Well, they may be cheap, but that alone doesn't seem enough to me. I guess different people look for different things.
I had a Asus ROG Zephyrus G15, and I'd rank it as one of the worst laptops I've ever owned (edit: don't even think it was that cheap). Including the awesome "feature" that it can't be run in clamshell mode, otherwise it will overheat and shut down. That took a while to debug.
I also know of at least 2 other people who were not happy with the thermal performance. They were able to mod it, which is cool (pun intended), but it's disappointing that's even necessary.
I've yet to find a _good_ laptop. There's always something wrong with them, from 'poor trackpad' to 'nonexistent linux support' to 'doesn't have a decent GPU'... and of course the crowd favourite, 'nvidia GPU randomly fails to shut off, sucking 10W extra at all times'.
I don't know where I'd even start. I've bought several that had excellent reviews, yet didn't work.
My favorite laptop I've ever owned so far has been a $300 Walmart laptop, Motile M141.
But I guess that would fit in with "doesn't have a decent GPU". I didn't get it as a gaming PC. If I do game on it, I'm doing cloud gaming/Parsec streaming.
I've upgraded the RAM, the storage, and the WiFi (Intel 6E adapter, better cloud gaming) on it. It survived being left out on the patio table in a major rain storm. I don't know what I'll get to replace it when it finally dies, but I can't imagine I'll find anything with nearly the level of value I got out of this machine.
I bought the 2020 model of the G14, which has the absolutely cursed combination of both an Nvidia and AMD GPU. The fans never shut off, it randomly fails to wake up from sleep, the touchpad requires an inconsistent amount of force to click, and the battery life is really only 2 hours rather than the advertised 10.
I have the all-AMD G14 and until I laid a beta bios on and then fully updated itd overheat like crazy, power off, shut off when you do a reboot, fail to boot past black screen and USB4 didn't work and PD was flaky.
Now I love the laptop but it's still not my favorite. I really prefer 11 to 14in laptops and I'd love a Lenovo T14 AMD in the A285 package. oh well. I absolutely do not trust liquid metal to last either. foam surrounds keep the metal in place and if you've ever opened anything somewhat old that has foam...well it just turns to goopy dust.
I had a 5900HS/3080Ti version of the G15, and probably the most underwhelming parts were the screen, which was on the dim side, its heat/noise output, and how you wouldn't get the full potential of the GPU unless you were running outdated, ASUS-specific Nvidia drivers which Windows constantly wanted to update. The white exterior looked cool, but the paint they used for it was so fragile that gently removing one of the factory demo stickers pulled a bit of it off.
It was frustrating, because I really wanted to like it. That laptop got returned towards the end of its return window and replaced with a combination of a ThinkPad Nano and custom built gaming desktop, which have both served me far better for their respective uses.
2022 G14 owner... it is a Windows laptop. Thermals are poor to the point that gaming on it makes the keyboard uncomfortable to touch, there's no battery bypass for USB-C PD so using it plugged in that way cycles the battery, the speakers are meh, the keyboard is mushy and the left ctrl key randomly stopped working, the trackpad is small and cheap feeling, in Linux the GPU management is tedious where I can choose between "integrated GPU" or "constantly hot and noisy with one-fifth as much battery life as my MacBook Air when just sitting there on the desktop" and switching between these modes requires logging out first.
That said, it's a reasonably priced gaming laptop for travel and you can definitely do worse.
> the keyboard is mushy and the left ctrl key randomly stopped working
2021 G15 (GA503QM), 3⅓ years old: the keyboard is a little less mushy than other laptops I’ve had by a similar age—HP 6710b, some Clevo thing (its keyboard was atrocious in well under two years, with Space and A particularly badly functionally affected too), and Surface Book. Left Arrow key become unreliable earlier this year, requiring significant extra pressure sometimes, or already pressing down another key (e.g. press LCtrl at the same time and it was completely fine, which is telling of the nature of the fault), and now almost never works. E has also been just a tiny bit unreliable at times, as far as its activation point is concerned, but all of my keyboards have had at least one or two issues like that within three years. For reference, I use my laptops extremely heavily (often been >10h and I don’t know how many thousand words per day), and don’t take the greatest care of them either, though significantly better than some people I’ve seen. I have little doubt I’d be in the top 0.01% for laptop keyboard wear.
I had a Asus ROG Zephyrus G15, and I'd rank it as one of the worst laptops I've ever owned (edit: don't even think it was that cheap). Including the awesome "feature" that it can't be run in clamshell mode, otherwise it will overheat and shut down. That took a while to debug.
I also know of at least 2 other people who were not happy with the thermal performance. They were able to mod it, which is cool (pun intended), but it's disappointing that's even necessary.