In the womb, there has 16GB of RAM (despite the incorrect description on the Amazon sheet).
Some speak in various locations of a hard drive 1 TB 7,200 revolutions, with a 24GB SSD cache, or magnetic / SSD hybrid drive.
At the opening of the machine, apparently sees two drives, but in fact, one of the cradles is empty. The 24 GB SSD, meanwhile, is located on the motherboard. It is not a cache that would be part of the main disk.
The negative side:
- The BIOS is only in English, and very poor in options.
- The battery is not removable, but is it annoying? It is secured with 5 screws and removed completely if necessary.
Exactly, to remove the disk, you must first remove the battery.
Battery life seems good (4 to 5 hours announced Windows) with a capacity of 6000 mAh.
- There is no access door to easily add another disk, as I had on my previous Asus. Instead, it will loosen using a Torx T5 screwdriver 14 small screws that hold the cover. Tedious, but simple, these screws are all fully apparent.
- The sound does not please me. Powerful, but aggressive, metal, again, my previous Asus was better. The "subwoofer" is a gadget without interest.
- Keyboard side, Asus has still not taken over ergonomics. As on all their models, INSERT and DELETE were reunited on the same key. Those who like me are accustomed to a CTRL + INSERT must CTRL + FN + DELETE / INSERT button.
Unbearable for me, and if I had found a machine of another brand that meets my criteria, I would have left nothing for this Asus keyboard history.
- I also consider it a defect that the machine is supplied with Windows 8. (8.1 to be exact).
I hastened to add this machine a large capacity SSD, and install Windows 7.
As some have mentioned, this is an adventure, to which I have had to devote a full day, but successfully.
Indeed, without returning to the screw multitude to the material side, I had to familiarize myself with the concepts of UEFI BIOS, CSM, GPT, and install all the drivers because much of the equipment is not recognized by Windows 7.
You should know such as a LAN card (Ethernet like WiFi) will not be operational until the necessary drivers have not been installed. My suggestion: go through the site MyConfig, start by downloading a driver that will transport WiFi USB key (at this stage, the USB3 mode is not active) and subsequently should be fine.
In conclusion, a good machine, which should suit users research power, and being satisfied with the machine as supplied, without trying to make adjustments.