Why is Asus so cheap?

Amol S.

Platinum Member
Mar 14, 2015
2,390
709
136
Asus items are mostly made in Taiwan and not in China, so there are labor unions. But, that is not the point. How does a Lenovo ThinkPad priced at $1.5K has the same specs as a Asus laptop priced at $1K? I am talking from the manufacturers website price. On top of that, a similar speced Toshiba laptop is being quoted at $2K at the dynabook website. Then the similarly speced Dell Latitudes are being sold at $2.5K at Dell's website. What is Asus breaking in the laptops that they sell, such that they are sold so cheap?
 

BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,067
1,550
126
Seems like a no brainer to buy Asus?

As far as I know , Most HP, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba laptops use Asus boards ....
HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba are all likely better known brands to most consumers .... so, they can charge a bigger mark up due to name recognition maybe?

Or, maybe they are selling to businesses...
 

Denly

Golden Member
May 14, 2011
1,433
229
106
Not sure it still apply it was because of support, mainly bios update and spare parts. Good luck finding a replacement keyboard or cooling duct after a few years on asus, also you can count on HP/Dell sent you a replacement parts on your desk within 24hrs.
 

RLGL

Platinum Member
Jan 8, 2013
2,062
294
126
I gave up on Asus after 2 bad mobos and a router out of the box last summer
 

Amol S.

Platinum Member
Mar 14, 2015
2,390
709
136
Not sure it still apply it was because of support, mainly bios update and spare parts. Good luck finding a replacement keyboard or cooling duct after a few years on asus, also you can count on HP/Dell sent you a replacement parts on your desk within 24hrs.

I was wondering why my Asus Q550LF Nvidia GPU always reached around 97 - 99'C when ever I was using the discrete Nvidia GeForce Gt 745M GPU. Otherwise it would always be normal temps. The CPU would also reach around 95 - 97'C. Oh wells anyway, the hard drive in that thing crashed, and I already ordered a Lenovo P52, which it says will be shipping on the 31'st of this month.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,227
9,990
126
I have (had) a pair of Asus Atom laptops, basic things, upgraded to a SATA SSD, had to remove the keyboard to get at them, wasn't simple.

Also have a pair of Lenovo pseudo-business (probably designed for the .edu market), that have nice easy access panels for RAM/HDD/SSD, and upgrade their RAM and HDD to SSD.

The Lenovo units are faster (quad-core CPUs), but their cheap-o 802.11n wifi cards overheat and fail. I also tried to remove one of them, screw wouldn't budget. Probably have a BIOS whitelist too on those suckers. Otherwise, I'd put in some 802.11ax cards from Intel, for $30 ea.

Actually, both units, the wifi sometimes cuts out, and doesn't come back, sometimes I have to reboot, once, I had to re-flash the Lenovo firmware.

But I do feel that the Asus laptop is durable and dependable. I don't get the sense that they make "craptops". Acer consumer lines, perhaps, but not Asus. (Had two Acer consumer laptops fall apart on me. They were easy to service though, to their credit, unlike Asus.)
 

RadiclDreamer

Diamond Member
Aug 8, 2004
8,622
40
91
All those other companies have actual customer service?


This so much.

Their products are pretty good but when they fail ASUS just DGAF.

I had a board some years back that wasn't even a week old and the second PCIE slot died. I had to pay return shipping and they sent me a replacement that was nasty and had cigarette smoke all over it. I had to pay to send THAT back despite my complaints. I got another replacement that had capacitors missing and after refusing to pay to send that back they send ANOTHER and it had a bad SATA port. FFS, its like they didn't test anything and they copped attitude when I asked for a new replacement board being that it was less than a week old. I finally gave up and went to the place of purchase who said i had to deal with ASUS, I did a charge back and told them both to TPAD.
 
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LikeLinus

Lifer
Jul 25, 2001
11,518
670
126
Because Asus has the worst customer service ever. So they can sell products cheap and don't support them. They are horrible to deal with.
 

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
30,246
10,748
136
This so much.

Their products are pretty good but when they fail ASUS just DGAF.

I had a board some years back that wasn't even a week old and the second PCIE slot died. I had to pay return shipping and they sent me a replacement that was nasty and had cigarette smoke all over it. I had to pay to send THAT back despite my complaints. I got another replacement that had capacitors missing and after refusing to pay to send that back they send ANOTHER and it had a bad SATA port. FFS, its like they didn't test anything and they copped attitude when I asked for a new replacement board being that it was less than a week old. I finally gave up and went to the place of purchase who said i had to deal with ASUS, I did a charge back and told them both to TPAD.


Change a few words around and you could be describing my last Asus motherboard support debacle verbatim!

Despite this I do still use Asus computer components since if they work fine out of the box they are usually pretty reliable. Note however I will only buy them from vendors with a generous return-policy and I make it a point to thoroughly test them immediately upon receipt.

I wouldn't even consider any Asus device that might need anything like regular app/security updates.