List Price: $1,189.00
Sale Price: $999.99
Today's Bonus: 16% Off
Pros
This laptop is great for gaming as it has the ROG logo, I can run assassin's creed 3 on ultra setting with out drop in fps, very smooth( this only happened after I updated the drivers and learned how to use the nvidia GPU, before then it was automatically go on the intel GPU with was ok because it was an easy fix)
The sound is very clear and loud, but is only good for long playing times
The small screen makes it really great for portability (14 inch)
the i5 processer is prefect for playing games
The screen is a matte screen so it doesn't act like a mirror and reflect
The brushed aluminum for the palm rest is actually plastic so its way easier to clean
I like the stealth bomber look that this laptop has.
Windows 8 is great once you learn to get used to it.
has lots of usb ports and all of them are 3.0
Supports hdmi
The keys are very quite
the laptop stays very cool because it has fans on the back instead of having it on the bottom,its a great asset for gamers.
No finger prints!!! the plastic on the casing is matte as well as the screen so it stays very clean for the most part.
easy to add more RAM.
Cons
The screen brightness is not that strong so its impossible to use this laptop outside on a bright day.
The screen res. is not the best.
The sound has virtually has no Bass, headphones and/or speakers are recommend.
It is hard to upgrade. it is hard to change parts because you'll have to take apart the whole laptop. No easy access.
Over all this is a great laptop for the price.
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Asus ROG laptops have always been high risk machines because it's like having a very small high performance vehicle. So you have a lot more under the hood to worry about going wrong, as opposed to something slower and simple. The first I ever owned back in 2009 was just awful, first the mouse pad went including the mouse pad buttons, no driver fix, nothing. Then the DVD burner spit out all discs when trying to burn, would read some for gaming. Then the screen would just go black for no reason. Driver update never helped. Through the years after I tried some of the G71 series, and others with the same problems. Right out of the box, smashed keys, the infamous horrible Centrino Wireless Card (which this has), always dropped or just would be very very slow. I had taken back several of these machines based on these glitches.Well when this design was released (the bigger ones), with the new cooling system, body (stealth bomber look), and other modifications, I was intrigued. But I still wouldn't pay the price for one, because of lack of trust towards the machine. So finally in May i decided to get this one from Best Buy. Seeing that is was nearly 1300$ on here, and on sale for 799$ there I couldn't pass it up. Especially for what it offered. The Nvidia GTX 660m is one beast of a card. This thing games great and stays very cool. One side pushed out air for the CPU, while the other pushes out hot air for the GPU, very good engineering. So why three stars? Here's a list of why.
No DVD drive is not a big deal especially for the size and portability, but using my portable one when need can be tedious.
The horribly slow 5400RPM HDD is just ludicrous for a machine with this much power, and the I5 does have a lot. It's on par with my Intel Core 2 Quad in my gaming Desktop. So kudos for that. But I don't feel like upgrading it.
Internal battery, good battery life, but bad bad bad idea in about 2 years when it starts to dwindle away. Replacing it will be impossibly expensive.
Not the best keyboard, you really have to straing (it seems to type fast) and it doesn't pick up keystrokes quick enough, and the pushing space bar issue is a real thing. Lots of people have had this issue, myself included.
Good speaker, but yet the strange crackling before playing them, does exist.
The machine can become possessed and just shut down on it's own, right in the middle of transferring, reading a web page, whatever, it will just boom. Shut down. Thus far starts right back up, but for how long. And is this a windows 8 issue? Time will tell.
It uses both the Intel 4000 and the 660m GTX, so you can right click on your game icon and choose which to use, or configure it in other ways to use the GPU you want. Or just let it pick for you. The only problem is you have to keep updates for both GPUS. The problem is when I updated the Nvidia Driver it would crash all the time. So I dropped it back to the original out of the box driver and it works just fine. So I would say just stick with it. Runs just fine.
Again with the Centrino Wireless known for being bad from even years back. Fluctuates far to much so I took the wireless Netgear adapter from my Desktop and it works great. Thought I would rather just use what's in it, instead of the adapter poking out of the side.
The HDMI is very quirky, sometimes it will just turn black and lose signal for no reason. Or freeze your picture. No answers for this.
I know it sounds like a lot of complaining and I suppose it is. But I like the machine enough because it really does do everything I need it to do. But it is very stubborn like trying to train a puppy to use the bathroom outside. Sometimes. But especially for the price and the specs I think it's definitely worth the hassle. Lets just hope it doesn't die completely. Which is my fear, like with my first ROG laptop in 2009. I must also add it runs very quiet and cool. I'm anxious to play Lost Planet 3 and see how it performs on it, since Capcom puts out some pretty graphically intensive games. Also wanting to play Castlevania Lords Of Shadow. After playing the demo it looked 10 times better then on any console, also it would just be fun to play it on here. Btw backlit keyboard is great.
Other games I have I've played on here flawless.
Spec Ops The Line
Alan Wake
Dead Space 3
Alice Madness Returns-Beautiful graphical game.
Battlefield 3, although it has compatibility issues with windows 8.
Resident Evil 5-Flies through it like a hot knife through butter.
Dishonored-Great
Crysis 3, looks great, but I just didn't care for it.
So if you can deal with the usual high end laptop quirks then get it. I have a gaming desktop too, but rarely use it, the one advantage to it is it's full 1080p, while this isn't, but this is still something you can take on the go. So I like it enough to keep it. But the 3 stars stands because I feel these (bugs) should not exist, not in this day and age. Happy gaming!!
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