Pros: -Excellent performance, especially on games -Great hardware for the price

Cons: -Beats audio renders external audio devices effectively useless. The driver arbitrarily changes default device settings and has a "user friendly" interface that prevents you from accessing advanced settings and configuring it manually. This wouldn't be a big issue if the sound hardware wasn't proprietary; generic Windows drivers are not compatible. You can't even install the standard IDT audio drivers (which the Beats garbage is a reskin of) that would allow you to configure your audio settings. And good luck trying to get headsets to work. Beats automatically registers headsets as "Communications Devices" and prevents you from using them as default audio devices, meaning sound still plays from your speakers when you plug headphones in. Brilliant. Also the hard drive speed is abysmal.