Pros:Exceptional CPU performance: Haswell may not have been a revelatory release versus its predecessor but there's no doubting that it's got the chops to handle whatever I chuck at it.Reasonable GPU performance: The HD4600 seems to deal with all of my typical desktop stuff without fault, and I'm still able to bust out some Civ V without it being a total kludge. Optimus is completely seamless.Great Screen: 1920x1080 IPS panels should really just be the minimum standard at this point. Anything lower on a 15"+ notebook is literally an affront to the eyes.Touch Panel: I'm not really a fan of Windows 8, but if you're going to roll with the latest MS OS you'd be doing yourself a disservice by getting a machine that does not support touch. I've already gotten some amusement out of my idiotic attempts to touch the screen on other people's older machines since I've started using this one and become used to having the screen as an input option.Audio: It works well. It's not as outright fantastic as the prior gen N56VM but it is very nearly the same.Build quality (see cons on this as well): Seemingly quite solid. All-metal chassis, some flex on the panel but only if you try. Lovely beveled edges on the deck and the panel that provide a good cleft for prying it open. There is a rubber ring around the entire exterior of the panel that "seals" the display against the deck. I'm not sure what kind of glass the panel is covered in and whether I will have key-marks in the future but so far it's not picked up any scratches from my occasionally grubby mitts. Ports are all quite solid in feel excepting the SD slot(see cons). The power plug from the PSU is a right angle and I'm all for it. PSU is large but somewhat flattened out so it's not too terrible to keep in a bag pocket.Heat: Intakes from bottom grilles and exhausts from the back in the hinge area. No warm wind coming from the sides of the unit.Cons:Drive performance: Out of the box, the 1TB drive that comes with this unit is just plain slow. Windows 8 does a good job with whatever caching mojo it has going on (Note, there is NOT a 24GB caching SSD in these units, despite any indication to the contrary elsewhere. There is physically no slot for it inside the chassis) so it keeps things moving well. However, the responsiveness of the machine is just dragged into the pits by the 5400RPM drive. I suggest immediately extricating it and replacing with an SSD if you want the machine to show its true capabilities. Be advised you'll need a Torx #5 to get into the chassis. Also, don't attempt to remove or replace the screws without a surgeon's touch. They are VERY delicate.Build Quality: Touch-pad is raised above the unit's deck on the right button corner. This issue is present on both units I ordered. The N56VM had this problem in the upper left corner. I wish Asus would fix this as it's apparent to me now that it's a consistent issue. The unit chassis is metal, but the bottom has no real internal support structure and relies on the rigidity of the bottom plate for its integrity. It would likely be VERY easy to smash it inward if the unit were pressed down onto something. SD slot is barely recessed. Inserted cards hang out 50% of the card's length. Do not count on being able to insert an SD card and leave it in there. Microphone and Headphones are integrated into a single jack. Maybe it's just me, but I really despise this configuration.Heat: The system's exhaust design is nice but isn't ideal since the hinge obstructs the exhaust location and vents roughly equally out of the back and up over the surface of the screen. After an hour or two of Civ V, the left side of the deck becomes very hot. However, I cannot knock this issue too hard since the unit's body is so slim there was bound to be heating issues no matter what.Webcam: The image quality from the integrated webcam is nothing short of garbage. Even if the capture size is reduced to the minimum, the frame-rate looks to be somewhere around 15fps. If the quality of the webcam is a sticking point for you, then you will NOT be pleased. This is the absolute worst element of the unit that I've discovered.Other observations:Windows 8 is, overall, annoying. That's really all there is too it. I'm not knocking anything on this unit based on the OS but, I will most definitely knock ASUS on this count for not at least providing drivers for this unit for Windows 7. Others have ditched Win8 for 7 on this unit and indicated only a few issues with certain things they could not appropriate drivers for. However, there are several ASUS applications that handle things like USB charging and keyboard lighting that may or may not work if you go that route.I wish there was a way to temporarily disable the touchscreen using an Fn combo like there is for the touch-pad. The screen obviously gets gunked up by fingers and wiping it tends to result in errant clicks.~6 month update:Still very pleased with the notebook. I have found that I rarely use the touchscreen outside of occasional scrolling of the start tiles, something which I only do rarely since I have everything I commonly access pinned to the taskbar. Upgraded to Windows 8.1 without any issues. System boots directly to desktop now.Performance: Hauls the proverbial gluteus maximus. Runs MSSQL in VirtualBox VM while I do development in Visual Studio on the host, listen to tunes, and run 30 browser windows with open dev consoles with no trouble. I did upgrade it to 16GB of 1.35v 1600Mhz RAM.Touch-pad: Lifted corner hasn't gotten any worse, but I don't use the touchpad much anyway. A small wireless mouse with the itty-bitty transceiver nub does the trick nicely. I do like the multi-touch scroll on the touchpad.Graphics: I didn't buy it to game with and it's no power-house by any stretch but it's still able to game on lower settings without much trouble. Obviously this doesn't work very well when you're on battery. System definitely gets hot after a couple hours of gaming. I recommend having something to lift the back of the notebook up and improve airflow when gaming.Screen: The glossy glass surface picks up dust out of the air like a magnet, keep a micro-fiber cloth handy. Depending on room lighting, you may be looking at a reflection of yourself pretty often. If you have good lighting behind the laptop and very little behind yourself, the screen is lovely to look at when working on code, browsing, graphics editing, or watching video.Audio: I have found that the last-gen N56VM's top-mounted speakers are simply superior to this unit's forward-edge mount. When I bother with the sub-woofer and have the unit placed on a table or something, it sounds fine, but the overall external audio setup versus the last gen is not an improvement. I've learned to like the all-in-one headphone/mic jack since I've started using some earbuds with a mic built in. Phone/Voip/Video calls on the notebook are better this way I think. Regardless of headphone quality, you're going to hear some hiss. Nothing to be done about it.Weight: This thing is no monster Clevo, but it's not light either. If mobility is key, find something in an ultrabook form-factor instead.