro/con situation. 512 is quite good, in comparison to what similar machines are offering, which is half that. At the same pricepoint as these machines. And as mentioned above, the machine will support up to 1tb storage boards, or SATA drive. So there is definitely room for expansion with this machine. However, to do so, IS an added expense. And if you are planning on adding on a lot of games to this, you are definitely going to want to expand on the storage capacity! Fortunately, it does have a sata slot. Which means that you can add in a 1tb sata drive for considerably less money.Overall, the only thing that I’m going to complain about, is the size of the palm rests. It’s very comfortable for typing on. But, as most of the applications that I use, I need those concise, accurate mouse movements. And not having room to use a mouse on this machine is going to be a problem.That, and having to purchase windows 10 and what I will have to go through reinstalling drivers. But again, that’s a personal choice.

211 people found this helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars

Works great..!

I bought this for my son for Christmas since he wanted a gaming laptop to be able to create and play his games better, it has lasted him about 2 years and it work’s amazing, I gotta say even tho it has been dropped quite a few time by younger siblings and it is still in great shape and works awesome so I will definitely buy another one when my middle one asks for one.

4.0 out of 5 stars

Good for starters

I’m new to the PC gaming world so this is my first “gaming” laptop. The only thing I don’t care for is the battery life. I don’t think I’ve ever went past an hour with it unplugged. If that’s not a big deal then this is a good gaming laptop for beginners or a quick replacement for an older laptop. Overall I’m satisfied. Have about 20 games downloaded at the moment. Mostly horror games that don’t take up a lot of space…BOOOO hahahaaa…

4.0 out of 5 stars

Nice every day laptop

I don’t game on it so it was a nice laptop for what I needed! It is quite fast for an I5 and seems well-made. I especially liked that I could add two more hard drives. The only drawback was that it comes with only 8 GB of ram but that was also easy to upgrade.

5.0 out of 5 stars

Glad I decided to purchase

I admit that I comparison shopped a lot of various laptops in various pricing categories. I admit I am not a heavy “gamer” but from time to time I enjoy playing Gears of War or Halo and sometimes simpler things like Risk. My libraries are, for the most part, all on Xbox Game Pass and on Steam and thus far this laptop is doing great. Seems to manage temps well, plays the games smooth and for having a 10th gen processor and the GTX 1650 on board, its handling what I need it to without breaking the bank. I am very glad I decided to go with this laptop!I will say that almost immediately I upgraded the RAM from 8gb to 16gb, put in a second 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD card and installed a 1TB internal hard drive (thanks to a couple laptops we had laying around to donate parts!) and its ready to go.If you are on the fence and are a moderate gaming user like me, don’t be afraid to pick this one up!

29 people found this helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars

Be forewarned, short battery life

The unit overall is spot on for gaming or most other uses; I really did enjoy it. The small battery is the weakness of the laptop – very dismal battery life. A huge plus is that basically, every component can be upgraded. Rather than changing out the batt and adding ram, I returned it. My next all gamers store laptop will have a larger battery.

2 people found this helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars

Decent laptop for casual gamers.

