Their QC is reserved for reviewers - you may bet they get the best units possible
Its not limited to Asus though - pretty much everyone is doing it. That's why review channels/sites are useless for gauging quality level - you need to look at feedback from random people (buying from same store as you) for that.
you can't discount every review on a quality control front based on those assumptions really. Some review samples come from PR teams at the manufacturer, so yes, you're likely to get a decent sample from a QC point of view - you're unlikely to get a review sample with lots of dead pixels or loads of backlight bleed most of the time. Although you'd be surprised really, i've had quite a few units which haven't been brilliant or perfect in that regard
You'll see from plenty of our reviews at TFTCentral that also other issues are often identified by us and reported on (overshoot problems, weird DP bugs, overclocking anomalies etc). if it's a concern, you can just ignore the "backlight bleed" section of the review but the rest of the review should apply to other samples.
however, many of our reviews are from samples which come direct from stock from certain e-shops and are unopened and just random samples. True, you still only get a sample of 1 to test, but it's certainly "fairer" than any PR sample is likely to be. I've also had samples of screens which have come straight from production lines in Europe (or even direct from Japan in some cases) where they are un-tested, un-used etc. those are often the very early reviews before the screen has even been to the PR team. i've had plenty which have come to me first for review, and then gone in to their review sample channel and PR team
so again, a fairer sample of 1 to test.
user opinions are certainly useful as a further indication, but you have to be a little careful with that too as it does get significantly skewed online. You will always see far more negative reports on forums etc than you will positive reports, it's just the nature of it. you're far more likely to post a negative experience than a positive experience with anything like this. also, i've seen many cases in the past where "issues" are poorly identified and are not a fair, realistic representation of the reality. i'm certainly not discounting these screens do have problems and QC issues, i've certainly seen plenty of legit cases and poor quality examples. but just making the point you still have to take a lot of the online reports of QC with a pinch of salt or be careful.
It's not at all un-heard of for some manufacturers to deliberately bad-mouth others online as well to damage their brand or product. i've heard of it happening in quite a few cases. you can normally spot it from those new members who only seem to have joined a site to have a moan, and go round lots of websites doing the same thing with very little real evidence or information. again, just something to be wary of as it does happen. also be careful of those people who just hate a given manufacturer because of a previous bad experience and either bring up their case at every opportunity, or use it as a reason to bad mouth that manufacturer proactively. obviously some people have had horrible experiences with support, returns etc and i'm not denying some of it must be really infuriating. Just another thing to be wary of when reading user reports of these things.
Sadly the monitor will show up first.
