ROG Strix G18 (2025) Gaming Laptop, NVIDIA RTX 5080 16GB GDDR7, Intel Ultra 9 275HX(Up to 5.4GHz), 18" 240Hz 2.5K Premium Rog Nebula Display, WiFi 7, 64 GB DDR5 RAM, 2 TB SSD, Windows 11 Pro

This is my second VivoBook. My first one was ruined by my cat dumping coffee on it and it wasn't under warranty at the time. I replaced that in a pinch - like writing a graduate paper and ran to Walmart and bought a cheap HP to finish said paper pinch. The HP was terrible. I had to send it for repair twice during it's two year warranty because the top of the laptop would come apart from the bottom, and just after the warranty ended the same thing occurred for the third time. I decided to come back to ASUS as it was my favorite laptop.The first one I ordered was slightly cheaper than this and had one of those weird numeric keys on the trackpad and it was a disaster, so I sent it back. I searched far back in my order history and realized it was a Vivobook I had originally and ruled it down to this one and one about $80 higher. I'm a serious review reader and literally the only negative thing I saw anyone saying (and a lot of folks were saying it) was don't buy this because it has Windows S and it is useless because of that.What? Windows S can be disabled by a 7 year old child. That is no reason to hate on this laptop or any laptop. You are not going to find many PC's without S mode as a standard factory setting. If you don't know what this is, it was an update to Windows 10 that includes Microsoft's new enhanced security features. Yes, if left on, you can't add Chrome or anything non Microsoft app, but again it takes a few clicks to disable it. If you disable it, it's disabled forever basically. If you want it back on you have to pay Microsoft to get it back on. You won't want it back though because obviously you want to use Chrome. Just turn it off and forget it was ever there!Anyway, onto the laptop itself. This is my first light up keypad and it's pretty cool. I never knew I was missing this feature. It's a full size keyboard and also has a number pad, which to me is pretty important, but not a deal breaker. Although I will never ever consider one of those trackpad numeric keypads again because they just come on at random and are actually stubborn to intentionally turn on or off. I did find this trackpad to be too sensitive at first, so I went into the settings and disabled two finger scrolling and that fixed the problem for me. Perhaps you like that feature, for me it just drags the screen size ever which way when I'm not meaning to.The screen quality could be a little bit better, as could the sound, but they are exactly what I would expect them to be at this price point. Unfortunately a budget laptop was all I could afford right now. I really don't have any complaints about this laptop, and I am very picky to how keyboards feel. It might be worth noting I'm not a gamer or anything like that, nor do I stream much on my laptop because I have smart tv's for that. For a basic work or school laptop this is a great deal. I expect it to serve me well until I can afford to upgrade.

Bought this laptop for my wife's bday. She does email, internet search & ordering of clothes, tennis shoes, etc. and plays solitaire & word games. We have also used it for Zoom Bible study. It does all of this perfectly. I don't see any problem with the display or speakers for these activities. We use a Bluetooth speaker for the Zoom meetings in order to hear the conversation better. I bought it with 4gb memory & 128gb drive but I may add 4gb or 8gb to the memory. A really neat feature is the micro SD card reader. I found out that an SD card can be configured as internal memory. If you have a little technical ability, the instructions can be found on the web & are not that difficult to follow. Micro SD cards are now available up to 1 TB so you can add much more internal memory without opening up the case. I added a 128 gb card & configured it as storage for the pictures, music & document system files. This leaves the 128 gb internal drive for programs which is plenty for us. This PC is plenty fast enough for quick start up, windows updates & internet searches. The keyboard has a nice, solid feel & the backlighting is nice & easily adjusted to 3 brightness settings & off. Keyboard is a bit compact to accommodate the numeric keys but certainly not a problem to get used to. The conversion to Windows 10 home edition was quite easy. The only down side is the internal camera. It's not HD, only VGA which is a headscratcher but not a game changer at all. I bought a USB, HD camera that clips on to the top for $13.50. We are totally pleased with this laptop. Asus was also the top rated brand for 2020 on laptopmag.com.