Customer Ratings & Reviews

I’m having a lot of issues with this device. Yes the specs are good, but the fan is incredibly loud playing moderately graphic games. The outputs to external monitors, and mouse also sometimes stop working and requires constant reboots. I’m so far pretty unhappy with this purchase.

1st-Thanks Best Buy for 1 day delivery. Having to leave town. 2nd just look at the cinebench test photo. This processor beats the Xeon 12 core. That's all I have to say. GOOD JOB AMD!!

Connected to a large gaming monitor, with high-resolution and refresh rate, and to a high quality mouse and keyboard, it is fantastic. Very pleased.

this thing is freaking awesome Asus i love you. 1009$ for this bad boy thank u best buy "im a happy campon" i would deffinety recond this laptop again

I bought the laptop at Bestbuy (asus g14), however I did not receive the laptop cover bag. I wonder if that accessory would come along with the laptop when I buy?

First of all, I was going to dock some stars since when I bought the laptop, the touchpad stopped working completely and I was anxious about getting the same laptop again after an exchange. However, I took it to BB and within 2 days they had a brand new laptop that works flawlessly and I cannot be happier. This review is after 3 months of owning and consistently using the laptop. This laptop is seriously AMAZING. I'll try and be super concise, but know that I have a lot to say about this laptop, being a computer enthusiast. If you want a laptop for gaming, school, office work etc. I'd HIGHLY recommend this machine. Pros: Demanding games are playable Great I/O options Low-glare, High-quality display Excellent CPU performance for its size G14 chassis is thin, light and very compact Comfortable keyboard (prop up design is surprisingly good) Amazing battery life Fast GPU runs games very well Tons of storage Superior AMD Ryzen 9 processor is fast on all fronts Design looks unique and stylish Compact 14-inch design for a gaming laptop The charging usb-c port is helpful beyond belief. I picked up a 65w usb-c charger and it's great for providing juice on the go. I'd also reccomend a usb-c hub with displayport and ethernet along with extra usb's. Only 2 isn't enough for me, but there are good ones on amazon like Laukey's usb-c hub. Cons: (all very minor things) No built in webcam - be sure to buy external Built in mic is not very good, but managable. It's AMD, so no Thunderbolt No built in ethernet Backlighting isnt that good I've been looking to build a PC for a while for gaming and using my Lenovo laptop for school work. However, my lenovo laptop had terrible battery and was crazy slow. That's when I found out about this laptop. First of all, yes, I get around 9 hours of battery doing moderate office work. The stock laptop would only recieve around 6, so if you do pick this up, be sure to head over to the subreddit on the zephyrus g14 and do the optimizations there. It increased my battery life by a whole 3 hours. The screen is amazing. I'm not an esports gamer by any means, so the common complaint of the response time hasn't affected me much when I'm playing CS or Valorant. The 120hz though. I've never seen a panel above 60 hz and I will never go back. It's so smooth that even 3 months into owning the laptop, I still love it. The keyboard feels great. The keys sink deep and feel great but are still pretty quiet and good to use in an office environment. The fans are a common problem on the laptop. Some complain that they get way too loud while gaming, but to be honest, I never really notice them. They keep my cpu temps very cool and since I game with headphones (Corsair HS60) like most people, even the turbo fan setting is not very noticeable when gaming. When I game with speakers, I use the performance setting and my fps is still very high, without any thermal issues or fan noise. The CPU is insane. The 8 cores with 16gb of ram is nuts and handles all my work and games wihtout an issue at all. Another thing to know is that since the AMD chip only has a 35w power draw (compared to intel's 45w power draw in their 9750h's etc.) the laptop draws very little power and maximizes battery without slowing the laptop down. It's great. I can have discord, spotify, valorant at pro settings, and stream all without dipping below a consistent 144fps. The 2060 Max-Q is a great GPU. It's very powerful and can even run some games with rtx on at 60fps. I played minecraft with rtx on and it looks amazing without going below 60 frames much. It also disables whenever not in use and that boosts the battery immensely. My only complaint other than the lack of build in webcam (i have a usb one so it dosent bother me) is the backlighting. It looks good in the dark, but not really any other situation. It didn't bother me, since I dont use it much. Now I'm sure I missed a ton of details, but I can seriously not reccomend the laptop enough. It's fast, very light, portable, lasts long, and so much more. I cannot recommend it enough

Best bang for buck - 40GB of ram makes this fly. I’d def recommend this to any gamer, streamer, and college student

This is a laptop that is used for business and works very well.

