Hello everyone. I'm a long-time lurker, but I've just come across this thread, so I couldn't help registering and adding my two cents, because my experiences with ASUS are probably unmatched. Sorry for the TL;DR in advance.
I bought my first ASUS gaming laptop (G9S) years ago, and had a very bad experience with it. A mere four months after I bought it, it crashed out of nowhere while I was on a business trip, and could never be turned on again. After taking it to the local ASUS service centre, they held on to it for an entire FOUR MONTHS before letting me know that the laptop was beyond repair and that they would give me my money back. I swore never to buy an ASUS laptop again. (I subsequently bought a Dell gaming laptop, which I used happily for over five years, before it became obsolete.)
Despite my anti-ASUS oath, two years ago, my son, an IT expert, convinced me to consider ASUS gaming laptops again, due to their excellent value-for-money ratio. I hesitantly accepted his arguments and bought an ASUS G53S. Exactly 21 months later – three months before the warranty was due to expire – the laptop’s display went black. I initially suspected something was wrong with the display itself, but since Windows wouldn’t boot, and the side HDMI port wouldn’t project an image onto an external display, I knew something worse had happened. Knowing that I was still within the warranty period, I took my laptop to the aforementioned ASUS service centre, hoping they would resolve the problem.
To my bewilderment, they notified me two days later that the cause of the problem was a defective display, due to “corrosion, most likely because some cleaning liquid had made it through the crack on the bottom of the display, where it meets the lid”. This statement was accompanied by highly suspicious photos, since they showed only mild discolouration on very small parts of the display, and no visible traces of corrosion anywhere. I challenged their findings, saying that a defective display doesn’t explain why the side HDMI port was dysfunctional as well. They stuck to their story and wouldn’t budge. Of course, if their corrosion story was true, that would void my warranty immediately, so they told me I had to pay for a new display. I told them that IF they were certain their story was true, they could replace the display and I would pay for it.
Three weeks later, I was summoned to the service centre to pick up my laptop. A representative delivered the laptop and told me they had just tested it with the new display and everything was working fine. I tried to power it on, then and there, in front of the representative, and – surprise! – the EXACT SAME ISSUE happened again (no display, Windows not booting). The representative got confused and told me to wait for five minutes while he takes the laptop back to check. He came back FORTY FIVE minutes later, telling me that everything was OK. I replied that the problem clearly wasn’t the display, as I had said, and I refused to pay, asking to talk to a supervisor. The supervisor CALLED me later on (he didn’t want to present himself in person) and told me that I don’t have to pay for the part (just like that?!). Naturally, I thought that I caught them lying, that they discovered the real problem only when I went to pick up the laptop, and that they wanted me to leave without kicking up any more fuss. I only wanted to have my laptop back in working order, so that’s what I did. Alas, I should have insisted.
Three months later, a few days after the warranty expired (Murphy’s law), the same issue happened again. Apparently, whatever the service centre did was a temporary solution, a patch-up of sorts, which held for a few months and then failed. With the warranty officially expired, I tried to contact the local ASUS office to try and reach a solution – any solution – but they were utterly unable to offer meaningful help.
I now feel bitter, disappointed, cheated on and left with a broken laptop that I had originally paid over 1500 EUR (2200$) for. Unless something miraculous happens, and someone from ASUS makes contact with me again to resolve the issue, one thing is certain – I’ll never buy an ASUS “gaming” laptop, or indeed any other ASUS device, for as long as I live, and will do my best to dissuade others from doing so.