I believe ASUS is using poor quality motherboards and/or components in their relatively well priced laptops. I had been a long time fan of ASUS products, and considered them a leader in the sector of computer hardware and components, however, I recommend not purchasing from ASUS now or at any point in the future regardless of their past prestige whether real or imagined.

I warmly hope this review reaches you, and makes you smile :)

Below is the original review, keeping that the same.
Had this for more than six months now, nothing broke and everything works as good as new.

First the negatives:
When it was new, one of the keys didn't press down all the way, it works, but one of the corners on that key didn't go down at all and it was super annoying.So I had to pop it out and trim a tiny piece off in that corner to fix it.Not a big deal if you have ever popped off a key before, but might be annoying to some.That is really the only thing wrong with it quality wise.

Switching between the integrated and Nvidia graphics had some issues in the past, but a driver update fixed it.

There are minor annoyances with the keyboard lighting, but that is really getting down the to nitty gritty.

It didn't have the option to use Win7, but that's more a Win8 issue than a laptop issue.I installed a UI shell right away and been happy enough ever since.

That's really it on the things that bothered me at all.Given the price and the overall performance and experience, I do not feel this warranted taking off any stars.

The overall experience:
The laptop is a good mid range gaming computer and good enough to handle most of the current games at mid graphics settings.I haven't tried the latest and greatest FPS on it, the most I use this for are some MMOs and MOBAS, but it handles them without any problems.Besides high end games and high end CAD usage, it will handle anything else for a typical home or office user.

For daily work and home usage: MS Office suite, light CAD work, web surfing, watching videos, etc, it doesn't break a sweat.

I am very happy with the decision to spring for the SSD plus 1T HDD, it starts up WIN8 in about 10 seconds and I have not experienced the stutters that I've felt with every other laptop I owned before.I believe that the computer should be waiting for me, and never the other way around.Higher end desktops with SSD will also give similar experience, but this is the first laptop where it's been true.So quite happy about that.If the price difference is not a big issue, I would definitely recommend it.

The screen is sharp, but it is only 15 inches, I knew that going in.And I have not had any issues with it in any lighting condition.I never used it outside on a sunny day, but near a window in Starbucks on a sunny day was no issue.Haven't noticed any dead pixles, I checked very carefully when it was new, and although I didn't do the same check before writing the review, I've never noticed any during regular usage.Lately, it's been hooked up to an external 27 inch display, and the performance was not affected at all, even though the resolution is much higher.I was happily surprised by that.

The speakers are above average for a laptop; and on an absolute scale, they are good, but not great.Even though I bought some nice external speakers for home use, I would say the speakers are good enough that I didn't have to if I didn't want to.

Battery performance was average, I got around 3 hours offline using office software and around 2 hours if playing games.Not terrific, but it's in line with what I expect for a gaming laptop.

Cooling has not been an issue even after 6 months, it's barely warm to the touch when not gaming, and warm but not hot when gaming.It's noticeably better than other laptops I've owned before.

I was never a fan of any touch pad, the one on this laptop works well enough for what it is.I try to use a mouse whenever possible.

There are enough ports for what I use it for, and the wireless works as expected, these are things that are good by virtue of never becoming an issue.

It's not upgraded to Win10 yet, but that's more because of my feelings about MS than with the laptop.