Puts out defective products then misleads consumers to think they have voided their warranty so they can't get a replacement for said defective products.
There's more too it but that's the main thing that made people turn on them.
You've just described my entire experience with the Transformer tablet. After a year of sending it in within days of receiving it "repaired," the day after my warranty ended, they said they discovered a faulty network chip and could replace it for the price of a new tablet plus shipping both ways.
I've been shouting "Fuck ASUS" for the past 10 years and I'm so glad I can now join others in it.
I had one of those. It worked well until I filled it up dor 90% ( photo backup while on holiday so I could keep taking pictures. ). It became laggy and slow. Even after doing a full reset.
At one point one of the keys in the keyboard got detached/broke. Was within the warranty period so i contacted them.
Sent the photos they asked.
They still couldn't determine the damage or if it was under warranty. So they wanted me to send it in free of charge. Then they would determine if it was under warranty.
If yes, they would repair it and return it for free
If no, I would have to pay 50€ to get it back unfixed. Or more if I would ask them to fix it.
I never did it because I felt like they were just going to say "no warranty" for a quick and easy 50€...
The usual. Hardware quality slowly goes to shit, company starts getting tricksy with consumers to make money instead of making quality product.
The big one was the BIOS update that nearly fried a lot of 670 motherboards that ASUS turned around and tried to avoid taking responsibility for, trying to pin issues on the consumer.
It's capitalists being capitalists. Completely ruining their brand to squeeze out a short term 1% increase in revenue.
We are in the "how many of my customers can I screw over and completey piss off and still make a profit" stage of capitalism.
Sending out defective boards, then refusing RMAs for said defective boards. They basically go “You voided the warranty by opening it, lul git fukd loser.”
Never mind the fact that (unless the board is visibly broken somehow) you’d need to open it and plug shit in to test it. So there would be no way to test it without voiding the warranty. It’s a catch-22 in action.
The truly shitty part is that using the board doesn’t void the warranty. But ASUS is claiming the people trying to RMA all have voided warranties. If it were only one or two, then yeah it may be scammers trying to avoid losing money after roasting a board. But it quickly turned into a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario, where nobody is believing ASUS anymore because they’re basically just blanket denying every single warranty RMA.
The problem with asus was all the engineers who cared went to asrock when they split. For those who don't know, asrock started life as a subsidiary for asus to cover the low end and OEM markets. There used to be a lot of shared engineering between the two companies but there started to be some bad blood between each other as asus was releasing server hardware and asrock was releasing enthusiasts hardware. Ultimately it was decided since neither side wanted to stop stepping on the others toes they would let asrock fully separate from asus as a company and let the market decide things. Ironically that only lasted for three years before the majority stake in asrock was bought up by Pegatron, a company owned partially owned by asus...
It's funny, ASRock went from a company I'd never fucking heard of to one of the top names in the space. I used to be like "what's this no-name brand?" and now I'm like "Oh ASRock, I know them."
Unrelated, I miss the old Gigabyte Dual BIOS, where it had a backup BIOS in case the default got corrupted. Which mine did, a lot.
+1 for MSI. I've bought GPUs from them for 10+ years and never once had a failure or even a minor issue. Got a lot of mileage out of the GTX 1080 I bought in 2016.
Oof, my MSI 1080 died after allmost six years of service.
My first hardware death in 20 years of building my own systems, other than a drive.
Can’t blame them for it. It truly did its job, so I went with them again for my 3080.
it was spun-off from asus in '02, then acquired by a different spin-off in '10 which asus retains significant ownership of. so, yea, basically asrock is their "discount" brand,
I liked ASrock when they were in the ECS tier of quirky and weird. Got a Socket 939 board with the ULi M1695 chipset that was really nifty.
Then I had an awful experience with an AM3 board that claimed to run a FX-8350, until they edited their support list.
I grudgingly chose them for AM5 because it was $50 cheaper for the featured I wanted, and it's been okay, aside from me breaking the x16 slot clip due to hamfistedly removing a shipping-container sized GPU.
