Asus’ repertoire of devices spans a broad spectrum of categories, including smartphones, monitors, and even graphics cards. As wide as the range is, their assortment of laptops are amongst the most extensive, and most desired. When the company launched their Republic of Gamers (ROG) collection of gaming units back in 2006, the world may not have expected such a competitive spread of devices to compete on the global stage. So popular they have been that many of their designs and hardware has been replicated by other manufacturers over the years. Earlier this year, the company expanded their range of gaming units, which included the Asus ROG G752.
The successor of the, highly rated, G571, the G752 has a lot to live up to, and even expand upon. There are several variants of the G752, the unit we received for review being the G752VW, which itself comes in a variety of choices. You can view the variants at Asus’ official ROG website.
Design and Build
With the design of their previous range having been seen replicated more times than they’ve had liked, Asus has switched from a matte black finish to a semi-gloss aluminium look. The updated glossy finish does bring with it a few additional annoyances, like fingerprint smudging, but if you manage to keep your unit clean, looks very impressive. While the overall design isn’t as overhauling and revolutionary as it previously was, it remains true to its ROG principles, while keeping its premium look and build. The reds have also seen a slight change, with more of an orange tinge to it, which also extends to the backlighting on the keyboard. Only time will tell how long they can keep the design before it too is replicate en masse.
Given that their G752 laptop range is arguably their signature product, careful attention has been paid to the design of each of the units. Between the different varieties, the looks range from overly spectacular Bomber looking G752VY, to the more simplistic, yet elegant looking G752VW. If you look further down the list of ROG products, you’ll also find a themed cooling system as an add-on, which fits the mould of ROG design for the G752.
In terms of connectivity options, the G752VW covers a wide variety of interfaces, which includes an HD Web Camera, Integrated 802.11 WiFi, Built-in Bluetooth™ V4.1, microphone jack, headphone jack, USB3.1 Type C, USB3.0, x2 USB2.0, RJ45 LAN, HDMI and mini DisplayPort (significant for NVidia’s G-sync).
Screen and Display
As with the predecessor, the ROG G752 has a 17.3″, with panel code LP173WF-SPF3, which isn’t fitted to any other laptop currently on the market. While the screen may be unique, it doesn’t always mean that it’s the top of the range. But, thankfully, the panel fitted here delivers some good results. It may not only have a 1080p resolution, the colours are bright and bold, with dark blacks and a good contrast between greys with its 1000:1 contrast ratio. A few of the other models within the range with the NVidia GTX970M (or higher) graphics card have G-Sync capabilities, which those displays will also support. This particular model doesn’t not support G-Sync, so it’s very likely that it’s not supported on the display itself. The screen has a matte finish, which assists with daylight glare, with visibility quite good as a result. There is, however, slight colour bleeding, but not significant enough to cause major concerns. Given its IPS technology, the screen has a fairly large viewing angle if it’s something of interest to you.
Keyboard and Touchpad
Comparing the G752 to the G751, the keyboard layout is identical. Still, the keys have a 2.5mm travel distance, with no wiggle when tested. It is also very quiet and responsive, although the use of space on the laptop is not maximised to the full dimensions. On some models, there are a few additional macro keys on the top left to assist during gaming and the likes. On that particular model, there are an additional two keys over the G751.
I’ve never been a fan of the laptop touchpad, no matter how great of an improvement it is over other models, but the touchpad fitted here does the job reasonably well. The experience is smooth and accurate, and allows you to easily guide your fingers across the surface with no trouble. The mouse buttons are slightly rubberised, while also very quiet in use. Once my tests were completed, I used the settings to disable the touchpad to make things easier during gaming without having to worry about clicking unecessary buttons.
Performance and Features
Performance on the ROG G752 is very good overall. The unit is fitted with Intel’s Core I7-6700HQ Skylake chipset, with the CPU clocked at 2.5GHz, which is accompanied by an Nvidia GTX960M GPU, 1TB SATA HDD, and 16GB RAM (x2 DRAM DDR4 8GB). While the units have the same CPU, the GPU, RAM and storage come in different options, including the GTX980M, 500GB SSD or 64GB RAM. Benchmark tests were excellent for the combination of internals, and ran almost flawlessly over the two weeks. Given that Windows OS isn’t always the greatest in optimising memory usage, the setup with Windows 10 worked really well, and I only had to restart once during this period of time after software began acting up. Multi-tasking was a breeze. Often I would connect a second monitor, and while playing through a game or two, would use the second window to run another task at the same time. While it isn’t something I would regularly do, games often run at a higher priority and often leave other tasks flat-lining in the background. And this is where Asus’ included software came into play.
As with many other people, I find bloatware extremely annoying, not just because they load in the background upon booting and consume some much needed memory, they always seem to make their presence known during the most inopportune time, especially with Windows’ side notifications. While Asus does include a lot of bloatware, I didn’t need to disable all of them. The Gaming Centre and ROG Game First III provide some much needed tools to set resource priorities whenever you’re gaming, which is a huge advantage. The other less useful software includes ASUS Smart Gesture, ASUS Splendid, ASUS WebStorage Sync Agent, ICEsound, McAfee Internet Security(Trial version), PixelMaster Video HDR, USB Charger+, and XSplit Gamecaster.
The GTX960M is the perhaps on the lower end on the scale of graphics cards within the G752 range. That isn’t to say that it’s not competent. It does its job really well. While the benchmarks have it slightly lower than its counterparts using the same GPU, you’re still able to produce some high-end graphics for most games. True there are some flaws with drivers for certain games, on the few games I’ve tested myself, there were no such issues.
On the whole, the device performs really well. Surface temperatures are kept at a minimum thanks to Asus’ cooling tech. Even during heavy gaming, the G752 didn’t seem to break a sweat in keeping noise levels and temperatures down, with only a faint hint of the fan every so often. The cooler temperatures are also a benefit to the battery life, but if you’re gaming, I doubt you’ll be using battery in the first place. But in the event that you are, the 67Wh battery capacity is adequate enough to perform most functions for a considerable amount of time. In all honesty, battery life on a gaming laptop is a non-issue, and even though it did score less than many others, its 2-hour lifespan during high-performance tests and clocking the CPU and GPU seems sufficient.
Conclusion
There’s a lot to love about the Asus ROG G752. For this specific model, the G752VW, prices range from R29,999 to R49,999, depending on your chosen setup. The setup we reviewed is at its most basic, and still performs remarkably well. There are a few points worth noting, though. Instead of this setup, I would suggest upgrading to the GTX970M, which is said to yield upwards of 50% more in performance, while also choosing any of the options that include an SSD. The upgraded GPU will also support NVidia’s G-Sync and ULMB, for which you’re able to make full use of the mini DisplayPort for G-Sync capable monitors. Be sure also to check out a few of the other models from the range, which offer their own unique setups and features alongside.
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