Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I received my unit 2 days ago and I am very pleased. I have read all of the other reviews, and most of them are not accurate. Yes the computer comes with a 5400 rpm drive, but it is still very fast, and it is very simple to either put in a ssd, or even raid it with another drive. The difference between a 7200 rpm drive and the one included is slight. I'm talking the difference of a few seconds for most disk intensive things. (Loading and video work) Apart from the slight drawbacks of a slower drive this system screams quality and speed. I primarily use it for video work, and the screen is great as well as the graphics card. My ability to do large jobs is greatly increased because of all the power. While not the top end it works well. I left it to process 25 minutes of HD video. It took just shy of an hour (4x faster than my old computer) and barely got warm. The cooling on this thing is amazing. I can play Saint's Row 3 with ultra high settings in 1080p at about 50 fps and it hardly gets warm. It is also very quiet. I could hear it, but it was noting compared to what my old laptop did when it came to cooling (Asus n55sf, while not bad was not this thing) The sound is a bit strange. The volume is randomly reduced until you open the AudioWizard program and switch modes briefly. Also the built in sub causes the keys to rattle and produces an unwelcome noise. I would deduct a star except that it sounds so good with headphones or speakers attached that it really is not a major issue. Be aware that this thing is big. Most backpacks won't accommodate it at all, and it is very heavy. It's really designed to stay on the desk most of the time. The keyboard is about average. The layout is great, but nothing special. It is one of the more comfortable designs that I have seen and makes good use of the extra space. The backlighting is not super strong but works nicely and is adjustable. One nice surprise is the battery life of the system. In power save mode watching youtube and typing with the screen down low I got almost 5 hours. This is not only better than my old computer, but is actually amazing for a gaming laptop. One little thing is that the keyboard deck is all aluminum. This looks great but makes typing a bit sweaty. Again very small just something to keep in mind. Sorry this is so long.