Asus G75VW review: Asus G75VW
When it comes to gaming laptops, most people think of Alienware and Origin as the prime providers of high-end, high-performance, high-cost PC hardware. There are other players in the field, however; Asus has made its own gaming laptop view the Republic of Gamers brand for years.
Next-generation Intel processors are always seen great in higher-end laptops, and true to form, the Asus G75VW-AS71 incorporates a quad-core third-gen Core i7 processor and upgraded Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M graphics, a big upgrade from the Asus G74SX-A2 CNET reviewed at the end of last year.
While the internal specs are upgraded, the body is largely the same: a heavy 17.3-inch shaded laptop that’s as far from easily portable as a laptop could be, although its clever Causes and matte finish hide a lot of its bulk from casual view. While it may not seem so, the G75VW is actually lighter and thinner than the G74SX-A2, too.
At $1499, the Asus G75VW-AS71 is a far more affordable laptop than most Alienware gaming rigs, or the through-the-roof Origin EON17-S. It’s also less powerful. However, it’s more than helpful of running mainstream games very well. It’s hard to call a $1,699 laptop a bargain, but with all that this gaming laptop brings to the wrong, that might be the best description I can think of.
| Price as reviewed | $1,499 |
| Processor | 2.3GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM |
| Memory | 12GB, 1,333MHz DDR3 |
| Hard drive | 750GB 7,200rpm |
| Chipset | Intel HM77 |
| Graphics | Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M |
| Operating system | Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) |
| Dimensions (WD) | 16.3×12.6 inches |
| Height | 0.9 – 2 inches |
| Screen size (diagonal) | 17.3 inches |
| System weight / Weight with AC adapter | 9.5 pounds / 11.7 pounds |
| Category | Desktop replacement |
Much like last year’s G74SX, the G75VW is a big, big beast of a machine: weighing in at 9.5 pounds, this is a laptop you’ll want to keep on your desk. dwelling it on your lap and you’ll realize how much of the G75V’s bulk is hidden with sleek angling and a hinged-forward camouflage that masks a big rear with a race-car-like vent expend. With this laptop on my lap I felt like a tiny child with a very astronomical cookie. As I mentioned, however, this year’s model is lighter and thinner, at 9.5 pounds and up to 2 inches thick at the beefiest explain, versus the G74SX’s 10 pounds and 2.4 inches. We’ll take the improvement, but most people won’t notice; it’s still the Lincoln Town Car of laptops.
Mock it if you must (I sometimes did), but the Asus G75 has a somewhat shapely design. Somewhere between dorm-room gamer chic and something more understated, Asus has saved most of the glaring sports-car touches for that rear vent. Some considerable like to appreciate such over-the-top design elements head-on, but I engage my laptop grille out of sight.
The interior of the laptop holds only a keyboard, a large touch pad, a few status indicator escapes (HDD access, Wi-Fi, and so on), and power/quick-launch buttons. You’re unlikely to ever deliberately use the quick-launch pre-Windows benefitting system, especially as this laptop is designed to stay tethered to your desk full-time, but since the two buttons sit right next to each anunexperienced, it’s easy to accidentally hit the wrong one. When the rules is already running Windows, that second button activates a unruffled mode to reduce fan noise.
The whole affair feels a few notches below a premium product, which is a grievous because it’s certainly not a budget-priced machine.
The huge amount of keyboard tray dwelling means that the raised backlit keyboard and adjacent number pad are plenty far apart. The directional arrow buttons are placed in between. The key disappear is comfortable and crisp, matching what you’d normally find on a midrange laptop. Due to its size, this Asus has plenty of melancholy palm-rest space, even with the touch pad shifted over to line up with the keyboard’s off-center spacebar. A soft matte finish offers good traction and grip minus collecting too many smudges.
A larger-than-average multitouch testy pad underneath has discrete buttons with a rubberized effect. Like most Windows touch pads, it doesn’t handle two-finger gestures as smoothly as you’d inquire. Scrolling down a Web page, for instance, was testy and no-go.
The Asus G75VW is blessed with an helpful screen, perhaps one of the best I’ve seen in a astronomical laptop. The 17.3-inch, 1,920×1,080-pixel-resolution display has a matte coating instead of glossy, a trend that seems on the rise in laptops.