Very good laptop for gamers. I love it. Very nice graphics.

Works great thanks. I’m using it now and everything is ok

There are many reviews praising this laptop. It is nearly perfect for me (1) light, (2) powerful, (3) decent battery life I have the same issues as many. (1) power. At first my fans were always running. Silent resulted in more fans and heat than performance. The recent BIOS update to 211 has helped this. Other fixes have probably also helped, but i've spent at least 8 hours dealing with this... Not sure the average user could/would/should do so. Last night I was able to play Slay the Spire on the AMD GPU for an hour with less than 10% battery loss and the laptop fans never being audible. Significant improvement, and really nice, but took too much time to get to. (2) Blank screen. Very frustrating and doesn't happen all the time. Only when web browsing, never gaming. I've tried the AMD removal, uninstall, reinstall and it's better. But just happened again. I hope a real fix for this is available soon. -- it's probably mentioned in these reviews, but pressing WIN+Ctrl+Shift+B fixes this issue by restarting the driver... but is still a pain. (3) keyboard backlight. This doesn't bother me at all. I prefer the light off in the day time and prefer that the lights are more faint than blinding

Absolutely love this laptop. It does anything and everything I have thrown at it, all at the same time. The keyboard feels great because of great travel and Asus' over stroke keying plus the instant responsiveness this powerhouse provides. I have played GTA V at nearly all max settings and it still runs up to the 120fps that the screen can do. I usually run two screens at once, with dozens of chrome tabs, a few programs open as well, and even the Folding at Home program running at full tilt and it still runs buttery smooth. Absolutely nothing slows this thing down and the value for this performance is unbeatable--just watch Linus tech tips show this matching and even surpassing laptops that cost north of two grand that are purpose-built for raw processing horsepower like the i9-9980HK in the Acer Helios 700; it matches it even in single-core processes where the Helios is factory overclocked to 5ghz while consuming WAY less power. I've used this for gaming, for schoolwork, and I've even done Resolve video editing of hundreds of movies I had in the wrong format; this laptop can and will do everything. The size is perfect for me because it is still super portable, especially for a machine that can game and perform as it does; the only laptops that can surpass this one are usually bulky ugly things that are a pain to take anywhere if you can even afford them. And for a gaming machine, this still makes a great companion for a college student because when not gaming, the battery life is phenomenal; If you stick yourself to lower brightness and just a tab or two, the battery will last all day. I've watched movies for hours on end where the percentage barely changed from start to finish--the estimate is 10 hours and I believe it and this is FAR more than any comparative gaming machine can provide; it also supports USB C charging if you want to take a less bulky charger around with you. The only bad thing about it so far is the lack of thunderbolt support, although that hasn't really stopped me from doing anything I want with it and we can't blame Asus for that because Intel has a stranglehold on that tech; and the only other complaint is that running intensive games like GTA V or programs like Folding at Home can really make it heat up, like the area above the keyboard is not touchable--you will burn yourself. However, even during these conditions, I have monitored the temperature of the internals with HWMonitor and they're well-within safety range thanks to AMD increasing their thermal ceiling to 105 C instead of the measly 100 C that Intel has; I have yet to pass 96.5 C anyway; moreover, Asus cleverly made the keyboard areas where good typists usually rest their hands' fan intake areas-it pulls air through the keys so even when the laptop is super hot, the keys remain relatively cool. The fans do get loud at that point, but that is kind of expected from any gaming machine running at full tilt; the fans do not shut off at any temperature or setting as I know some of you are wondering. However, if you are doing even nominally above normal activity with multiple programs and a dozen Chrome tabs, they're still nearly silent running at 2500 RPM or so; you won't hear them under normal conditions unless the room is absolutely silent (or you are gaming, of course). Moreover, I usually hate factory bloatware on my electronics of all types, but Asus' included programs are actually pretty helpful like being able to set a maximum battery charge for the best longevity over time and being able to self-diagnose and chat with Asus straight from the program about issues that may arise internally. Really, if you are trying to find a reason not to buy this, there isn't one. I am a tight-wad with my money, I abhor spending, but this was the best 1600 bucks I have ever spent and I haven't regretted since the moment I took it out of its way over-engineered fancy box that literally lifts the laptop to greet you when you open it. BUY this--it is the best value of anything I have ever bought and I have had no issues at all besides the same nitpicks everyone has with modern laptops: not enough ports.

