Pros: Quad core; just keep throwing more work at it, it'll keep chugging. Integrated graphics are unbelievable; can tackle most games at med-high with no problem. Combine the integrated with the discrete in crossfire (for certain titles) and it gets even better. 1600MHz RAM is noticeably quick and there is a vacant soDIMM slot for future upgrades. Wireless N + Bluetooth 4.0 + Gigabit Ethernet. Windows 8 boots with "SSD speeds" but on a 5400RPM HDD (I average 9 seconds from power button to lockscreen) Keyboard is very comfortable + 10key pad. Also has no proprietary keys that only work with particular programs as some other machines do. Every key is usable with straight Windows. Touchpad is better than others give it credit for (just disable any annoying gestures especially tap-to-click and it's much better) Hey at least it has separate buttons instead of "touch zones" Runs surprisingly cool for having AMD chips under the hood. (even under load) Battery life is ~5 hrs on "Balanced". DVD drive is very sturdy. (Doesn't rattle when the disc spins. Even massively unbalanced discs are nice and quiet.) Ships with x64 bit Windows 8. (give Win 8 a chance it's just windows 7 with some new graphics tacked onto it.) Dolby Home Theater v4 keeps speakers from crackling at higher volumes. Audio out jacks are wired well and don't "hiss" through speakers or headphones. Headphone out jack supports headsets that combine the mic and phones on the same 3.5mm plug, as well as standard headphones. Comes with quite a bit of preloaded bloatware, BUT it all uninstalls nicely and without issues. Screen is plenty bright and plenty dark and has decent blacks. Machine is very light for it's size. Webcam and built-in mic are decent. Media card reader works well.

Cons: Some titles suffer from graphical micro-stuttering because the two GPUs take turns rendering every other frame. (many games are optimized to overcome this so it's not a big deal.) The integrated GPU is so powerful, I'd recommend running everything you can off of it alone, (solves stuttering, runs cooler, saves energy) if the integrated is not cutting it, then throw in the discrete GPU. Graphics hardware can only run in two modes, integrated GPU only or BOTH integrated and discrete GPUs in crossfire. You cannot run off the discrete alone. Definitely should get an 8GB 1600MHz RAM kit for this, 4GB is ok for a while, but you'll start to feel the sluggishness of dumping memory to HDD cache under heavier loads. While it boots quickly, 5400 RPM HDD is a tad slow. I live with it, but others may want to upgrade to something faster. Although 2.8GHz turbo core is listed in the specs, I have never been able to hit 2.8GHz. The highest I've ever seen is 2.28GHz. (Still feels plenty fast though) Screen's colors are a bit washed out, but... you can't win em all. Speakers may not crackle, but they are very quiet and have, as little as makes no difference, no bass whatsoever. Movie dialog is crisp and loud, but music will suffer from the lack of bass. Glossy black finish is not the easiest to keep shiny, it collects fingerprints badly. Outer casing plastic is not the sturdiest. Flexes a little under pressure, but I've seen worse. Just be gentle with it. Power brick gets quite hot under heavy load. (Charging and gaming combined)

Overall Review: I had difficulty installing Linux on this machine, likely due to the odd GPU setup. Your mileage may vary. The crossfired GPUs mean that the graphics drivers must be repackaged by the manufacturer, AMD's normal drivers won't work properly. I suppose you could build your own drivers, but I've never tried that myself. Just something to think about. For the money, this laptop has blown away my expectations. I would highly recommend this to a friend. After owning this machine for 7 months or so, and using it heavily and daily at college, (programming and gaming) not one thing has gone wrong. All the ports still work (and I use every single one of them every day).

Pros: Reasonably solid construction. Bluetooth works well enough.

Cons: COMFORT Very heavy. (Heaviest headphones I've ever worn) Very strong clamping pressure (uncomfortable, like it's trying to crush your head) Shallow ear cups. (Don't be fooled by the picture, the can is mostly electronics, no room for your ears.) FEATURES Atrocious wireless link. (Static and signal loss rather often, even when sitting less than a foot from the fob.) No software controls for things like EQ. No realtime monitoring for mic. SOUND I wouldn't call it 'surround sound', more like artificial sound-stage expander, and it doesn't feel like it wraps around behind you either. An exhausting listen: (Overly harsh highs, and a bloated mid-range that sounds more like harmonic room-modes than mids) Extremely lackluster bass. (I have a dozen pairs of headphones, and I used to think the TB x11's had awful bass. These beat it. They're worse.)

Overall Review: I was unbelievably disappointed with these headphones. I was a fan of the TB x11's for their comfort and realtime mic monitoring. (They didn't sound too great, but I could wear them all day.) These though, for almost $300? Disgusting. I'd recommend looking elsewhere for wireless headphones. Have a look at the Logitech G930. They're almost half the price and have a great software suite to tweak them. (They sound pretty good too.)