Glad you brought up ECS. Not good for high-end computing, but really stable for low-end. I have a customer with an Athlon64 box I built them in a pinch almost 20 years ago now that just runs a POS system, and it's never caused him a single problem. Sometimes budget minded brands work in a pinch. ECS is not super well known, but always been great with customer service and advance RMA replacements. I wouldn't call their hardware super sturdy in some cases though.
I've been largely unaware of a lot of these things going on with Asus but the other day I was reading up on Armoury Crate, which Asus integrates as a hardware-level rootkit on many of their motherboards. That is absolutely goddamn absurd. Bloatware baked right into the hardware itself? I cannot express how scummy and disrespectful to your customers that is.
I'm very glad I picked no Asus parts for my latest build.
I had an msi board in my father's build, and as I was eyeing hardware upgrades I decided to get some more life out of it by adding some memory and updating the bios, as it was quite old. After the bios update, it never booted again. The upgrade tool said it was the correct file, that it was installed successfully, and that I just needed to reboot. Their flashback system? Didn't work. Researching, it was apparently a KNOWN PROBLEM that msi just shrugged off, and several boards from that era would die after an update. No apology, no resolution, not even an admission of guilt. Because of that fuck up, proprietary software that my father used for business finances, wouldn't activate on a new machine - the company shutdown the activation servers, and it required hardware checks, and there was no work around. The new program? Unable to read the old file format. We lost access to 20 years of tax/receipt records.
MSI is blacklisted for me, my family, friends, and anyone who I perform IT services for. I don't give 2 fucks if the hardware is 80% cheaper and 200% better. Fuck you, they fucked perfectly good hardware, my reputation, and if we ever get audited we're fucked. Eat shit and die, MSI.
This video kind of misses the mark on delivering the points of the title, but these are the simplest boiled down points of the community gripes:
ASUS is having quality control issues, or deliberately skimping to pad profits
They are rebranding lesser quality components with the higher quality ROG brand, and pricing it as such
They are unilaterally voiding warranties when users try to RMA or return said hardware
Gigabyte (remember them?) did this same slow slide of enshittification about 10 years ago. The issue pretty much boils down to a company producing too many different types of things, instead of staying good at the things they do well, and the community has noticed and is calling for boycotts. This will no doubt put them on the defensive for years to come, and affect their overall standing in the larger community until they correct course.
Sure do! Both my board and the board in my wife's computer are Gigabyte. So's my video card. The only issue I've ever had with their stuff has been a bad stick of ram a few years ago, which they exchanged without argument.
Brands in this sphere I definitely have had trouble with: MSI, Razer -- so many problems with Razer -- and ASUS.
Keyboards, headphones, laptops, a handheld Steam Deck imitator, and various other RGB gamer shit. All of it is trash. Their business model nowadays seems to revolve entirely around upselling Aliexpress quality Chinese garbage at premium prices and then methodically denying every single warranty claim for defective and DOA product using spurious excuses. Oh, and their driver software is crap. And their products are consistently behind even Logitech on the features you get for the price.
Through no particular intentional means, I am now a Logitech convert. For mice and keyboards, their stuff has always been consistently reliable for me, their "G" series driver software is significantly less irritating than Razer Synapse, and most of their stuff is cheaper as well.
I think in my lifetime I've trashed four Razer keyboards, at least as many mice, and two pairs of headphones. All of these died early deaths -- within weeks, sometimes a couple of months at the outside. Every time I tell myself this time will be different. It never is. I don't buy their shit anymore, and I don't recommend anyone else do, either.
I bought the $120 Razer Wolverine V2 Xbox controller after MS shrunk the official controller for the Series S/X and it was a piece of shit. Replaced it with a $45 gamesir (Chinese brand) with hall effect triggers and sticks that I've had for two years now with no issues and no drift, a first for any xbox controller I've ever had. Razer sucks.
I mean their mice are terrible too. I went through three of their mice in two years back in like 2016. Been using a Logitech g2 whatever their most famous one is since then and it’s not had a single problem. So much so that I bought two more for my other computer and my wife.
