I believe ASUS is using poor quality motherboards and/or components in their relatively well priced laptops. I had been a long time fan of ASUS products, and considered them a leader in the sector of computer hardware and components, however, I recommend not purchasing from ASUS now or at any point in the future regardless of their past prestige whether real or imagined.

I warmly hope this review reaches you, and makes you smile :)

Below is the original review, keeping that the same.
Had this for more than six months now, nothing broke and everything works as good as new.

First the negatives:
When it was new, one of the keys didn't press down all the way, it works, but one of the corners on that key didn't go down at all and it was super annoying.So I had to pop it out and trim a tiny piece off in that corner to fix it.Not a big deal if you have ever popped off a key before, but might be annoying to some.That is really the only thing wrong with it quality wise.

Switching between the integrated and Nvidia graphics had some issues in the past, but a driver update fixed it.

There are minor annoyances with the keyboard lighting, but that is really getting down the to nitty gritty.

It didn't have the option to use Win7, but that's more a Win8 issue than a laptop issue.I installed a UI shell right away and been happy enough ever since.

That's really it on the things that bothered me at all.Given the price and the overall performance and experience, I do not feel this warranted taking off any stars.

The overall experience:
The laptop is a good mid range gaming computer and good enough to handle most of the current games at mid graphics settings.I haven't tried the latest and greatest FPS on it, the most I use this for are some MMOs and MOBAS, but it handles them without any problems.Besides high end games and high end CAD usage, it will handle anything else for a typical home or office user.

For daily work and home usage: MS Office suite, light CAD work, web surfing, watching videos, etc, it doesn't break a sweat.

I am very happy with the decision to spring for the SSD plus 1T HDD, it starts up WIN8 in about 10 seconds and I have not experienced the stutters that I've felt with every other laptop I owned before.I believe that the computer should be waiting for me, and never the other way around.Higher end desktops with SSD will also give similar experience, but this is the first laptop where it's been true.So quite happy about that.If the price difference is not a big issue, I would definitely recommend it.

The screen is sharp, but it is only 15 inches, I knew that going in.And I have not had any issues with it in any lighting condition.I never used it outside on a sunny day, but near a window in Starbucks on a sunny day was no issue.Haven't noticed any dead pixles, I checked very carefully when it was new, and although I didn't do the same check before writing the review, I've never noticed any during regular usage.Lately, it's been hooked up to an external 27 inch display, and the performance was not affected at all, even though the resolution is much higher.I was happily surprised by that.

The speakers are above average for a laptop; and on an absolute scale, they are good, but not great.Even though I bought some nice external speakers for home use, I would say the speakers are good enough that I didn't have to if I didn't want to.

Battery performance was average, I got around 3 hours offline using office software and around 2 hours if playing games.Not terrific, but it's in line with what I expect for a gaming laptop.

Cooling has not been an issue even after 6 months, it's barely warm to the touch when not gaming, and warm but not hot when gaming.It's noticeably better than other laptops I've owned before.

I was never a fan of any touch pad, the one on this laptop works well enough for what it is.I try to use a mouse whenever possible.

There are enough ports for what I use it for, and the wireless works as expected, these are things that are good by virtue of never becoming an issue.

It's not upgraded to Win10 yet, but that's more because of my feelings about MS than with the laptop.

