ASUS UX550GE-XB71T Zenbook Pro 15.6" UHD 4K Touch Laptop, Intel Core i7-8750HK, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Win10 Pro, GTX1050Ti

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Just got this laptop and have been using it over the weekend. Forwarning, this may be long-winded. Update 10/6/2018: Still having touchpad failures, and now my bluetooth mouse is becoming disconnected. Turning the laptops bluetooth on and off indicates the laptop is deciding not to see the mouse. Yet another problem with this computer. At this rate, Ill be unable to control the cursor with anything but the touch screen. Lowering the score a star. tl;dr/summary: Overall performance great. 4k monitor is the bees knees and also ankles. Style makes you look like a wealthy startup CEO. Obnoxious touchpad issues. Battery "meh". Runs hot but tolerable. First, of course is the display. 4k in a 15 inch screen is crazy. I can put my eyes up to the screen as close as I can focus, and can just BARELY make out the individual pixels. I bought this for photo editing so I think it will work well. Im not quite sure on the color acuracy yet. Shortly after booting for the first time, I noticed the color temperature of the screen changed. I looked around everywhere for what might have caused it, but couldnt figure it out. Night mode wasnt on, adaptive bightness wasnt on, I dont get it. There is an Intel application for changing RGB hue and saturation, but it doesnt give the results I want. Its almost like the color temp of the backlight changed. Quite odd. Honestly though I wouldnt have noticed the change if I didnt see it happen. I am still confident that Ill be able to edit photos acurately. First thing I did when I booted up was open a white image to check for any dead pixels. All good! I briefly want to mention the color of this thing. Oh my god does it just ooze class. A bit of a fingerprint magnet, and the surface below the keyboard can look gross if youre typing (like I am right now), because the laptop is almost always warm and causes your palms to get a bit clammy. Thankfully, Im not too picky about stuff like that and dont mind wiping it down every once in a while. Backlit keyboard is on point, and I like it just like the Asus laptop I used to own. They shine through under the keys with white, and the button lettering is like a light beige. Im assuming if they tried to match the gold accents too closely, they would look like an ugly yellow. I think this color is quite good. Touchpad. Ill be honest, I have a huge problem with this thing. When moving the mouse around the screen, or scrolling, sometimes it just stops responding, or it will let me move up, but not down. I dont think its lag, but for some reason its just not registering my input. I ran through all the bases trying to troubleshoot this. Tried several drivers, checked to make sure windows gestures werent interfereing, tried downloading Asus Smartgesture, tried cleaning it, and of course double checked that they didnt put some super-thin protective film on it. Still having the issue. I mean, Im a mechanic by trade, but I by-no-means have grizzled old calused hands. I really dont think baby-soft fingertips should be a requirement for using the touchpad. This could probably be solved if there were a way to adjust the sensitivity of the pad. Asus customer support, I appretiate your assistance, but before you respond, Im not talking about pointer speed. I mean the sensitivity of the touchpad registering an input. The sensitivity either needs to be increased, or give us a utility to increase it ourselves. That is, assuming thats the problem. My bluetooth mouse works flawlessly with no issues whatsoever, so its undoubtedly a problem with the touchpad. Who knows, maybe its just a problem with only my touchpad, but I really didnt plan on spending close to 2 grand just to immediately send it back, and possibly have the same issue. If anyone else has this problem, I would greatly appreciate if you commented and let me know how common it is. For now, its not unusable, just occasionally quite frustrating. Battery. (update 9/18/2018: Have generated several battery reports that put the battery life around 4 to 4.5 hours of general web browsing and video watching) I havent timed the discharge rate of it, but Id put it around 5 hours just surfing the web and watching videos. Not great, but Im by no means complaining. Driving a 4k monitor takes a lot of juice, and I probably wouldnt have an issue with the battery life unless it were under 4 hours. Bought this thing to be a powerhouse editor, and occasional light gaming computer. I would never expect to be able to to do those things all day on battery. Thats just unrealistic. You might be able to increase battery life by setting a custom resolution of 1440, or 1080p, but I can certainly live with it right now. Noise/Heat. When I first booted the computer up, I was honestly surprised at all the noise it made. Fan noise is one thing, but this thing has so much coil whine when completing tasks that I took the bottom off to make sure I didnt get sent a unit with a traditional hard disk drive. Solid-state, and no moving parts aside from the fans, but this thing clicks and whines more than my $2500 desktop. It got a bit better once it wasnt constantly installing Windows updates in the background, but its still there when under slight load. When you start to stretch its legs, the fans spin up and sound like little jet turbines. A bit loud, but I wouldnt say obnoxious. In a busy environment, like a coffee shop, you probably couldnt even hear it. It definitely heats up though. The fans honestly do a great job at keeping the top of the laptop cool, but the cooling effects dont transfer to the bottom very well. When using it as a LAPtop, it will definitely keep you warm if youre taxing the system. It hasnt gotten so hot that I need to take it off my lap though. Handled Cities: Skylines okay so again Im not complaining. Oh, SPEAKERS! Wow theyre definitely the best laptop speakers Ive heard, though its not like Im a laptop speaker tester. They have great bass that holds out until volume level 30-35 on Windows, after that, the bass stays the same and the treble just gets louder. For watching some netflix in your room, theyre top notch. Playing some music while you clean your whole house, might want to get a bluetooth speaker. For entertaining a house party, thats a terrible idea and youre probably not a good DJ anyway. Overall, the touchpad thing is really my main gripe with this computer. My last laptop was an $800 Asus and I honestly had no complaints about it, so I was really expecting the trackpad to be much improved since the one I bought ~5 years ago. Cant think of any more topics to touch on, but please feel free to ask any questions. Not sure if Amazon sends notifications when someone comments, but Ill try to check every once in a while since I seem to be the only reviewer so far.

