Disappointed with the ASUS GL703GS

garyfl · 28 Feb 2019 at 20:18

Hey,

After a lot of research and deliberation being a bit of a cheeky gamer but also a professional media creator, I settled on this laptop because of its IPS display mixed with 144hz, a decent 1070 matched with an 8750h. Spent quite a chunk too, £1,699!

I own a business and use this as a hybrid machine that I could be portable with now that my son is 1 year old and having a pc on the desk being static isn't feasible anymore.

Unfortunately not even 2 months later it has developed an array of defects. A line of dead pixels, really bad thermal temps (CPU throttling), sticking mouse pad, gamma issues on device wake up and really poor battery.

I contacted ASUS but they were pretty cold about it and just told me to go through the standard RMA process which is fair game. They would not even replace it which was weird considering it seems to be a complete dud in terms of QC. I would not be comfortable spending so much money on a machine with so many issues and fixing it is the only solution.

I guess luck is not on my side as today it was supposed to be picked up by DPD to go to ASUS repair center and DPD lost the tote and I have to go through the rigmarole of phoning DPD and arranging a new tote (3-5 days) just to have the privilege of it being picked up to leave my house.

The whole thing is disheartening and I'm not really wowed by either its build quality / QC or the experience with their customer support. The issue with DPD is not their fault but it solidifies that it's just not meant to be. So I was wondering if maybe its time for a forum rep to possibly step in and help me with this directly while I still have the machine?

I thought ASUS was supposed to be about really good build quality and premium parts, especially their ROG range, and I also heard the support was supposed to be pretty epic compared to other companies too!

Sorry for the moan!

Space Monkey · 28 Feb 2019 at 20:22

2 months old? Get a refund from the original seller?

garyfl · 28 Feb 2019 at 20:24

Space Monkey said:
2 months old? Get a refund from the original seller?

I bought it from OCUK, they said it's down to the manufacturer as its over 28 days

garyfl · 28 Feb 2019 at 20:24

I really don't want to say anything bad about OCUK there's not much they can really do on their end I don't think

LEK-89 · 28 Feb 2019 at 20:29

I hate to say it but the poor thermals with this model is the reason why I didn't end up getting one a couple of years ago after reading many reviews, some of which even highlighted a flaw within the cooling design and was partly down to the fact it has a micro 3rd fan in place. Gaming laptops in general do get very hot when at full pelt but this model really struggled to hold up during a lot of tests when it was first released.

I hope you manage to get all the issues sorted out but I would sell it on afterwards in favor for another brand.

Liam.

garyfl · 28 Feb 2019 at 20:40

LEK-89 said:
I hate to say it but the poor thermals with this model is the reason why I didn't end up getting one a couple of years ago after reading many reviews, some of which even highlighted a flaw within the cooling design and was partly down to the fact it has a micro 3rd fan in place. Gaming laptops in general do get very hot when at full pelt but this model really struggled to hold up during a lot of tests when it was first released.

I hope you manage to get all the issues sorted out but I would sell it on afterwards in favor for another brand.

Liam.

Yeah, when I started getting issues with thermals I did some googling and found this was affecting this range, but they were dated a few years ago and it's hard to see which model specifically as there's a few renditions of the SCAR model. So thought maybe this newer model had been fixed design wise. I'd be happy with a replacement or a refund tbh. Fixing something with so many issues just does not sound very appetizing after only 2 months.

philstanbridge · 28 Feb 2019 at 21:37

You sure it was brand new and not B grade? Did it 'smell' new?

garyfl · 28 Feb 2019 at 23:53

philstanbridge said:
You sure it was brand new and not B grade? Did it 'smell' new?

The B grade at the time was £1,599, I paid £1,699 for a new one. My unit is a brand new unit

garyfl · 1 Mar 2019 at 10:57

Are there any ASUS reps in the laptop forum specifically still active? I seem to have found a guy named Loki after some research

philstanbridge · 1 Mar 2019 at 15:20

I think he's active, I'm sure he posted the other day.

garyfl · 1 Mar 2019 at 17:03

This was finally handled by OCUK, they did not have to but they did, so bravo. Will update once its all over.

