Asus G75VW-AS71 Review

By Scott Stein

If you want to buy a "budget" gaming laptop, the Asus G75VW-AS71 offers plenty of horsepower and features in its heavy 17-inch body. Just don’t expect a svelte build or good battery life.

The good	Cutting-edge processor; new Nvidia GPU; slightly slimmer body; matte screen; faster ports and connections, including USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt.
The bad	More expensive than average laptop; bulky; performance behind more powerful gaming laptops.

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 under the "Republic of Gamers" brand for years.

Next-generation Intel processors are always seen first 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 black laptop that's as far from portable as a laptop could be, although its clever angles 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 last year's G74, too.

Editor's Note

This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of the other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Asus has not yet revealed the price and availability of the G75VW here in Asia. However, the company has informed us that the Thunderbolt port may not be available in all countries.

The Asus G75VW-AS71 is a new set of processors in a slightly thinned-down gaming laptop box. The result is better than ever, but the price you're paying is still really high, even if it's less than half the price of stacked gaming rigs. If you value top-notch specs over any sort of portability, the G75VW could be your dream machine.

At US$1,499, 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 capable of playing mainstream games very well. It's hard to call it a bargain, but with all that this gaming laptop brings to the table, that might be the best description we can think of.

Design

Much like last year's G74, the G75VW is a big, big beast of a machine: Weighing in at 4.5kg, this is a laptop you'll want to keep on your desk. Place it on your lap and you'll realize how much of the G75V's bulk is hidden with sleek angling and a hinge-forward screen that masks a big rear with a racecar-like vent exhaust. With this notebook on our laps, we felt like a tiny child with a very large cookie. Believe it or not, but this year's model is thinner: Up to 52mm thick at the beefiest point, versus 62mm inches thick for the G74. We’ll take the improvement, but most people won't notice. It's still the Lincoln Town Car of laptops.

(Credit: Sarah Tew)

Specifications as reviewed	Asus G75VW-AS71
Price as reviewed	US$1,499
Processor	2.3GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM
Memory	12GB, 1,333MHz DDR3
Storage	750GB, 7,200rpm
Chipset	Intel HM77 Express
Graphics	Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M
Operating system	Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Dimensions (WD)	415 x 320mm
Height	52mm
Screen size (diagonal)	17.3-inch
System weight	4.5kg
Category	Desktop replacement

(Credit: Sarah Tew)

Mock it if you must (we sometimes did), but the Asus G75 has a somewhat attractive design. Somewhere between dorm-room gamer chic and something more understated, Asus has left most of the glaring sports-car touches for that rear vent. Some might like to appreciate such over-the-top touches head-on, but we prefer our laptop grille out of sight.

The feature-free interior has only a keyboard, a large touchpad, a few status indicator lights (HDD access, Wi-Fi, and so on), and power/quick-launch buttons. You're unlikely to ever deliberately use the quick-launch pre-Windows operating 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 other, it's easy to accidentally hit the wrong one. When the system is already running Windows, that second button activates a quiet mode to reduce fan noise.
The whole affair feels several notches below a premium product, which is a shame because it's certainly not a budget-priced machine.

A huge amount of keyboard tray space means that the raised backlit keyboard and adjacent number pad are plenty far apart. The directional arrow buttons are placed in-between. The key travel is comfortable and crisp, matching what you'd normally find on a midrange laptop. Due to its size, this Asus has plenty of comfortable palm-rest space, even with the touchpad shifted over to line up with the keyboard's off-center space bar. A soft matte finish offers good traction and grip without collecting too many smudges.

(Credit: Sarah Tew)

A larger-than-average multitouch touchpad underneath has discrete buttons with a rubberized finish. Like most Windows touchpads, two-finger gestures aren't as smoothly handled as you'd expect. Scrolling down a Web page, for instance, was touch-and-no-go.

Features

The Asus G75VW is blessed with an excellent screen, perhaps one of the best we've seen in a large laptop. The 17.3-inch 1,920 x 1,080-pixel-resolution display has a matte coating instead of glossy, a trend that seems to be on the rise in laptops.

