Asus Q550LF-BBI7T07 (Best Buy Exclusive ???)

I have been eyeing this laptop for a while now after being set on the lenovo u430 touch. However 14 inches is not enough for me and the grainy 1600 x 900 display killed it for me. Fortunately I was able to search around and going through all the toshiba, sony and hp fluff, I found the Asus Q550LF from best buy.

Asus 15.6" TouchScreen Laptop 8GB Memory 1TB Hard Drive Q550LF-BBI7T07 - Best Buy

Since I can't find any information on this laptop on Asus website, I'm wondering if this mode might be a Best Buy exclusive model?

I haven't found much information on this laptop so far nor does people talk about it much. All I see is about the N550 but that silver keyboard on white background looks gimmicky to me. And the drilled holes for speakers on the top doesn't make sense.

Does anyone have this laptop( QF 550LF) and can share their experiences.

Pros -
1920 x 1080 IPS display is remarkably clear and colors are great
Aluminum finish
Asus button lights up
Back Lit keyboard
White keyboard on Black background looks professional
Touchscreen + Windows 8
Nvidia GT 745m
3 USB slots
1 TB more than enough storage
Subwoofer external speaker is intriguing to me
Haswell processor

Cons -
Somewhat reflective
High pricepoint 1000$ + tax
Very fat, even fatter than my 2010 Toshiba I am on right now
no SSD
Only a dual core i7 processor (i7 - 4500)
Starts at 1.8 ghz
Moderately heavy at 6lbs ( I plan on traveling with it everyday)

Is this worth the 1000$ pricetag?, Should I wait for Best Buy to lower the price on this or should I pull the trigger and just purchase it now.

 

There are a few people on this forum who have it I think, although they aren't too active.

 

Yup Best Buy exclusive. I have the Q51 basically the same with less. Depends on what you want.? If is for home and you need a cd it will be fine. If your not going to heavy game. I have a quad core i7 also. The Q51 will keep up for what I use it for= searching the web.I saw the Q55 it looks nice. If your not in a hurry I would wait to see if it goes on sale. I would still buy it. Its new so you may only save ~$50? If it does go on sale?? The Q55 would be better for multi tasking then the Q51. The Q51 is nice imo

 

That makes sense. I prefer this design, similar to 3rd gen Asus with 4th gen processor. I play games every once in a while but not a hard gamer at all. Multitasking is essential for me, at times I have over 50 chrome tabs open. I could push along with my current laptop so I will wait but 50$ seems to little of a discount especially for this computer. I expect low tier laptops around 400$ to get that discount. I might even wait until Black Friday and see what Best Buy does with this laptop.

 

Yeah $50 was just a guess. That's what the Q51 was. If you can wait you will be able to find a deal. Just keep your eyes open everyday / week for the deals

 

I bought this computer last weekend and so far I am happy... with the computer Windows 8 is another subject. It is hard to find on the Asus website here is a link that might help https://www.asus.com/supportonly/Q550LF Not sure what anyone hear thinks about Win8 but I am finding it difficult to switch over to using. I bought this laptop after quite a bit of research and advice from a local Linux users group. I wanted a laptop I would be able to run a few different versions of Linux on and everything pointed to either an Asus or Lenovo. I too wanted a bigger screen than 14", at least an i7 with a minimum of 8gb. I am not a fan on the touch screen either. If I want to touch a screen I will use my tablet or cell. Like I said good machine bad OS.

ironmike86 are you a Marine?

 

Use the desktop mode. It works like win7

 

Thanks for the link. I have a few questions, is the i7 4500 low voltage processor speedy enough for daily use? And how well does the touchpad gestures work? I only got 3 out of 6 of them to work on the model in store, I am not sure whether it was the model itself or that the laptop just has shaky touchpad gestures overall.

I think Windows 8.1 will bring back a limited start button allowing the metro interface to be completely bypassed!

 

What's been your experience with Linux on this machine? I'm eyeing the very similar N550JV and a lot of the hardware overlaps. Any issues with dual booting alongside Windows 8?

 

Still considering this laptop, would like to hear more opinions on this.

 

I had the q550 I like it. It has an Ips scree, so multiple viewing angle. But it doe glare.
I return it because the WIFI keep disconnecting.
Although after searching around that one has the best specs so far for the money. So I may think of giving it a second try.

 

Just wanted to give this thread a bump to see if anyone has bought this model recently and has more feedback to share. Due to time constraints I've got to buy through a retail store and basically have my choices narrowed down to this or the ATIV Book 8. I'm leaning towards the Asus as the keyboard feels better, it has an optical drive and is $200 cheaper. Wish it was a little more on par with the Book 8 in terms of battery life.