–Note, after 3 weeks of owning i decided to return this. I stand by my review, i feel the laptop is good for casual gaming, but i ended up wanting to PC game full time, and this wasn’t going to cut the mustard.This is my first gaming PC, and overall its good.For the price, i think its a great snag, BUT if you plan on using this PC as your main gaming station, or plan on playing every game out there, id buy something else.This PC has run every game ive thrown at it, but it runs noticeably worse when running newer games, or higher demanding games.You wont be getting 144 frames on majority of games without dropping every graphics setting to low, and even after that you most likely will not get 144 frames.Max i was able to get for Insurgency Sandstorm was 80ish, Ready or not 80ish, Death Stranding 60, Madden 23 60, Apex Legends 120s, GTA 4 60s. I had to run these games on low settings to get these frames, and it wasn’t steady. I was dropping down to the 20-30 ALOT when playing Insurgency and Ready or Not. Even GTA4 was pretty janky while driving and shooting.I got max Frames in Valorant, Counter Strike GO, and all older games like Fallout 4, Skyrim, Left4Dead 2 i was able to play on ultra graphics.Graphics card is meh. I can easily notice the graphics dropoff when playing Apex and Madden on here, then hopping on Series X and playing them, its a steep drop off. The issue is you cant play a majority of games on medium or high settings, which also hurts the graphics big time.The screen is excellent. Its anti glare, and very clear. Its very well made, but 15inches is quite small, so an upgraded side monitor might be needed.Battery is pretty bad, but i usually always have it plugged in. Just web browsing at 50% brightness youre getting 2 hours battery life.I see some reviews claiming that the Wifi adapter is bad, i havent experienced this. I game upstairs on wifi, my router is downstairs, and i usually get 25 ping in online games, which is pretty great. I also got 150ish download on steam. Ive never gotten buffering when watching a video, or live stream(I watched the Bills vs Rams game last night on this without any buffering).I highly recommend upgrading the ram if you do end up buying, the max this PC can use is 24 RAM, so i installed the Crucial RAM 16GB DDR4 3200MHz CL22, very easy install.Speeds for the PC are very fast. From web browsing, to gaming, to tab switching, everything is very fast, even faster than my Macbook 2020.Overall its a solid gaming laptop, just go in knowing the limitations going in. Id recommend for casual /light gamers.

116 people found this helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars

Battery Life is not great

I was hesitant to purchase this but went ahead and purchased it. I wasn’t a huge fan, but it seemed to work okay initially, but it was a little louder than I prefer, but it’s a gaming computer so I figured that was just normal. I have had it about 1.5 years, and last year not even a year old I started having issues with the length of time the battery stays charged. It has gotten progressively worse. I have a small lenovo significantly cheaper, and the batter lasts forever. Perhaps these aren’t designed to last long, but I’m not gaming on it so for just regular stuff it seems the battery should last longer. I’m back in the market for a laptop, it will not be this brand.

4.0 out of 5 stars

This is a well rounded budget gaming laptop

There is very little to dislike, the display is very clear and bright. It runs very smooth, even when playing a taxing game. Though I have noticed that games tend to load up very slow if the PC is not plugged in. I’m sure it has something to do with power saver mode. I love the backlite keyboard, and dedicated WASD keys. I am missing a finger on my left hand and the way the keys are configured makes it a lot easier to play when a controller can not be used. Honestly I was very hesitant about buying this laptop. I have been traveling a lot lately for work and this thing has just been great to have on long trips and boring days in my motel room.

3 people found this helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars

Perfect for The Sims 4

The media could not be loaded.

I purchased this laptop as a little upgrade from my old 2013 MacBook Air lol. The updates on my mac left me with zero gigs to run the game. With The Sims being a huge game including mods etc. it runs perfectly on this ASUS. Only thing I don’t like is the battery life but I’m assuming running the game for long will drain it. Oh and for those who are having trouble with the volume and brightness you have to hit FN and the button at the same time other wise you would have to download a app offered through Microsoft store to over ride that hope that helps. Over all good buy I plan to connect it to a curved monitor for a bigger view. I thought the brightness was bad but it’s actually not bad to my eyes if you think about it lol. Hope this review helps

30 people found this helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars

Great budget laptop.

