HIDevolution ASUS TUF Gaming A16 Advantage Edition FA617NT 16" FHD+ 165Hz, 3.2 GHz Ryzen 7 7735HS, RX 7700S, 32 GB DDR5 RAM, 512 GB PCIe SSD, Windows 11 Home

It's been just over a week with this laptop and I don't recall being more satisfied with a tech purchase in at least half a decade!I've upgraded storage to 2 TB, and the RAM to 32 GB, it performs marvolously!The first thing I did with it is completely remove Windows and Install Fedora Linux and everything works perfectly on it - with the only exception of putting the laptop to sleep - it does not wake up from sleep - but after research I discovered that it's a common linux kernel issue with many laptop models (not just Asus) and has nothing to do with the laptop itself in all likelyhood.before settling in to my normal use case of having this laptop as a docked desktop replacement I was using this laptop normally - with it's built in keyboard, touchpad and screen, and I was very happy with it.Now (just because of preference) I use it when the lid is closed, external monitor through HDMI, and external mouse and keyboard plugged in via dongles connected to a TypeC usb hub going to my TypeC USB 4 port, and ethernet cable plugged in. But I've also checked WIFI performance beforehandDetailed review:* the screen: 9 out of 10. colors look great, display is sharp the screen leans back quite a bit for whenever you might need (i estimate around 160 degrees leaning back), the refresh rate is excellent, it does not wobble even while aggressively typing on the built in keyboard, and it's easy to open with one finger thanks to the housing of the webcam slightly protruding forward from the frame of the screen and serving as a latching point for your finger when you want to pull it open, opening and closing it so far has been smoothe and quiet and reasurring of the hinge quality.As for brightness - for indoor use it's more than bright enough - as long as you don't have direct sunlight on you screen. did not test it outdoors but I imagine you'd have a difficult time seeing things clearly on this screen outdoors on a clear bright day.*keyboard - 9 out of 10. as I've said i mainly use a peripheral keyboard but i'm writing this reveiw with the built-in one, and during the settling in period i was also mainly using the built in KB.it is very comfortable to type on, long keys like the space bar, enter and shift are stabilized, it's a quiet keyboard but does have a satisfiying tactile sound and feel to it, the key travel is comfortable and it is very easy to develop the muscle memory needed to easily touch-type on it. if you love numpads like me - it's included and a delight to use as well.Lighting is bright, accurate, includes secondary icons as well (like the !@#$%%^& icons on the number row) and FINALLY it only has one color - white, without the nausiating rainbow-puke of throbbing RGB.*speakers - 7 out of 10 - these are not macbook speakers (that in my opinion macbook speakers are the best laptop speakers), but they are not bad at all!!! they are loud, clear, just a tiny touch lacking in base and depth, but don't sound tinny or distorted even in high volume, perfectly adequate even in a slightly noisy environment.*webcam - 6.5 out of 10 - poor 720p camera, it doesn't look very good, even in today's poor webcam standards, but it's just enough for remote video meetings. not more than that - frankly - I don't really care about this category.*mic - 6.5 out of 10 - it's okay, nothing more, but nothing less, good enough for meetings. don't really care about this category all that much either though.*touchpad - 10 out of 10. smoothe, accurage, well placed, excellect palm rejection so no erroneous touches are registered while typing and resting your palm on the touchpad, just a tiny touch too small for my taste but easily adjusting with touchpad excelleration*I/O ports: Asus get's 10 out of 10 for this: full size HDMI, ethernet, 2 typeC ports with USB 4, one of them is for charging in addition to the barrel charging port so you have a backup charging ability, 2 type A of USB 3.2 gen 1 and finally no bullshit SD card readers that gamers or web developers like me just don't give a f#ck about. forgot to mention the combo mic/headphones 3.5 mm jack. perfect!*thermals and fan noise - 10 out of 10. with the exception of fanless apple-silicon macbooks I have never seen a more quiet laptop while still keeping up its hardware's full potential!!!.reminder - I use fedora linux on it, we have 3 power profiles - "max performance", "balanced" and "battery life".when on battery life the fans are dead silent, for all I know they are not spinning at all 90% of the time, and even when they do - it's a silent "whoosh" that does not bother or anooy me - unlike practically any other laptop I've ever used, and the fans engage only while gaming - the only game I play is World Of Tanks, during gameplay even on "battery life" that reduces CPU and GPU clocks I hit over 110 FPS with butter smooth experience and the fams are barely audioble, while the laptop barely get's warm to the touch - still very very well within the perfectly comfortable range of temparture to be touching in the keyboard area.letting the laptop stretch its legs on max performance mode will of course get the fans to be more noticeable but even then they rarely get actually annoyingly loud - but comparing to any other laptop - they are still light years ahead of anything else, while easily keeping the laptop's thermals in check, even during the most damanding tasks in my use-case, and even under sustained heavy load the laptop does not get too warm or too loud.*overall build quality: 9.5 out of 10. minimal deck flex in the keyboard area thanks to what i believe is an aluminuum top part of the chassis. the lid's back side is the same metal. the bottom side of the chassis feels like very high-quality textured plastic that feels very sturdy but lightweight. the lid has a fair resistance to warping sideways, the lid hinges are PERFECT - I even lifted the laptop with both hands and rocked it back and forth quite aggressively - the lid barely moved and definitly did not wobble - yet when you actually want to move the lid (open and close) you can easily do it with a signle finger.overall weight is excellent despite its size and beefy cooling capacity.* charging brick - 8 out of 10 - it does its job really well - the laptop charges fast even while in heavy use. while the brick is not thick or too heavy its definitly long - but not out of proportions given other laptops' charging bricks.Overall - This is not a cheap laptop - but also not a super expensive one. Asus stuck a perfect balance in everything that matters to me in a laptop. It performs admirably, it's very quite while not compromising almost any of the performance, even under heavy load fan noise is deep within the tolerable range while definitly keeping up with thermals. the keyboars is perfect, build quality is excellent while not being too heavy, screen is perfect for indoor and battery life is decent for its hardware.I am a professinal web developer and I only use linux - so for all of you linux users out there: Fedora workstation 39 works flawlessly on this laptop - with the exception of suspending the laptop - and this is a kernel issue so it's likely to be fixed sometime in the future. If you also game - since this an AMD CPU and AMD GPU it's perfect for linux, including gaming, and even gaming on Wayland. It doesn't have the rainbow-puke flashing RGB, but a mature respectable while keyboard lighting so you can definitly bring it to the office without having your boomer supervisors looking down on you and shaking their heads at you, you can compile your code while gaming without the fan noise driving you nuts and still enjoy a great gaming experience,