Wrinkly · 1 Mar 2019 at 23:37

I picked up a SCAR GL703GS-E5011T for £1,499 during the Black Friday sales. It's a beast! Added another 16GB of DDR4 and upgraded the NVME to 512GB. Have the CPU under volted at -160, thinking about a repaste.

The battery runs down fast due to Gsync, but you can pick up spare power bricks for ~£30 online.

MiSJAH · 2 Mar 2019 at 03:48

@Loki Asus ROG rep.

Loki · 2 Mar 2019 at 20:18

Hey @garyfl Sorry to hear you have had a bad experience with this notebook. On the plus side, we have sold quite a lot of these without any reported issue. Obviously, that is little comfort with your particular purchase. Can you drop me a PM with your RMA number and I will do some digging for you and lets see if we can get this sorted out so you have a fully working notebook that you can game on.

MiSJAH · 2 Mar 2019 at 20:22

Loki said:
Hey @garyfl Sorry to hear you have had a bad experience with this notebook. On the plus side, we have sold quite a lot of these without any reported issue. Obviously, that is little comfort with your particular purchase. Can you drop me a PM with your RMA number and I will do some digging for you and lets see if we can get this sorted out so you have a fully working notebook that you can game on.

Good work.

garyfl · 3 Mar 2019 at 20:31

Loki said:
Hey @garyfl Sorry to hear you have had a bad experience with this notebook. On the plus side, we have sold quite a lot of these without any reported issue. Obviously, that is little comfort with your particular purchase. Can you drop me a PM with your RMA number and I will do some digging for you and lets see if we can get this sorted out so you have a fully working notebook that you can game on.

Thank you for getting back to me. It appears OCUK stepped in here but if there are any issues I'll send you a PM. Thank you for getting in touch that is really comforting to see

tropicola · 7 Mar 2019 at 13:42

This is why I make all my big purchases on a credit card - you get a new product you are not happy with and they start to be funny about it - charge back and ship the thing back!

Why should you pay over 1,500 only for it to break in 2 months then have to get it repaired and be without your laptop for a while... makes no sense.

Company should give you a brand new replacement in my opinion take the broken one back, fix it themselves then sell it as a referb.

You would not expect to buy a new car then send it in for repair the next few weeks....

Seems like a major QC failure with all these issues you have had.

rolypolyman · 9 Mar 2019 at 23:25

Pretty sure Ocuk are responsible for any issues for the first year and thereafter Asus depending on warranty. To be told after 28 days its up to Asus is just wrong as far as I know. Really with all those issues you should be offered a new replacement or full refund. Shocked that Ocuk told you to contact Asus as it was over 28 days.

garyfl · 23 Mar 2019 at 12:53

tropicola said:
This is why I make all my big purchases on a credit card - you get a new product you are not happy with and they start to be funny about it - charge back and ship the thing back!

Why should you pay over 1,500 only for it to break in 2 months then have to get it repaired and be without your laptop for a while... makes no sense.

Company should give you a brand new replacement in my opinion take the broken one back, fix it themselves then sell it as a referb.

You would not expect to buy a new car then send it in for repair the next few weeks....

Seems like a major QC failure with all these issues you have had.

rolypolyman said:
Pretty sure Ocuk are responsible for any issues for the first year and thereafter Asus depending on warranty. To be told after 28 days its up to Asus is just wrong as far as I know. Really with all those issues you should be offered a new replacement or full refund. Shocked that Ocuk told you to contact Asus as it was over 28 days.

In the end, OCUK gave me a full refund, I shipped it back and that was the end of it. I can't really fault them. It took a bit, but they did that.

I ended up purchasing an Alienware Area 51m in the end and oh my god I have never been happier. Its a completely impressive piece of kit! Desktop 9900k desktop 2080 RTX and its silent in normal use.

hardkore · 23 Mar 2019 at 15:44

My gl703gs runs fine. You really have to mess with throttle stop and afterburner to dial the voltages down a bit but very rarely do I see my cpu go past 80c and GPU is usually around 65c-70c.

The worst thing about the 703gs is the single stick of ram. I was lucky and found an identical 16gb stick on ebay and got the ram working in dual channel. Running dual channel gave me about 15% FPS increase across the board.