At the time of purchase (April 2020) there is nothing on the market like this laptop. The Ryzen 4900HS CPU outclasses most other laptops out there except for the ones that use desktop CPUs. As far as graphics / GPU performance, the 2060 Max-Q is mid-range, but performs well in 1080p gaming when combined with this CPU. The stand out feature of this laptop, gaming-wise, is the 120Hz refresh rate and FreeSync. The FreeSync range is 48-120. In 2020, I refuse to buy a laptop that does not support some form of adaptive sync. Again, there is nothing like it in this form factor on the market. The closest you will find are some 15.6" laptops that weigh a couple pounds more. Activating FreeSync is simple. It is on by default in the Radeon app settings. I set a frame limit in the nVidia control panel of 119 fps to stay within the FreeSync range. Works perfectly. Another key feature is battery life. I use the laptop mainly for office use and light gaming. When on battery saver mode, 65-70% brightness, and leaving the display at 120Hz, I get 7 hours of battery life. This is when running basic office tasks, internet, some YouTube, and remote desktop. I have yet to test the battery life when setting the display to 60Hz. The keyboard is very nice. Nice key travel, fairly quiet. Touchpad is excellent. The keyboard backlight is terrible but I couldn't care less about that. Ample supply of ports which is very convenient. No need for any dongles. The laptop does get hot during gaming. CPU temps go up to 100-ish Celsius but GPU temps have stayed below 80 for me so far, which is great. The fans are always running which can be annoying, but is what it is. At full blast there is no whine or other noise, just a loud constant blowing sound. There are only two negative things I have to say about the laptop. The first is lack of a webcam, which makes no sense. Again, 2020, people work remotely and from home all the time. Boneheaded decision by Asus. The 2nd is warranty support. Buyers should note that you cannot get Asus Premium Care extended warranty. The warranty terms on Asus' site specifically state systems bought through Best Buy are not eligible. I contacted Asus support and they confirmed this, unfortunately. So prior to buying, if warranty support is important to you, either look at 3rd party options or your credit card which should add a 2nd year onto the base warranty. I've only had the laptop for a week but boy does it deliver. It's so nice to have a portable, 14", 3.5 pound machine for work that is also no slouch when it comes to gaming performance. Truly a unique product at the moment and I'm happy to support the innovation.

