Pros: This is an awesome buy at this price. Had to swap out the slow spinning HD (5400 rpm) for an M.2 drive (Samsung 950 512 GB), dropped in more memory (32 GB total), and this thing is a beast. Instant wake-up, instant log-in. Runs multiple VMs without hiccups. Plays games like a champ.

Cons: Like others have said, upgrades are not fun on this laptop. It can be done, but take your time doing it or you could damage it. People are complaining about the mousepad, but I use a wireless mouse for that reason, so not really a con for me.

Other Thoughts: I tried to upgrade it once, but it started acting up, so got the warranty work done and had them re-install the upgrades while they were at it. It cost me $90 for install at the M*********r near me. Overall, still a great laptop that really excels when more ram and the M.2 SSD are installed.

Pros: The technical specs for the money are a good deal, however, this laptop is unusable without external keyboard/mouse, see cons.

Cons: First off to add a M.2 card is borderline insanity in this day and age. You have to disassemble the entire machine to a point where you can remove the motherboard to flip it over to get to the M.2 slot. Your stomach will churn as you trust flimsy plastic to not break while you dismember it without ever even using it just to add a M.2 card. Also the battery is not replaceable, again, in 2016 you make a laptop with this much proprietary junk! They must assume this is disposable.

Okay now on to my purchase killer... the "precision touchpad". Yes this was pushed on manufacturers by Microsoft, but they could have said no. Stay away from any laptop where the touchpad looks like a single panel, no buttons. These things are terrible, there is lag, there are jumps, the buttons and scolls don't work as expected, there aren't many settings to change because windows controls it, not synaptic's or elan. I have a saved chat with an Acer customer support that ends with them giving me Microsofts 1-800 number, never again Acer, never again. You will notice on high end gaming and business machines they have NOT moved to the ridiculous "precision touchpad", there is a reason. Also because of the touchpad it is impossible to run windows 7 without any control over the touchpad, it will load as a basic mouse, but it will jump all over the place and there is no driver you can install to give you more control or functions, you have to disable it every time you want to type.

Again, without Windows 7 support you loose 90% or more of the business market, and 60% or more of home users. Maybe windows 10 will make it, I don't know the future, but it is years away from happening and what I know is that right now in my secure business environment I have to run windows 7 with our proprietary software, so this machine is out of the question with its unofficial windows 7 support and no touchpad support whatsoever in windows 7.

you have been warned. again, fantastic specs ruined by Acer disposable engineering and Microsoft precision touchpad

Pros: +FAST. Light for a 17incher.
+Excellent GPU for the price
+upgradable(ish, see below)
+screen is sturdy, matte, pleasant, can be crazy bright
+red backlit keys are cool... but (below again)

Cons: -check the dimensions - fit is tight in my 17 inch backpack. it's a little thick on the bezel, bigger than most 17 inchers
-Upgrade is a warranty voiding nightmare for the uninitiated - if you are not comfortable COMPLETELY disassembling a device (removing a laptop motherboard, not daughterboard, not through a screw bearing panel - complete disassembly) consider it "not upgradable"
-red backlight on keys doesn't shine through the "letter" which isn't a big deal, just struck me as weird. if you use the backlight to actually SEE the keys, it might upset you off more. Also, I wish it was amber.

Other Thoughts: So I have the 4th gen I7/860M version of this laptop. BOY WAS I SORE when 960m hit a couple months later, now it's 960m+6th gen i7. Ouch. I digress though. I've owned this laptop for just over 1 year now.
I love this laptop. Upon arrival, I immediately gutted it out, popped in a crucial M2 SSD, and some more ram, (VMs for work) and put it back together. This requires, on the 17inch model, that the board come out completely, as it must be flipped over to install SSD or RAM. This may have changed on the 960m board, but FYI, that was my experience.

The fans get audible when you're going full bore on a game, but for me, this is on a desk, table, etc. so it has never seemed excessively loud to me, "normal" compared to standard fanned laptops. Nowhere near as loud as a ROG can get.

The keys are mounted in with small melt-over plastic rivets. Probably 40 or so, it took a while to get apart so I could paint it without ruining the keyboard. Keep in mind though, if you mush a key REALLY hard and pop a rivet, it'll be very difficult to repair without expert hands and a good understanding of plastic adhesives. DONT mash a key. It is strange the keyboard isn't screw mounted anywhere, but at this price, I'm very happy.

The whole thing is about an inch thick at the thickest. With the keyboard light turned off, no one would know this was a gaming laptop, which is a boon in business environments when I'm doin' stuff. I do onsite SMB response and IT consulting, so it's nice to "look" professional with my most powerful portable.

ITS BIG. I recommend you handle a 17 inch laptop prior to purchase. I frequently reach for my surface pro out of convenience because you cannot safely hold this with one hand and type on it with the other, it's not balanced for it, and it's not effective.

