TEAM WSL
Asus, a brand mainly known to us for its motherboards and other assembling components, revamped its laptop product lineup a few months back. Delighted with its product specifications, marketing and quality promise, we have purchased an ASUS Zenbook 14 around its immediate launch date.
Here is our overall personal experience from the brand ASUS. From Product registration to Resale experience, we have covered our experience below chronologically.
Pricing of the Model (UX435EG): Rs. 1, 20,000.
Force Users to Use Third-Party Messaging Platform: WhatsApp
Right from opening the box to the initial set-up of the device, the brand and its dealers, sales staff have one thing in common – i.e. enforce a weird registration process on to the users. This isn’t any regular registration that we have faced with any brand we have used so far. Even for the warranty to come into effect, the user needs to complete the mandatory registration where the OTP only comes to the WhatsApp account of the user and nowhere else. If you are not a WhatsApp user, you cannot proceed any further. The same has been discussed in brief here.
Force Users to link ID Proofs:
Have used laptops from four major brands for over 13+years now, never faced a situation where ID proofs were asked (upload to their portal) even for the warranty to come into effect. This is a weird practice we have come across. Remember, every step involves only WhatsApp OTP as an option to proceed. Even to avail the promo offer that comes bundled with the device, you need to go through this Whatsapp OTP process.
We doubt what is the company trying to map here with ID proofs and whatsApp?
Support:
Contacted support regarding the mandatory WhatsApp OTP step, but after a couple of follow-ups stopped hearing from them. The support staff doesn’t even have basic telephone etiquette; when a customer converses in English, the support personnel replies in Hindi. Repeated reminder emails elicited no response. We then tried to level up the escalation matrix.
CEO Help Desk:
The CEO help desk is also of sub-standard quality and inherits the qualities of a regular support team. The team doesn’t even respond to emails, and a customer feels abandoned. After multiple follow-up emails, we gave up any hope on the support.
Design Engineering and Awards:
This is where the entire functionality of the laptop comes into question. The design itself is so flawed that the heat gets directed towards the screen when opened. Compared to the bottom, the screen and function key area get hot, which make your fingers feel the warmth and the touch screen useless even in an air-conditioned room.
For such a design, who has given the Design Awards?
The authenticity of the awards is a question now to a user who has used this model from ASUS. Having lost hope in the brand or its support, we even lost all the interest to use this laptop, considering the heat this laptop generates, noise and battery backup and decided to sell it.
So, in the end, no point to discuss its fancy dual screens or performance when the basics are flawed and failed.
Honestly. the only pro thing we liked about the model is the Sound by Harman/Kardon.
Resale Value:
We tried selling the laptop the very second or third month after its purchase and the responses we got in return shows the market resale condition. The only repeated response we got in return for our ask price is – This is not so and so brand to retain value, and all you get is this minimal amount in the market.
Tip: So, next time when you purchase something, keep this pointer in mind when you invest something into brands like these.
Finally, we gave up on the selling aspect, considering the time and efforts involved and decided to keep the device with zero interest in using it.
US Military-grade durability:
We were somewhat confident, at least on the durability aspect, till the event date. But on one unfortunate day, the charging cable got stuck and pulled by the chair and thus made the laptop fall. We acknowledge this is accidental, but to our surprise, the Military Grade durability couldn’t sustain a 75-80cm height fall, and the screen broke.
Learnings: So, don’t get overwhelmed by the fancy durability claims from brands.
Experience: A laptop from a different brand with no durability claim sustained a slightly higher fall with a small dent when compared to this accident.
After Sales Support and Component Availability:
Experience 1 – Service Center: Sorry, the replacement screen is not available for this model and won’t be available going forward.
Seriously? No replacement availability even within 1 year of the product launch?
Experience 2 – Service Center: Available, up-on order and upfront payment.
Initially, we were in an opinion to get the screen replaced, but with the multiple responses we have received, we decided this brand is not worth it and now abandoned the device.
YouTube Influencers:
This model was hyped the best by certain youtube influencers during the launch time. The kind of influencers that were involved in the promotion itself shows the quality of the brand and the misleading assurances they make. Though we never believed in those influencer claims, we thought to give a try/chance to the brand.
Our Thoughts:
Investing money in such brands is not worth it, and later spending time following up with support, repairs is a completely unworthy experience. Personally, we see the brand is more interested in user registration and WhatsApp accounts than giving the user a good quality product and service. If you are a serious user, be careful when you purchase from such brands with no user-centric approach. Going forward, we would never touch this brand for any of our computing uses as we consider their products as e-waste from our experience.