Take into consideration that I have owned this product for just about 8 months long. I have used it for school and gaming mostly, with multiple other random programs used for fun. Let us start with THE GOOD; 1. VERY SMALL gaming laptop compared to competitors, plus an average size in other laptops not meant for gaming. I can easily fit this into a laptop sleeve and into my backpack. 2. THE BATTERY is again very good for a gaming machine MOST OF THE TIME, however average for regular laptops. While only streaming video (I mainly stream Twitch or YT videos on this device), I get around 5-6 hours of use. Gaming, when not plugged in, from my experience, is not recommended. I tried to play a game like Skyrim when on battery at Maximum settings, but barely got 30fps. It is basically a Ps3 in terms of performance when not plugged in at least from that experience and the same with Rocket League. 3. PERFORMANCE IN GAMES is good, but like every gaming machine, will come outdated quickly. Every single game you play will most likely get at least 60fps on Medium to Max settings, with RTX turned off if applicable. The G14 is not meant to use its RTX capabilities and also get high frames (100fps+). It is highly one or the other. 4. KEYBOARD is quite amazing and feels smooth and not clicky. It is very quiet compared to any keyboard I've heard, and nowhere near the sound of a mechanical one. THE TRACKPAD is kind of small, but is high quality and no unnecessary sounds came from it. The extra keys for mic muting and the Armory Crate work well, however sometimes when in a game the Armory Crate would not become the fullscreen when clicked on, and sometimes it would (with the same game.) 5. THE SCREEN is fantastic for the price. At 1080p 120hz the color is still very accurate in the eyes of an average consumer such as myself. However, when on battery I notice the screen adds VERY OBVIOUS gamma to the quality, even though I do not change any settings whatsoever. 6. The design is fantastic, the white color matches the silver of the rest of the body perfectly in my opinion, and the boxy shape is nice. 7. THE SPEAKERS are truly amazing to my ears, if you notice the difference between bad and good speakers, you will probably think these are the quality of an iPhones speakers, (Which are known to be good!) Very loud too! (for a laptop) 8. THE PORT SELECTION is high, with 2 usb type-c ports (one can be used for chraging as well, but can use it as normal port.) an HDMI port, headphone jack, and 2 USB A ports, the only one missing which is truly no big deal is the ethernet port. (You can purchase a separate adapter for that anyways, I did!) And on to THE BAD 1. Back to the Keyboard, its lighting is terrible, do not expect for it to be good at all, because the lights under the keys are extremely dull. Most of the time I had to have them off because they actually can make the letters harder to read etc. 2. No thunderbolt at all to help futureproof this device. 3. Beginning to hear clicking sound from main charger when plugged in, (which is barely heard in a silent room btw,)but that was after around 7 months, and is probably user error. 4. Around 20-25 dBA when idle and not plugged in. THE UGLY 1. My least favorite thing about the g14 is the battery when not plugged in. This could even make or break the purchase decision. IT IS INCONSISTENT. One day you can unplug it and it will use 30,000 mW per hour WHEN NOT RUNNING A SINGLE PROGRAM, and let me remind you that the battery is around 75,000 mW, which means you have about 2 1/2 hours of use when not using anything. A downside of this usage is the heat, it can get hot when not doing anything unplugged too, but not past 60 degrees C. Like I said Earlier, most of the time it uses its average 5-9k mW per hour, which gives around what you can calculate and what programs you use. also remember that you will use more battery when watching video or streaming something and especially in HD. 2. THE HEAT while gaming and plugged in is overwhelming sometimes. The CPU has gotten to and above 90 degrees C, which IS ABOUT 200 DEGREES F. You can burn yourself if you touch certain areas for too long, but if you are only touching the keys you are safe. the cracks in between the keys can hurt though. This will also bring up THE FANS. They are VERY LOUD. However wearing headphones nearly eliminates the fan noise, although I feel as though they could help more. On Turbo mode (the overclock mode built in to Armory Crate,) it is barely louder than Performance mode when it is in a gaming session. I recommend using the manual mode and max out the fans if you dont wish to burn yourself using this, (EVEN THO THE FANS GET LOUDER THAN 50 Db when in a triple A gaming sesh!) In conclusion if you want a mixture of everything then this device is definitely for you. While it is not excellent at everything it does, it is good at is all, from battery life to gaming performance. I give it 4/5 but because of the price I would give it 4.5/5 but Best Buy does not offer that. Thank you!

