Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

For sanity sake, here is a clear list of the pros and cons I found: Pros: - When configured laptop switches between the power hungry RTX 3050 TI and the integrated Intel Iris XE graphics card to deliver great battery life. - The RTX 3050 Ti can deliver performance to play most games at the highest settings. The CPU is also really powerful making general desktop tasks a breeze. I've hosted Minecraft servers on my PC before, and the amazing single thread performance allows me to host servers and play at the same time. - The casing is light yet sturdy. Plus it is supposedly drop tested by ASUS but I can't say much on that end (sorry, but I rather not drop test my laptop :p). The interior of the laptop is also well protected with sticker-covers (as I noticed while installing additional ram). Seems durable! - Super upgradable :) - On top of the existing 500 gb SSD, there are slots for 2 additional SSDs. I only saw one extra ram stick. - The display looks good quality. I appreciate the 144 hz monitor. - Thunderbolt 4: Its really convenient to be able to charge the laptop with USB-C cable (among MANY other things, worth looking up). I'm glad the manufactorer chose to include the new Thunderbolt 4 port. - The laptop does charges really fast as promised in the product description (with the default charger, I haven't fully tested charging limitations on the Thunderbolt port). - Powerful Wifi 6: I was able to achieve download speeds as high as 420 mbps on my gigabit internet. This value is higher than my other wifi devices with cap out at ~250 mpbs max. - Comes preinstalled with ASUS Armory Crate: Displays CPU/GPU/Ram stats and temperatures, allows you to configure the blue light filter, manage battery saver settings, and the keyboard backlighting. - All things considered, great price! Cons: - The laptop does not come with a camera. This is something to keep in mind if you are a student intending to also use this laptop to for example attend zoom calls. I think this could be a significant con for many, but you can always buy a seperate web cam. - The screen does not open past a ~100 degree angle. Say if you are using this laptop on a desk while standing, the narrow screen angle makes this job difficult. This is the biggest con for me. I suggest getting a laptop stand for managing this issue if need be. - The laptop does not have a numpad. I've attached macros to numpads in the past, so not being able to do that with this laptop is a limitation. - The battery life IS NOT anywhere close to "16.6 hours". With battery saver mode, a more realistic value MAX value is ~8 hours (which still isn't bad compared to other laptops with similar specs). But the true battery life isn't close to advertised so be aware. - The LED lights on the keyboards only have one color (blue). I do wish the LED was a little bit more configurable. - Be aware if you plan on upgrading this laptop: The screws that come out on the back are different sizes. PAY ATTENTION to size screw goes where when taking it out. In my opinion, this is a really unnecessary hurdle. A slightly more clever design could avoid this inconvenience. - Comes installed with a few bloatware (namely MyAsus, Mcafee, and a few other things). Fortunately, its not to hard to uninstall. - The battery part of the laptop gets REALLY hot even with a light workout to the computer. And if you are playing any pc intensive games, EVEN WITH A laptop cooling pad, the keypad even gets hot. I'd suggest using dedicated mouse and keyboard for gaming. - It looks like the thunderbolt port (as pointed out in other reviews) is hooked into the integrated graphics card. Mainly, how this affected me was that I wasn't able to use NVIDIA's Shadowplayer recording software (unless you are CLICKED IN to a NVIDIA SUPPORT game) while connected through Thunderbolt. However, if you connect to the HDMI port on the laptop itself, since it appears that hooked to the RTX GPU, you will be able to use NVIDIA's built in recording software for streaming and gaming.