They're still pretty good at least here in Asia. The horror stories I hear of Asus support in the US is a might and day difference from what I experienced. Their Taiwan HQ needs to smash some sense into the US office and clean house.
Yeah, some folks don't want to tinker and do like to play games with DRM that won't work on Linux. It's also a little more powerful than the Deck.
I love my deck so much that I broke my tinkering with computers outside of work hours rule in order to set up some Steam remote play boxes (HoloISO based) on mini PCs scattered throughout the house so I don't have to be next to my gaming rig to play. I don't really play anything online that has the Windows only DRM so Linux is great for me. But I get it when people have things they want to do and don't have the time, know how, or desire to fuck with their systems.
It's got better specs on paper but in practice, my Steam Deck just just about everything without issue, even new games and most games that are "unsupported" (at least as far as I've tried).
Some people might also like the layout better or just be fond of Asus as a company from the good old days when they were actually decent.
They've been a shit company for over a decade at least.
I got a laptop for my wife back when we were in college. It developed a problem with the monitor where the screen would look all corrupt after using it for a little bit. My wife, while reciting the prayer of percussive maintenance, would whack it and the problem would go away for a while. So I figured the connection had come loose. No biggie, just reseat it or replace it. The warranty had expired, so I cracked it open to see what was wrong. I reseated the cables in it and it worked... for a bit. Then the problem came back. Eventually we got fed up and bought another one, same model, figuring it was a fluke... It developed the same issue. Come to find out, Asus cheaped out in the ribbon cable for the monitor and installed ones that were too short for the laptop. Looking online, there were a bunch of people complaining about the same thing.
Around the same time as I had gotten her the new laptop, I'd also bought an Asus ZenPad for her to read on. We'll, that suddenly developed a screen issue too! Almost exactly the same as the laptops! My wife, ever eager to apply kinetic reinforcement, found that twisting the tablet a little bit also fixed the issue. I went online and, sure enough, Asus used cheap cables again! They would last just long enough for the warranty to expire before they'd detach.
I swore to myself I'll never buy another Asus product as long as I live. If I ever have kids, I'll disown them if they do too... Fuck these scammers.
I highly doubt they used those cables maliciously knowing they'd go out right when the warranty expired. It was probably a cost thing, and they later realized (too late to fix it) during production sometime that the cables were a warranty issue.
Engineers don't do thing maliciously with their designs. They pick things based on cost, and probably even raised the cable length as a risk/concern during the design and testing phase, and were overruled by the bean counters.
Even in your defense, you point out that someone at the company made the explict choice to sell devices with defective cabling. At no point did he blame the engineers who designed it for that choice.
That's a shit company that doesnt deserve anyone's support, regardless if it was "engineers" or "bean counters" that opted to continue to sell what they knew was a defective product.
The fact that it happened over and over with multiple devices means it's a culture issue with the company, not a one off mistake.
I've known about GN for years and with everyone talking about Tech Jesus I thought I'd have to look up a new tech reviewer. Never heard him referenced as TJ before but I can see it. Such pretty hair!
My own experience with Asus warranty was of utter incompetence.
It was a long time ago, around 10 years or so, and I sent a newly acquired laptop for repairs because of constants BSOD. Waited a month before getting it back... Without sound.
Turn out they forgot to reconnect the sound card. I sent it back for repair, waited another month (because even if they are at fault, they won't even fast track that repair), only to get it back with a nonfunctional touchpad.
I don't use it, so I didn't send it back a third time, because who know what would have come back damaged that time.
So their repair woes aren't recent. When their stuff works, it works well, but pray that you won't need to RMA it.
I had a nightmare situation a few years back with a ZenFone 6.
It bricked itself within a week, and after I sent it in I got months of radio silence, until I started calling them about it. They had no clue what the status of my repair was, there were a ton of orders for part after part, and it just kept going.
Eventually I just started pressuring anyone I could with "I need a new phone, this old one is falling apart, I can't just keep using it for months on end as you figure your shit out" and they eventually relented, instead just giving me an entire new unit.
Last year I bought an Asus monitor with clearly advertised "on-site-warranty" (which means a courier comes to your house and just drops off a replacement in exchange for picking up the old one), it was DOA.
I thought great, "on-site-swap" should have this sorted by tomorrow. I started the RMA and the first thing they want me to do is ship my monitor to Germany at my expense. I said "fuck no", and instead returned it to the retailer as I was still within the return window, and then just walked into another retailer with more in stock, to pick up another, which then worked.
Then, months later, some dude calls me and asks when I'll be home for my on-site warranty swap, straight up dropping my jaw to the floor. I know I cancelled my RMA.
Lo and behold, the RMA case-number wasn't even the same, so for some reason Asus decided, on their own, to open another RMA, WITHOUT TALKING TO ME for a monitor I TOLD THEM I WOULD BE RETURNING. Maybe someone tried to fix the fuck-up of not honouring the on-site warranty, but holy fuck if that took two months, thank god I took it into my own hands and got it fixed within 24 hours.
Yeah even in this video the guy was saying they used to be great, but after having like 3 motherboards fail prematurely and dealing with their crappy RMA process, I learned long ago that their reputation isn't deserved. I did buy a couple of their routers which seems fine for now but I won't be giving them more money in the future after watching this
Back in university at the turn of the millennia I was a front-line desktop support guy and the amount of Acer and Asus laptops that came in just completely falling apart was insane.