I use the laptop for both work and gaming. The important detail is that I use Linux as primary OS.
After my previous laptop started dying I started looking for replacement. The requirements were simple:
- Good screen, Full HD, preferably matte
- 16Gb of RAM (or ability to increase it to 16Gb)
- Good GPU. In my case this must be nVidia (because Radeon support for Linux is terrible).
- 13"-15"
The funny thing is that there were only 3 possibilities matching the above criteria: asus n550jk, gigabyte p34g and gigabyte p35g. p34g is 14" the remaining two are 15". asus has a better GPU (gtx 850m) comparing to gygabite models (gtx 760m). On the other hand gigabyte offered up to 2 drives (hdd/ssd) in p34g and up to 3 (three!!!) drives in p35g. And asus had a single drive + DVD (asus, who is using DVD in our days?!!!). However, both gigabyte models had a show stopper - fun noise. So, I had to give up on multiple drives and choose n550jk.
After using n550jk I clearly see its good and bad sides.
Good:
- Build qualit.
- Screen - matte, resolution (Full HD), IPS.
- CPU
- GPU
- Drive space (1Tb in my case).
- Very silent (no fan noise).
Bad (any OS):
- 3 USB ports (4 is better)
- The USB port on the right side it too close to the front. For right-handed person this make this port usable only for wireless mouse connector. Asus engineers should put that port to back and move DVD to front.
- Wide screen (16:9). This is a crappy aspect ratio, suitable only for watching movies (which in turn are optimized for cinemas). 4:3 is much better aspect ratio.
- Connecting headphones to audio port often results in a noise. Maybe this is caused by connecting to metal case. Maybe this happens just for me.
Bad (Linux):
- UEFI
- Optimus
- Tachpad. For unknown reasons Asus engineers used ps2 mouse interface for tachpad. So, you can't enable-disable it in a normal way.
