ASUS X550 15-Inch Laptop [OLD VERSION]

I'm a huge fan of Asus computers. They are always high quality and they work nearly perfectly. I play lots of games like Skyrim, Fallout, Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect etc., and they all run perfectly on this computer! One of the best features is the cooling system mostly because it actually works but also because it works amazingly well. I can have this laptop plugged in and running multiple apps the entire day and it never heats up. The only time it did heat up (very minimally) was when I used it on my bed on top of the comforter with nothing separating it. I work from home so this is a huge plus for me! The sound quality is outstanding and I love how you can set the audio for what you are doing i.e, music, gaming, movies, etc. The sound is crisp and clean and the gaming option makes the audio in games very robust. The webcam works excellent as well, very good quality. My one and only complaint about this machine is that it has Windows 8 on it. For those of you who do not know this Windows 8 is absolutely terrible. 100% not user friendly, the updates take forever and make you set everything up all over again and go through quite a lengthy process just to be able to use the computer. Windows 8 is brought to us by the same idiots that created Windows Vista, and we all know what an atrocity that was. It takes some getting used to and at first Windows 8 is very very frustrating. The shipping was also great .It arrived 1 day early with no damage. All in all this computer is pretty rad. If you game, work from home or just want to watch movies on it, it will perform admirably nearly every time. I could not have asked for a better laptop at this price. WELL worth the price!!! Honestly I think it should've been more expensive for the excellent quality but that is typical Asus. Spectacular computers at an even better price,

This computer has great specs, which is why I was so surprised that the screen was an average, run-of-the-mill matte screen. I have matte screens at work, so the real issue was the quality of graphics. It was not sharp at all. I had bought this powerful laptop because it could handle video editing. Who wants to edit a movie on such a mediocre screen?

Before I begin: I would like to point out that I no longer own this computer. I purchased it USED from the Amazon Warehouse in early July and had returned it within a couple weeks because of a few broken keys which would have cost me upwards of $100 to fix. While this was the main reason for the return, there were a few other factors that left me a little cold - but I'll get to that. Pros: - From what I (non-expert and generally non-caring) could tell, the computer seemed to have a nice speaker quality. More bass than I was accustomed to with my old laptop. - The keyboard is labeled as "ice cold," and in the short amount of time I had it this seemed to be true. Compared to my previous and current Samsungs, which warm in the keyboard area when they run, I never noticed any heat, which is a feature I loved and sorely miss. - Has an optical drive, for us fogies and our imported music from our compact discs. - Clear, crisp screen. Nice and bright. - I liked the build a lot. Nice and thin, pretty light for its size - the back end is raised to allow for airflow, and also shaped in a way to offer a convenient handle of sorts! The lid is brushed nicely and can't be fingerprinted. Overall it's a very handsome computer, though the pictures aren't accurate to it. It's all black all oer. Cons: - Updating from Windows 8 to 8.1 was a nightmare. Though probably the fault of my particular machine or of Windows 8, it took close to a week for me to be able to update the OS because of an update error which required I do over 150 very large updates in small batches of 5 to 10 so the computer could handle it without getting stuck in a restart loop. 0/10, would not repeat. - Maybe my hands are abnormally small, but the reach from (fn) to the volume keys was an uncomfortable stretch and difficult to do one-handed. - The touchpad is atrocious. Lacks click-lock (a must-have for doing word documents without a mouse, I find) and a middle-click equivalent. I found it jumpy and sometimes insensitive. Support for the driver (I can't remember what type it was anymore, but I looked at the time, oh how I looked) seems almost nonexistent. Trying to replace it with ELAN was a complete disaster that resulted in neither driver working, and neither of the computer people I spoke to about it could figure out why. - ASUS ITSELF. In my fruitless attempt to try and change my touchpad driver to one that was a little more useful, I had the misfortune of being directed to the ASUS website and I was truly blown away by how awful it was. It typically only loaded halfway, ending up at some half-assed HTML state, loading took forever, and trying to access any dropdown menu was occasion for my session to time out. It took me four days just to register my machine because of how awful the website was. This, coupled with other complaints I've heard about awful customer service, makes me kind of glad I jumped ship when I did. I don't know what I'd have been looking at if I'd ever needed tech support. In the end, I'm not sure what to think. I really loved the cooling features, and I know ASUS is a well-regarded brand among many people who want a good computer for a decent price (read, fellow college students), but I returned my computer underwhelmed, especially on the point of the touchpad, which I need to be usable.

I was looking for a laptop with a full keyboard (including a keypad so I could type accents more easily), a matte screen for easier outdoor use, a large screen, and a fairly decent amount of power for a decent price. For its price, it is fairly thin. It stays fairly cool even if I'm playing Team Fortress 2, which runs very smoothly on the laptop although the laptop lacks a dedicated graphics card. In terms of battery life, on the power-saving settings it lasts for a decent-length flight. The sound quality is pretty clear. I will note that the total memory is listed as a terabyte, which is actually achieved by having two hard disk drives, so there might be some disk-drive switching lag when accessing files on the other disk drive. The ethernet port has a small hinge to expand to fit the actual plug, which might present a possible weak point that could break off later on. Only the top cover and keyboard surface have metal plating; the border of the screen and the bottom are entirely plastic, though this hasn't presented any heating problems yet. The trackpad I'm not a fan of. I avoid using tap-to-click, and the actual clicking mechanism of the trackpad doesn't always work as well as I'd like it to. Initially, some of the keys were also a little unresponsive (I'm looking at you, "u"), but this seems to have gotten better over time. Also, there was a fair amount of ASUS bloatware but nothing hard to remove. Overall, this is a very solid laptop, and for anyone who isn't too keen on technical details but wants a laptop that can handle games, do work, and stay classy, I would definitely recommend this laptop.