When Apple unveiled their new Macbook 'Pro', I knew it was time to give up on dongles and headaches and move back to a pc laptop. I support my family from my laptop, so having both portability, and power, are very important to me. Adobe premier has come along way in offering support for Cuda cores so I knew that an Nvidia based system was where I wanted to look rather than a ultra-book. The 1060 video card, and speedy ssd (with an additional 1tb hard drive), all paired with great cooling and an i7 quad core processor had me hooked. I bought the laptop with very little ability to research it as it was very new. Many product review videos focused on the 15 inch model rather than the 17. I use this laptop as my main system for work as a Graphic Designer and I have to say it's been rock solid across the board. The 128gb ssd is fast, but the laptop actually supports the even faster nvme based ssd's as well. Because of this, I'd recommend buying the non-ssd only model and adding a nvme based ssd at a larger than 128gb size. You'll spend about the same amount of money but get around 3x the speed from the primary hard drive. Not a huge deal really, not even enough to drop a star because its so easy to upgrade when you need it. The fan noise is very easy to deal with. And a feature that isn't really advertised as often as I'd assume is that the 17 inch model actually packs in an additional fan for even better cooling! It fits easily in my backpack, even though the backpack was labelled being for a 15 inch laptop, because its just so thin. Usb 3.1 and even thunderbolt are here (in usb-c form) so unlike the macbook series, you'll be able to use both old, and new, usb based external devices. It looks amazing, and I never fail to receive a slew of compliments when I use this during a meeting. It looks almost sinister, yet in a professional and toned sort of way. You can most definitely tell that it's something different than any other manufacturer, without being as over the top as something like an alien ware. Pro's: Very very fast at handling everything I throw at it. ASUS drivers and support are top notch. The triple fan cooling system is quiet, and works flawlessly thus far. Nice full sized keyboard, with a very nice tactile feedback. Trackpad is actually use-able and accurate! Battery life of around 5 hours while running photoshop. The screen while not full Adobe color ready, is unbelievable. Very crisp and bright without a single spot of edge bleed. The gtx 1060 is a serious desktop replacement gpu when compared to anything in the 9 mobile series. The laptop was definitely designed by someone who knows that you'll likely upgrade some components down the road. SSD, ram, and even the hard drive are all laid out in a brilliant way and easy to work with. I can handle an external 4k display, a third 1080p display, and the native display, without ever losing a beat. The keyboard, even through a beating of working with large files and animations over a 10 hours work day, never once has gotten hot. Something even my Macbooks had issues with. Negatives: I wish the ssd was nvme based (they are supported but not included) I wish the ssd were larger (128gb is a good starting point but doesnt hold a whole lot) I wish that it had more than 12gb of memory (Ive yet to max this out, but rendering would be a better experience with 16/32gb AGAIN all of the negatives can (very easily I should add) be upgraded for fairly cheap. I would buy this again, in fact I bought a second for my girlfriend who enjoys it for school and gaming. Watch Dogs 2 seems to run great.