The touchpad isn't good. at all. It uses a "rocker" switch with a single clicker and a contact on each side - so it's very difficult to right click, and all clicks feel "spongy." It's fine for browsing, but for any heavy use, precision, drawing, gaming I bust out a mouse. This is a de facto standard in most laptops, and all acer laptops I've touched and sold, but it's an important note - this is no exception. (still beats the surface pro 2's bizarre canvas touchpad missing a clicker, though)

That's all I can really think of to type. I really like this laptop, and I use it very frequently. I'd highly recommend it for a budget, professional looking laptop.

Pros: - 17.3" screen
- 6th Gen I7 6700HQ
- DDR4 Ram
- GTX 960M

So far I have thrown my collection of games at it and the laptop just begs for more, at the time of writing this review I had been playing "The Evil Within" on max settings and there is no graphical lag at all.

Has a PCIe M.2 keyed SSD slot, & 2 ram slots which makes for a killer rig. Drop in a SSD and 16GB of ram and this laptop becomes a beast.

Cons: - Hard to perform upgrades, not for the faint of heart. It is doable if you take your time and have experience taking laptops apart

Other Thoughts: Highly recommended purchase, put in a little for upgrades and this becomes a monster of a gaming rig

Pros: Beautiful crisp display, the entire body of this laptop is covered in that soft rubber/silicone that makes it look and feel pretty cool. The downside is that I can foresee this wearing away over time leaving use patterns... or perhaps peeling. I've owned this for about a week now, and done some gaming on it. It does run pretty hot while in game and making full use of the graphics card - on some games in ultra settings with DX11 I have actually seen this slowly drain the battery while it's plugged in. Not a huge concern for me because I mainly play ArcheAge with custom settings in DX9 and it performs extremely well and no issue with the slow battery drain, but if I were a bit more extreme I'd be alarmed. I like the way the keyboard types (I know... just a matter of taste), some nice buttons to kill the keyboard backlight as well as the touchpad. Aside from the sluggishness of the 5400rpm hard drive, this thing is really fast. I plan on upgrading the RAM and adding an SSD later on, which I imagine will make this puppy sing. All the games I play including ArcheAge, Eve Online, SWTOR, The Secret World, Dead Space, Skyrim etc... plays on high or ultra settings with no issues.

Cons: The heat when in game worries me. The complaints from other users about how difficult the ram, battery and hard drive are to change worry me.. though haven't looked into those yet. I am an extreme do it yourselfer who has fixed countless laptops and replaced screens etc for all my friends so I don't imagine it's outside my realm of capability but still. The battery drain while in ultra settings in games worries me. Too small of a power supply? I dunno... not a huge deal for me right now, but others might seriously take that into consideration. There's also this annoying audio thing that happens... system sounds... any sounds really that hit a certain frequency causes the chassis to rattle and sounds like a blown speaker. I can put my palm firmly on the surface of the machine and it stops the rattling but... gawlee. Alright, I could nitpick it to death if I wanted....

Other Thoughts: All in all it's a good machine that handles my games as I need it to, and doubles as a work computer. With all the negative quirks I mentioned above, I still feel like it was money well spent. I did know getting into this that getting a medium end system was bound to have it's cost to cons ratio. For now, it purrs like a kitten and unless I'm actively looking for things to be wrong with it, I don't even notice any of the downsides.

Pros: Very fast, video card is top-end, 17" is awesome

Cons: 8 GB of memory is too low + no SSD = just upgrade, right? Wrong. The process of getting to the RAM module and the M.2 SSD slot is unbelievably over-complicated. There's no reason why Acer couldn't have put a RAM module window on the bottom of the machine (like every laptop manufacturer used to do), but they want you to pay more for the upgraded machine so they make self-upgrades nearly impossible.

Other Thoughts: I gave this machine 1 egg because the lack of customization makes this an obvious bad deal for budget-conscious enthusiasts. I'm not sure who would go for such a high-end laptop with only 8GB of RAM that you cannot upgrade. So disappointing, especially considering how easy it would've been for them to (at least) put a window to the RAM module on the bottom.

Pros: Beautiful, bright screen. Backlit keyboard is nice. Extremely fast, will run any game I throw at it in Ultra 1920x1080. Case is actually more attractive than it appears in the photos here.

Cons: Upgrading the hard drive is not for the faint of heart, you have to completely remove the keyboard and upper shell of the case to get at it. The hard drive isn't even attached with screws into the chassis, just resting in a foam bed. Battery is also not removable without disassembling the case. I suppose this explains the low price.

Other Thoughts: I immediately replaced the HDD with a SSD. This thing is silly fast now, will boot into windows in under ten seconds. It can open LibreOffice in about 2 or 3 seconds. Definite improvement from my old Core 2 Duo!