Pros: This laptop has good battery life, is very light and cheap. Unlike some other smaller laptops, the keyboard is fullsize, or close enough for me to not notice. I should also say that the hardware does not feel cheap. It's not going to play modern games, but although I haven't tried, you could probably get away with games from 3-5 years ago. If you have a decent desktop machine and would just like to supplement with something to use for web browsing/messaging on the couch or while traveling, this is a good choice. If you're realistic about how a laptop this cheap should perform, you probably aren't going to be disappointed.

Cons: I want to install Linux on it, but the hardware is not very Linux friendly. You will have to mess around in the BIOS to disable secureboot. The WIFI chip is broadcom and the proprietary driver seems a bit flaky. It will only connect after suspend/resume. Even then it will not work sometimes and must be rebooted. The ethernet chip prevents the laptop from suspending unless the kernel module is unloaded and reloaded when resuming. I assumed, since this laptop is sold in Windows and Ubuntu varieties, that the hardware would be Ubuntu friendly. Not so. The Ubuntu version of this product must have different components. So if this is what you plan to do, this is just not the laptop for you. It's kind of a shame, because in typical ASUS fashion, they included a bunch of weird software hacks in the Windows 8 installation that make it kind of buggy and annoying to use. I wish ASUS would just admit to themselves that they make good hardware that ends up sucking because they don't know how to do the software.