This gaming laptop is surprisingly thin for the hardware it has. The 3750H is a 4-core/8-thread CPU coupled with a Radeon RX Vega 10 GPU. While it has an integrated GPU, it also comes packed with nvidia’s GTX 1660. These two are currently the latest hardware in AMD processor and nvidia GPUs in the laptop market. For ASUS to pack in those two in a laptop that’s less than 1 inches thick and just under 5lbs is surprisingly good. The laptop comes with Windows 10 Home, which is disappointing because of how limited you are in configuring Windows to prevent everyday annoyances. ASUS went as far as to recommend Windows 10 Pro on their website. If they prefer Pro over Home, then Pro should have been pre-installed anyway. Moving on, the version of Windows 10 installed is 1809, which gained notoriety for its post-launch issues and data losses. At the time of composing this review, Microsoft has already released the 1903 update. Despite it being available to download and upgrade, I have opted to keep the pre-installed version for the time being. This is to prevent any possible issue due to upgrading to the latest update release. ASUS list the specifications (from their website) of the laptop to have a 15.6 inch 1080p display capable of 120Hz refresh rate. However, I am skeptic to believe their wording of “vIPS-level panel”. Viewing angles looks to be good but my concern is their wording. The only test for 120Hz after a quick Google turns out to be the UFO test. The test appear to be solid and it looks like the panel is capable of 120Hz as advertised. Sadly, I cannot critique much as panel and information regarding this is very limited and difficult to find. (Mostly due to terminologies and companies exploiting the ‘gamer’ market.) The storage is handled by an Intel SSD 660P series. It comes in a M.2 form factor on a 2280 keyed configuration. With 512GB storage capacity, there’s enough space to house several current games out today. And if you need additional space, there’s an additional M.2 slot that can be used. For memory, 16GB is preinstalled in a single SODIMM slot. There is only one slot available and so upgrading memory means purchasing a single SODIMM to replace that 16GB. On one hand, it makes upgrading straightforward. On the other hand, it also means you cannot expand by purchasing an additional 16GB if you want to bump up to 32GB of memory. Also, 2GB of that memory is taken and reserved by the integrated GPU (the Radeon). Lastly, the limit seems to be 32GB. Rated memory speed is DDR4-2400 according to ASUS, but I forgot to check while on the laptop. Should you want to upgrade your storage or memory, you need to open up the bottom panel of the laptop. It’s held in place by several screws and a series of snap lock tabs. But one thing I noticed is that there’s no small quick access to either of these components. It’s just one single large panel to take out. Also, the battery cannot be replaced, as it is built into the laptop itself. I’d take a point off on this. But after some consideration of the laptop’s design philosophy, I’ve come to understand the decision behind not having a replaceable battery. Anyway, prying the panel off requires a bit of effort and little force. Once you’ve carefully remove the panel, you’ll have access to the SODIMM and M.2 slots. Audio is powered by a RealTek sound system and the speakers are located at the bottom of the laptop. It’s bottom firing and sounds okay and reasonably loud (even at 50%). There’s a headphone jack should you need to use it. At the same time, the jack is also a microphone jack. I do not know how one can use a wired headset with this. But in likelihood, the only way around this is to use either a USB or Bluetooth headset. On networking, I used a 1.3GB video file to test transfer speeds from a desktop connected via gigabit Ethernet. The file itself is on a SSD which should eliminate any potential bottleneck on the network. Network traffic is handled on a Linksys EA9500 for both wireless and wired connections. However, I should note that I have several wireless devices floating around home and wireless performance may not be up to expectations. The laptop’s networking is handled by RealTek. Connected wireless link speed reported by Windows 10 is 72mbps. Wireless performance averaged around 40mbps. This is with the laptop located feets away from the access point. If this sounds underwhelming to you, do understand that I do not have ideal conditions. For wired connection, the Ethernet port handles up to 1gbps connection. With the same test, the test file was transferred quickly, saturating the entire gigabit bandwidth (even with network overhead). Since this is a gaming laptop, I have installed 4 select game titles -- Guild Wars 2, Hard Reset, Bioshock Remastered, and RAGE. These titles are not the latest to push the hardware to the limit. But at the very least, it will provide some insight on how it handles these games now. Hard Reset has its own benchmark tool so I used that alongside a short playtest run. The rest is checking framerate and short play runs to get a feel to how it performs. But before I get into how it performs, I should point out that there are 3 performance profiles depending on battery status (Silent, Balanced, Turbo). When running on battery, the performance profile is set to “Silent.” This will obviously net you the worst performance. It can also be set to “Balanced” to provide some performance in exchange for potential fan noise. When plugged in, the performance can be set to any 3 profiles, with “Turbo” being exclusive to the plugged in state. The fans do run loud but is tolerable (a Dell gaming laptop I tested before ran much louder) for playing games. Benchmarking Hard Reset showcased a tale of two worlds -- running on battery and running when plugged in. On battery, performance suffered greatly. Yet while plugged in, it performed smoothly, obviously. Hard Reset is configured on Ultra settings with FXAA anti-aliasing and 120Hz refresh rate. Minimum framerate when plugged in was around 40fps with maximum of up to 140fps. On battery power, the framerate was so poor that I did not want to mention it. It’s playable in most cases but you either have to lower the detail settings or simply plug the laptop in. Bioshock Remastered appeared to have no issue regardless of battery or plugged in. Both modes allowed the game to run smoothly but I did not give it enough time on either side to make certain of this. The same can be said for RAGE but I did not have the game fully configured to maximize the hardware (which can eliminate all the high-res texture loading). RAGE also has some sound issue which I have yet to resolve before composing this review. Lastly, Guild Wars 2, a game that I heavily play on, is severly (and brokenly) limited by CPU. Framerate is tolerable only due to the CPU being the driving force in keeping up. It varies between 35fps to 50fps in the short time I’ve played around. Yet performance can take a hit when you factor in big epic battles in certain situations. Overall, I am liking this laptop. I haven’t had a AMD processor in years (the last being the old Athlon X2). It seems to handle the workload and the GTX 1660 is plenty powerful for on-the-go gaming. The difficulty of removing the bottom panel for hardware access is a bummer. But with patience, it can be done. The choice of using Windows 10 Home instead of Pro for a gaming laptop is a major minus for me. I feel it is wrong to give users Win10Home when the hardware is geared towards the gamers. And gamers tend to do whatever it takes to make sure nothing gets in the way of their gaming session. Verdict: Buy it if you’re gaming on the go. Good value, nice build, surprisingly light.