Warning!!! Read before you buy any ASUS N550XX Series Notebook

It's not long since I had bought ASUS N550JK notebook from Amazon for about 1150$ including tax.


At first, I was really amazed by the quality and performance of ASUS notebook, but things changed drastically within 1 year of using the notebook!


Before buying my ASUS N550JK, I had done lots and lots of research, almost exploring every part of this notebook.


Along the way, I read many complains of people having trouble with this notebook regarding fragile Headphone port and missing keystroke problem. But I didn't paid much attention toward it because I felt those people either had little to no knowledge of IT nor they used the notebook carefully. Nonetheless, its amazing price and great specs lead me think that taking the risk is worth it!


But it didn't took me long enough to realize that problem weren't people but ASUS itself!


Before buying any ASUS N550XX series product, please consider the following problems I faced:


1. Missing Keystrokes:

At start, I started to realize that whenever I was typing, I found some of my key strokes occasionally missing. I thought that the problem was me but it didn't took me long to realize that it was buggy "ASUS smart gestures" driver who was the problem. Without it, windows won't recognize your touchpad and 3rd party drivers are neither safe nor stable.


Even submitting complains many times to ASUS regarding this issue, they came up with no real solution. The only work around I could find was to disable the touchpad from BIOS but was forced to use external mouse (which is not a solution).


Basically, I am a programmer and imagine my pain that even missing of 1 character during programming can cause whole program to crash!


2. Fragile headphone port:

I always used my headphone port very politely and very rarely especially with ASUS N550JK because I was afraid of having the same experience as of others having broken headphone port.


But happened exactly I was afraid of, on 1 bad day, the headphone port started no longer recognizing my headphone. At first, I thought my headphone would be a problem but infect, I found that my headphone port was broken!.


It was a shocked for me because I can never imagine a notebook headphone port to be such fragile!


I never expected ASUS to put such fragile headphone port in 1000+$ notebook.


3. Broken keyboard:

Just few months ago, I started noticing that my backspace key was automatically pressing after random interval of time. I didn't paid attention toward it because I thought I was a virus or windows bug. But weeks after weeks, the issue became to get more and more aggressive, pressing backspace key automatically like every minute.


That was the time when I became real concerned about the problem. I ran many antivirus rescue boot time scans but no viruses were found. Then being tired of the problem, I even reinstalled my windows but the problem persist.


I tried to contact the ASUS and they said you need to replace the notebook, and I was like "WHAT???" mainly because I simply ran out of warranty period.


Before ASUS N550JK, I was using Acer Aspire 5720 for about 5 years and it gave me no problem at all, then how can ASUS give me bunch of problems after paying 1000+$?


But it again proved to be poor quality of ASUS.


4. Poorly optimized status LED:

During the first day of using the notebook, I was again surprised to find that whenever I put my notebook to sleep when battery is low, it doesn't give any clue of battery status i.e. either its low or not.


During the use, when battery gets low, the battery LED indicator start to blink red LED but as soon as the laptop is put to sleep, all the LED's goes off unless you're charging or charging becomes full.


With that behavior, you can never get a clue about your laptop battery status when you put it in sleep mode.


5. Poorly assembled:

The assembly process of ASUS is below satisfactory level. You will find lots of flaws in final finishing of this notebook especially on the bottom and on the DVD tray area.


DVD dray is snugly fitted, leaving noticeable margins on all sides.


The bottom plate is unevenly fitted; some of the edges are smooth as butter whereas some of the edges are sharp as razor so you need to be extra careful while holding the notebook in your hands to avoid cutting yourself.


6. Fragile finishing:

The palm rest area and the especially bottom of the screen lids are very fragile to wear and tear. Even with polite usage, you can easily find the paint peeling off in that particular area easily! Attached Pictures states the matter more clearly!



7. Useless touchpad:

The touchpad itself is very stiff and sticky. It is stiff due to the placement of battery just below it (this again seems to be an engineering flaw). Its surface is very sticky which makes the gesture and browsing a very tiring experience.


8. Poorly optimized audio:

This, I believe, is purely software related. The audio output from the speakers is not that amazing which ASUS might have created hype about.


The sound comes from laptop like an extreme artificial case of virtual surroundings effect. The sound itself comes muddy (i.e. mixture of lows, mids, highs and bass) rather than independent and punchy frequencies. The subwoofer helps making the bass frequency more independent but again holding the subwoofer along with yourself is not a comfortable experience especially with its very small cable.


ASUS provided MAXX Audio Master software is of no use unless you are really a professional audio editor and knows the effect of changing of each frequency node.


Conclusions:

With my current experience with ASUS, I am totally frustrated and regretful about my choice. I find it better to warn others before it’s also too late for them. I would personally NEVER EVER buy another product from ASUS. I can compromise the performance and maybe little bit more cost, but I can never compromise the ease of use and quality.

If you have any questions regarding this notebook, I'll be here to answer.

 

1 year of probably full time use... Am I missing something?

ok now that I got that out of the way, the missing keystrokes really would tick me off. Other than that everything seems semi-common. Its a consumer grade and therefore should last 2-4 years, sucks it began to fall apart after year 1 but then again you are a programmer and therefore probably use your computer much more (and more demanding) than the typical buyer. Retrospect is 20/20 but maybe you should have looked into a business class machine instead.

All of this said, I have had a few asus computers and have found them to be quite good. I currently have an x205 and T300 chi and both are very good for the money. I have owned a few zenbooks and albeit they were somewhat over priced in my book, they were well made machines. To write off a company over 1 computer is somewhat over reaching.

Well back to the point, I feel for you dude, I would be mad too.

 

Believe me, my 5 years old Acer Aspire 5720, (which I even dropped it several times lol) still runs far better without any issues. I was expecting something to last about some years from ASUS at 1100$ price mark.

Never the less, you're correct, I should had have looked into business class laptops.

Do you have any suggestions about which can be a good business class laptop?
What about apple mac book pro?

 

I have nothing about macbook's but feel they are most useful if you already live in the apple echosystem, ie, you have an iphone and ipad already.

If you are a windows guy, I love the thinkpad line from lenovo and the dell latitude 7000 series laptops. Both have great build quality and best in class keyboards.