I can't believe how well this works. I moved all my programs that bogged down my old laptop to this one, and it runs smoothly, even in battery saving mode. And on high performance, just wow. I ran Mass Effect 2 with every graphics setting maxed out, with no lag, as long as it's plugged into the wall. My old laptop - which is 3 years old and used to cost $1200 new - would have caught fire at the mere thought of running Mass Effect.
****EDIT: I've been having a big problem with the sound card, the microphone port has an unbearable amount of static coming from it, which means the plug is bad. I made sure it was the plug, and sent it to ASUS to repair it. They updated the drivers and sent it back. I sent it in again, making sure to point out the problem with the specific port, but they still didn't replace it (they did replace some other things though, like the screen that I scratched, which is nice, I guess.) My one piece of advice here is that if you need this laptop fixed, in the letter they ask you to put in with the laptop when you ship it to them, be very, very, VERY specific about what you need fixed! I'm assuming this faulty card is a fluke, since no one else has complained yet, so I'm knocking the review down to 4 stars for customer support issues, because I fixed my sound card problem with one of these:
Creative ExpressCard Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook-70SB071000000
****
The only cons are battery life, lag when it's unplugged, and the product picture is not what the design truly is. The battery lasts about 2 hours and 15 minutes on battery saving, but that's only 30 minutes less than my old laptop, which had a 12 cell battery that stuck out so far you could use it as a handle to carry it around with. I noticed that when I unplugged my laptop from the wall while playing a high-graphics game, the game tends to drop frames (gameplay becomes choppy,) and goes back to normal when I plug it back in, which might just be a setting I forgot to change when editing the high performance battery plans (because the laptop doesn't go to battery saver when I unplug it, which is the first thing everyone asks,) but you never know.
Heat isn't a problem for me, because I bought a cooling pad with this (make sure to get a 17" pad, I bought a 15" by accident, and it looks comically small under this beast of a laptop, but it still works.)
As for the design, it looks like this: <...> It looks neat (a black and grey vaguely camouflage design, in case the link breaks,) and still lights up and everything. It isn't any better or worse than the pictured design.
| Standing screen display size | 16 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1366 x 768 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1366 x 768 Pixels |
| Processor | 2.2 hertz core_i5 |
| RAM | 4 GB DDR3 |
| Memory Speed | 1066 MHz |
| Hard Drive | 500 GB |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTS 360M |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | GTS 360M |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 1024 MB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11b |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 4 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 3 Hours |