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Before I start, I must say I am really impress with the delivery speed. I ordered this laptop (sold by Amazon and delivered by UPS) the night of Oct. 3rd, and it was delivered the morning of Oct 5th... and I live across the border in Canada! I had originally hoped to get the blue version from Taiwan, but it had been out of stock for weeks, so I got the black one from the States instead. The laptop body is very well built. Slim and full aluminum body, circular metallic pattern and ASUS logo that lights up when turned on, the glass trackpad and fingerprint sensor, ultra-thin bezel, perfect. There are four speakers: two on the sides, and two from the bottom front, resulting in loud and crisp sounds. Hinge resistance is just right as I can open the laptop single-handedly. Screen brightness is slightly darker and feels cooler than my last ASUS laptop (K43S) from 2011, but this is more comfortable for my eyes. Keyboard has slight flex, but sturdy, not as bad as some video online shows. I checked the lightbleed and found there is little to none for my machine, thats great. I do not really use SD cards at all, so the micro SD is a non-issue for me, but some people may not like this design. Performance wise, its blazing fast. As a graphic designer / full stack developer, this is a perfect machine for my everyday professional work. As I am not a heavy gamer, I cant say much about how this machine performs in gaming, so I will leave for others to review that, but for a light gamer this is more than enough. I have not get the time to see how ventilation works under heavy load, but with only two arrays of small vents at the back I suspect it may not be too well. I do have a couple issues with it though. First, the power bar is a giant brick. I did expect a powerful machine to have a bigger AC converter, but the size of it (about three iPhone7s stacked together) still startled me, and it weights about half kg. Second one is a bit troubling: the machine makes some small buzzing sound when some processes are running; it could be the coil whine some people are talking about. Its not loud, but its audible in a quiet room so I might want to open it up and check one day. The issues aside, this is a very good laptop in terms of quality and performance. This is the laptop of choice for me this year, and I would definitely recommend it for professional users (though probably not gamers).

