While we love a good gaming notebook, we’ve always known that opting for one has always been a lesson in compromise. Despite mobile versions of components like CPU, RAM and storage has largely closed the gap performance-wise to their desk-bound brethren, until very recently you’d had to compromise on the most vital component for gaming: the GPU.
With NVIDIA’s newest Pascal-powered offerings, that’s no longer the case. The GTX 1080, GTX 1070 and the GTX 1060 are so powerful and power efficient that there’s no longer a need for a mobile version of these cards. If you get a gaming notebook that has NVIDIA’s new GPUs in it, you’re getting performance that’s essentially identical to gaming desktops.
That’s what we have with ASUS’ new ROG G752VS gaming notebook that we’re reviewing today. It’s a massive gaming notebook that can match and beat all but the hardest-hitting gaming rigs in the market today.
Absolutely massive and not for the faint of heart
There’s no getting around it, the G752VS is a massive notebook. At 43mm thick, 428mm wide and 4.3 kilos in weight, the G752VS is a notebook only in name. Sure, you can probably move it around your desk if you wanted to, but trying to lug it around all day like a regular notebook would probably give you a hernia. Once you set it down somewhere, you’ll probably won’t want to move it from that spot.
Design-wise, the G752VS has a lot in common with ASUS’ previously released ROG gaming notebooks. It’s not surprising – while the Taiwanese brand makes sure to out a brand new design for their more portable offerings, they’re more than happy to just recycle the design of their gaming notebooks and just update the innards.
That’s exactly what happened with the G752VS. If you read our review of their insane dual GPU toting GX700, you’ll notice that the G752VS has a lot in common with it. The design of the lid and the body is almost identical, though the rear of the G752VS is quite different since it doesn’t have to accomodate the fiddly bits for liquid cooling.
Despite its ungainly size, the G752VS looks the part of a gaming notebook. Two LED strips and ASUS’ ROG logo adorn the back of the lid, which is colored aluminum. We don’t think it’s actually aluminum though, but regardless the color scheme looks good.
Open the lid, and you’ll see the 17.3-inch 4K 4096 x 2160 IPS display. It’s a gorgeous display, sufficiently bright and has punchy colors. We’ve been extremely lucky to have the ability to stream 4K content, which looks extremely sharp on the display of the G752VS.
Since the G752VS is so large, there’s more than enough space for a spaced out, full QWERTY keyboard with a numpad and five programmable macro buttons plus a button that gets you streaming to Facebook, Twitch and YouTube in no time at all. The touchpad is responsive but it’s a little too big for us since we kept accidentally hitting it with our palms when we were typing or gaming. We just turned it off and stuck with our Razer gaming mouse for the duration of the review, since you’ll be using an aftermarket mouse to game anyway.
There’s also an abundance of ports on the G752VS – four USB 3.0 ports, a USB Type-C port, HDMI and a Mini DisplayPort, SD card reader, three audio ports and an optical disk drive.
Desktop-class performance in a (barely) mobile package
Once you read the spec sheet of the G752VS, you’ll understand why the thing is so big. Inside the bulky exterior of the notebook beats Intel’s 6th generation Core i7-6820HK processor, chugging along at 2.7GHz. That’s complimented by 32GB of DDR 2400Mhz SDRAM, 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD storage plus a 1TB HDD. Of course, the most important component is NVIDIA’s GTX 1070 GPU, which is almost a mirror image of the one being offered for desktop rigs.
That means the GTX 1070 that beats in the heart of the G752VS runs at 1442MHz, which is just a few MHz shy of the 1506MHz clock on the desktop-class GTX 1070. Boost clocks are almost the same too – 1645MHz versus 1683MHz. Everything else is the same, from the memory speed, bandwith and configuration.
The G752VS is also VR ready and gets most of the same features that its desktop brother receives.
4K gaming is possible on the G752VS, although you’ll have to trim down graphical settings from ultra to very high or high while doing so. Check out our 4K benchmarks using three games: The Division, Batman: Arkham Knight and Battlefield 4:
Obviously full HD doesn’t have that problem, as evidenced by the benchmarks of the same games on full HD:
Short story is that the G752VS can run most games on ultra on 4K, though the notebook will struggle to go above 30 FPS on some games. The best compromise here is to tweak settings down a bit from ultra.
Surprisingly enough, the G752VS doesn’t get too hot with use, thanks to ASUS’ fan design that spews hot air to the rear of the notebook. Noise under full load is negligible, though the person sitting in front of you probably won’t appreciate the sudden surge of hot air when the fans go full tilt.
We’re quite annoyed at the fact that ASUS also threw in quite a few bloatware into the notebook. We really can’t understand while ASUS decides to burden their products with so much unnecessary stuff, though we do like their ROG Gaming Center which acts like the central hub for GPU/CPU overclocking.
Battery life is okay, but don’t expect miracles
Most gaming notebooks score poorly when it comes to battery endurance, so imagine our surprise to see the G752VS last around 1 hour and 55 minutes on a single charge. That’s still mediocre endurance, mind you, but then again the GL752VS is a performance-oriented machine that’s made for gaming, not long periods away from the socket.
Verdict: A gaming notebook with desktop-class chops, but it’ll cost you
The ASUS ROG G752VS certainly is an impressive notebook. With the new Pascal GPUs from NVIDIA, gaming notebooks can finally claim to have the equivalent performance to desktops, though obviously you’ll still be paying a premium for the privilage of enjoying “mobile” gaming. In this case, you’re looking at a steep price tag of Php 189,995. At that price you can probably build your own gaming PC with a bit of cash left over, but then again it’s not the same thing as being the proud owner of an ROG-branded machine.