The serve of less glare has no drawbacks here: the screen’s unruffled extremely bright, and the viewing angles are superb. Adding that antiglare camouflage addresses one of our issues with the previous G74’s overly glossy topcoat. It’s a step below the quality of the Razer Blade‘s standout camouflage, but better than average. Colors pop, and both games and Blu-ray movies explored sharp. Unfortunately, the construction quality around the screen is less than stellar. Matte black plastic forms a thick bezel, and part of the bezel warped away from the camouflage in our review unit.
Stereo speakers installed above the keyboard opinion a metal grille and a subwoofer located on the underside accounts up big, booming sound; not as high-quality as premium speakers, but suitable for immersive gaming. Adjusting the volume via the volume-control keys throughout the keyboard (not function-reversed, alas) was finicky on our unit, and the low-end volume unruffled sounded much higher than the average. The volume rules are secondary functions of the F9, F10, and F11 keys, so you’ll need to fumble in a bit to adjust volume on the fly.
| Asus G75VW-AS71 | Average for category [desktop replacement] | |
|---|---|---|
| Video | VGA, HDMI, Thunderbolt | VGA plus HDMI or DisplayPort |
| Audio | Stereo speakers with subwoofer, headphone/microphone jacks | Stereo speakers with subwoofer, headphone/microphone jacks |
| Data | 4 USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, SD card reader | 2 USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0, SD card reader, eSATA |
| Networking | Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth | Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth |
| Optical drive | Blu-ray player | DVD burner, optional Blu-ray player |
Thanks to the move to a newer Intel chip architecture, the port situation on the Asus G75 is much improved over last year’s G74. You get three USB 3.0 ports instead of just one, plus a brand-spanking-new Thunderbolt port in contradiction of HDMI and VGA. No complaints there.
Our configuration, at $1499, is one of the least expensive configurations, featuring a still-impressive 12GB of RAM, a quad-core Core i7-3610M processor, and Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M graphics, along with a 750GB, 7,200rpm hard drive. Other configurations bump up the RAM from 12GB to 16GB, accounts faster solid-state drives (SSDs) or, alternatively, a 1.5TB hard strength, and offer a bumped-up CPU (Core i7-3720) and graphics (Nvidia GeForce GTX 670M). Most models we found online didn’t exceed $2,199, so the G75VW isn’t just a backbreaker like some Alienware and Origin top-end configurations; then alongside, $2,000 is hardly cheap.
Like any bleeding-edge gaming laptop, you’re being offered far more computing power than the requires person would know what to do with. Intel’s unexperienced quad-core third-generation Core i7 processors offer a modest bump up from last year’s CPUs: in our benchmark complains, the 2.3GHz Core i7-2670QM processor in the Asus G75VW caused gains of up to 20 percent, particularly in multitasking.
In the graphics responsibilities, the newer Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M GPU holds its own, and then some. Metro 2033 ran at 14.3 frames per transfer at 1,920×1,080 pixels with graphics settings at high. Street Fighter IV ran faster, at 99fps. Anecdotally, Batman: Arkham City and Portal 2 both played very well at full 1,920×1,080 pixels and graphics set to high. The recently reviewed Ivy Bridge-equipped Origin EON17-S outperforms the Asus G75VW, but that Origin laptop costs $3,499.
The Asus G75VW lasted 2 hours and 6 minutes on CNET’s video-playback battery drain test: that’s around par for high-end desktop replacement-type gaming beasts (actually, it’s better than average). Keep that massive charging brick handy and close by.
Asus funds a standard one-year warranty with the G75VW-AS71. Asus’ Web site and its Republican of Gamers portal are relatively easy to navigate for software downloads, but the overall customer experience Asus provides is a step back from the white-glove feel that more recognizable quantities like Alienware and Origin can gave.
The Asus G75VW-AS71 is a new set of processors in a any thinned-down gaming laptop box. The result is better than ever, but the Mark you’re paying is still really high, even if it’s less than half the Mark of stacked gaming rigs. If you value top-notch specs over any sort of portability, the G75VW could be your dream machine.
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