I'm two weeks into owning this laptop while writing this review. I bought this laptop mainly for productivity- to do all my graduate level schoolwork, and possibly get into computer gaming as well. There was simply no other laptop that could approach these specs at this price range. There are some negatives I've found, but many more positives. You need to be able to put a little time into optimizing it for performance- mainly, disabling the GPU for non-gaming tasks and updating software, but if you're someone who doesn't mind a bit of extra work, this laptop seriously packs a punch and is great value at this price point. If you're looking for reasons NOT to buy, here are the negatives: When I first got mine (I picked it up from my local Best Buy) there was some issues with the keyboard. A lot of keys were simply tilted and uncomfortable to use. So I sent it back! Best Buy was super awesome and replaced my laptop with no questions asked- they deserve credit for that. Unfortunately, the new model I got had an issue with one key (key only registered input half the time), but after removing a human hair from underneath the key cap, there were no issues. Weird, but slightly annoying. The i button still is off-angle, which doesn't affect typing but bothers me slightly when I have to look at it every day. In addition, the bigger keys on this laptop (space bar, delete etc.) can squeak when pressed due to metal brackets supporting them. Good for durability, bad for usability. The fingerprint sensor is also average at best- it doesn't work very reliably which is fine for me, but if you're hoping to rely on the fingerprint scanner you may be disappointed. Okay, we got the negatives out of the way. Now for the positives (the reasons I've decided to keep it): The power of this laptop is amazing and 1 TB of storage is a godsend for someone going through graduate school. I bought this laptop so that I'd never be lacking computing power- and to be honest, there's no way I'll ever be lacking computing power. With the Ryzen 9 and a lightning-fast 1 TB SSD, transferring files, running code, loading up high-res satellite images... It's all great. This is a great laptop that can function as a high-powered work station, and the HDMI port (or USB-C if you've got fancy connectors) makes hooking up to an external monitor super easy. In terms of gaming performance, the laptop seems excellent (keep in mind I'm fairly new to PC gaming) and can give you some pretty solid frame rates on whatever graphics you would like. The fans get loud, but never were really blaring while I did productivity work. I imagine this is unavoidable for such a slim laptop, and the fans seem to do their job well with a lot of air vents. I wish there wasn't a vent blowing onto the screen however, and I would get a bit nervous if I were gaming for multiple hours a day on this machine. Heat isn't an issue- the fans are great and the laptop never got too hot for me to feel uncomfortable resting my hands on it. Battery life is a positive (you can't match it for a gaming laptop), but will be beaten by slimmer ultrabooks without dedicated GPU's. Battery life can be really optimized by disabling the GPU for the apps that don't need it, but is already better than most gaming laptops out of the box. The trackpad is great, the volume is perfectly satisfactory, the keyboard backlighting isn't as bad as most professional reviews say (though it definitely isn't amazing), the screen is great, and the performance is GREAT. Oh, and the port selection is very good (two USB A's, one HDMI, two USB-C's, a headphone jack, lock slot and a charging port). There's also a mute button on the keyboard which is nice! All in all, the laptop is great, but you should know what you need it for. If you are an "on-the-go professional", who probably doesn't need an 8-core processor with a great GPU to get through your daily workflow, then I would be put off by the keyboard and the battery life, which are simply going to be better on a slimmer laptop without a GPU. If you're someone who needs a mobile powerhouse workstation, this laptop is a dream come true. Buy it now. If you're a gamer, I would say think twice if this is going to be your go-to machine for gaming for the next couple years, but if you're not too worried about durability then this laptop can power through whatever game you need it to at better frame rates than your friends. P.S. I found the reddit community r/ZephryusG14 an amazing resource for optimizing this laptop out of the box, and without the information from that community I probably would've returned the laptop. If you're not willing to put in the work to optimize the machine, get something simpler. If you've got the time, you've got the money, and you need something powerful, this laptop is the one for you.

As someone that has built several personal computers over the years. I decided to invest in a more mobile option as a travel friendly alternative that would be a companion to my ASUS C302 Chromebook that I use for work. This item arrived and I was eager to stress test it prior to my travel. It was a beautifully crafted piece of hardware, sleek, thin and only slightly larger then my chromebook. I have always watched AMD's foray into the CPU market with great interest, having a Ryzen Thread Ripper on my home/work pc and was readily ready to convert to the same for mobile devices But I was only met with disappointment and fustration. Lo and behold, it had booted straight into into the BIOs and had not even come with a harddrive. It dazzles me how a supposingly top of the line laptop could possibly miss such a key component and brings into question where the quality assurance is. This is both inconvenient, and deeply dissapointing.

