ASUS - Vivobook Pro 15 15" FHD OLED Laptop - Intel Core Ultra 7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 - 1TB SSD - Earl Gray

This laptop is the best performing laptop I've purchased. It outperforms my last Omen by far. I haven't had any issues with in-game lag, and it renders hefty in-game graphics quickly. I run Adobe CC and it starts-up Photoshop and Lightroom faster than any computer I've had. It's amazing. Battery life is good- you don't have to worry about running out of battery working in Word or other production apps. In-game battery life isn't that good BUT you can get something done quick enough and hangout for a minute. I'd say 45 minutes or maybe a little longer- it depends on resource demands. The great thing about this laptop, in-game on battery, is that it saves resources- the fan runs slow and quiet and the temps stay down. Speaking of temps- ASUS provides great apps for support that allow you to monitor internal temperatures, updates, and even get support. The OLED display is awesome, the visuals will truly amaze you....AI is excellent too. The unit will run hot in-game, but it stays within normal in-game temperatures, and if by chance it reaches above the norm, it cools back down very quickly. The speakers are great! They have a good clear sound. I haven't had any cracking or popping from them. I'm thinking that may be noises produced in-game environments. The speakers are good and clear...I will say this, if you're an HP or Dell user you may need to adjust a little to the keyboard but it's no big deal. Overall, this laptop is excellent in its class.

I bought this laptop for college before my first semester. I spent a little extra for the nicer specs so I could play games on it with friends. It definitely doesn’t disappoint. It’ll occasionally get a hiccup or two but after making sure updates are done and my graphic drivers are up to date, it runs great! The main reason I bought this laptop when comparing to others at the store, was the keyboard! Other laptops have an awkward click and bend to them around this price point but this laptop had a nice soft press feel. It for sure caught my attention. I don’t use the touchpad hotkey feature often because I don’t do much photography/videography. However, I’m sure it gets great use from others that do use those programs. Overall, I would recommend this laptop to incoming college students because it’s not just a great workhorse for doing homework and such, but it also can hold when playing games like Call of Duty and Fortnite. 5/5 stars for me!

Open Box, the factory warranty for my laptop started 8 months before I purchased it, so mine only has 4 months remaining. That's not fair, and I don't recall being told, pre-sale, about that small complication. Lose 3 stars because of the warranty problem, but add back 2 stars because the processor has dozens of cores. Open Box explains why my laptop has 16 GB ram instead of the factory 8 GB. Personally, whomever went through all the trouble of opening the laptop, they might as well have added 32 GB more instead of only another 8 GB. Of course, if another $50 worth of ram were added, Best Buy would raise the price $200. Time to ask Youtube if I can max the ram, myself; we have the technology . The Accidental Geek Squad Protection is too expensive. After using Windows 7 many years ago and just a little 10 recently, I find that being concerned about a huuuge learning curve for 11 was unnecessary. Instead, I think I'll find it very customizable. The ultimate customization will be to eliminate tiles in the Start menu from opening the dreaded Edge browser, or at least get them to open their links in my alternate browser (Opera). After using Windows for 30 years, 11 still does things occasionally that are slightly screwed up. Continual trouble finding the display brightness keys -- F5 and F6, practice, practice, practice. Can't get an emoji menu, even though there's an emoji icon on the F8 key. Artificial Intelligence says the emoji menu can be summoned with Windows Logo + "." but that doesn't do anything. The first owner did something with the audio. The volume on website flash players worked, but the volume controls on F1, F2, and F3 didn't do anything. Clicking around the Sound Mixer straightened that out, so now the keyboard volume controls work, too. Little things like that when you save money on an Open Box. My open box did not include a single piece of paper, which is kinda nice in a way. But, no warranty card, no Quick Start manual, no introduction, no thank you from Asus. No explanation about Nvidia Broadcast or the assorted video options. Power cords were included but messy. No effort was made to repackage the laptop to approach a similar experience to a new item. More expensive than my average purchase, resulted in frustrating taxes of about $50. But that's a problem with Uncle Sam, not Best Buy. Looks like you can get a tan by raising the display brightness. But be nice to your OLED. I usually disable screen savers, but the OLED is susceptible to image-burn-in, so I'll keep the [stunning] screensaver that's been activated. Recommend limiting the battery to charging up to 80%, which is a setting in MyASUS, not in Windows power settings where I'm used to finding it. There is no option for maximum charging levels besides 80% and 100%. I would have chosen 60% if it were available. And the fan should be set to Performance instead of Quiet. Keyboard, if NumLock is active, then there's no Home or End keys. If NumLock is inactive, you have Home and End keys, but no keypad. Of course, the top row has numbers, so maybe I'll start leaving NumLock off unless I'm really doing number keypad stuff. I'll append more opinions after using the laptop for more than 2 days...