Joined on 11/05/05
Excelent Card
Pros: Runs cool, looks great, and the noise level is decent. Intel has come a long way with the drivers and I've had zero issues with them. Plays almost all my games on high settings @1440p. Cyberpunk, LoL, WoW, CoD, Diablo 4. Battlefield 2042 I run on low-medium settings but the game still looks good. Excellent in Photoshop/Lightroom, AV1 encoding, a beast in DaVinci Resolve, smooth scrubbing at 6k when paired with an i5 13600k.
Cons: I haven't run into any issues so far.
Overall Review: I would 100% buy again, I was hesitant to buy a GPU manufactured by Acer at first however after watching Gamers Nexus review and tear down I decided to make the purchase and am glad I did. Intel has resolved most of the driver issues that plagued Arc on launch, there is still performance in these cards that future driver updates will unlock. With 16GBs of vRAM, this card is a better long-term buy than the new 4060TI or 7600.
Almost
Pros: It works well and does what it should do.
Cons: The included power cable was bad, of course, it was the last thing I tested when troubleshooting... The plastic around one of the pins on the motherboard connector was half gone though still seems to work and hasn't caught fire yet.
Overall Review: Quality control should be a little better however the product works fine and would buy it again.
MSI Claw
Pros: I use this way more then I thought I would. Joycons are awesome, using Windows with the touch screen and joycons is much easier then I thought. Most all games I've tested or played have worked just fine. Good battery life. Works really well on a thunderbolt/USB-C dock with external monitors.
Cons: Some games are just better with mouse and keyboard...
Overall Review: This is an excllent handheld, I would have probably went with the Core Ultra 5 looking back since the GPU on both are the same and it does use less power. 100% would buy again etherway.
Asus Zenbook 14
Pros: Ryzen 7 Build Windows Hello Audio - Comes with a USB C Dac Battery Life Extremely Fast The best unboxing experience ever Looks amazing
Cons: Had some issues with wifi to start with but seems to have stopped after updates. It would be very slow until I reconnected or switched SSIDs after waking up form sleep. However updates seem to have resolved the issue.
Overall Review: About Me: For the past 7 years I have been working in corporate/enterprise I.T. - I worked for over 10 years at a computer shop building and repairing desktops and laptops. I looked for a few weeks for a Windows laptop that I could justify buying over one of the new Apple M1's. This was it, Ryzen 7 competes with the M1 much better then even the new intel 11th gen i7's. You would have to pay over double for an M1 Mac with 16GBs and 1TB NVMe SSD. I played LoL with over 100 FPS with default settings and it looked great. Capture one edits Sony A7rII photos just fine, 42MPs. I also use Davinci Resolve and I have had no issues encoding 4k videos. Build quality is outstanding, this looks amazing. Battery last much longer then any laptop I've ever used. Asus needs to keep doing this!!!
Thermaltake Versa II
Pros: Well Built, lots of room, SSD mount, bottom mount power supply decent cable management
Cons: None
Overall Review: You have to remove the front panel to remove the drive inserts.
Refurb: Steelseries Shift
Pros: Solid Keyboard, USB and Audio ports work fine. Lots of features. Perfect size.
Cons: The right side space bar key (smaller side) doesn't seem to work but not an issue since I don't use that key anyway but enough to take off an egg,
Overall Review: It came in the original box, could barely tell it had even been opened. Keyboard was warped in plastic, owner manual had not been opened at all and the case sticker was still inside.