My experience with HIDevolution

The laptop (Asus GM501GM) was bought for me as a Christmas gift, but I chose the specs/guided the ordering process, etc. When I received it, the first thing I noticed was the way the speakers sounded. When I started the setup, Cortana's voice was on by default, and I noticed a lot of buzzing. The sound is similar to what happens when you crank up the speakers on a cheap phone. I noticed it as low as on 20% of the way up. It was worse on certain audio or songs than others. The second thing I noticed was the backlight bleed. While I didn't choose the "minimize backlight bleed" option while ordering, the bleed seemed unusually severe - much worse than my old budget laptop. It was mainly from a left angle, and the best I can describe it is a green blob. I compared it to my old laptop - and on that one there is only minimal bleed at the bottom, and it isn't as discolored - its a dark grey. I never noticed it until i went looking for it because it blends in.

Something else to mention is I was a bit disappointed with the temperatures. I chose the best liquid metal option offered, but when I did a stress test, it went into the mid 90s and throttled to 28%. I contacted tech support about this, and Zoltan told me that stressing both the CPU and GPU at the same time is the wrong way to do it, and that it can burn up the computer. however, a friend emailed Donald, and Donald said during testing at HIDevolution, both the GPU and CPU are stressed at the same time. I thought stressing both at once is the way people normally do a stress test, and Donald said that's how they do it as well, so I'm confused why Zoltan said what he did. I'm not sure if maybe there was some sort of misunderstanding? Getting back to the temperatures, I know this unit will throttle a bit in stress tests but my temps aren't as good as I'd hoped with paying for LM.

The last thing was a rattling noise that started a couple of days after I got it. I'm thinking it may be the fan because it was coming from the upper right side of my laptop. I'm not completely sure though because in certain programs, the rattling had a different "pattern" - for example in a game i loaded up, it made a clinking noise every couple seconds or so.

I sent the laptop in, and I'm hoping for a full refund. I'm still waiting to hear back, so I have my fingers crossed. There was an email on tuesday that said the repair was added to the work queue, and it said to allow 3-16 days for the device to be checked, repaired, and sent back. I sent an email the same day mentioning again that in the case I'd need a repair, I instead want a full refund. I never heard back, so I'm hoping for an update soon.

Edit: I ended up hearing back about the email, turns out it's just an automated email everyone gets and they will look through the notes on my account.

 

What stress test did you run?

 

Your issue could not be duplicated regardless what we tried. That is what took so long, but our communication to let you know was poor. So, when we talked to your dad, who is the actual buyer, we agreed to give him the full refund due to our poor communication, and offered him a special discount should he want to buy something in the future.