Pros: The laptop opens up to a matte finish black inside keyboard and track pad with no extraneous buttons or a bunch of stickers - it's very sharp looking. Also, I do not think the 10+ pounds description is accurate for those of you weary of that number. The laptop itself is a lot thinner than other 'gaming' laptops and is just under 6 pounds. It's sleek! Also, the red backlighting is adjustable in both positioning and strength of glow. I added a 250 msata ssd to this immediately and moved windows 8 to it. Now, I'm not exactly technically inclined but I was able to do this plus add another 8g ram stick I had around without much trouble. The manufacturer has made the chassis really easy to open and work with which makes upgrading very easy. With the additions, I am extremely excited about this baby. I hook two 23'' IPS monitos to this (1 HDMI, 1 VGA) and use this laptop for some enginnering process modeling, some minor video editing and gaming - WoW and Dota2. All of which it has handled great! I am able to play WoW on a mix of high/ultra settings with around 45-50 average fps. Controlling the extended desktop on my other monitor is seamless, so keeping track of other applications is a breeze.

Cons: The laptop has an extra boost setting for the CPU fan which adds some noise if you're using it while gaming. The computer itself does get pretty hot while I'm gaming but that is not unusual for a laptop and this one being thinner than traditional gaming rigs will make the heat more obvious. My fpd doesn't seem to suffer though.

Overall Review: For those concerned about the 'slow HD' mentioned in other reviews, I would definitely recommend putting in a msata ssd to accompany the 1TB HD that is included (they are separate slots, for those unaware). It's pretty easy to install and SSDs rule anyway!