They had two models of ssd, but one laptop sku. One model went to review websites, the other's performance degraded to actually be noticably slower than a hard disk. You could replace the ssd, but it was a non-standard form factor, so you needed to buy an expensive m.2 converter.
The keyboard dropped keystrokes.
The screen was meh for the time.
This was their flagship laptop that year.
After it has been a full decade, I might consider buying another asus laptop.
The 14'' Razer Blade [2] also has a normal keyboard, and comes close to being a MBP replacement, though it's not perfect.
Apparently a lot of these laptops have issues with heat and noisy fans. Some articles say i7 laptops (the quad-core ones) tend to have low battery life. I'm getting about 4 hours from my MBP 2015 using only Safari, Terminal and VSCode, and I can't imagine these other laptops would be worse than that.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/2/13497094/be...
Shame about the keyboard not coming in different variants, though. I am sure that some people like numeric keypads, but ever since my first PC cirka 1992 I've always hated them. It's the last thing I need on a small laptop.
(I find the shiny brushed aluminium look to be embarrassingly tacky, though not quite as bad as the rose gold model.)