 

I bought one about 2 weeks ago. I'll try to give you guys some feedback...
I like the backlit keyboard, and the feel of it. Touchpad is actually pretty good for an Asus, guess they are learning. I don't really use the touch screen much though, so can't comment on that. I use "start is back", so basically boots to desktop with start button just like Win7. The display is pretty good, with good viewing angles and is pretty sturdy too. The audio with the remote speaker/sub is the best I've heard on a laptop to date (not saying it's the best, just the best I've heard).
I do game on it and I do have to say, after about an hour of gaming it get's pretty hot. It vents the hot air right up thru gap at the base of the display, totally heat soaking the lower screen and even the keyboard. Keys even start getting hot, so I'm not too impressed with the cooling.
As far as stability, it's been ok so far. Speed seems good. It's not a graphics powerhouse, especially when you're running games at the native res. Plan on doing some tweaking to make your games run smooth. I play wow, and it's good enough for that.
I don't think I'll change anything other than maybe add more ram and maybe swap out the crappy Atheros wifi module.... I had some connection issues at first, but reloading the driver seems to have cured that for now. The hard drive is plenty fast enough for me, and I'm picky about drive speed. My WD external USB 3.0 drive actually works on this laptop, unlike my last Asus. As far as battery life goes, I can't really comment on that yet as I've been using this mostly in the office (if I had to guess, maybe 5-6 hours of real use). Once I hit the road, I'll post an update.

 

Thanks for the input OV10stang. I was planning to buy in the next day or two, but of course all the Best Buys within an hour of me are now sold out!

 

Thanks for the review. Where do you download updated drivers for the wifi issues?

Same here, you should give us your impressions and a review of it when you do get this laptop.

 

I got the drivers right from Asus support website, but they are not updated, they are the same exact version. Reloading them seemed to have cured the connection issue I was having. ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download

 

Well, as luck would have it a BB in the area got re-stocked and I just picked one up. The guy claimed this would get better battery life than the ATIV Book 8 but we shall see! I will report back once I've had a chance to put it through it's paces. If anyone has some good posts/threads for things to do upon initial set-up I would appreciate it.

 

Managed properly haswell can give improvements to battery life

 

Thanks for the highly informative post! And so that I'm not a hypocrite, the ATIV 8 gets 7-9+ hours on battery while the Asus Q550 gets mixed reviews on bestbuy.com. I have not seen anyone post a specific number so far with this unit though. Hoping for the best.

 

Lol, well haswell is more efficient per Wh of battery but that samsung does have a huge 92Wh battery so it is actually unlikely the asus will be able to match it. However the graphics will be much faster in the asus so your money goes to different places.

 

Hi,

New to the site and have a concern about this laptop. I recently purchased it and have updated the bios to 209. This 209 bios is supposed to fix the nvidia gpu fan running 100% bug. However, if you run the windows 8 app fresh paint and then bring up a browser of youtube videos or something similar then you get the fan running at 100%. However, I can run catzilla gpu benchmark without any issues.

Any other owners experienced the 100% gpu fan problem bug AFTER updating to the latest 209 bios?

Thanks!

 

I bought this model a few days ago and my initial impressions are positive.

This is my first Asus. I was going back and forth between this and the Samsung Ativ 8 (best buy version), but it sounded like there were a lot of issues with the Ativ 8 over in their owner's lounge forum. I came from a Samsung Series 7 that I liked, but had issues with all the Samsung update bloat, and a power connector that was not always reliable for some reason (which very well may have just been my unit). The Series 7 got fried after I spilled a full glass of water on it. So I needed an immediate replacement and I wanted a Haswell if I was going to have to buy a new system.

Pros:
- Very little bloatware. Not even Java.
- Super sturdy build. Lots of metal, and nicely machined metal. (caveat: the metal palm rests get smudgy pretty easily
- Power connector is a right angle plug, which is a pleasing feature if your power source is usually on the right (like mine). The power connector on my Samsung was my biggest gripe, along with Samsung power management that liked to constantly cycle between "plugged in and charging" vs. "plugged in and not charging" and would cause the screen to change brightness no matter how much I tweaked the power/display settings.
- Touchpad auto-disable when a mouse is detected. I mostly use my machine at home with a Logitech MX mouse, and it's nice not to have to manually disable the touchpad.


Cons:
- The screen is glass and reflects like glass. Daytime use pretty much requires repeated adjustments with the display angle to deal with glare.
- Keyboard is not sensitive enough. I'm hoping this is a "break-in" issue, but there are several keys that regularly don't register with normal touch typing. (Would love any feedback on this).
- Number pad keys are thin. Roughly 12mm wide vs. 18mm for the letter keys. Not a huge issue, but feels a little weird compared to uniform keys.
- Directional keys placement. "Left" key gets subsumed by the main keypad and "Right" key gets subsumed by the number pad. I typically only use the left 'CTRL' key, and the right 'CTRL' key on this model seems unnecessarily wide, and could have allowed for better configuration of the directional keys. Assuming you use [ctrl+direction-key] a lot to navigate, it takes a while to get used to. I'm thinking I'll need to put some nubs on the left arrow and the up arrow so my hand can find them more quickly.

So my biggest complaint is the keyboard, but hopefully it's just a matter of getting used to the layout. I'd love to see an owner's lounge for this device or if someone could point me to an owner's lounge that covers broader Asus topics and is relevant for this one.

Cheers.

