Asus Q550LF Lounge

So I'm still like all over my laptop and how much I love it. I love talking about it with friends and still find it is one of the few laptops in its class. I look around today and haven't found a mid range laptop that is as high quality as this laptop yet. Anyways the first model is almost a year old now and I haven't seen a main review/lounge thread here (the other thread was more of a question thread). So after about 5 months I wanted to write up my experiences and why you should consider his model.

Right off the bat, my targeted laptop was to be a 1080p with some gaming strengths, either 15 or 17inch. My last dell laptop had a super screen but the ati x1400 really struggled on mainstream gaming. I never did intend to for it to be a gaming laptop but today when you consider how far mobile GPUs have come, I wasn't going to accept anything less in my new laptop. I didn't quite have a money range set but I really couldn't afford over $1000 and was pretty close to pulling the trigger on a $800 toshiba that was powered only by a powerful i7 cpu. However when I discovered the Q550LF with its 745m I jumped all over it. After verifying it wasn't a lemon rife with problems online I picked it up for $900. Build wise the laptop is a dream, the case is all metal with the palm rest and keyboard mold being one piece. It is no ultra thin but they did their best at squeezing it down so much that they needed to use an expanding Ethernet jack. The laptop gives you just enough jacks for most situations but I found myself wishing I had 2 on the right side too. Outside of the case itself, the power jack uses an L-shaped connector which works beautifully considering at home I need to string the cord along the back from the right side and I feel it will help ensure no broken power socket in the future. The monitor hinge is very solid and there is very little flex in the keyboard. The screen is a full glass touchscreen so obviously no flex there.

So diving into performance, the CPU powering this laptop is a i7-4500U. The U is short for ULV or ultra low voltage. Now many have said the CPUs are weak, and are not suited for any gaming. Indeed the performance is very much like a dual core i5. Haswell ULV processors contain a bunch of new tech, but are also fairly underclocked as well. Alone, the integrated graphic scores are pretty abysmal. Thankfully you won't need to rely on it. Anytime you need some 3d muscle for a game things are turned over to a very capable nvidia 745m. It is hard to say where the 745m compares to in the desktop realm, it seems like even mid range budget cards like the 750gtx are more then capable of powering current gen games on high settings. The 745m would probably fit in just below the 750gtx by a generation. Current games would be a mix of medium and high settings. It comes with 2gb of video memory so textures would not need to suffer, you just my need to dial down detail distances and the large eye candy effects like AA and Ambient Occlusion. Some games I play on my laptop are WoW, guild wars 2, GTA 4, Planetside 2, Pinball FX2, and Child of Light. WoW and Guild Wars 2 are probably the more intensive games, I lowered ground clutter and some shaders like the water that I wouldn't miss. Guild wars 2 just needed me to keep the player model details and numbers low (but not the lowest setting which replaces players with generic armored models). My biggest problem with guild wars 2 was drive speed. It is constantly loading new players and player armors as they join battles and it takes for ever on the mechanical HD. If you did more laptop gaming then me, an SSD would be an ideal purchase. I have one on my gaming pc so my laptop isn't a priority.

So the 4500u gets a pair of crutches for gaming thanks to the nvidia gpu. Are there any GOOD reasons for choosing the 4500u over a more powerfully quad core? Most definitely! Like I said above, the i7 isn't just underclocked, it has some new tech built into it. More accurately, it has tech which was normally done by chips outside of the cpu like power management and brings it inside the cpu. What this means is a laptop that would have normally been running a cpu at 37 watts and a bunch of chips that would consume about 15 watts, and replaces it with a single chip that takes 15 watts! The net result is battery life improvements between %50 and %100 percent. From personal experience, web browsing with some videos (youtube) and music use can hit the 7 hour mark, where a world of warcraft session under high performance mode would have hit about 2 hours. I'd be interested in finding out how long and how good it would play had I set it to battery saver. Also keep in mind that I NEVER reduce brightness. I hate..HATE having to reduce brightness to save battery life. Never again. Also thanks to its low power use, heat is never an issue and the fan has no high mode to drown out that airplane engine. This also means the CPU is almost always running at turbo speeds (I think it was 2.3ghz that I never see it drop below, even though the base speed is 1.8ghz). It's superior construction design btw also drives the heat through a vent upwards in the monitor hinge, so it is not being redirected out the side and into your lap.

So to summarize, the ULV i7 does indeed pale in comparison when compared to its other i7 brothers (only one i5 beats it, so it can be looked upon as a very fast i5, although I will admit the benchmark graphs for many i5s and the i7-4500u are like a straight line, while the quad i7 is a significant jump) however the combination with the nvidia gpu makes it more then capable for decent gaming, and you get all the low heat and high battery life perks that come from a ULV processor. If you feel you will need real quad core performance from a cpu for image filters and video compression, then look elsewhere, but the 4500u is enough for any casual work and drives a decent game using the nvidia gpu.

