Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The professional reviews of this series are correct. The cooling system is quiet and very effective. The screen is nice, but does pick up reflections in bright light. The machine is fairly heavy and you will need to buy a bag or sleeve meant for 18" screens because the thickness of the laptop prevents it from fitting in most 17.3 bags. The battery dies fast and furious, though you can squeeze out over an hour of use if you are just web browsing and turn down the screen backlighting. I wanted an ATI powered rig, not NVIDIA, and this fit the bill. I've had a couple of the grey bars of death screens that apparently are common with this series. That has been the most disconcerting issue. Hopefully some future 5870 drivers will clear that up. I wiped the drive and installed Windows 7 Ultimate. The laptop includes a utilities installation disk.
Update 1/13 - The computer continues to function pretty well. I haven't used it for gaming recently, but I have not had any more of the "grey bars" crashes. All drivers and bios are updated.
A different issue has developed: the built-in touch pad seems to loose sensitivity and/or malfunction periodically. This is very annoying as I use the laptop in multiple locations and rely on the touch pad - I do not carry around an extra mouse with me. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, and updating the driver did not solve the issue. It goes through periods of not working, automatically resizing the window when I do not want to and other irksome issues.
Update 2/10 - Over the last several days I have been using this laptop for gaming. Nothing major - mostly "Two Worlds" on maxed settings. "Two Worlds" is a perfectly dull, buggy game I would not recommend to anyone, but it does have graphics that will push the mobile 5870 card a bit on maxed settings. When I first received the laptop (before updates) it was a game that gave me a couple of my GSODs. Anyway - no GSODs now. Updating everything seems to have worked. I haven't had a GSOD (knock on wood) since December. Now I will have to try a game that is actually worth playing! (I have a tower I have dedicated to major games - and it's hooked to a 60" Sony TV, so it is hard to use my newest stuff on the laptop for long periods when I can use the larger system instead.)
Update 4/26 - I've tried several other high demand / graphics intensive games on the laptop. It runs them very well. However, a new issue has appeared that seems to be common with this type of ASUS power supply. I discovered the jack that plugs into the laptop was bent sideways. I am very careful with my electronics - the laptop has never been banged or dropped and as far as I know the cord has never been jerked while plugged in. I can only assume the weight of the cord somehow bent the plug, or that it had a crack inside that widened at some point. Now the cord is shorting out. I did some research and it does appear that the power bricks are a wink link in for this series - both for failing or (to a lesser extent) physical issues like my bent jack. So. . .now I've been trying to get my power supply replaced by ASUS. . .and as many others have reported, dealing with them directly is no fun. I've received inconsistent replies and RMAs that initially requested I send in the entire computer. The issue is relatively new, but as of yet unresolved. At the moment I'm still giving this laptop four stars, though I would rate ASUS customer service around one and a half or two at the present time.
Update 5/11 - The power supply issue is resolved. ASUS eventually shipped me a new one, though it took a bit of wrangling with multiple customer service people before the item was sent. Once sent, it was shipped quickly. Strangly, the replacement feels lighter weight than the original - somewhat filmsier perhaps, though it is difficult to say for certain without the original here to compare (I had to send them the original - shipping at my expense). Now I'm paranoid about the plug breaking again as the other one bent with little or no provocation. Overall the customer service experience was about two stars out of five. If you have a problem, do not email them. Call them and keep calling if the RMA they send you isn't related to your issue. They also tried to get me to give them a credit card number to keep on file. I absolutely refused to divulge that information.
Overall still recommended. I would buy this again over the Toshiba gaming laptops if I had it to do over.
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