This undercover warranty investigation is a one-year follow-up from our series that investigated ASUS for motherboards incinerating AMD CPUs, at the end of which ASUS promised a number of improvements to its then-anti-consumer warranty processes. Spoiler alert: They’re still anti-consumer. We sent our ASUS ROG Ally Z1 Extreme in for warranty repair for issues with the left joystick (“drift”). The device also had a broken microSD card. ASUS then pointed to the world’s tiniest scratch and tried to charge us $200 for it under threat of sending back a disassembled device if we didn’t pay within 5 days. It felt like extortion. If you’re wondering whether ASUS is worth buying, the answer for anyone who values support should be “no.”
We have now tested ASUS’ motherboard and ROG Ally warranty and RMA processes. Both have been anti-consumer experiences.
About 7 years ago… Friend and I built PC’s about 6 months apart, him first, then me. Same ASUS motherboard. 2 years go by and his motherboard just dies. Few months later, mine dies. They honored the Warranty but the RMA process was awful. Little to no communication and it took a month for each of us to get refurbished motherboards back. I have not used a single ASUS product since.