Ordered this laptop to use for work. I work from home and use it a minimum of 8 hours up to 16 hours 5 days a week. Battery will last 4 to 6 hours on performance settings so decent battery life. Good graphics on the laptop its self but the 1660 graphics card will not maintain on a hi performance external monitor. I run 2 external monitors both are gaming monitors. One I had set on 70 Hz the other on 140 Hz. Had to turn down the 140 one to 60 to get it work with this laptop.Fast processor for running multiple programs at once. I run normally 6 programs all day while working and there is never any lag or slow performance. So for work its great. I have tried a few games such as WOW and COD it does pretty good on normal settings but not great on max settings. I have upgrade RAM from 8 gig to 32 gig and did see a major improvement.So if your wanting a hard core gaming machine this one isn’t for you you will need a better graphics card but if your wanting a good performer for work and mild gaming I highly recommend this laptop

9 people found this helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars

It’s been a while since I’ve given 5 stars: See Review

Well , where to begin, ….. I review a lot of tech in my profession and I am very impressed with this product. I initially bought this for business and of course the occasional gaming 😉 This thing is a beast still ! I upgraded the ram to 32gb and everything else I kept the same and it’s handled everything I’ve thrown at it from games AAA titles to video editing and much more . Now, the CPU/GPU is not the newest it’s about 2 years old in the tech world but it still packs a punch, starting from the seller , to deliver , and presentation , it came in perfect condition.It’s been a long time since I had not a single complaint. This was the smoothest purchase I have had in a while . The build quality is great , the I/O has everything you need , it’s all around a total package. I’d say it’s great for the average Joe to a power user. It also is future proofed as everything is upgradable which is also nice. It has a ram card of DDR4 3200mhz that can be maxed out to 60gb’s and super easy to work on. I can happily answer any regular or advanced questions for anyone that has them. This honestly was a steal for the price and a 2 year warranty. I love the screen, it has the matte finish to cut down on glare, I am also glad the laptop is backlit, and I can put it to one color although it can pulse , strobe and a slew of other options but I always felt RGB screams “a 14 year olds first game rig” which I am sure gamers will get it, so it’s nice to choose a color and stay there. The keyboard and trackpad is super responsive, and feel nice. I was actually really impressed with the sound quality as I also use a MacBook Pro for business and they just have great sound but this ASUS just romps ! It sounds good . Another nice thing was it’s actually is as advertised, no surprises and it is specked out the way it said it was . My only suggestion is to immediately jump up to 16gb of ram and you can buy it as a bundle, I’d suggest the “crucial” brand of ram sticks they have never let me down or had any compatibility issues. Obviously there isn’t a whole lot I can say that the posting does not but I can say once actually getting it in your hands the listing doesn’t do it justice , it’s really nice. I’ll say it again the seller was great , I had it rushed shipped and it was here earlier than planned, the box and presentation was spot on and the PC performs , isn’t that what it’s about ? It does the job and it’s durable and well made. If your looking for a entry level gaming laptop that realistically can be upgraded to a mid range gaming PC , this is it . I saw the 2022 version of this TUFF laptop and honestly you’d be best getting this one at this price point which is a late 2020 model and Its basically the same laptop other than internals( obviously). If there was one thing I would like to have change is the bloat these companies put on the PC. I really don’t mind windows 11 it’s a welcomed change. I requested a clean install , unfortunately and I get it , it’s just business and the way these companies work together to make money but it would have been nice to not have to wipe it and debloat the machine. However I will always recommend to do so anyway as it makes a huge difference. That’s really the only meh vibe I had to say about this awesome product and let’s be real , there will always be bloat from anywhere you buy new machine from. Just run a clean install of win11 and you’re golden! Before I forget the battery life is actually pretty good I saw others saying otherwise but again a clean install of windows 11 will definitely improve that, the screen has a decent brightness maybe if it had 1 more level up it would be perfect otherwise this is as close as to a all inclusive total package your gonna get. Great price for a great machine . Best of luck and I hope this helps someone make a decision, if you have questions feel free to ask away , I’m a straight shooter and happy to help! Happy Holidays!

130 people found this helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars

Perfect for me!

