Questions about the Asus Q551LN-BBI706 Laptop

[Trippn Billy]

My grandson has asked for a 2 in 1 laptop for Christmas. The Asus Q551LN-BBI706 sold at Best Buy is the only one I can find with a dedicated (nvidia gt840m) graphics card.
http/www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-2-in-1-15-6-touch-screen-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-black/7289029.p?id=1219262038351&skuId=7289029
With it's specs it should be able run most games at medium to low graphics settings. I have one concern. It is said to be a discontinued model despite only being out since September. Anyone know about this?
I have also read that only Samsung ssd and HD are compatible with this model. ???

 

[Mark1974]

I don't know about it being discontinued. Amazon sells one (though I can't tell if it has the dedicated graphics card). It looks like Asus made a base model that Best Buy upgraded. I don't think the base model is discontinued.

I have one and it is great.

The first thing I did was replace the hard drive with an Samsung Evo 256 SSD. Easy install and is blazingly fast, cool, and quiet now. It literally starts up and is ready to use in less than 10 seconds (no exaggeration). I play Far Cry 3, Skyrim and Batman Arkham Origins on it which are much more graphically intensive than Minecraft and they play on high setting smoothly. I never have anti-aliasing turned on to max, but then again, I can't really tell the difference anyway.

The only thing I'm not impressed with is the trackpad. The buttons on it are sub-par. But it is usable for every day tasks and no one in their right mind would use a trackpad for games anyway.

I highly recommend this computer. You won't find another high-end, upgradable, 2-in-1 laptop with a dedicated graphics card, and an optical drive out there.

 

[Mark1974]

I purchased my Q551LN Oct.2015 its now going on Feb2016. Having a dedicated two gigabyte graphics card is a definite huge plus. I would like to add that it is upgradeable to 12 gigabytes max. 8 gigabytes that it comes with, 4 built in to the mother board,4 on the (sadly) single slot
Ram Chip, which can be upgraded to 8, and the extra 2 gigabytes for the dedicated graphics card, for a total of really 14GB's if you put it all together. This is plenty for most applications. The only recommendation, that has been ABSOLUTELY awsome, is to upgrade to an SSD Drive. I used SATA 512gb that I found on sale at best buy for $99. Otherwise 256 gigabytes would have sufficed for my storage needs. My point is my computer is now a beast. I am telling the absolute truth that it starts up in no more than 5 seconds. Not to mention when loading your applications to use, it does this almost instantaneous! vVersus the crappy 5400 rpm 1 terabyte that it came with. I guarantee you will be the happiest man or woman on the block acting like a little school girl after you do this. Being that it has a lit keyboard (an absolute necessity for me), it is a convertible to be able to use as a tablet, it has a touch screen that uses a top of the line 10-point touch capability which blows away the competition, Bluetooth that works seamlessly with my android which happens to be a Samsung S5. Any and all pictures or videos or notes, contact information, you name it, syncs directly to my computer as soon as I get near it. I have only 2 gripes. 1st the black brushed aluminum which is gorgeous clean, fingerprints ridiculously easy. This can somewhat piss a perfectionist like myself off. So I've been looking for some type of cover, or killer sticker set. The 2nd is the screen has an auto dim that must be disabled in the settings for it to have the kind of back lighting that I personally like. After thats disabled the screens pretty damn good. Like others have said this is not a gaming computer, but definitely has enough power to game at an acceptable rate. Other than that this is one screaming badass machine. I personally used to be a HP man. I hesitantly let myself get talked in to giving this a test drive after many a talks and lots of research. If you YouTube this model, there is a perfect demonstration of installing the SSD Drive. It was quite simple. I also love that it has a CD / DVD driver burner. This slot can also be removed and fitted with your old 1 terabyte hard drive if you're the type that doesn't need or use a CD / DVD Drive. Talk about serious storage capabilities! Ladies and gentlemen, I'm telling you, you're not going to do any better than this without spending serious duckets. I've built many tower systems also, so I am speaking from experience. Don't take my word for it, do your own research. The first thing you should do is go to Youtube and type in, Asus Q551LN SSD Hard drive install. The guy doing the video is very informative about this computer while showing you the easy steps to putting in the solid state hard drive and making this probably the fastest computer anyone you know has. Desktops included. Once again I believe 8 gigabytes of memory is plenty. But if you want to go crazy you can always upgrade to 12. But after installing the solid state drive I think you too we'll see that it has plenty of capability without upgrading the memory. Email me if you have any questions. Markyreeves@yahoo.com