As someone with small hands, Razer is the only mouse I can use. All the beloved Logitech models are just too big. I've been using Razer mice for more than a decade. Only had a problem with one. I'd like some competition and alternatives, but the gaming market (side buttons) is for large hands. Which sucks, because people with large hands can also prefer that claw-grip and want smaller mice as well.
Yeah so the thing with PC parts suppliers is that every brand is going to have people who have experienced problems with their stuff.
Gigabyte I've never had a problem with, but yeah during the pandemic their power supplies were fucking exploding so yeah that's a problem.
Asus I've never had a problem with, but yeah their boards on both sides have been setting voltages and power limits very aggressively, killing AM5 CPUs catastrophically, potentially causing instability on higher end Intel chips as well it seems. That's a problem.
I keep hearing this and wonder if I should buy bulk mice before they come preinstalled with malware or something because they last decades so voting with your wallet doesn't really work.
Maybe. Or just switch to whatever the good mouse brand is at the time. I'm rocking a Microsoft Intellimouse Pro (wired) on my desktop, which I really like. On my work laptop, I have a Logitech MX Master 3 at work (had lots of issues with the thumb button in the past), and a Logitech Triathlon (no issues).
My wife had a couple of the g305s die on her within a year, so I switched her to a Razer Deathaddr Mini, which has been good for over a year now.
I have a 14 year old gigabyte motherboard in my older computer. When I first got it I didn't know what I was doing and plugged the wrong thing in somewhere and blew up a component on it. As long as I don't use that slot it chugs along just fine. I wish companies would just keep making things that last I'd gladly pay a fairly steep premium for that. Instead it seems every company that gets known for making good stuff decides to shit all over themselves
Honestly, in your case, it could just be more about who makes what components can withstand X amount of punishment and keep the electrons flowing through so other things keep working 😂
Agreed on your point though. Cheap shit needs to stop.
No. The ROG brand is ASUS's brand in the first place.
Like, anyone could be like "this is my normal quiche, and this one here is my MuMu quiche."
Then, once everybody's buying MuMu, start using the normal recipe for MuMu. It's not illegal, but at first people think they just got an Ok MuMu, then they start realizing it just sucks now. Hard for the company to recover from that.
Anecdotal like the rest of the posts here, but I recently built a new rig for gaming/lab testing and used a Gigabyte board for the first time in a decade after seeing good reviews and a solid sale price.
About 3 weeks after setting everything up it just crapped out. Would reboot seconds after you pressed power. Checked and verified absolutely every other part, no luck. Tried to contact support, got the runaround for a few days until I was directed to a site to submit an RMA request.
That was a month ago, zero movement still. About 4 days into it I bought an identical part of Amazon and "traded" em. I'm usually pretty ethical about that kind of thing but this was ridiculous and I needed the PC working ASAP.
Who's decent anymore? I always used to go with MSI.
Years ago I happily used some Razer mice and keyboards, even a headset, so in the not too far past I told people around me that Razer was fairly good, quality wise, but alas, I think each and every one I recommended Razer products to had them break and or die well within warranty, and they always had to start a stupid discussion to get the warranty/RMA accepted, a few times even replacements denied outright by Razer.
For me this stands in sharp contrast with Logitech whom has never denied me a warranty, even for products a few weeks beyond the date, and they generally just send out a new item.
That is, for me it is rare for a Logitech product to actually require replacement to begin with, I have a few mice, keyboards and headsets far older than 5 years and they work fine plus are still supported in the drivers.
Speaking of drivers, Razer at one point also made the decision to have their drivers require an account login to function properly (multi-button mice would only have 2 functional buttons if not logged in etc). But after some flak from its users it slightly changed that to the login being optional, but profiles would still be hampered without a continuous online presence.
Coming back to Asus, for a few years now I hear of people having quality issues and grumpy asus service desks, but for me their videocards ways ran fine (even without coil whine, unlike some MSI cards).
I am quite hesitant to buy an Asus monitor or motherboard though.
Seconded for difficulty with Razer products. 15+ years ago they were pretty good. But since then I’ve had 2 headsets crap out right after warranty, one in warranty failed, mice quit working and a keyboard fail. They only replaced the one headset. Plus, their gaming software for their upper tier headsets is unbelievably bloated and awful. I’ve had to uninstall and reinstall it several times to get it working when some update f’s it up.
