Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I really wanted to like this laptop. It's my first real gaming notebook in over 5 years. My old Dell is still ticking, but can't handle many of today's games. The specs on this ASUS ROG are truly impressive, all in a relatively small and light package. I purchased the SSD/IPS version, so boot times were blazing fast. I wasn't too thrilled about the fact that they've installed a Kingston SSD and not a Samsung EVO SSD. As the Kingstons are really prone to failure, I planned on switching it out in the near future. Anyway, first impressions were great. It ran fast, boot times were low, and it handled some graphically intensive games at high settings, all while remaining surprisingly cool. 2 weeks in is where the problems began to crop up. I got the dreaded blue screen with "Driver Power State Failure" while trying to load a YouTube video. I hit the ASUS forums for some help, and it turns out almost 90% of the previous generation of this exact laptop is suffering from the same problem! That was a little disheartening. After a few days, the blue screens started occurring every few hours. I tried every fix out there to no avail. I was considering returning the laptop but thought I would wait a few days to see if the issue went away. A week after that, the computer was dead. It would get stuck on a continuous BIOS loop. Game over. It was time to send this laptop back. Although I was disappointed, I also felt a little sense of relief since these problems occurred within the 30 days return window, and not after. I thought I'd share with you some of the other issues I read about on the ASUS forums that seem to be plaguing this laptop model. The most common issues were (almost 80% of users seem to have experienced at least one of these within 6 months of ownership) - 1. Driver state power failure blue screen, 2. Continuous BIOS looping, 3. Failing SSD's with no warning, 4. IPS display failures, 5. Dead headphone jacks, 6. Graphics card failures. I'm not saying this will happen to everyone, but it's something to take in to consideration. I decided against purchasing another GL551JW for the reasons mentioned above. As I've had great success with Asus products in the past, I began looking for another ASUS ROG. The GL751JL caught my eye. It was actually slightly cheaper (on sale) than the GL551JW-DS74. The specs were even more impressive. 17.3 inch IPS screen, 16GB RAM (upgradable to 32GB!), and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M graphics card, which is leagues better than the 960M. The only thing missing was an SSD, which was great because I could just pop in a Samsung SSD. There's an empty bay in the back just for this. The GL551JW didn't have an extra bay to install your SSD (even in the non IPS version). More importantly, I checked the Asus forums for issues on the current GL751 and previous models. There were no recurring issues I noticed. Most users were very satisfied with their purchase in the long run. So I placed the order. When I received the GL751, I was surprised at how (relatively) thin and light it was. The pictures make it look ridiculously bulky but it really isn't. It felt about the same as my 15 inch Dell Inspiron 6000. The laptop powered on quick, and I was really impressed by the 17 inch IPS display! The view is truly stunning. Everything is crisp and bright. With the SSD installed, the 751 seemed even faster than the GL551JW. The OS runs smooth, and response times are instant. Anyway, overall I am much happier with the GL751JL. Don't be afraid of its size and weight, it's really not bad at all. If you purchase it, you'll notice the blazing fast performance right away, and you can feel comfortable knowing that the majority of people who made the same purchase as you haven't had any problems with their laptop after years of use. If you go ahead and get the GL551JW, please do your research in advance, and learn how to recognize and fix some of the more common issues that may crop up in the near future. Other than their tech support and warranty services, Asus is a great company that makes solid products compared to other laptop manufacturers. Please feel free to comment with any questions you may have. I'll do my best to answer as a consumer. Thanks for reading :)