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UPDATE: After using this laptop for well over a year as my primary dev workstation and gaming device, I can confirm this is very solid. I built an eGPU rig (HP Omen Accelerator/GTX 1070ti) and they work very well together (since the drivers from ~8 months ago). I can play Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4k, medium settings at ~30-60 fps. 1080p at Max settings is stable at 60+ fps. Most other new games perform similarly. :: END UPDATE I have been researching and waiting for a device like this for a long time. The goal was a laptop that could handle heavy software development, medium gaming, has Thunderbolt 3, less than 5 lbs, and gets great battery life. This laptop has/does it all with ease. My primary focus was a solid CPU and decent monitor as my primary use case is software development. I have a MacBook Pro (Late 2016) provided by my job. While it has good CPU power, its drivers are way behind and do not support everything Windows 10 has to offer. This ASUS has support for all Windows 10 features; specifically, I am interested in the PTP capabilities for easy multi-desktop work. It also is a nice weight at just over 4lbs. There are plenty of reviews out there, so Ill just touch on the differences I count important. The nVidia 1050 Ti GPU is a very nice value add to this already inspired laptop. I can play Portal 2 and Portal Stories with the FPS capped at 60 and the GPU usage averages 38%. I have also tested its connectivity over its HDMI and USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 to DisplayPort and everything works well. My secondary goal was decent mobile gaming with the option dock into an eGPU over Thunderbolt 3. While I have not tested this yet, it has the necessary ports and specs. I will update when I have the full rig built. There is currently (as of v388.13) a bug in the nVidia GPU driver that causes unacceptably high CPU and GPU clock at idle (desktop, no application running). My solution has been to disable the nVidia GPU in Device Manager when Im not using it. Contrary to some reviews, I like the keyboard on this laptop. Yes, the keys have a bit more travel that other premium options. And yes, they are a bit softer than some. But, I like it this way. They are still fast and responsive. I cannot give this laptop that last start for the following reasons: There is not option, in North America, that I can find to get one without the touchscreen. I dont like them, I dont use them, and I dont want to pay for it. Next, it will not charge off the USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports. I understand the power requirements of this device *can* go above the 100w provided by the spec. But, it should be allowed as an option given the user acknowledging the limitations. I say it *can* go above 100w but I have never seen it get even close in all my tests. Thats about it. Everything else is great. I consider the ASUS ZenBook Pro, the MacBook Pro for those who want Windows for far less expense.

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I do lots of video editing and music production so I needed something portable and powerful as Im always on the go. I decided to go with Asus because my Vivobook from 2013 was keeping up with my workload pretty well and it was extremely reliable. Yes theres some coil whine and no the battery doesnt last that long but I dont care. I just need it to look nice and be efficient and it is. I can edit 4K raw footage with no problems and render times are absolutely incredible. When working with music production I can open a project with 50+ plugins and have many other programs running and it works flawlessly. This laptop handles thermals well and I dont experience very much throttling at all when working. It is all metal and it is really thin for what its packing inside. Yes, it has keyboard flex if you try but you have other problems if you are pressing the keys that hard. If you just want to get some work done and look good doing it then I highly recommend this laptop. UPDATE: If youre editing short videos here and there this will be perfect. My workload increased and Im doing a film a day and they range from 5 minutes to 60 minutes and all the footage is 4k. Ive recently discovered the disadvantages of editing on a laptop. It does get warm over time and it also suffers from Power Limit Throttling since it is a 45w processor and not a 95w like you would find in a desktop. SInce it is a laptop the CPU is locked so you cant override it. Sometimes while editing and definitely while rendering the CPU clocks down to as low as .80 GHZ and fluctuates between that and 2.00 GHZ. I still have great render times but it makes life hard when trying to edit. Also, if you have large timelines, (30-90 minutes) 16GB of RAM is not quite enough so keep that in mind. This laptop still works incredibly well for music production and I have had no issues there. Video production is just very demanding on systems so I recommend a desktop if you edit a lot of videos. I still give it 5 stars because this laptop is currently making me a lot of money and its been very reliable. I plan to keep it for a while.