For clarity, this review is for the 15.6″ GTX 1650 version, not the 17.3″ GTX 1650Ti version.Positives!This laptop is perfect for me and what I need right now. I am currently in between homes, over the road a lot for work and have all of my stuff in storage, including my main PC, so I bought a laptop so I could continue doing work and gaming while on the go.This laptop is not top of the line by any means, it’s no $2,000 laptop with an RTX 3080 or anything like that, but if you want a good mid-range laptop that can get 60FPS on some everyday gaming, this is as good as mid-range laptops get in my opinion.Even on my main, much beefier PC, I’ve never been one to crank up the settings and enable raytracing, 4k etc. I’m more of a framerate type of person and this laptop does a great job getting high frame rates if you’re willing to adjust the settings accordingly. The screen is a clean 1920×1080, lovely quality (though the brightness isn’t that great), comes with an NVME 512GB hard drive which is not a bad start if you’re not trying to install a Call of Duty game with 100gb patches, but that leads into another glowing positive – this thing is upgradeable and I love it! One of the hardest things about picking a laptop for me is the eventual obsolescence, so in the few times I’ve bought a laptop in my life, I prefer ones you can upgrade which will allow you to skirt by the expected lifespan for a bit longer.Overall, my complaints a few, but I will point them out.Negatives!Honestly, 8GB of RAM is… well, it’s not enough for any modern PC that you want to do more than browse the internet, but this negative hardly counts against it because once again, it is upgradeable! I added 32GB to mine and it runs like a dream now. The fact it ships with such low RAM is forgivable because that’s probably why the price of entry is as low as it is.I also had a few problems with the Wi-Fi antenna at first, which I know is not unique to my laptop, but after a few online searches, troubleshooting and settings adjustments, it hasn’t dropped the connection for a couple of days, so I think I’m over that hump.My last complaint and honestly maybe the only one that could be considered “major” is the screen brightness. To be clear, I’m talking about BRIGHTNESS, not QUALITY. The resolution is wonderful and the screen is a clear HD experience, but keep this thing away from the sunlight if you want to see it easily… I took it to the park one day and while I could see the screen, I felt like I was squinting, and I had to change my preferred dark mode to light mode just to see the Windows UI better. Once again, I consider this a minor gripe and won’t take a star off, because if you’re using this thing indoors or in appropriate shade, the screen is beautiful.Overall, if you’re looking for an affordable, upgradeable, laptop suited for everyday gaming (as long as you’re not trying to push max settings, 4k or raytracing), you won’t be disappointed!

108 people found this helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars

Add 8gb of RAM

PC for the price, amazing! I got it for schoolwork and light gaming, but it can actually do a little more than just light gaming. You need to add another 8gb of RAM. It will make the system run a lot smoother overall. I own a high-end PC and I am satisfied with the performance of the product.

5.0 out of 5 stars

Runs beautifully!

As someone who has always owned crappy laptops, this is a major upgrade for a good price! I mainly got it to play Sims 4, and let me just say I have a bunch of cc and mods and it still runs super fast on the highest quality!! Once I run it up the computer does begin to get a little hot and the fan goes fast but it doesn’t really bother me. It has custom options to change color, speed, and effects for the keyboard. I personally didn’t experience any issues with the wifi or buttons. (For those of you who struggled with turning up and down volume or brightness, just press FN key at the same time :)!)Note: I DID upgrade ram from 8gb to 16gb. I don’t know much about computers and it was east to install. I was a little concerned because I noticed the heat shield for the ram slot was not aligned correctly, but it seems to work fine.