The benefit of less glare has no drawbacks: The screen's still extremely bright, and the viewing angles are superb. Adding that antiglare screen 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 screen, but better than average. Colors pop, and both games and Blu-ray movies looked 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 screen in our review unit.

Stereo speakers installed above the keyboard under a metal grille and a subwoofer located on the underside offer up big, booming sound: Not as high-quality as premium speakers, but suitable for immersive gaming. Adjusting the volume via the volume-control keys above the keyboard (not function-reversed, alas) was finicky on our unit: The low-end volume still sounded much higher than the average. The volume controls are secondary functions of the F9, F10, and F11 keys, so you'll need to fumble around 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	Four USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, SD card reader	Two USB 2.0, two USB 3.0, SD card reader, eSATA
Networking	Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth	Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Optical drive	Blu-ray drive	DVD burner, optional Blu-ray drive

Thanks to the move to a newer Intel chip architecture, the port situation on the new 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 alongside HDMI and VGA. No complaints there.

Our configuration, at US$1,499, 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 12 to 16GB, offer faster SSD drives or, alternatively, a 1.5 TB hard drive, and offer a bumped-up CPU (Core i7-3720) and graphics (Nvidia GeForce GTX 670M). Most models we found online didn't exceed US$2,199, so the G75VW isn't exactly a backbreaker like some Alienware and Origin top-end configurations: Then again, US$2,000 is hardly cheap.

Performance and battery life

Like any bleeding-edge gaming laptop, you're being offered far more computing power than the average person would know what to do with. Intel's latest quad-core third-generation Core i7 processors offer a modest bump up from last year's CPUs: In our benchmark tests, the 2.3 GHz Core i7-2670QM processor in the Asus G75VW offered gains of up to 20 percent, particularly in multitasking.
In the graphics department, the newer Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M GPU holds its own, and then some. Metro 2033 ran at 14.3 frames per second at 1,920 x 1,080 pixels and graphics settings at high. Street Fighter IV ran faster, at 99 fps. Anecdotally, Batman: Arkham City and Portal 2 both played very well at full 1,920 x 1,080 pixels and graphics set to high. The recently reviewed Ivy Bridge-equipped Origin EON17-S outperforms it, but that Origin laptop costs US$3,499.

Multimedia multitasking test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Origin EON17-S (Ivy Bridge - Intel Core i7-3920XM)

295

Asus G75V

326

Sony Vaio VPC-F236FM

406

Toshiba Qosmio X775-Q7170

550

Adobe Photoshop CS5 image-processing test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Origin EON17-S (Ivy Bridge - Intel Core i7-3920XM)

129

Asus G75V

153

Toshiba Qosmio X775-Q7170

177

Sony Vaio VPC-F236FM

181

Apple iTunes encoding test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Origin EON17-S (Ivy Bridge - Intel Core i7-3920XM)

83

Asus G75V

100

Toshiba Qosmio X775-Q7170

112

Sony Vaio VPC-F236FM

115

Street Fighter IV
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Native resolution, 2X AA, V Sync Off

Origin EON17-S (Ivy Bridge - Intel Core i7-3920XM)

216.6

Asus G75V

99.5

Toshiba Qosmio X775-Q7170

60

Sony Vaio VPC-F236FM

44.7

Metro 2033
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,366 x 768, High, DX11, AAA, 4X AF

Origin EON17-S (Ivy Bridge - Intel Core i7-3920XM)

39.8

Asus G75V

27

Toshiba Qosmio X775-Q7170

23.7

Sony Vaio VPC-F236FM

12

Video playback battery drain test (in minutes)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Toshiba Qosmio X775-Q7170

134

Asus G75V

126

Origin EON17-S (Ivy Bridge - Intel Core i7-3920XM)

115

Sony Vaio VPC-F236FM

104

The Asus G75VW lasted 2 hours and 6 minutes on CNET's video-playback battery drain test: That's about par for high-end desktop replacement-type gaming beasts (actually, it's better than average). Keep that massive charging brick handy and close by.

Service and support

Asus offers a standard one-year warranty with the G75VW-AS71. Asus' Web site and its Republic 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 provide.

Source: Asia.cnet