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0:00 0:00 This video is not intended for all audiences. What date were you born? January February March April May June July August September October November December 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 1982 1981 1980 1979 1978 1977 1976 1975 1974 1973 1972 1971 1970 1969 1968 1967 1966 1965 1964 1963 1962 1961 1960 1959 1958 1957 1956 1955 1954 1953 1952 1951 1950 1949 1948 1947 1946 1945 1944 1943 1942 1941 1940 1939 1938 1937 1936 1935 1934 1933 1932 1931 1930 1929 1928 1927 1926 1925 1924 1923 1922 1921 1920 1919 1918 1917 1916 1915 1914 1913 1912 1911 1910 1909 1908 1907 1906 1905 1904 1903 1902 1901 1900 Submit Adobe Flash Player is required to watch this video. Install Flash Player People whine about thermal throttling and coil whine, no pun intended! ;) But seriously, I bought this used like-new condition from Amazon warehouse which was most likely a return and CDI showed only a couple hours on the SSD. I love this laptop and have had it for about a month now. I hardly ever write product reviews, but it seems like there are a lot of complaints about this laptop and it doesnt get the credit it deserves. For these specs while maintaining slim and light profile good luck finding a better deal. I did pay $1400 plus tax which is slightly lower than the current price but I challenge others to comment on laptops with similar specs and design quality to compare this to. The Dell XPS 15 is in the archetype but lacks the specs unless you want to pay $2000. And sure, it has a 4k display, but at the cost of earlier GPU model, on a 15" with the pixel density, 4k is just marketing unless you need 4k for visual design projects there is not much point, you have to render 4k and then increase zoom anyway. There are some drawbacks though and 1. I am not super impressed with the keyboard. It performs fine and no problems with ghosting, but when Im really hammering away at the keys like Im used to doing on my desktop pc, there is a slight rattle, but thats just me being too rough on the keyboard due to my fast and high-actuation force typing habits. The next issue is that I really liked the silver design of the UX430UN, and I wish they would have incorporated that design into this build rather than the black spun metal which is very attractive and has class, but also attracts fingerprints. So have an anti-static microfiber cloth and screen/keyboard cleaner handy (which you should when you own a touchscreen laptop anyway), but its not as bad as I might make it sound. Its not a fingerprint magnet, its just that the silver spun metal design didnt show any fingerprints, greasy or clean barely. Lastly, sure, there is some thermal throttling if you are playing graphic intensive games, but I can play Destiny 2 on Medium settings with a few things tweaked at 60FPS no problem. It will start to slow down as it heats up a little bit, but a Havik cooling pad eliminates that problem. Keep in mind this is not a gaming-designed laptop although it plays most games very well. The thermal engineering was done well and the keyboard never gets hot, only the back and only when youre running the GPU at full load for an extended period. Any other case it runs cool, setting it on your lap and browsing, editing office files, watching videos, it will stay nice and cool for around 10-11 hours of basic mixed use.

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(UPDATE 9/17/18) Tested the laptop thoroughly with random gaming, video streaming from Amazon Prime movies while on battery mode. System will completely blank out the screen with no system response unless you hold the power button down. When turning the system back on and log back into Windows, the screen would flicker a lot for maybe 10 seconds then look perfectly fine afterwards. This issue continued at random with the same blank screen issue. Battery had about 50% capacity at the end. House has an ambient temp of 77 degree F with a ceiling fan for the controlled environment. Sad but I will be requesting a return and hopefully a replacement to give this wonderful system class another go. Depending on the QA ethics at ASUS, there might have been no thorough thermal testing and extensive benching before system was packaged for any possible software/hardware defects. (UPDATE 9/14/18) Wife reported that the system has randomly shutdown twice this week while on battery during work. Considering a request for a replacement. Dropping down the level of quality for this product of a brand name with another star drop. (UPDATE 9/11/18) Wife complained that the screen would turn off and had to completely force shutdown to restore. Issue still occurs when on battery mode and power was over 60% charge. Created a Disk Image of current system and started updating majority of the system drivers Intel Chipset/Wifi/BT Intel Video Nvidia GPU Disk Cleanup Will follow-up later if this helps. Might consider a laptop replacement for a crappy deployment as the initial Windows Logs in the System log files shows a good amount of errors occurring when the instance of the screen turned off for a driver issue of some sort. To lazy to investigate further. (UPDATE 9/7/18) After the 1st week of usage, the system will randomly power down into a sleep state in battery mode. Ran the Asus BIOS Updater and found Version 300 2018/08/21. Initially Version 206 2018/06/21. Tested system in battery mode again with all Office 365 applications opened and Adobe Creative Suite apps such as Acrobat and Illustrator running to replicate what the wife was suffering through when she complained about the sleep/power down issues. System seems stable for now. Was patient for ASUS to refresh their Zenbook Pro as the UX550VE model was nice but it was at it is end of life. Was hoping to find a decent all-rounder laptop with a GTX 1060 that was under 5lbs and around 15" of screen space but this was fitting the needs properly. After reviewing gaming performance on the GTX 1050 Ti against the 1060, give and take. The UX550GE has a nice body but it will leave evil finger marks on the exterior. The fingerprint reader works nicely for the unlocking Windows and the setup process was straight forward. Please note, since I work in IT as a Desktop Engineer, I seriously hate Win10 with the Cortana features and telemetry crap. ASUS Win10 Image is current 1709 latest release. Played Blizzard Heros of the Storm and Starcraft II. The Intro videos did display some minor distortion on the 4K screen but it held up find for the most part. Have not been able to test 4K movies yet but hoping it will be smooth. Accessories include a microfiber cloth, a spare power velcro tie, Ethernet dongle. Some Notes on the side, I have worked on various Lenovo desktop and laptops, MS Surface Books, Surface 3 and 4, MacBook Pros and they have their Pro/Cons. I must say for the ASUS Zenbook Pro, this laptop series will fair well for good content creation and part-time video gaming. PS: This is for my Wife so I am jealous of her now!

