First the not so good:

Keyboard - I do prefer chiclet keyboards, but despite the bad reviews of the keyboard on the N55SF, it's totally useable. I've adjusted to it pretty quickly and I really don't have any major complaints. The keys have sufficient travel, and although they feel a little cheap in relation to the rest of the laptop, they certainly DON'T feel like they belong on a $300 laptop. The 10key is a little cramped (not full size keys) to make up for the media keys on the left side (more on that later). I'm still adjusting to the cramped size so if you're a HEAVY 10key user this may be a problem. I use it occasionally for homework and online banking without issue.

Lid - I actually kind of like the appearance of the glossy lid, but it is a fingerprint and scratch magnet. A nice plastic or textured rubber or something may have looked less elegant, but been less of a scratch risk.

Size - It's probably a TAD bit bigger (mainly deeper) than similarly spec'd laptops. Not huge, but about a half inch to an inch deeper (or longer, or however you want to say it - longer from front to back) due to the speakers, but more on that later.

The good:

Feel - Even though the laptop is basically all plastic, it feels like a high quality plastic and it's comfortable to rest your palms on the palm rest. As I mentioned before, the keyboard feels fine and I like the huge touchpad. The touchpad is not lower than the rest of the palm rest, there's just two lines to seperate it from the rest of the palm rest. I have not had any problems "missing" the touch pad or anything as a result of it not indented into the palm rest (as some have complained about). I think it looks and feels vey nice.

Sound Quality - My DV7t had decent speakers and a subwoofer. The N55SF has just the speakers and external subwoofer, but even WITHOUT the external subwoofer, the sound quality is very good for a laptop. Plug in the subwoofer and music, movies, and games sound great for a laptop. Compared to the DV6tqe I'm returning, it's a night and day difference. Of course, this sound quality creates a slightly larger laptop as the speakers are a bit larger than normal for a laptop, and result in the deeper design (and slick silver plate just below the screen).

Price\Performance - Obviously this will vary, but I find the laptop to be very quick and responsive. It comes with some bloatware you might want to remove, but nothing that degrades performance as badly as some of the pre-installed stuff Dell and HP include (the "Support Assistants" and "Upgrade Assistant" types of stuff).

Noise - Both my old HP and the new HP I tried were very noisy. The fan was on regularly and the laptops were nearly unusable on an actual lap, both due to their vents and the fact they ran extremely hot. With all the power in the N55SF it does run hot when gaming (Skyrim on high settings will get the CPU to 90c and the GPU up to 80c), it's VERY quiet.

The fan is always on but for every day use the fan is nearly silent. When gaming, it's audible, but not what I would consider loud. I'd actually like ASUS to release a BIOS update that allows us to speed the fan up - it could be a little louder and run a little cooler and I'd be happy with that. But in short, it's a quiet powerhouse, in part thanks to it's slightly larger casing than similar laptops, and well designed vent (big vent on the left). If you're using it in your lap or on a blanket, the only vents you cover are the vents by the RAM and HD. Even then, those are near the very front so chances are those aren't completely covered.

Other thoughts:

Some folks complain about the media buttons to the left, particularly in regards to getting in the way when gaming. They don't push as easily as the normal keyboard buttons, and after a couple of days of gaming I've not found myself accidentally bumping them when playing. I actually like having the volume buttons located there because I often play games without headphones in a room with others, so I like being able to quickly adjust volume depending on the situation (turn it up when talking to city folk in Skyrim, turn it down when battling it out with a Dragon).

The GT555m performance has been very good. I play Skyrim with a mix of high\ultra settings at 1366x768 and get 35-50 FPS (without overclocking the GPU). I haven't played a ton of other games but most games I've tried (Deus Ex: HR, Crysis benchmark, Medal of Honor, Dragon Age Origins) all run at 1920x1080 at high settings with 30 - 60fps. Overall, in my experience, I find the GT555m is slightly faster than the 6770m in games that are more nvidia friendly, and similar to the 6770m in games that are ATI\AMD friendly." - i read from notebookreview forum.