Okay, so I’ve been taking a lot of mental notes about my likes and dislikes about https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08842D7JS.
What I like:
- Speed. This thing is a BEAST! It’s so fast! From start-up to browsing in just a few seconds. Navigating my filesystem, opening and working in and out of software, multitasking – all a breeze. I love it!
- Performance. The performance is amazing. I love that I’ve got easy control over my CPU and GPU, and can tweak a few settings to accommodate whatever I’m doing, be it gaming, working with code, or anything else. All without any lag.
- Visual Quality. I’m able to enjoy a lag-free gaming experience on maximum settings, which also nods to the performance, but as visuals go, I feel like I’m playing an entirely new game. Things are just visually beautiful on this machine.
- Capability. I see what this laptop is capable of, and I can only imagine that these specs will last for at least a couple more years, for pretty hardcore gaming.
- Lighting. The laptop has a sort of futuristic feel to it. The lighting is perfect. On some reviews, I’ve read about and seen on videos where some reviewers reported light-bleed, but I’m not having that happen at all. All the lighting, from the keyboard backlighting to the display brightness to the logo on the back of the monitor, all of them look fantastic!
- Hardware. As mentioned before, the hardware is all current and the specs should hold out for at least a couple years, able to handle whatever I happen to throw at it. This is definitely a good purchase where you get your money’s worth.
- Build Quality. It feels sturdy and eloquent. It doesn’t feel like cheap products were used in the making of this laptop. I could be wrong, but it doesn’t feel like it.
What I dislike:
- Alignment and Layout. Some of the keyboard layout feels very different from any other keyboards I’ve ever used, and so it will take some getting used to. For example, the arrow keys blending into the ‘Shift’ button and the number pad, is something I’ve never had, and with the smaller right-Shift key, it trips me up a bit when trying to navigate a wysiwyg editor or through some other text / spreadsheet editor. I often find myself pressing the wrong keys.
- Button Force. Along with the wonky layout, I’ve got to press the keys about 50% harder than with virtually every other keyboard I’ve ever used. It’s annoying, as sometimes, keys are missed and then I have to go back. I can’t depend on the arrow keys for quick navigation because I’m often pressing ‘Down’ instead of ‘Left’, ‘0’ instead of ‘Right’, etc (so not only did I just do a typo, but now I’ve added on a few ‘0’’s in the middle of some random word. Very frustrating. I just hope this is a ‘l2p’ issue and I just need to learn to “play” my keyboard.
- Sound Issue. This one is big. I know that I should be wearing headphones when doing anything that requires sound – especially on a gaming laptop that has such powerful fans. The problem is that the first time I plugged in headphones, the sound quality was absolutely amazing! I felt like I could hear everything happening in the game. The problem as that once I unplugged the headphones, the sound never returned to my laptop speakers. I’ve tried searching for an update to the driver (I have the latest driver software), I tried toggling and even rolling back the drivers, but all to no avail. I still don’t have this issue sorted out. Sometimes I just don’t feel like wearing headphones. ☹
If you want an alternative laptop in the same bracket, I'd recommend (based off of specs):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BJDQMVR and https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087CBPMHH (though the latter doesn't have as many reviews, and I don't know much about the company).
If you want to stay just under $1,000, I'd suggest this one:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DCKDPCD.
Overall, I'm very happy with my purchase, and I believe this is the best laptop for the price, even with the issues, which over time, may not be issues at all.
