ASUS N53 Series N53SV-XE1 NoteBook Intel Core i7 2630QM(2.00GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory DDR3 1333 500GB HDD 7200rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M

Pros: This baby is sweet. The i7-2630QM processor screams and all 12gb of ram (upgraded to this ofcourse) just allows for an explosion of power from this beast. Definitely satisfied with this great product and the price was perfect.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: This notebook is awesome.

Pros: Overall, this laptop is very nice. It is fast, the picture is GREAT with the LED, and everything else is perfect. The sound is pretty reasonable also. Haven't played any games yet, but I am sure it will be just fine. The microphone and the webcam work better than my $150 webcam on my desktop!

USB 3.0! yes

The I7 is amazing, if you're gonna go big you might as well get an I7 rather than an I5. I DO see a difference as I work with I5's at work.

I would buy any ASUS products alot in the next year before they become too popular. Once they become too popular, then they will get cheaper with the quality like every other brand has.

The body of the laptop is strong solid. Very high quality

Cons: I don't know if anyone else has this problem but the keyboard seems a little pushed up whereas everytime I press a key the keyboard sort of pushes down. Also the keyboard is not raised so it is sort of hard to get your fingers on the letters and type efficient because of the way it is setup.

The bloatware was terrible like every new computer.

The mouse clicker on the laptop seems a little cheapish. Maybe it's just me but it seems loose like the keyboard. But I am using a mouse anyways so I guess that only matters for traveling.

It has Windows Home on it(Upgraded to PRO immediately with no problems and only took about 10 minutes)

Other Thoughts: Besides the keyboard, this is a great laptop. Not too big, not too small. I would recommend this for anyone that would ask about it! :)

Pros: -Quad core i7 for less than 900 bucks
-1 gb Nvidia graphics card, good enough for BFBC2, Duke Nukem Forever, Company of Heroes, L4D2, GTA IV on high, max, high, max and max graphics respectively.
-Optimus improves battery life substantially
-Runs at 45 degrees celsius at idle and relatively cool with older, less demanding games
-7200 RPM HD = fast boot time once bloatware is removed
-Really, really high quality speakers, good enough for casual movie watching or music listening from across the room distances.
-Runs quietly, even while gaming

Cons: -Media keys annoying to configure
-Bloatware
-Heavier than laptops with similar specs
-Charger "brick" gets hot enough to literally cause pain if skin makes contact with it
-Demanding games like Metro 2033 and STALKER SOC bring the temp as high as 98 degrees Celsius on medium/high settings respectively

Other Thoughts: Got this to replace my MSI GX630 of 3.5 years. The old machine got to water boiling temperature and underperformed with new games. I wanted a machine that could keep cool and play the newest of the new games, as well as old favorites like BFBC2. I was not disappointed.

The quad core 2630QM i7 is faster than your preconceived notions of what fast is. The graphics card is substantially powerful. Source engine games run at max settings 60 FPS no problem, BFBC2 runs on high settings smoothly. Optimus knows when to kick in and does it immediately, but if you're paranoid like I am you can still configure individual games to automatically run with the dedicated card on startup. The hard drive is plenty good, double my old laptop's. Battery life while browsing the web on power save mode is almost 5 hours and about 3.7 hours running a SD movie.

Bloatware takes 20 minutes to get rid of. Laptop is heavy, but not terribly so. Charger gets hot, be careful. Overall, highly recommended.

Pros: I wanted a computing platform that I could use to do some database work and statistical analysis with on weekdays and still use to play games or what not on the weekends or when I am away from my desktop. So far, I have found this laptop to be very solid for this type of use.

Great battery life (3+ hours of heavy web/multimedia use)

Fast CPU with Sandy Bridge

Turbo mode is great for older or other programs that aren't set up for multicore processing

Can take up to 16 GB of RAM (4 slots)

Discrete GPU is fast enough to play reasonably demanding games at decent frame rates at high settings

Sound is pretty good for laptop speakers

7200 RPM hard drive

Really quiet and cool under normal usage

Physical web cam sliding cover

Cons: I don't like the increasingly common method of partitioning the hard drive into an OS partition and a data partition (it is one physical drive, two logical drives - unlike what the other reviewer said). It isn't too much of a problem as the data drive is empty and I was able to delete it and extend the primary partition using Windows management.