56 people found this helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars

Very Underwhelming and it has the worst UEFI/BIOS I have ever interacted with

So until the 13th generation of Intel CPU, the I series CPUs supported both EFI and bios legacy OS installation and booting yet this laptop has had that option removed. There is also no way to disable TPM which means Windows 11 just gets to install itself whenever it wants and you don’t get a choice unless you want to solo boot Linux. Oh and you wanted to do a uefi/legacy bios Windows Linux dual boot so that they don’t cross contaminate? F*** you says Asus, because as I previously mentioned that’s not an option because they removed it. Also if you bought this laptop because of its promises to be easy to upgrade, it wasn’t offensively bad but it has no right marketing itself that way, it was still fairly annoying to get the back plate off. As another note they used multiple different sizes of screw to hold in the back plate and only one of them is captive… Dell latitude e6410 from 2011 had only three screws of the same size and one of them was captive. I won’t ask to return it unless something seriously bad goes wrong but my first day impressions are pretty bad. Oh also Aunt asus’s website they will tell you that this laptop only supports 32 GB of RAM but I currently have 64 GB of RAM on it and it registers all of it… You can tell from Windows task Manager that they artificially make it so you can’t access two of the ram slots it was supposed to have as well so they further undermine the theme of upgradability. It does come with the gddr6 1650, and to this device is credit when I put it through hell playing about 10 hours of video games yesterday, it kept the GPU very cool, however the laptop’s underside got almost certainly OSHA violation level of hot, so under no circumstances should you buy this for business usage.Ultimately it did however over perform benchmarks I had seen previously on YouTube in Halo infinite and the performance was not bad. I will say with all of this bad it is still the best asus product I have used thus far, I will update this review again if that changes.

3 people found this helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars

Well built, unfortunate it has Windows 11 and such low RAM

Very beautiful laptop. The biggest gripes that I have with it though are the 8gb of RAM and the Windows 11 operating system. I will have to upgrade to 16gb of RAM and still have to decide whether to settle for Windows 11 or purposefully downgrade to Windows 10. Beyond that everything seems very well put together. Very excited to start playing games with this laptop since it has a better graphics card than any computer I’ve had in the past. I’m also glad they have a long warranty for 12 months and a possible warranty extension of an extra 3 months. I will be taking advantage of those.

7 people found this helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars

Thanks

Thanks

One person found this helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars

Just what I needed

The media could not be loaded.

So, before I say anything, I’ll answer the stupid questions I know I would have liked to see answered for those out there who may want tk hear the same.I play games like Roblox, Vampyr, L4D 1 and 2, Sims 4, Overcooked, Moving In, Minecraft Java and bedrock, sheltered 1 and 2, TWD, and many other games (those are my main choices). On all of those games, I was able to get full graphics and no lag whatsoever. I even went back on Roblox and played games that normally lagged the heck out of my old laptop even when I used to have the game on the lowest possible graphics, only for it to run flawlessly at max graphics.I absolutely reccomend this laptop, it’s great for gaming if you play low-medium games like I do.The fans, I have to mention this because I found it so cool and incredibly convenient. At first when I started up the laptop I started getting annoyed due to the fans. God are they loud, but, to be fair, it’s a gaming laptop. I’ve just been unaccustomed to this sort of thing. But after messing around with the settings and special apps that came on the laptop for customization, I realized there was an option to chose making your laptop silent! How awesome. I thought it’d be a nice thing to add to the review.But yes, in general, this is the best device I’ve had in my possesion lol. If you’re looking for a laptop for something like I listed above, for gaming, or streaming, or just a new laptop, I reccomend this one.

24 people found this helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars

Wonderful little laptop

My hubby is the big PC gamer, I am a consol peasant. However, there are certain games we have been itching to play together and they are either not cross platform within game or just PC only. When we saw this deal I thought “well my old laptop is laggy AF and has no memory and was never meant for gaming” so we decided to get this in place of a full blown PC set up (which we didn’t have space for even if I wanted it).But I am impressed, for a medium serious gamer, the battery life is decent, i play over wifi and it’s still great without ethernet cable. They designed really well so it doesn’t overheat and does not require external cooling fans, as the air blows out the back, I would suggest giving it a few inches from the wall which most people do anyway because the air blowing out can be pretty warm.The laptop is quiet but the fans do make some background noise but it’s not bothersome, and I hardly notice it when playing a game only when shutting it down.Overall I’m very happy with it! I would recommend this brand if anyone asked me.

30 people found this helpful