Pros: - During the month of Feb 2016, Asus was running a promo for an $80 rebate on this laptop. I bought this for $1150 after rebate.
- Most powerful laptop you can buy for $1150, hands down. Macbook Pro, eat your heart out. Surface Book with discrete GPU, you're funny.
- Big gorgeous 17.3 inch IPS screen, beautiful color reproduction, awesome wide viewing angles.
- Near silent at idle, whisper quiet at load.
- i7-4720HQ is a beast, it can handle anything you throw at it.
- Nvidia 970m is a beast, it can play all modern titles at 1080p in Ultra at 30-45 fps. Dial the settings down to HIgh for 45-60 fps.
- G-Sync just plain works, 45 fps looks like 60 fps.
- Big comfortable keyboard with long key travel.
- Huge trackpad with dedicated mouse keys.
- Backlit keyboard for late night gaming sessions.
- One screw, easy access to storage and RAM.
- Two drive bays, with three configuration options (2 SATA III, 1 M.2 PCIEx4).

Cons: - Huge and heavy, but you already knew that right?
- The power brick is a literal brick, you could smash it through a window with ease.
- The design was starting to grow a beard. I'm glad to see Asus revamped the ROG lineup for late 2015 with a brand new look.
- Macro keys are oddly placed, and the replacement of the NUM lock with an Asus Gaming Center button as unnecessary. I'm glad to see Asus also fixed these quirks with the new ROG lineup.
- DVD-drive in 2016? Who buys PC games on DVD anymore?
- Speakers are meh. Not bad but not good either.
- Battery life is terrible even with a ginormous 8-cell battery. I get about 2.5 hours of web browsing at 25% screen brightness.
- Tons of bloatware.
- Weird Asus HDD partitions.
- Nvidia drivers did not work out of the box (but that's not Asus's fault so I can't blame them). I had to go to the Nvidia site and download the latest drivers to get the 970m to work.

Other Thoughts: Even with the list of cons, I'm still giving this laptop 5/5 Eggs. At $1150 you simply won't find a more powerful, well-rounded laptop. It can handle any application you throw at it, it can play any modern game at High or Ultra settings. G-Sync does voodoo witch magic to make games look smoother than the fps counter indicates. It's near-silent, it's comfortable, it has a huge gorgeous screen, it has easy expandability. The pros easily outweigh the cons, no its' not perfect but this is easily the best laptop you can buy for the money.

Before purchasing this laptop I was deciding between buying the new ROG models, but I didn't want to pay the $400 price premium. I was also thinking of buying the 980m version, but once again the $550 price premium wasn't worth it to me - I'd rather save that money to buy the new Pascal GPUs for 4k desktop gaming. Lastly, I knew what I was getting into with buying an 8.4 lb desktop replacement. This beast stays inside of my house 99% of the time, I only carry it from room to room on occasion, and that's fine with me.

Pros: - Bought this laptop to play Fallout 4, runs it beautifully on ultra settings with mods
- Case feels solid and sturdy
- Excellent cooling, played Fallout 4 for hours on ultra and the keyboard didn't even get warm
- Fingerprint resistant
- Didn't come chock full of bloatware, only a few things to remove

Cons: - User manual is pretty much useless, have to Google how to set up the macro keys
- Keyboard backlighting isn't as bright as I'd expected
- Speakers are behind the screen when it's opened so sounds are kind of weird and echo-y cause it bounces off the back of the screen. It sounds great if you turn it around and look at the back of the screen lol. This is the only reason I docked an egg

Other Thoughts: It doesn't bother me but it might be pertinent to note that this laptop (and it's power brick) are very heavy (and huge!!). If you plan to tote it around you will definitely want a large carrying case to put it in.

Pros: none

Cons: Can't even turn this on. Screen was black/dead upon arrival. Seems to be very common issue per the rest of the reviews here. Already contact for return/exchange. Please choose a better courier/ do a better packing on the box!

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,


Thank you for bringing this to our knowledge. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience we have caused you. It is unfortunate to lose you so soon but please consider contacting me directly should you have any questions regarding ASUS products. My email is cl-tom@asus.com and our 24/7 support line is posted below. Have a great day!

Thank you for choosing ASUS
Best Regards,
Tom
Asus Customer Loyalty US Support
http://www.asus.com/us/support/CallUs

Pros: Performance

Cons: Durability, Screen, battery life, build quality, display, sound, size, weight

Other Thoughts: Yes, it runs games great, if it works, but the build quality and screen quality are terrible. The first one was completely dead. Second one works but the monitor has horrible back bleed, making anything slightly dark look like garbage. Also, the mouse button on the second one didn't work! Asus must be going way downhill, returning TWO of their laptops now, definitely going with a different brand.

Manufacturer Response:

Hello Joshua,


Thank you for your positive comments on the system performance. I am sorry to hear that you were not satisfied with the quality of build on some of the components. I suggest running a bios updating through you ASUS update utility application and reinstalling your drivers from our support and drivers page. You are welcome to contact me for repair options on your display. My email is cl-tom@asus.com and our 24/7 support line is posted below. Have a great day!