So far, my Logitech gear is still trucking along, even my cheap $14 travel mouse.
I finally bought a Razer mouse just a couple years ago since it was one of the few I could find that was a USB receiver + Bluetooth wireless gaming mouse I could use with my desktop and steam deck. Still works great, thankfully. But otherwise I learned the hard way many years ago to just buy Logitech after purchasing a stupid expensive gaming mouse from a brand I've forgotten whose left click died in less than a year. I don't think I've ever had a Logitech product actually die on me; I just eventually replace them with a newer Logitech product.
But otherwise I learned the hard way many years ago to just buy Logitech after purchasing a stupid expensive gaming mouse from a brand I’ve forgotten whose left click died in less than a year.
Seems to be a problem in general. I've been using Elecom trackballs for years, first one I bought still works. Ones I've bought in the last year all started wigging out on left click within a couple months. I took one apart recently to swap the mouse switch with a quick solder job and it's good as new. Seems like the newer ones are using really cheap Chinese Omron switches that die quickly. IIRC the older one uses a Japanese Omron switch. The new one I soldered in is a Kailh GM2.0.
Modern Logitech mice are the same. The cheap Chinese Omron switches in the same mouse look like they're from different factories.
I have two G604 mice that I bought within a couple of months of each other and one of them started double clicking. So I did a button switch just like you but with Kailh reds. Each mouse had old looking Omron switches.
I've had the opposite experience between Logitech and Razer, at least when it comes to mice. Every modern Logitech mouse I've had (3) has had the right and left click switches replaced as they started double clicking right after the warranty expired.
Logitech are actually using the wrong switches as they're running them below their design voltage and is causing premature failure. I swapped them out with appropriately rated switches and they are still in service, now for much longer than the original switches.
When the failure started though I switched my main mouse to a Razer with optical switches and have had zero problems with the hardware. Software wise, Polychromatic + OpenRazer on Linux works better than Razer's software on Windows. Razer's software leaves a lot to be desired, but Logitech's software is only marginally better.
I have a bone to pick with Lenovo, the backlight doesn't work out of the box for my laptop in many Linux distributions because as far as I can tell they don't honour the acpi calls to adjust it.
I have to do a whacky work around where I need the proprietary Nvidia driver to control it.
This is troubling. I've been using ASUS motherboards for a very long time. I haven't noticed any problems in the last 3 systems I built, but I also usually go for the workstation type motherboards instead of gaming motherboards, so I can use ECC RAM and dispense with the LED bling I don't need or want. I wonder if they are still putting enough effort into the business/workstation stuff that it's not having too many quality issues yet. I hope they can turn this around, because the list of quality PC parts manufacturers is growing smaller all the time.
I have always had issues with ASUS. Their parts have never really worked well for me, and if they did they only lasted a year or two before shitting out. Everyone else seemed to swear by them and I could never even get a part that worked.
Nope, its only been ASUS. I have a mix of corsair and MSI right now. The problems ranged from DOA (couple mobos over the years), dim displays, and even had a router that had burnt up its power module.
I had a $1,300 gaming laptop from Asus from way back in 2013. The hinge for the screen was designed in such a way that it applied pressure against the very thing plastic screen bezel when opening the laptop, so in a very short amount of time the bezel just snapped in front of each hinge. Absolutely brain dead design.
The only non-Apple laptop that has lasted me for years was an asus from 2013. Probably cost me $1900. Luck of the draw for me, I guess. I always thought highly of the company because my HP and Dell laptops fell apart so fast (even the ones that cost close to $1900). I know Lenovo always had issues with back doors. I guess there aren’t a lot of options these days.
That's my experience with Asus going back over 25 years now. To me, Asus has always been substandard products sold at premium prices. If I wanted a substandard motherboard, I'd buy ECS and save a bunch of money. And to be fair to ECS, I've had some of their boards that have worked just fine, which is more than I can say about the Asus stuff.
