First off, I purchased this laptop without being able to find super good information about this model. All of reviews are on the i9 version. I wanted a laptop that "could" game, but was focusing on a powerful work machine that would handle everything I do for work replacing my office desktop and travelling with me. This laptop absolutely does that; and does it well. Overall: Top to bottom, this thing is a power house. I have really enjoyed using it. Light, responsive, and very respectable battery life. There are some... glitches? touchpad kind of does it's own thing and registers clicks or touches you aren't doing. Yes it plays games just fine, ran about 60 fps in Escape From Tarkov on recommended settings, ran between 80-90 with DLSS performance on recommended settings in Call of Duty Warzone, that's all I've tried so far. Pros: This screen is spectacular, for one feels giant, the 16:10 ratio just feels right for a chassis of this size, no wasted space, the brightness is insane for a mobile setup, 144Hz feels very smooth. Don't be scared away by the "lower" resolution. The guts are toned down from the step up version, but at a $400+ lower price, they absolutely get the job done. Keyboard is fantastic, snappy, responsive, and great key travel. Battery life is respectable, especially if you push the settings down and utilize the iGPU switcher. Cons: The trackpad, although one of the biggest ones on a windows machine, is very temperamental; sometimes working flawlessly, others it just won't respond or over responds to your inputs. Somewhere in the software, there is a hiccup where when your laptop goes to sleep, like mine does at my USB C (Non Thunderbolt) docking station, the backlit keyboard will flash over and over again; really annoying. Lastly, the machine does get hot, like to the touch on the keyboard tray and trackpad. The airflow does a spectacular job of keeping the internals within limits, but it does warm up the air around it under load, I have not experienced any thermal throttling, but I have had the fans running at 35+ dB according to the amoury app.

So my review is one from a former console-only gamer. As this Asus was my first foray into PC gaming I had no idea what to expect. I did many weeks of research on what the best hardware combos were, the best deals, and what I should expect from different iterations or combos of hardware. I stumbled upon this particular laptop through another purchase I made on an HP Victus that quite didn't meet my standards. Although, this was on sale at the time for $1249.99, which was a steal for value vs performance. This laptop is a wonderful option for first time PC gamers like me, or even the veterans as a nice mid-tier gaming laptop. With the i7/3050ti RTX combo, I have been pleasantly surprised and happy with the performance: -Doom Eternal ran on High-Ultra settings with an outstanding avg of 100+ fps on just Performance mode, likely even better on Turbo mode. (The Armory Crate is a great tool that can be used to really streamline your experience) -Forza Horizon 4 I was getting a consistent 72 fps with the adapter plugged in. I noticed a big drop in fps when running on straight battery, so you definitely want to keep it plugged in while gaming as it also seems to be about at most 3 hrs of battery life with gaming. -Red Dead 2 (Online) I havent ran any sort of benchmark tests but I am currently running it on Ultra settings with no visible frame rate drops and has been very smooth. Some other thoughts: Storage may be an issue for some, as 512G is not a whole lot of storage with today's big titles. The DLSS feature is quite nice and does work really well with some games. The fully lit RGB keyboard is nice, never been a huge "RGB Guy" but it has a nice look and feel while typing. You can manage the different RGB effect modes in Armory Crate. The 144hz refresh monitor is perfect for the 1080p gaming and is perfect for what I use it for. Overall this is a nice introduction into PC gaming being that you hardly can find PC parts to build a desktop. Pre-built desktops and laptops are going to be bought up in the mear future and this will be heavily on peoples radar!

The laptop is nice, light, and snappy. It can handle the games I play just fine. The display is gorgeous and much brighter and crisper than displays I've used on other laptops. The Asus Armory software lets you set different performance levels. There are Performance and Turbo levels that will crank up the speed, but this also makes the fans quite loud. Battery life is mediocre, but I plan on mostly using it plugged in. I'm giving this laptop 3 stars because the advertising around its Windows 11 support is deceiving. The laptop prompted me to upgrade to Windows 11 out of the box during the initial setup. After upgrading, everything seemed fine. A few days after setup, I noticed the fingerprint reader was not working. Device Manager showed an error. Updated all software, drivers, BIOS, etc., but the problem keeps coming back. Asus is blaming the issue on Windows 11 and told me I'd have to wait until Microsoft or Asus release an updated driver. They said the "upgrade to Windows 11 is a choice" and that the notebook was manufactured to work with Windows 10. It's disappointing that Asus is taking this approach. I would have be fine if I had known that they're not sure the laptop will work with Windows 11 and likely would have held off from upgrading. If Windows 11 or the fingerprint reader are important to you, you may want to look elsewhere. I never used this laptop on Windows 10, so I can't confirm that Windows 11 is fully to blame. I'm now debating whether to return the laptop and move on or hope that Asus or Windows put out an update to fix this.

Overall: Coming from a Dell Inspiron 7570 to this beast of a laptop is a huge upgrade. I love almost everything about the laptop from the very big screen (Especially for a 15 inch laptop). To the mechanical keyboard that almost feels like my desktop PC. I also love the control that the typical ASUS BIOS comes with (I've got an ASUS motherboard in my desktop). As an overall package its great, but I do have some problems about specific things in the laptop. Detailed Pros/Cons: Display: Love that its an extremely controllable display with up to 500 nits and that its a anti glare screen. However the backlight bleed is very strong when in a darker area. During normal use though its not extremally noticeable. (Pictures) Chassis: I absolutely love the design of the chassis and the feel of it. However the texture or material they used is a fingerprint/oil magnet. So to keep it clean I typically wipe my fingers off before using it. CPU: While there isn't anything wrong about the CPU being Intel I do prefer AMD more because of their control over the CPU. Storage: I do wish it came with a 1TB SSD, however its not a huge deal as it is easily upgradeable. This is the same for the RAM, 16GB is more then enough for what I'm going to do but you can easily upgrade half of the ram as half of it is on the motherboard. Heat: Man does this thing get hot but that's to be expected. With ASUS amazing cooling and a little bit of undervolting (Which can be done from their bios). I'm able to keep the laptop in a comfortable temperature for me. Battery Life: You can control how much the batter gets charged up to which I love as if you know you will be gaming (Id recommend being plugged into an outlet) on it you can decrease it down to 60% charge and not worry about hurting the life of the battery when you need it more mobile. Plus you can control when the dGPU kicks on which increases battery life. Summary: With me getting this on sale for 1,199$ I think that was a steal for this laptop because of the build quality and features it comes with. With this being an older model If you can get it on a sale I recommend picking this one up or even if you don't mind spending more. Picking up the 2022 version of this laptop!

The laptop is great, fantastic speed, and great performance, including the graphics. I am amazed at such a powerful machine in such a slim design! The fan is pretty loud though even on silent, and I don't of much on it. Anyways good buy.