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! :D 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.