Some bloatware but not anything compared to what I have seen elsewhere. A lot of ASUS utilities which may or may not be of use to the end user (I personally like most of them but YMMV).

A lot of reviews said the keyboard felt soft and squishy. I haven't had any problems with it and am a rather fast touch typist on it. I am not, however, comparing it to a mechanical keyboard.

No physical recovery discs, you have to burn them when you get the machine from a hidden partition. It takes about 5 DVD's. Not too hard but just something you don't want to forget to do.

Other Thoughts: Overall, I love the computer. Being able to expand the RAM was a key feature for me given how I use my computer. Really, there is nothing I can say that I dislike about it - everything works like I would expect.

The price on this laptop is a steal, I couldn't find a similarly loaded laptop anywhere else for less than 1200 dollars. That alone was a huge point in its favor.

If I were shopping again, I would likely get this machine as it is mostly a secondary computer and I spend most of my time on my desktop. I would like to suggest that people moving from a desktop to a laptop consider the model with the higher resolution screen. The lower resolution screen isn't bad but if you are used to 1920x1080 the 1366x768 shows a lot less then you would want.

Pros: love the quad core with 4 threads, 4gigs of fast ddr3 RAM, and nvidia optimus for when i dont need graphics. 7200 rpm hard drive.

Cons: none really.

Other Thoughts: keyboard flex is not noticeable while typing

not two harddrives like below review, one 500 that is partitioned, i prefer it not to be honestly.

prefer this screen res, 1080p on a 15.6" screen is too hard to look at in my own...

Pros: - Aesthetically pleasing! The back of the cover is a nice solid grey look. I really like it.
- Core i7. For a sub-$1000 laptop, you couldn't ask for a better processor. This thing is QUICK!
- Nice 2meg webcam. It looks nice! Even has an 'on/off' switch. Sort of as a lens cover.
- Speakers.. Yeah, they're laptop speakers, but they sound okay, and look nice. Along with that, there are quick sound buttons. Volume, mute, and a play-pause button.
- Multi-Touch mousepad. I like the feel, and the sensitivity of it.
- 4gigs of DDR1333 ram. 'Nuff said.

Cons: I got the laptop today. Off the top of my head, here's a few things:

- The keyboard is a little confined. Although, honestly, I really have no issue typing on it. Once you get used to it, you'll enjoy having the actual number pad off to the side.

- Mousepad clicker *is* flimsy. It rocks just a hair from left to right, due to it being simply one button. It works fine though, and looks snazzy.

- Some bloatware installed. Not all too bad though. A few quick uninstalls will be necessary.

Other Thoughts: Read the other reviews. They're much more thorough, and well written than mine. They were a big aspect in buying this laptop.

So far, everything is great. This laptop will be mine for the next 4 years of college, so I'm glad I like it. Haha.

Just remember, whenever you buy a laptop for yourself, its for *you*. Don't let people discourage you from getting what you want, unless its a serious concern. I have no regrets (yet) buying this laptop, and it has been running great so far.

5 eggs, just because.. Newegg is awesome.

Pros: Having the new core i7 quad core is amazing. This laptop is fast! I can run multiple engineering programs (AutoCAD, Matlab, SolidWorks, etc) all at the same time without any noticeable slowdown. The power saving features are great as well. I like how I can set the graphics card to only turn on for certain programs. The keyboard is big enough for me, and the number pad is really nice. I always use number pads when entering data, so it makes life so much easier. The speakers are amazing for a laptop. The audio quality is great. The backlit screen is nice, and the low resolution is fine for my purposes. Has enough USB ports to accommodate a variety of peripherals and has a USB 3.0 (now I need to get a USB 3.0).

Cons: Wish it had a 750 GB Hard Drive. Also, the hard drive comes oddly partitioned. May want to do a clean install of windows to eliminate this.

It only comes with one 4GB stick of DDR3 memory. So it isn't even running dual channel out of the box. Easy fix - I ordered a Mushkin 8GB dual channel kit to slip in there.