Overall: Been using this thing for about two weeks now. Needless to say for $1400 this thing absolutely rips. It's hardly any bigger or heavier than an typical ultrabook and it does so much more. Screen: Decent colors, GREAT response rate, adequate brightness. Only thing I miss is a touchscreen. CPU: The Ryzen CPU destroys my intel desktop for encoding 1080p BluRay's, video editing, and software compiling. It's not even close, not sure how AMD did it here. It's really that fast. The SSD is also surprisingly fast. I've never been an AMD guy, always spent the premium for Intel, but now I'm a believer. Gaming: Maxed out graphics on everything I've thrown at it so far (Doom eternal being the newest). Noise: Quiet in normal operation, pretty loud while gaming. I think that's to be expected. Heat: In normal use it's room temp, maybe cooler. It hasn't heated up on me at all ever since I turned off hardware acceleration in Chrome (see last part). Video encoding it gets pretty warm and throttles to a little over the base clock, gaming it gets hot but still throttles to the same place. Connectivity: Plenty of USB, clever you can charge via the USB-C or the AC adapter. WiFi signal is strong, stable and low latency. Battery: Holy hell. This thing just doesn't die! OK so gaming will kill it in short order, but going about my day doing typical office things (word, excel, web browsing, remote access/VPN stuff) the battery lasts >10 hours. I got 12 hours out of it today and it's still at 20%. The bad: Had the occasional black screen when I got it. Seems to be a software thing with hardware video acceleration going back and forth (IE YouTube, Netflix etc). I disabled hardware acceleration in Chrome and not only did it fix my problem it increased battery life a ton, this CPU is a beast and doesn't need the GPU for watching videos even in 4K and the GPU will just drain battery and run the fan.

Pros: -Powerful CPU and graphics -Lightweight design/Premium build quality -Fast SSD with a lot of storage space -16 gigs of fast RAM -Great speakers -Long battery life -Great price -Ryzen is better than Intel -Included version of Windows has no bloatware -Windows Hello fingerprint scanner is a nice touch (no pun intended) -User upgradable SSD and RAM Cons: -Fan noise is noticeable at idle and under load -keyboard gets hot under load -keys have low legibility due to silver key caps and weak backlight -trackpad leaves a lot to be desired -No built-in webcam, inconvenient for zoom meetings (however, there is a zero percent chance of a weirdo watching you through your webcam) -No page up/down or home/end keys -Screen isn't HDR -There isn't a normal type A USB port on the left hand side -Nvidia is your only option for discrete gpu -I would prefer a 1440p resolution but you're limited to 1080p on the build in panel This is hands down the best of both worlds between portability and power when it comes to notebook computers. 8 core 16 thread Ryzen 9 is a beast of a processor that powers through tasks like nothing else. RTX 2060 max-q plays most games at 1080p 60+ fps on high preset which nicely takes advantage of the included 120hz display panel. It's also good enough to run VR. The fast read/write speed of the SSD is a very noticeable upgrade coming from a HDD and 1TB is a lot of storage space for a SSD that is this fast. The included 16 gigabytes of fast RAM is more than enough to handle modern games and productivity tasks. If for whatever reason you find 16 gigs to be insufficient, you can supply your own RAM up to 32 gigabytes (8 gigs of ram are soldered to the motherboard so the the maximum is actually 40 gigs). The computer is surprisingly light weight for the desktop class compute power inside and has 8+ hours of battery life when running on the Vega integrated graphics. The chassis has excellent fit and finish, second only to Apple when it comes to the premium design. An included program called Armoury Crate is very useful to optimize battery life, fan noise and graphics power to suit your needs. Options range from "silent" mode for improved battery life or "turbo" if you want to utilize the components to the fullest extent(only works when connected to AC adapter). I highly recommend this computer as it runs games flawlessly, handles productivity as well as or better than any other notebook and is an excellent value for money. Especially if you can get it on sale.

