Asus n550jk review

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:

1. Good screen, Full HD, preferably matte
2. 16Gb of RAM (or ability to increase it to 16Gb)
3. Good GPU. In my case this must be nVidia (because Radeon support for Linux is terrible).
4. 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:

1. Build qualit.
2. Screen - matte, resolution (Full HD), IPS.
3. CPU
4. GPU
5. Drive space (1Tb in my case).
6. Very silent (no fan noise).

 Bad (any OS):

1. 3 USB ports (4 is better)
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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):

1. UEFI
2. Optimus
3. Tachpad. For unknown reasons Asus engineers used ps2 mouse interface for tachpad. So, you can't enable-disable it in a normal way.