Battery life is a little low (around 3 hours if you are just surfing the web and listening to music), but what do you expect from a quad core laptop with dedicated graphics and huge speakers.

The hotkey functions for the audio have to be enabled every time at startup through the hotkey program. I'm trying to figure a way around this, possibly telling the program to automatically run at startup. Hopefully that works.

Doesn't come with a Windows 7 disk, so if you want to do a clean install, you have to go buy your own.

Other Thoughts: For the price, this is the best laptop out there. I did a lot of research and looking around before I finally decided on this one. It has the new core i7, dedicated graphics, 7200 rpm hard drive, four memory slots (as opposed to the usual 2) supporting up to 16 GB of memory, pretty good size screen, and it isn't all too heavy.

If you went with a better laptop, you would be paying 40% more for 5% more functionality.

Pros: Overall, this laptop is quite nice! The nice thing that I like about this laptop is that it has two video cards: one which is an Intel HD Graphics Family (2GB) AND the NVidia GeForce GT 540m (1GB). The Intel GPU is used for normal operations wile the NVidia automatically kicks in when using heavier programs!

- Design is quite awesome!
- Number keypad (Convenient!)
- Runs quietly in my opininon
- Quite powerful!
- 7200 rpm

Note: So far on today's rating, it rates at 5.8

Cons: There are some few spots that can go a little bad such as very few minor lags that really slows down your laptop. The hardrive amount is a little small but I'm sure it can be replaced. It has two separate hard drives and the primary hard drive doesn't have much space compared to it's second hard drive. (About 80GB vs 327GB)

I just download numerous games and programs so that is the reason why I think it's a little bit small.

The laptop also tends to get a *little* hot around the bottom left corner of the laptop. But other than that, most of the area is relatively cool.

Other Thoughts: For this price, I think this is a very nice game for average gamers/programmers. As long as the game is not too demanding, this laptop may/can fit your needs. Some games such as Metro 2033 is playable; though it was a little laggy but I'm pretty sure it can speed up a lot more since I was on power saver.

If you're a little low on cash, you could consider this laptop considering it's performance is quite good for being mobile and cheap!

Pros: This laptop was the best for the money. I love the i7 sandy bridge so if I want I can put up to 16g of ram and it's super hard to find notebooks with a 7200 rpm HDD at this size. It runs really quiet, and I keep it on my lap and on my couch and basically no heat is given off.
I like the simple style of it and it looks sleek. The display is really nice, and the sound quality is really good as well. The Power4Gear options, basically power options, are really nice. You can set the maximum and minimum processing power you can set for "battery saving" "Entertainment" "high performance" and "quiet office."
The 2.0 mp webcam was also a nice addition with the on and off switch which is nice.
The USB 3.0 port is nice for backing up on my toshiba usb 3.0 external, backs up and images in less than 10 mins.

The speakers/quality from Olufson are amazing.
2 finger gestures on the touchpad is nice.
there are a few problems though... but for price, nothing major at all and quick fixes

Cons: First of all, I saw this on another review somewhere else that if you remove some of the bloatware games and such, it will disable the hotkeys, like volume control. I thought this was due to the fact the person didn't know what they were doing, but as it turns out... it happens. To fix this you just have to re DL the ATK drivers from the ASUS website for support... or you can use this link -
http://support.asus.com/Download.aspx?SLanguage=en&m=N53SV&p=3&s=271

I also had some issues when I had to update windows 7 but that was probably my fault, and all I had to do was re download and install the last 5 updates that were "failed."

The keyboard is a little cramped, and the mousepad's one button button at the bottom (instead of being divided into two) feels a little flimsy. although the play/pause, vol up and down dedicated buttons up top of nice.

Other Thoughts: For this price, and what you're getting it's hard to find better. I looked at tons of notebooks, and this was the best find I found. I chose this over the $200 more xv model because, this was $200 less for almost the same thing.

I also picked up neweggs extended warranty, because it wasn't that much more expensive and totally worth it to protect an investment like this.

This laptop is fast, and fun, with great audio quality. Big improvement over my HP which I had for 5+ years. Also convenient to have number pad, although it makes the keyboard a little more cramped.