Thank you for choosing ASUS
Best Regards,
Tom
Asus Customer Loyalty US Support
http://www.asus.com/us/support/CallUs

Pros: Beautiful looking. GTX 970M
Runs World of Warships, everything on Ultra, 1920x1080 resolution at 78-85fps and the fans didn't even come on.
Ultra cool, beautiful screen, the red back lighting on the keyboard is soft on the eyes.
For the money, no better machine on the market. Mine even game with a free 128 GB SSD

Cons: None so far, finger crossed.
It's heavy. This is not a machine to carry around and Facebook in Starbucks.
This is a machine for gamers, graphic designers, and industry professionals who need a desktop replacement but who need to get on a plane every so often and don't want to put a desktop in luggage.

Other Thoughts: New Egg are solid.

I ordered the cheapest shipping option $2. 4-7 days supposedly.

Still arrived in 24 hrs.

Pros: Windows 10 isn't so bad. I can play BF4 on Ultra at 65 FPS.

Cons: Nothing yet.

Other Thoughts: I wrote this review to make sure that you turn of GSYNC immediately. With this one, my BF4 framerate from low and ultra was like 30-45 FPS, with it off it was 200 FPS on low and 65FPS on ultra.

I also used iobit driver booster to just update all of the drivers.

Pros: Packaged well

Cons: I ordered this from Newegg a week ago. It's the ASUS G751jt with 970m 3gb ram. I got the box today. It came in good condition. No issues with the packaging. I set up the laptop and powered it on, and was immediately met with a black screen with display flickering issues. Tried turning it on and off, contacting ASUS support. I was told there was nothing I could do but return it.

It's disappointing to see a product this expensive so fragile and error prone out of the box. Checking around the internet after revealed that this isn't an isolated incident. Apparently display issues with the device are common, which can occur months down the line for some users.

This seems like a display driver issue with the hardware ASUS uses that hasn't been fully resolved. As I said, the packaging of the product was solid. What's concerning is the state of the product itself even after that.

I'm issuing this as a warning to potential buyers. You're investing a lot of money into a product with known display and driver issues. You'd be better served with a different model. In my experience with computers, a notebook with a faulty display is time bomb waiting to go off. It's not worth the risk.

I'll be returning my ASUS and will update this as I learn more. I'm disappointed by the quality of the laptop. I expected a good return for my investment.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,


Thank you for your positive comments. I am sorry to hear that there were issues with your display. Have you tried connecting your unit to an external monitor? You can also try removing your battery and power adapter then holding onto the power button for 30 seconds. If you are still experiencing these issues feel free to contact me directly should you like to explore anymore of your repair options. My email is cl-tom@asus.com and our 24/7 support line is posted below. Have a great day!

Thank you for choosing ASUS
Best Regards,
Tom
Asus Customer Loyalty US Support
http://www.asus.com/us/support/CallUs

Pros: Fast!

Cons: Biggest and probably only complaint is the keyboard. ASUS decided to mark the keys with red lettering and back lite the keys with red LEDs. I'm partially Red - Green color blind as is 8% of all males and it is very hard for me to see the lettering on the keyboard. If I turn up the back lighting all the way I can just get by. Fortunately I'm almost a touch-typist so once I get positioned it is not too difficult but I'm surprised ASUS made the "Styling" decision to make the key lettering red, bad decision as far as I'm concerned.

Other Thoughts: My model came with a single 1T SATA disk. I upgraded it with a 512 G PCIe SSD and moved the 1T into the second drive bay. I had to do a fresh install of Windows 10 to get the PCIe SSD disk recognized but that was OK since I wanted to get the system cleaned up and remove any unwanted try and buy software.

The system with the PCIe SSD is a real screamer, very happy with the performance, just wish the keyboard had white lettering.

Pros: -Came in less than 24 hours somehow
- Looks cool
- Nvidia GPU driver updated successfully

Cons: - So much random junk installed on here (bloatware)
- Cant run the first game i tried to install off steam
- Mcafree blocks everything
- Windows updates keep saying they're failing or freezing half way through
- Asked to register my product by Asus when I do the log in options are greyed out, until i pick a language, when i pick english it just reloads the same page.
- Asus "giftbox" opens up a page that never loads

Literally never been so frustrated in my life, I think im just going to install windows 7 on this and MAYBE upgrade to windows 10.

Other Thoughts: Im sure once there is a clean install of this laptop with updated drivers it will run like a champ, until then im ready to drop kick this piece of ****

Pros: - Great screen, gorgeous colors, and at 17" it's convenient to work on two windows side-by-side.
- Excellent graphics performance. Sure, the 980M is a bit better, but I'm on a budget and am confident the 970M will keep me satisfied for at least 2-3 years.
- Well-built and nice-looking.
- Best laptop at this price point, imo.

Cons: - Heavy and bulky. Had to get a new bag to carry it. (Fortunately, I don't need to carry it very often).
- Would be nice to have an SSD, but again, I'm on a budget and that would've increased the price.
- The touchpad seems to default to Mac-style "natural scrolling" and doesn't provide an option for conveniently changing that setting, but I got used to it quickly so it's not a big deal (perhaps all Windows laptops are moving in this direction and I just didn't get the memo?).

Other Thoughts: If you want a powerful machine at a low price, and you won't be constantly carrying it around, then I highly recommend this laptop!