Loving it, works well, and very fast. The laptop FLIES with 32GB RAM. Battery life is suspect but that's to be expected with these power-hungry gaming laptops. Recommend 100%, especially if you are using it for Linux (UPGRADE TO KERNEL 6.4.7 OR ELSE THE KEYBOARD WON'T WORK)

I bought this on prime day on a discount. The asus website estimated about 13 hours of battery. This computer dropped a percent per minute. I bought it for 3d modeling, and it ran my program great but is very comparable to my older laptop. I reached out to this company during business hours and sent an email, but I received no feedback from anyone at the company. The computer was also very heavy and the fans were much louder than I expected. It could have just been a problem with the battery, but there was no customer support through this company. I refunded and received my money back.

The features of the computer were customized as I needed. And the results are great performance to hard usage.

This is a 5-star laptop. It is not without its little issues, but that is not enough to take away from the sheer value for horsepower that you get with this machine, especially if you get it when on sale. I ran Passmark on it after I had updated all of the software and it came out at 10753 for me, which is 1500 more points than my 1-year old Alienware R13 desktop with a top-level i7 processor and Nvidia 3060 card.I got the FA617XT model, which is Win11 Home, the Ryzen 9 7940HS, 7700S Radeon graphics, and the larger 2560x1600 display. These are the best specs you can get in this model line, since otherwise you end up with the smaller screen and the slower graphics chips which you can't upgrade. Asus even did a nice job with the main components, with name-brand 1TB SSD (Western Digital) that runs above spec.For things that you can't add later or upgrade, I would have liked to see a better webcam (it's only 720P), and perhaps a fingerprint reader and an SD slot. But otherwise, there's really not too much more I would have liked to change.But for upgrades, the bottom cover is easily removable, and do be careful not to nick or bend the corners and then do all of your upgrades at once so you don't have to risk breaking something twice. I immediately made the following upgrades, which all work great and are super-easy to access:- There is actually an extra M.2 slot, so I added an additional 1TB Samsung SSD- I removed the 2x8GB 4800 ram and installed 2x16GB Crucial 5600, and it runs just fine at the higher speed- The laptop only has Wifi 6, so I got the Intel 6E AX210 NGW card. It is located under the factory SSD, so just remove the factory SSD and it's an easy swap.- Finally, I got an upgrade key, and changed Win 11 to Pro.Another great laptop from Asus. Just FYI, it is China-made, which is still hard to avoid in laptops. I would love to see them start making these in Taiwan.