Review: Asus ROG G551JW-DM139H

In one-line: It's a decent machine, but don't expect toooo much out of it.

It's been over 2 months that I bought this laptop. Overall, an OK laptop. Sub-optimal Amazon buying experience though, but bought it anyway since I urgently needed to replace my old laptop. I use my laptop mainly for scientific programming and other day-to-day use. I am not into gaming.

The good: SSD bootdisk, backlit keyboard, decent graphics card with previous issues seemingly resolved now (I haven't tested it yet), aesthetically quite sleek and a wonderful obscurish metalic black. The screen has a matt quality to it (which is a good thing if you like that).

The bad: poor cooling which results in quick heating up of keyboard and space around touch pad (in spite of this not being an ultra-thin model) - so do invest in a nice perforated laptop support/pedestal; short battery of about 2.5 hours at low processor activity right from day 1. The touchpad is flimsy as sometimes it begins to move because of a tiny play that exists between its stable position and the position it is in when clicked on. This play is very very annoying especially when using the touchpad to select large sections of the screen (you can forget about precision selecting in drawing/image editing applications; It's best to just buy a nice mouse). It also results in auto-clicks when you are simply lightly running your finger along the surface of the touchpad during scrolling operations. The audio speakers are OK, but don't expect stereo quality sound.

It is amazing that Amazon delivered the PC the same day I ordered it, albeit a bit earlier than the indicated delivery hours; luckily someone was home to receive it so it all went well. But it was deplorable that amazon didn't offer me any customisation options while buying - for example options to pick from among different European keyboard configurations, options to replace the CD-ROM drive with additional HDD/SDD, a free complementary Asus backpack or the option to buy one. Not even a laptop sleeve :-/

All-in-all, a very functional machine but a mediocre feeling of satisfaction. Maybe with time I will grow to like some things about this laptop.

 

For same day shipping no one will make changes to the machine as there is no time to test it.

 

• Sure... but the "same day shipping" option is provided only after one has chosen among provided tech specs (like quantum of SSD storage, colour theme of laptop, etc). So they could very well have provided options for different keyboard layout (if they were in a position to do that at all) before providing shipping options.
  

 

I'm a bit surprised about some points in your review. I have the 551JM, which is basically same laptop with GTX860M GPU. And since GTX960M = GTX860M, only 86MHz higher clocked the user experience should be almost the same.

Mine stays very cool, and keyboard/wristrest is never too hot. Heck I can even run folding@home for hours on both CPU and GPU and there is no problem, sure I can feel some heat, but nowhere near uncomfortable, I'd guess around 40C surface temps for the most heated up spots. Cooling is among the best when it comes to 15" laptops with GTX level GPU and quadcore CPU. And noise level is also very low. I have also had Lenovo Y50 and Acer nitro black edition, and both are noiser and have higher surface temps. On balanced profile and LCD backlight set around 30% I get about 4 hrs of light work/wifi surfing on mine.

The screen in mine is fantastic (Samsung IPS) and has great color spectrum, black are good, kontrast good.

On the bad side: Some keys on keyboard makes squeaky sound when pressing them (space and y at least), the touchpad feels a bit loose. Speakers are below average, Acer nitro and Lenovo Y50 has WAY better speakers. Slightly thicker and heavier than many competitors.

Overall I'm very satisfied with mine, so far I've found no perfect laptop, but I'll rate this one higher than Acer nitro and Lenovo Y50 at least.

 

A keyboard swap is not an easy task, it would require stocking all their current options with all the different keyboard layouts and would expand exponentially the amount of configurations they have to stock.

 

^guess you could always assume that a small amount of people will always want to buy the option, and make sure you prepare just a few on beforehand. Then.. hopefully sell away the odd layouts before the shop looks like a bag of random lego-pieces..

...?

Since the thread seems to develop into an interesting case-study in consumer shopping preferences anyway - how did you end up with this laptop?

 

Clearly, there's more to the difference between the two models other than just the alphabets/number in its model number..... otherwise one could've filled up a review by simply posting a link to another review for another seemingly similar model. Having said that and apart from the specifics, I also think it's hard to be uniform in what appeals to one customer and another.... so the purpose of my review was not to trash the model but to tell people who are interested in buying this model about MY user experience and hoping that each one eventually decides what they want to buy after they have weighed in all the information they have at their disposal. I did find it hard to decide on buying this model since I couldn't find any user reviews on it and took a bit of a leap of faith there when I went ahead and bought it. So I honestly hope someone finds this thread useful.

As for the record on my review of this laptop, my laptop heats up quite a bit beyond the the comfortable temperature range (putting it subtly).... that I assure you. The battery power is never more than 2.5 hrs.

And I would like to add that I did forget to mention that it is absolutely silent...... so no embarrassing fan noises if you're trying to work on it at a meeting/conference. The keyboard is also quite great.... not squeaky at all!

 

Narrowed down on it mainly based on my professional needs. So I looked at tech specs (processing power, SSD, memory), brand quality legacy, general reviews of similar products with similar tech specs of the same brand but by users who are into scientific computing (where I looked for info on servicing and guarantee assurance, heating/cooling issues, stability and durability of motherboard and hardware, and the graphics card and the processor individually) ...... oh, and yes, price!

 

What about stocking entire laptops of two or three different keyboard layouts? Clearly the 5 westernmost European countries (where I'm currently located) don't all speak the same language and I would imagine a third-party vendor like Amazon would at least stock a standard English QWERTY keyboard along with the local language, if not 2 or 3 of the most-spoken local languages (for e.g. Spanish, French or German). You cannot argue that stocking a few more customer options (especially options as basic as an international English QWERTY keyboard model) by a vendor that is built on stocking-selling products of different brands (like Amazon) is bad for their business..... And stockist/wholesaler can do that without overshooting his/her inventory and running costs. Quite the contrary; exponentially better for sales.

 

Stocking 2-3 keyboard doubles/triples their stored inventory, not a minor change by any means. If you want more customisation that's what resellers are for, you just have to wait a little longer.