It's an amazing machine. I chose this model because of (a) how new all the parts should be, (b) its portability, & the power of a gaming PC means that it will run any program well for me for many years to come. And even though I wanted to spend about $250 less than the total price, I still think I made a very solid choice. A lot of this review is based more on observations than experimenting with this computer. I fired up Doom 2016 for the first time and found myself shooting past enemies because the game ran so fast. I never knew Jedi Fallen Order at full speed, and that was so breathtaking I decided to save a N+ run for Jan or Feb '21. I've mostly played older games on it, but the only problem I've had is with a new game, the PC update of Control. There's a boss fight where the boss is a hypnotic swirling mass of shapes and it's so impressive and beautiful, but once the boss first starts to attack you, the game crashes. You have to look up how to run the game with older windows compatibility (actually not hard to do). It runs everything else quite quickly and smoothly, although I've yet to try video editing on it. The audio is fine, the keys feel good, the weight is excellent, and it looks beautiful. The number of ports, and their placement, is pretty solid. If you haven't upgraded to USB-C yet, this will give you a good push, although you should use a mix of -C and -A devices... It connects to monitors/screens easily, the Bluetooth works well. Because it's a Windows computer, it crashed on me in the first 15 minutes of use. No joke, I took a screenshot. But in 2 months, I think it's only crashed 2 more times or so... It's a keeper. I think you should consider more storage, even with the 1TB drive. Maybe install a lot of your games on an external drive or to an SD card. The newest "big" games, like Death Stranding, clock in at 60-70GB, so your drive will be at or below half capacity in no time. Also, get a USB-A hub (USB 3 not USB 2), so you can connect as many peripherals as you please. I think it's the smartest choice while at home. If you take this machine on the go, you can always leave the hub and still connect a wireless mouse/kb, the receiver for a wireless controller, and an external drive or SD... and still have one port free. And still have multiple Bluetooth devices available, thanks to BT 5.0. And still have the dedicated hdmi port free. So far, the only downsides are - this thing can run quite hot. I haven't experimented with turning the fan off yet, partly because the area near the power button was actually painful to touch. I make a point of mounting my computer so that the fans are several inches off the surface beneath it, so it getting that hot very soon into a game was worrisome. -you're going to have to learn a lot about -only the left side USB-C can power the computer, and it clearly can't provide enough. I got C-to-C cables that can carry 100W, and the machine still loses power steadily. This is when you notice the power brick is 180W. WOW -The keys are only white light, which is clean but dull. I think it's also too dim - from my typical angle to the KB, I see no lighting. This may be because the screen brightness goes to max when you've got the power plug in. In fact, it can be hard for me to see which key I'm looking at - they're clear so they have to allow light to pass, like the light up portions of elevator buttons. Maybe it's better in dark rooms? -I really wish there were touch screen options for this laptop. -Not the manufacturer's fault, but this latest version of Windows 10 is the pits. I was already using Win 10, but it wasn't updated to what came with this PC. This version will reboot your computer during your "off hours" every time it needs to because of Windows updates. You can delay installation for up to 1 month at a time, but you don't really have a choice in the matter. And while Win often automatically re-opens whatever you had open, you still lose private browser tabs, unsaved changes in some programs - and some updates are so big that the system re-opens or remembers nothing. I think this is ridiculous, but whatevs.

I'll spare y'alls the nitty gritty of benchmark scores, those are a dime a dozen and can be found anywhere. You hopefully aren't reading these reviews for tech specs. So, let's skip straight to what it is like actually using the laptop. Well, from the start, it is a pleasure. It came very well packed and I absolutely love the box it came in (yeah, I know, it has nothing to do with the performance of the laptop, but I like attention to details on the small things like well organized packaging and a hinge system that keeps the laptop incredibly secure in transit but painfully easy to remove, small thing, but it shows the level of attention to detail Asus has). Set up took only minutes, plug it in, turn it on, and it does the rest. Honestly, I wouldn't expect any less from a modern Windows 10 computer, but I'll still give it props for getting that right. Now that it is set up, on to installing games. The wifi on this thing is a beast (I topped out at 100mbps download, which is the limit of my internet plan). While waiting for my Steam library to download was the perfect time to kill some time watching Youtube... and I have to say, I was completely shocked by how great the speakers sound on this thing. It sounds almost as good as my desk speakers. Now onto playing the games. The keyboard is really comfortable to use while gaming (the trackpad is horrible for gaming, but that is true of all trackpads, for general use, the trackpad is actually pretty good, but seriously, get a mouse for gaming). This thing kept up with pretty much anything I threw at it, even on high settings. On a related note, even while gaming on high settings, I can get over three hours off of the battery. If you want something that will let you game on the go, this is definitely for you.