I hate ASUS. Used to be way in on them -- well not way but relatively. I had the ASUS ROG Phone. The screen unfortunately broke and needed to be sent into service. More unfortunate, it was just about 1 month out of warranty.
So I get it set up to send it. ASUS charges me $300 for the phone screen replacement. It took over 8 months for them to get it back to me. When the phone finally did arrive, the RGB lighting didn't work, the NFC didn't work, and the screen itself had an orange hue in the upper right corner. To boot, it would only connect to AES Wi-Fi networks, so I can't even use it without a SIM card because who the fuck uses AES. They didn't even fucking fix it properly. I never got responses, sending e-mails for months after it was finally returned to me.
Now, in this time I was really patient. I was using a temporary phone. Around month 5, I just needed a new phone and was looking into the newly released ROG Phone 2. I figured the ROG 1 would still get plenty of usage as a spare device. Well I had the ROG 2 until AT&T decided that the phone didn't have the supported bands anymore, so my >1 year old phone is now as effective as an iPod 3g. Just 6 months later, screen itself just died, no fall, no nothing. I can use SCRCPY to use it, the screen just doesn't work. I really, really tried to give them a shot and the benefit of the doubt.
Now, in between these ~2 years I'd accumulated a few accessories for the phones, keycaps and backpacks. Just little things -- ngl, the bag and the keycaps are still really good quality. I also decided to upgrade my PC, and was looking at a nice new motherboard to rebuild my existing PC with.
So I get the ASUS B550 or something like that. Stupidly bought it from Newegg, first time. The motherboard arrives and upon building the computer I just cannot get it to POST. I reach out to the 2 likely culprits, the PSU and the MoBo. EVGA sends me an entirely new PSU, free of charge, and tells me not to bother shipping it back. ASUS on the other hand would not accept that the motherboard could have been the point of failure! And when I FINALLY was able to fully prove that every single component in the board works EXCEPT the MoBo, they told me to take it up with where I purchased it from, Newegg. So I would get to pay some ~20% restocking fee on a broken motherboard, instead of the manufacturr just replacing a defective board. Oh, the best part? The motherboards USB-3.0 header was broken, came right off when trying to plug it in. No wonder it wouldn't POST.
Fuck you, ASUS. Fuck your shitty warranty, your awful customer support, your horrible treatment of customers who put their trust into you. I will never support ASUS again and I will always vehemently suggest anyone else. It's really, really simple to be a good OEM, all it takes is replacing things that break. ASUS treats every single customer like a scammer who is trying to get free stuff out of them, which IMO just goes to show that's exactly the mindset ASUS has as well.
I still have the motherboard btw. If anyone knows how to repair a USB-3.0 header I'll either be glad to be guided through a repair or I'll just send it to you for cost of shipping. It's just going to sit in my garage otherwise.
Going to corroborate this with that I had a really similar experience with my old Sabertooth 990FX board. Was supposed to support Bulldozer, and they put out a BIOS update the night before Bulldozer launched. I grabbed the update, put it on a flash drive, and updated the board. It would never post after that. RAM, CPU (FX6100), graphics card were all reseated multiple times. Never even gave post beeps, so there wasn’t even a hint as to what was going on. Even tried a different PSU just to be safe.
ASUS told me to get shafted because they couldn’t guarantee I updated the BIOS safely.
CompUSA exchanged it with a pre-updated board, no questions asked.
Lol, yeah. The ROG line of phone has an RGB backlight with the ROG logo.
Honestly, I liked it. Could be configured to per-app notifications, and could be synced to other phones that had it. Not that I ever got to use this feature, it was returned to me BROKEN! lol
Reattaching the connector is relatively easy. But unless the pcb itself is really mangled, a missing connector won't affect the computer POSTing. Can you send a closeup of where the connector should be?
It's in my garage at the moment, but from memory (it's been a year or two now) the USB-3.0 header straight up fell off. The PCB should be fine, which is why I have a feeling that I could likely just resolder it, so long as the pads themselves on the PCB were ok.
I'll see if I can find some time this week to dig it out and share a photo, thank you for the offer!
