Asus vs. Toshiba for these models

Hi everyone, I was wondering whether some of you could give me an opinion on these two laptops. I am looking into buying one of these (or a different laptop if you guys have suggestions of other models with similar specs)

The Asus I am looking at is the ASUS N550JK-DS71T ($1,099)
Intel i7-4700 HQ
2 GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M
15.6" touch screen, full HD
8 GB RAM (I would likely upgrade to 16 GB RAM, adding about 100 dollars)
1 TB 5400 RPM (I would likely upgrade this to a 1 TB 7200 RPM adding about 200 dollars)
DVD drive

The Toshiba I am looking at is the Toshiba Satellite P50-BBT2G22 Laptop ($1289)
Intel i7-4710HQ
2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon™ R9 M265X graphics
15.6" touch screen, full HD
16 GB RAM
1 TB 5400 RPM hybrid 8G
Blu Ray optical drive

Those are really the main differences between the laptops, but I would also like to know whether anyone has any experience with either of these two laptops -- i.e. what is the battery life like; what speakers are the best (asus requires a subwoofer for good sound from what it sounds like); which display is the best -- or does anyone have other suggestions?

 

The 850M in the N550JK is a better video chip than the R9 in the Toshiba. The 4710 in the Toshiba is slightly faster than the 4700HQ, but it's such a paltry difference that it won't show in normal or stressful applications. The hybrid drive in the Toshiba will get you a small bump in performance over the stock one in the Asus, but a 7200RPM drive will treat you well also (or better yet, a SSD). With the external sub on the N550JK, the sound quality is most likely going to be better over the Toshiba (just don't blast the volume, as the sub might distort some, especially on a glass surface).

I can't comment on the Toshiba's build quality as we don't sell that system, but the N550JK definitely feels like you got what you paid for (in a positive way).

They'll perform similarly as far as the specifications go.