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pros: excellent specifications (powerful processor i7-8750H ,16gb,and 1050 TI) put all together in a lightweight 4k laptop. Best speaker I have ever seen on a laptop The cooling mechanism is better than other laptops in the same price range. Cons: Crappy camera on such a professional laptop. In online meeting this camera is terrible. Build quality is excellent, but it doesnt match other rivals like Specter or XPS in the same price range. Additionally, battery life will not impress you, in my regular usage (surfing and youtube) I get 5 hours at max. Touch-pad occasionally stops working for a seconds then goes back to normal.

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I use this device for development and some gaming. The 6-core i7 is an amazing amount of power for a laptop. The only real down side is the battery life. Between the i7 and the 1050 gpu you can burn through the battery in no time under heavy work loads. Its more like a portable workstation with a battery backup than a laptop. - Out of 5 stars: Build Quality: 5 Screen: 5 - as good as any mac book pro screen. Keyboard: 4 - a little flat on the rebound. Track-pad: 4 Webcam: 4 - low res but works well. Sound: 5 - Great sound!! Performance: 5 - Fastest non gaming laptop I have seen. Size/Form-factor: 5 - about the same a 2016 mbp. If you plan you use this laptop with external monitors and a keyboard its the perfect mobile workstation. If you need to work unplugged, continually on the move then there are better options with less power. As a bonus you can run linux on this laptop without an issue including support for its nvidia gpu.

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Its a great laptop except for one thing. Coil whine. Ive tried updating my bios, gpu, chipset, and other drivers but it still sounds like there is a loud mechanical hard drive inside. Besides that though it is a great laptop. I still havent used it long enough to tell how good the battery life is but so far that is the least of my worries. Update: Ended up returning the previous laptop and purchasing another hoping that it wouldnt also have coil whine but IT DOES. It also seems to have trouble connecting to wifi, especially 5 ghz, it connects for a bit then it stops. Ive tried updating every driver and bios and both problems still persist. Update 2: I used a program called ThrottleStop to disable the Turbo Boost and the loud mechanical hard drive noise is gone. network problems on the other hand are still an issue and may need to get the wireless adapter card replaced.

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Only downside I have encountered is that is smudges easily - and slight disappointment that it cant charge from tb3 in a clutch (but not surprising considering the power). I was hesitant to buy this laptop, obviously there is lots of competition and debate - and I heard a lot about coil whine and keyboard flex. Neither are the case... but Ill address them specifically: -You can press uncomfortably hard to make the keyboard flex, considering it is only an issue if you force it to be.. it isnt a real issue. -It whines a bit when charging(actually charging, not when plugged in and fully charged)... barely noticeable, but it is there - afaik this is typical of power lithium-ion batteries. This is not the same as coil whine which I have not encountered on my machine.

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