The Asus UX31a served me for two years until its issd died. Asus' customer service has been excellent in repairing and replacing parts that broke and they did not even touch the Arch Linux installation (which worked out of the box).
I'm hoping more people/companies release Linux distros (as oppose to how-to-fix-broken-stuff guides) that's tailored for different laptop models (with all the keyboard shortcuts and other hardware quirks properly configured).
I did have some issues with defects on the laptop, but as I said, Asus has been extremely good on replacing parts that broke.
Re keyboard shortcuts and such, those are usually extras handled by bloatware on Windows as well. I'm not sure I'd prefer companies releasing their own distros for this kind of stuff... we all saw what happened with android customizations.
I'm not trying to be harsh on Asus or anything, but in the Amazon review I linked above, there are many people who were very dissatisfied with how Asus dealt with the defects.
So while it's great that you got lucky in this regard, I wouldn't recommend people this particular model because of the high defect rate alone (even if they choose to use Windows).
> I'm not sure I'd prefer companies releasing their own distros for this kind of stuff
It's not just keyboard shortcuts though. For example, take a look at all the modifications made for C720 from plain Ubuntu:
I just don't think it's a good idea that lots of smart people get frustrated and waste time going through hardware-specific documentation and applying fixes like these.
Writing good documentation (like the Arch one you mentioned) is a better-than-nothing solution, but in my opinion releasing distros with all the right configurations for that specific hardware is the right solution.
The Arch wiki has excellent resources on a lot of laptop models. For example, here is the page on that model: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ASUS_Zenbook_Prime_UX31...
(Don't think of it as required reading, but it can help you set up windows-specific keyboard functionality to work on linux, for example)
I would highly recommend it. You can find it easily for around $800 on ebay.