However, there are some software conflicts that I ran into when I first got the laptop I think are partially due to windows 10. They took a little research for me to fix and once I did the laptop is unstoppable.
Some of things you need to do are basic sense others a little bit more of trial and error and research.
So first things first.
1.) When you get the laptop open Asus gaming center and turn the display to vivid, it gives the best visuals overall hands down.
2.) You need to immediately uninstall gamefist 3. It is a program designed to help manage your internet bandwidth to prioritize it for gaming. Great idea poor execution. This program caused horrible download times internet speeds and even made gaming worse. It also caused conflicts with NVidia Gaming Center. I was unable to update or download the gaming center. After I uninstalled it based of information found on online forums everything started working normally.
3.) Offline gaming you are ready to go as I played Witcher 3 on ultra no problem with framerate. If you disable NVidia Hairworks you get much better frame rates between 30-55 on ult. Online gaming is where your next problem comes in. I had already updated all my drivers you can do this by: Right clicking the windows icon in the bottom left. Click (Device Manager) go through each one opening the submenu then right clicking each component and selecting (Update Drive Software).
4.) This is where I started to get frustrated and I will tell you what happen and how I went about fixing it.So I fired up League of Legends to play a few games it looks amazing by the way but my ping kept rubber banding back and forth going sky high then back to normal. It was making the game unplayable. After research I found that there is another update for the Realtek PCIe GBE family controller that Microsoft system does not find. So you have to go to the Realtek website click the link in the bottom right and download the driver and install. Fired up (LOL) to find a constant ping which made me happy. But however every 10 secs or so my fps would go from around 350 to 7 which caused horrible lag and really pissed me off. After trying all kinds of settings capped frame rates lowering settings nothing helped. What I ended up finding out is that Gsync doesn’t work very well with LOL. You right click your desktop Click (NVidia Control Panel) Go to Manage 3D settings. Now we are going to turn off Gsync just for LOL and from what I was reading (CSGO) or Counter Strike Global Offensive doesn’t like it either. In the 3dsetting menu you will see global settings and program click program settings. Go to (Monitor Technology and click Fixed Refresh). Now (LOL) should run fine however for some reasons the (Show Shadows) in LOL settings can cause some hangs. The last thing I did was install LOL on the ssd and not the 1TBhd because when I would kill objectives like the baron or dragon it would cause a momentary lag. Because there is nothing running on the HD I think that slight lag was caused by the hard drive spoiling up because it was at a dead stop. So I just put it on the SSD and no problems. You can also fix this by adjusting your hardware settings to run at a minimal speed but this causes more wear and tear on the hd.
5.) Last but not least you should probably get rid of MacAfee internet security because it sucks and it has no idea what gamers need. It is horrible any program is probably better than it. This is not a must but you should disable some of the startup items. You can do this in the task manager. Change some setting in Msconfig to get faster boot times. In the bottom left click the search bar type msconfig hit enter. Click on the boot tab Advanced options under number of processors click 8. Hit ok exit out restart. After I did this I have boot times of around 2 sec.

I hoped this helped anyone that was having any issues. I had to fix all of these things but they are all software related. The computer is just amazing I really can’t express that enough. It never runs hot it looks amazing and is crazy fast. If you have any questions just contact me and I will see if I can answer them.

Asus are known for their good and well-made product, but be aware as many users received it with dead screens. But don't worry, amazon is a custumer-centered store, so replacing it will be easy. You can replace it in 30 days, but if you are going to make an international order and 30 days may not be enough, they'll get you covered. I wrote to support service and they said they'll offer me more time, as it's an international order.
It arrived safe even in Moldova. I was wondered. The packagind is nice, really nice.

As I only spent just 3 days with it, I can't tell you a lot, I will update soon, but there are some things I already mention and I can talk about them.

*The build quality is fantastic, it looks and it feels amazing.
*It's the only nice laptop with gtx 980m for the price, I was searching a lot.
*The power adapter is really a brick - you can kill somebody easy with that thing.
*The display, oh the display, it rocks. Just turn on the Vivid mode in that "Asus Splendit" pre-installed program.
*The keyboard is very good for a laptop. I was thinking to buy a mechanical gaming keyboard with this one, and nothing will be better then a mech. keyb. , but after writing some articles and playing some games, I am very pleased with it and I do not want to buy another one, it's just damn good and the keys are very rensposive.
*The red backlit is also very nice-looking. I like it a lot.
*Of course, as you know, that 5 extra buttons on the left top are terrible and useless, but maybe pro gamers will use it to macro some things. The only thing I found good in them is that you can program a website on each, except steam and that video button. It would be a lot better without them.
*I find the trackpad very nice, it's big and just doing it's work.
*The speakers, as other reviews says, are not terrible, but very bad. I recommend getting a headset.
*The ROG button on num-pad is useless and you'll get a bit angry when you want to turn on the num-pad and you'll get to that useless program.
*BLOADWARE! Yes, there a bunch of totally useless pre-instaled programs, but I will not decrease y rating because of that, as the majority of laptops comes with it, and it's very easy to deal. Just make a clean install and get the all necesary drivers from asus website. It took me an hour to instal windows 10 again and install all the drivers.
*Boot time is standart for all SSD, I am not surprised.
*Speaking about the SSD... It has a m.2 slot, but the SSD came with sata3, and there are no adapters for that little thing, some if you plan to get a m.2 ssd you'll also need a adapter, and by adapter I mean that thing that will hold it, as the port is right there.
*I played StarCraft2 on it and Battlefield4 both on ultra ( you'll want the settings to be made by geforce experience, as it's doing a great job optimizing the game's settings)
*Speaking of GeForce, it won't run because of a s*** program that I have already deleted ( game first 3), you can see in the reviews here some other useful thing you should do.
* I fefinetelly recommend a CLEAN INSTALL, it;s very simple to do and do not spend extra money fo some other companies to do that for you, at least if you're not 70. Otherwise, respect yourself :)

I will update after some time of use, but for now, I'm very pleased for what I got for only $1568 with GTX 980m inside.
If you have any questions, write in the comments below.