I own this laptop with a few customisations. The fan noise is very quiet when performing regular office tasks. However it can get louder when playing games, but typically you may have speakers or headphones on which will cover that up (housemates/partners beware). It gets hot on the underside but not noticeably on top in the parts that you touch. I have seen the CPU throttle in XTU but it hasn't affected the FPS noticeably in games.
Photoshop and Lightroom fly.
There are many larger choices for those who require bigger fans or more cooling. My requirements were portability, power and battery life of which this delivers in spades.
1.8KG (With mSATA SSD and SATA HDD) for a gaming laptop is amazing in my eyes. It's noticeably faster gaming than my 2.5yr old workstation with a
[email protected] ivy bridge and 670GTX, a marvel of engineering!