Newest Asus Vivobook 17 M712DA 17.3″ FHD Premium Laptop, AMD Dual-Core Ryzen 3 3250U upto 3.5Ghz, 20GB RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD Boot + 1TB HDD, USB-C, HDMI, AMD Radeon Graphics, Windows 10 Home, Silver ASUS

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★★★★★
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Description

Newest Asus Vivobook 17 M712DA 17.3" FHD Premium Laptop, AMD Dual-Core Ryzen 3 3250U upto 3.5Ghz, 20GB RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD Boot + 1TB HDD, USB-C, HDMI, AMD Radeon Graphics, Windows 10 Home, Silver

User reviews

Pros: -Screen size is great, good match for resolution.-No dead, stuck or bright pixels.-Keyboard feels fair, good key separation.-Big palm rest. Cons: -No USB-C charging.-Keys are difficult to see at best if there's no bright image on screen. External lights don't help. Touch typers should be fine 80-90% of the time.-Big palm rest isn't populated by a larger touchpad. I'm OK with the size but many users, especially Macbook fans, will be disappointed.-Heat is an issue. There's a heat pipe tying the GPU and CPU together but no heatsink afaik. A single blower type fan just blows at it. I may see if there's a module I can epoxy onto the pipe.-Getting Linux on there was more of a struggle than it should be. Overall Review: I bought this for pentesting with an intention to dual boot Sabayon or Debian for DD and Kali for PT. Sabayon (my pref), Ubuntu (which I dislike) and PopOS straight refused to run the installer (burned with both Balena, which you shouldn't use for anything ever, and Rufus). Debian finally ran after grabbing Elantech drivers for the touchpad and iwlwifi for the Intel 8265 AC wireless but wouldn't startx, even after lots of work. Kali wouldn't install the first time but did finally install, and worked flawlessly, after I included the kitchen sink option for tools. There's likely a package in there that was required for some weirdo piece of hardware in this budget laptop.Overall I'm quite pleased. I'm used to budget devices working in Windows. That's what everyone validates to. I'm also used to Linux being a bit of a pain on some budget devices because most companies give zero Fs about people running Linux or have specific, lowballed hardware they charge a premium for. Be prepared for a bit of a struggle (maybe) depending on the distro you choose if you go Linux.Windows users should be prepared to turn off Cortana creeper and switch out of S mode to get a usable anything. Beyond that it boots very quickly in S mode which is exactly what it was created for. Outside of first boot for kicks I didn't play in it at all.Performance is fantastic. I'm sure everyone else out there that has been running NVME based systems for a while would see a bit of sluggishness but I saw nothing but supremely responsive behavior in Kali. Web pages and general apps were very snappy.Physical build is good, polished, like I'd expect from Asus. That said it's plastic. There's a fair amount of deck and display flex. The main deck is light enough, and the hinge stiff enough, that it's not a one finger open. There's some pronounced display wobble if you are a heavy typist but I'd suggest ditching the sledge hammer fingers before complaining about the keyboard or wobble. I type fairly light, even for a big guy, so I didn't notice any issues unless I got aggressive.Overall I'm giving it a 4.8. Installing Linux shouldn't be this hard and I'm no n00b. Price for performance is great, it's no heavier than I'd expect (about the same as my work HP envy), the display is great for what I need and the power adaptor doesn't weigh more than the laptop. I highly recommend it.


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