After hours of research and comparison shopping for a work laptop, I settled on the ASUS Zenbook S14 (UX5406) back at the end of 2024. What I clearly did NOT do a good enough job researching was the litany of stories about ASUS product reliability and support. A mistake I won’t make again.



Look, it’s a very nice looking machine. But in the past \~14 months of ownership, it’s been RMAed 3 times, and has been out of my possession for probably about 10 weeks total.

 

I’ve contacted ASUS countless times by phone, email, and chat.  And while everyone at ASUS Support that I talk to is friendly and helpful and don’t force me to go through the same BIOS/updates/drivers/resets/etc troubleshooting every time, the only resolution is to have it sent in over and over for repair. At first, it was the screen, and since having it repaired that first time, it’s been touchpad failures time and again. The touchpad has failed 3 times now, hours or days after initial boot up upon receiving it back from repair. The laptop is in pristine condition with not even a scratch - I haven’t even removed the plastic film from the screen repair the first time! I’ve requested a replacement which has been denied, though what I’d really prefer is a side-grade, or hell, even a downgrade at this point to some other model because it just seems like this ultimately might be a design issue.  For this latest (third) touchpad failure, their answer is still the same: send it in for repair.

 

After my experience, my employer has decided that no employees will allowed to purchase ASUS products anymore, so ASUS has probably lost both a regular consumer customer as well as a business customer. Sucks to suck, I guess.

 

Anyway, sort of feels like I’m shouting into the void with my perpetual escalations, but without slandering or defaming, I hope to warn at least one person in the great wide world of the internet to avoid at least my ASUS product, but also of the impotence of Support.

[Support] ASUS Laptop Nightmare Quadrilogy