Pros: Every piece you actually interact with is extremely nice for the price. -IPS 1080p screen. (Who else even offers this at this price?) -Above average touchpad. (Large, Precision Drivers) -Decent keyboard. (Shallow throw, but perfectly usable, no stupid 'E-Mail' hotkeys) -Metal-clad construction. Feels pretty good, but LOOKS amazing. ("Is that a Mac?") -Surprisingly good speakers. (See other thoughts) -Well rounded I/O (Fullsize HDMI, plenty of USBs, even a TypeC USB port, AND an SD card reader. Very nice) -Lay-flat 180 hinge. (I hate laptops that can't open all the way. Sometimes I'm standing.... come on....) Other goodies. -Full-fat Windows 10 Home (at dinky chromebook prices) -Passive cooling. (No dust, no noise, no moving parts to wear out) -Disassemble-able (Just a handful of screws on the bottom) -Vacant M.2 SATA slot. (It is my understanding that this is NOT PCIe compatible, FYI) -Dual Channel 1866MHz RAM. (dual-channel has very good performance. especially helpful to aid the iGPU in performance) -Dual Band AC wifi. (an Intel card no less, in my model. Top marks)

Cons: Physical -Biggest drawback, RAM capacity. If this had 8GB, I'd recommend this machine over almost anything else up to around 500 bucks in this weight/size class. Even if it were socketed, that would get a win from me. Sadly it is soldered, and cannot be upgraded. -Heavy multitasking will bring this to its knees pretty hard. (But the limited RAM discourages multitasking anyway) Software -Preinstalled Win10 has minimal bloat, but the few things it does have will cripple your performance. (see other thoughts) -Factory software configuration makes a bad first impression. (see other thoughts)

Overall Review: -Storage is a personal situation. There's enough for any normal programs you'd need, and probably all of your MS office files, but I wouldn't try to store lots of pictures or video on the primary drive. Onedrive strikes a great middleground here because you can 'see' what you have, but it won't download any of it untill you actually try to open it. (Can always upgrade the storage with that empty M.2 slot if you really need to) -Install Windows 10 Home freshly from a USB drive... it's free, gets rid of any Acer garbage (like Norton) and you get almost 8GB of storage back for your trouble. (really, you aught to do this for any OEM machine.) Drivers are all loaded automatically on this model, just cycle Windows Update a few times, and it'll be golden. -Is your sound shreiky, tinny, and horrible? Go into your sound settings and DISABLE enhancements, it pulls right back into true. (Makes a huge difference, they're not bad speakers, they just have some weird DSP setting in the software) -Keep your expectations in check on performance. The Pentium is 'good enough' for any normal office tasks and browsing the internet. Very causal gaming is achievable, but so is digging a hole with a spoon. Heavier programs like Photoshop or Premiere really aren't going to work well, I'd look elsewhere for those. TL;DR: this is an excellent machine for the price, the screen, overall appearance, and build quality punch well above their price bracket... and it has just enough oomph to be the only computer for most average users. There's plenty to love for power users as well, but not as their ONLY computer, this would compliment a decent desktop in a heartbeat. Best use-case is college. Take this to class, come home to your desktop.

Pros: -High Capacity. -Good Timings. -Low voltage. -Cheapest (2x8GB) Kit on the market, when I bought it. -Passed 5 passes of MemTest 86+ with flying colors.

Cons: -Not... as compatible as I'd have liked in my older Toshiba P775. (See Other Thoughts)

Overall Review: After much debugging, I have reached the conclusion that the Intel HD Graphics on my laptop is unable to initialize its memory stake on these larger DIMMs. It will POST, and the BIOS reads all 16GB, but no OS will boot, (Windows, Linux, Flashdrive, PXE, nothing.) My solution was to use one 4GB DIMM in slot 0, and one of these 8GB DIMMS in slot 1. I can boot OSs in this config, and use all 12GB available. (It seems that the GPU can allocate across a 4GB stick, and the system is compatible with 8GB DIMMS, just not in both slots.) Go figure.... This of course is not the fault of the memory. I tested them in a different machine which didn't have these limitations, and they work perfectly.

Pros: Performance for days. (Fastest-clocked Intel you can get, except the priciest i7's). Very low power consumption and heat. (Stock cooler is perfectly adequate for this one.) Performance for days. (This thing is a monster for gaming, especially for emulators, which are pretty heavy on the CPU) Full HD graphics goodness. (QuickSync, top-tier 4600 graphics core, multi-display support, etc...) Performance for days. (The crazy high clock speed makes this faux quad-core haul enough derriere to keep up with all but the most brutal of workloads)

Cons: (Obligatory stock cooler complaint) But it's not inadequate.

Overall Review: As a long-time computer enthusiast, I must say this little chip has thoroughly rustled my jimmies. My main rig is an overclocked, AMD FX octa-core'd, Nvidia SLI'd, RAIDed SSD'd, triple-headed, monster workstation. And I can say from trying it out for a month that (other than video encoding) a system based around this CPU feels snappier and faster than my workstation for just about every task I do with my computer. (I'm a dev, and a gamer, so there's a lot in that list) As mentioned, video encoding is the only thing this little i3 falls a bit short on. (It's really not that bad, it just doesn't have the cores.) And actually, if you're okay with the quality of Intel's QuickSync video encoder, the i3 performs very well. Because this particular i3 exists, I can not understand why anyone would pay extra for an i5.

Pros: Connectors! This card has a bunch, including full size HDMI (great for Home Theater use) and DisplayPort (maximum convertibility) Noise! What noise? It's really very quiet, even when it's getting thrashed. Heat and power consumption! Very cool, and very efficient. (I've got it practically suffocating in a very cramped case, in a poorly ventilated AV cabinet, but it still manages to turbo boost no problem. Max temp I've managed is 75C running furmark) Powaaaah! Gratuitous. These Maxwell chips don't mess around. I can't remember FPS's off the top of my head, but I haven't had it choke on anything I've thrown at it yet. (not necessarily at uber-maximum settings, but definitely high enough to dazzle)

Cons: Any downsides would be entirely platform specific. I'll mention them in other thoughts.

Overall Review: This card is dual slot. Low profile? Yes. But it still takes up two slots. 2GB of RAM may start to show its inadequacy on the very latest of games. I suggest this be used for HTPC applications, namely because the RAM is hit pretty hard by anti-aliasing, which isn't as necessary from 8ft away on a large TV.