Has anyone had a refund offer Asus GL502VS Battery Discharging Issue?

After locking the long thread where community members were discussing workarounds and unsuccessful Asus solutions (new bioses, larger ac adapter) to the discharge problem, Bahz (the moderator) had in his final comment to contact the RMA department for a refund. He removed the wording regarding a refund about 1 day after posting and any new threads on the discharging issue are being locked. Asus is solidly in "sweep under the rug" mode now. I contacted the RMA department referencing the thread and basically they said that I don't have an RMA issue. I forwarded my info to Bahz and was told to wait. It's been about 2 weeks now and I was wondering if anyone has had any different results. I hope to discuss in this thread since the Asus forum is no longer the place to do it.

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...ischarging-while-Plugged-in&highlight=GL502VS

 

I have been following that thread on the ASUS forum for about 8 months. I have read every single post. I also saw the post from Bahz stating to send in RMA for a credit and to consider purchasing a different model.

I set mine back via RMA last week. The whole process from the time I shipped it to the time I received it back was 2 weeks. I live in Portland, OR. The RMA center is in Dallas, TX. Anyway, they literally did NOTHING!!! They sent it back to me and said that I had reported that the battery was not charging correctly. They completely factory reset my entire system, including wiping the 1TB storage drive. On the RMA slip that was inside the box when I got it back, it says "Battery error - repaired/fixed components" am in the process of testing it now. I called ASUS support yesterday to ask them exactly what they did to supposedly "fix" the problem and they refused to give me any information. I told them that I have been following a thread on the ASUS forums in which there has been an admission by an ASUS moderator that there is no current fix for this issue, despite the efforts to update the bios etc... and they just said, it has been reported as fixed and that's all the information they have.

Anyway, i'm literally installing my games and everything back on here, removing all the bloatware and McAfee etc as we speak. I will report my findings after some further testing this evening. I played one game of Dota 2 on Ultra settings just now and my FPS was WAY lower than it ever has been before. I am concerned then that they have made some negative performance tweaks maybe.. I will run through some other benchmarks on other more demanding games, of which I have photographic evidence of the FPS scores I was receiving before I sent it in for RMA.

I can tell you now though, I am beyond angry. I feel like we have a case for a class action lawsuit against ASUS.

 

I can confirm that the battery discharge problem still exists!!!!!!!

I am so frustrated by the way ASUS has treated me throughout this entire process and as well as many many others. To the point, where they are trying to "hide" the issue now.. They are deleting threads about it, they are trying to do everything they can to keep people quiet and from not being able to share their RMA experiences etc... My experience was terrible. They literally did nothing and they fixed nothing. They just sent me back a factory reset laptop and said they fixed it... They DID NOT!!! So now I am back at square one.. I was without my laptop for 2 full weeks and have to reinstall all my programs and games and everything else. Now if I want to get it RMA again it would take at least another 2 weeks of being without a laptop. Do they think that we all just have spare laptops lying around!!!!??!

I sincerely think a class action lawsuit at this point is the only way to move proceed. They've had long enough to come up with a satisfactory solution and they have not. Simple as that. They've done everything they possible could to hope this problem would disappear on its own.

 

A class action law firm is investigating this issue as an unfair and deceptive trade practice: http://www.classlawdc.com/2017/08/30/asus-gl502vs-gaming-laptop-battery-drain-defect-investigation/

 

Thank goodness. I was looking into one of the asustops when I came across the discharging issue and crossed it off the list. Asus did a horrible job and basically went dark on the topic if I recall correctly. Hopefully everything works out for the owners.

 

Originally this Battery Boost was thought of as a positive feature when it was first introduced, getting additional power from the battery during heavy load situations, and was advertised as such.

MSI and Asus both do it, and it's to save weight on the carry for thin and light laptops now, where originally it was to increase power from the limited size PSU's available.

This is a function that has become standard in the industry, and the surprise by new owners is similar to the surprise that running on battery only won't give the same performance as on AC power. It's inexperience on the owners part, not trying to hide things on the makers part.

I doubt this case goes far, as it's got no realistic expectation of performance without the battery involved - it's in the case and connected at all times. Just because the owners don't know how it works doesn't mean it's a bad thing on the part of the maker.

It wouldn't be a good thing if it resulted in stopping this technique from shipping in laptops. Everyone complains about the "huge" power supplies now. Imagine what they will say when they get bumped up another size to run on PSU only

 

Asus can't fix a problem if it's designed to perform as such, the problem is your expectation of function, which differs from reality.

They probably took it in at your insistence to verify it's running correctly, and apparently it is.

Read my other post for more details, but in essence it's working as designed.

Running power from the battery in addition to running from AC is a technique that's been in place for many years, and it's not a hidden feature, it's a standard feature.

All laptops can do this to some extent, MSI does it as well. They may have been the first.

Just as running on battery only won't allow the laptop to perform at the same level as on AC, running without battery + AC won't give you the maximum advertised performance sustained over time.

There are higher power laptops that come with higher power PSU's, but even they use the battery for heavy sustained loads and will discharge their battery if put under constant use.

It's just how they work, not a nefarious attempt to defraud you - requiring a class action lawsuit. It's a matter of becoming educated in how laptops work.

 

that's news to me.

I just googled it, and several gaming laptop brands have battery drain while plugged in... razer, msi, dell, acer.

I think it's a stupid feature, if you can call it that. A few more ounces of power brick weight is insignificant, esp since most people keep their gaming laptop plugged in all the time.

But the greater flaw is that in some cases, even a higher powered adapter doesn't solve the battery drain issue because the laptop is designed to only take a certain wattage.

I see this simply as a design flaw. They need to supply sufficient power bricks, and design the mobo to run off ac power only, and not wear out the battery.

A desktop pc runs solely off electricity, and that's the way it should be with laptops as well.

 

The battery drain can be removed on some MSI laptops (the ones that have GTX 1070, 1080 and 1070 SLI configurations on the same mainboard), via editing the EC RAM (RW Everything) to change the power adapter profile, and some Alienware (Dell) machines have a sense pin to detect the PSU amp draw capability. But yes, this "feature" was needed during the dark ages of substandard 180W PSU's (because there was nothing better at the time), and some of those PSU's died anyway. But there's zero reason to have this type of limit "Feature" on current models. I don't know how much the Delta 330W can handle sustained maximum, but the Delta 230W can handle 240W to the system if you keep it ventilated, without a problem.

 

80% is a good duty cycle number for utilization vs spec limit.

So a 230w is good for 185w continuous use. A 330w is good for 265w continuous use.

Good ventilation or not those consumer PSU's aren't commercial quality where you can run 95% utilization in continuous use.

It's better to underuse a PSU than to overuse it or run it at it's published limits 24/7, to failure.

If you are going to run at the edge continuously, it's a good idea to keep a spare in case of failure - a laptop without a PSU is useless in a couple of hours

 

The law firm investigating this case has posted a brief survey regarding the battery-drain issue. It's available here: http://bit.ly/2xtkQ3k

 

I'm considering buying this laptop model from Newegg Open Box for ~$1400.

I don't leave my laptop on all day and I will have it connected to an AC adapter 99% of the time...is this a non-issue for me?