is the cd rom bay changable for a caddy with another hardrive, i am looking to boy this laptop but i need to put an ssd on it and possibly keep the original hdd

Concerning the blurring. There is only one ideal resolution for an lcd screen. This hould always be the maximum. If you like bigger icons or fonts do it with windows or your software but never touch the resolution settings of the screen. Same for external screens or tv. Always look for the maximum resolution of the monitor and adjust the size in the software.

There are several software tools to help sizing.

Hope that helped.

i have got one of the S4042H  without pre-installed os, and the backlit keyboard was never able to turn on and i cannot turn off the touch pad unless i plug in a mouse. good but few things missing

I bought this machine for over 1200 $ and after using it for 2 months the screen back-light got faulty, ASUS have never managed to repair it up to date..they have the worst service center ever...they always give false promises, I will never buy asus product again.

I have one too and can confirm some blurring appears on lower resolution and no way how to fix :(. On hi resolution with DPI scaling 100% everything ok and same blurring on externally connected monitors - i'm totally disappointed.
Cannot work with to hi resolution and cannot lower because of blurring.

Hi, i just bought this model three days ago and so far i am satisfied. The only issue that i cant find the answer to is the display. because of its full HD resolution, every thing is way too small. especially the UI in softwares like 3DS Max, Photoshop, Illustrator and etc. i replaced the resolution with less perfect ones but only the display becomes blurry and the menus and fonts are still small.

i've just bought one, but the HDD sometime have noise(just like when you defrag your HDD),it's not loud, but if you focus on that you can hear it
is it normal or the only noise in this model should be from the fan?

hello notebookcheck guys, great review, but i was wondering why there is no minimal brightness for display tested. It is really important to me, as i want to buy it. And i think that 360 cd/m is too high for daily use. So can you please tell me the minimal brightness. That would be great! thank you guys

does the N76VB have the same quality of display as N56?

If you look closely at the pictures, you will notice that the second wifi antenna is not connected to the Wifi card !! That's why the wifi range was not good in your test :)

Would have bought the i7 GT740m with GDDR5

Is it available on the market? Cannot find it anywhere :/

Poor wifi range is *not* the case on my N56VB, must be a fluke in the hardware item you tested. Am able to use Wifi in my garden without problem whereas other devices have trouble.

Was good to spot this article... Am looking at a new notebook and in terms of overall value the Asus N56 series looking to be about the best bang for the buck without major shortfalls.
On the Asus website (for the UK marker at least), the operating systems are listed as Win 8 or Win 8 Pro and also option of a Blu Ray drive (player only):
http://uk.asus.com/Notebooks/Multimedia_Entertainment/N56VJ/#specifications
http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/ASUS_N56VZ-S4207H_1385527.html
Maybe the N56VB will be available to the UK market soon also.

Going to get this as soon as I can get it over here. Also, does anyone know if the i5 version has better battery life and no throttling issues?