I'll just wrap this up with my opinions on the screen and sound. The display has been really impressive, it does appear to have a slight softness to it making it hard to find the pixel edge of things (this may be a good or bad thing to you) but colors are astounding, view angles are superb, and brightness is quite good. I normally run the displays brightness a few clicks lower then max for comfortable viewing. I also purchased a sheet of polyurethane from bestskinsever and cut out a custom skin for the entire display. The symmetrical screen made it easy to draw cutout holes on the back of it and then turn it around to stick it on. As for the sound, it really makes me happy I don't have to use an external set of speakers. My last laptop went through 2 sets of bookshelf/tablet speakers because I can't stand laptop speakers and I watched alot of movies and anime on it. The combination of the laptop speakers with the subwoofer unit is so good that I don't need to worry about it. I usually have the subwoofer behind the screen so it is out of the way too.

Negatives and idiosyncrasies are less then half a dozen. The most annoying is if you like to run with the sound low, movies/music will end up starting out with no volume in the front speakers, only producing sound from the subwoofer. You have to bring the volume up a good amount, sometimes almost blasting the sound to get the front speakers to kick it. No doubt a design flaw in the audio chip used to separate the low frequencies from the 2 channel audio. Also, and this is probably because of the windows 8 power saving settings, but usb drives that power down will end up fully disconnecting, usually when you go to access the drive again. I could probably fix this if I turned the usb power save features off. Third I would have to thumbsdown the webcam. It is nice that they included stereo mic sensors, but the quality of the web cam is the same crappy average you see on laptops under $500. I blame all the users out there that don're care for them or or happy with "just anything that works to call mom at college" instead of something with real quality.

Oh god and the clickpad. On asus laptops this is becoming less and less of a choice, but this thing SUCKS! It is horrible in windows and worse in games. The entire surface of the pad is touch sensitive, so the act of clicking moves the mouse point. There is no way to fix this, no way to turn off sensitivity in zones of the pad. I do most of my clicking by tapping the pad instead of pressing down, but some of the essential click actions (and right click actions) in world of warcraft and other games are impossible without pressing down on the pad. Maybe we can get the ps4 controller working in windows with %100 functionality . ^^

 

Hi jeffmd , Thanks for the review. I saw this model at Best Buy, but kinda thought the keyboard was cramped with all the keys (qwerty, arrow, and numpad) squeezed together. How do you like the keyboard? Thanks!

 

Key size is no different then any other notebook keyboard. what 16x9 15" notebook do you know of that does not have arrow keys and a number pad?

 

Hi jeffmd , What I meant was that some notebooks spread the qwerrty and numpad sections apart. Kinda like the new Asus G750. While others jam all the keys together. Also, other notebooks in the 550 series from asus have had trouble with missed keystrokes. Thanks!

 

The enclosed keyboard grid is nice in keeping junk out which is real nice, on the flip side though when I did get like a crumb beneath a key there was nothing I could do but mash the sucker to death. Key response is fine, I am just always frustrated with the click pad. Nothing is spaced out which is pretty much why keys are average size. I only really see keyboards with spaced out areas on 17" laptops.

 

Hi jeffmd thanks for the info. I'll have to check this notebook out, sounds pretty nice. Thanks again!

 

I knew nothing of the Q550LF before I bought mine. I saw it in a window at a local Pawn Shop with $350 on it. I asked to look at it, and offered them $300. They took the $300 and I am a very happy person. It looks brand new, and it is really built nicely. Now I need to find out what kind of mSATA drives are compatible...

 

Sinclair, amazing find, compatibility shouldn't be an issue but rather size. It normally accommodates a half length card, but I have seen people who taped full length cards tightly to the mobo with success.

 

Yeah, I still can't get over the price for this . I've been using the Q550LF for a few days now, and the ergonomics are WAY better than my Lenovo Y510P. The GPU is, of course, not as good as the SLI GT 755m with GDDR5, but I've had no issues running any of the games I play... I had to shave a few bells and whistles from some of the more demanding games, but I like not having hot air from the GPU's blowing from both sides and the USB ports are poorly placed on the Lenovo. I also love the screen on the Q550. I really prefer the ASUS glossy screen, and I have touch screen if I ever want it. In fact the Lenovo is getting restored to factory settings tonight and will be making a guest appearance in the local trade section or eBay shortly. If I need more power later I might try to swap a G550 motherboard for it when people start breaking them. Overall, I love the feel of the keyboard and the weight, thickness, look, and all around spiffiness of the ASUS. I've had several G series ASUS laptops in the past, G51, G72, G73, then I went with the Lenovo. While I really like the Y510P, it seems the new Y50 is what the Y510P should have been from the start. Now I want to bring the ASUS to 16GB and get the msata.

 

I Just bought this, had it about 2 days now .. wiped windows 8 and put in ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS 64bit and it runs flawlessly so far.

the only driver i had to put in wasnt even required, but the nvidia proprietary drivers that it suggested for better video.

I had to tweak Google Chrome on linux to use the touch screen, but everything works except old native linux apps without touch support built in.

I'm fairly impressed with Ubuntu on this laptop, it's powerfully fast, no hardware undetected, and it's extremly stable - i can close the lid and have proper logoff and proper power save activate.

I may not beable to use the subwoofer that comes with it.. it's kinda not a concern, i plugged in a bluetooth usb adapter and i use BT headphones that work flawlessly also. of course bluetooth on linux is sometimes goofy. so a reboot fixes it.

I Havent tried everything but i'm really impressed so far. . i even went into google chrome and turned on some gestures and pinch control stuff so i can zoom in google maps like a tablet or phone can.

happy to help people learn things if they need help getting ubuntu on this. it's got a few steps.