 

I have the same problem. Any fix for it?

 

Same here, updated bios doesn't make any difference. If anything, it was better before.... Also totally fed up with the unreliable wireless module and will be swapping it out soon with an intel unit. I'll post up details later.

 

Man, I wasn't having any issues with the fan until I went out of town this weekend and shut the laptop down for a while. Now I know what you guys are talking about! Not the worst thing in the world but before it was basically silent. And since I promised impressions:

- Battery life is a little better than expected. I learned you can run a command to get a battery report and last I checked I was averaging 6-7 hours on battery.
- Screen is nice and clear.
- Very few issues with the keyboard, sometimes it'll miss a stroke but it's pretty rare when that happens.
- Lack of SSD isn't terrible, the laptop is responsive enough for me as I'm not a power user.

- Touch pad can get a little annoying. I keep going 'full screen' without intending to.
- The subwoofer add-on is pretty worthless.

Overall I'm pretty happy, but W8 has taken some getting used to and I now see why some people are unhappy with the Metro/Desktop combo. If anyone finds a way to quiet the fan please post.

 

Any recommendations on best memory compatibility to upgrade from 8G to 16G on this notebook?

 

Haswell processor can handle DDR3L 1600MHz 1.35V therefore keep the memory spec at DDR3L 1600MHz CL11 unless you are going to use identical set with a more aggressive timing such as CL9.

 

In fact if you try 1.5v memory modules the CPU will only feed them 1.35V so they may not function correctly.

 

Seems pretty expensive given the apparent quality and specs.

 

I emailed Asus about the fan speed issue (maybe some you did to?). I guess they do listen to us. Bios ver 211 is ready for download.

 

Did the BIOS v211 resolve the symptom?

 

I'll try it tonight when I get out of work.

Loaded the new bios, and it fixed the problem. Tested: fan was at high rpm during a game, and after exiting the game, drops back down to near silent once it's cooled down.

 

Can you share the BIOS with everyone? Other people may need it if they come here, thank you.

 

It's on the Asus support site. ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download Q550LF
For anyone new to this, be sure to also download the windows bios flash utility from the same link posted above, if it is not already pre-installed on your laptop.

 

Are you guys on Windows 8 or 8.1? I'm in China and have been hesitant to do anything that might cause problems, so I'm sticking with 8 for a while. Is this bios update pretty straightforward?

 

As long as your drives are up-to-date when you switch to Win 8.1 then you will be fine.
BIOS update is pretty easy and straight forward.

 

Hey guys i just purchased this laptop today. I was wondering if any of you have tried to install windows 7 on it? Will the bios 211 update work with it?

I'm also wondering is there away to disable the subwoofer addon. I have a problem with the sound quality

 

Have you gone into your audio properties (right click speaker symbol in the bottom right) and looked at the audio levels?

 

I opened mine up to put in an SSD (btw you have to do a fresh Windows install from a DVD because the Windows 8 created recovery doesn't install to a new drive). It has an empty mSATA port. I haven't tried it though because I don't have an mSATA drive. Also, the Intel WiDi card is plugged into a port that looks like an mSATA one-- maybe it's PCIE.

Edit: Here's a pic:

 

Typically these days pci-e slots are half height for wifi cards.

 

To remove the back do i just need to remove the screws from the back or is there some clips that i need to lookout for?

Thanks in advance

 

I removed the screws and then had to pull really hard... be careful or it could snap back and damage the hardware

Sent from my SPH-L300 using Tapatalk 2

 

I just flashed my BIOS fun 207 to 211 and now it won't boot. I put in the Win8 disc and tried to do a refresh but it says the drive is locked. What do I do? This is the SSD I put in. Do I need to reinstall the original hard drive?

Sent from my SPH-L300 using Tapatalk 2

 

Sent from my SPH-L300 using Tapatalk 2

 

I put the old drive in and it booted. I flashed the 207 bios using the /nodate stitch on winflash.exe... put back in the SSD and it still won't boot. Windows 8 refresh gives the same error about the drive being locked.

I will never buy another ASUS. I get that it's a budget off brand (at least when it comes to laptops) but come on... Upgrading to a new hard drive should be easy and it should work.

Sent from my SPH-L300 using Tapatalk 2

 

I tried to do a new install of Win 8 on the SSD and got an error about how the drive isn't partitioned to GPT which it has to be for EFI

 

I figured it out-- I had to disable secure boot and turn on the CST boot option or whatever it's called

 

Yeah that is a mSATA port for a mSATA SSD. It is even nice enough to tell you its for an SSD to the left of the empty mSATA port. May be worth loading up a 128GB mSATA for ~80-100 bucks and leaving the 1 TB in for spare storage.

Taking a look at the "swap your DVD drive for a HDD caddy" things as well...although I despise them.

Can anyone spill the beans on what the actual full specs are on one of these RAM sticks? Was going to look online for pricing tomorrow.

Thanks!
-h8rift

 

I made a mistake. The other pcie port had the Intel wifi not widi

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Which Intel WiFi card? Most of the Intel WiFi cards can do WiDi.