Asus is a brand more commonly associated with gaming laptops. The graphics card, which the latest Asus laptop has, is not usually found on other laptops. One such laptop is the Asus ROG Strix GL702ZC. The laptop is powered by the Ryzen 7 1700 and has the Radeon RX 580 as the dedicated GPU.
Though as expected with any other gaming laptop, the laptop does generate excessive heat with such specs. To make up for that, the sound from the laptop is pretty good. On the contrary, if you don’t plan to use the laptop for gaming or productivity, then perhaps the extra performance might be of no use to you.
Design
The laptop appears to be metallic but in reality, it is made up of plastic. Although, when you will touch the laptop chassis, it is clear to be made of plastic. The lid is faux brushed made from aluminum and also features a ROG logo embedded in silver. In all, this makes the lid appear to be great. To offer more aggressive looks there are reflective accent lines on both sides.
Some laptop lids out there are difficult to close, yet this one isn’t. Instead, it is pretty easy to press down, since there is some flex in the lid. The lid houses a 17.3 inches display, which has a screen resolution of 1080p. Around the display is a thick bezel and a black plastic deck with orange accents. There is also another ROG logo but in orange.
The keyboard is a full-island style and thankfully has a numpad for easy mathematical calculations.
The laptop’s dimensions are 16.3 x 11 x 1.3 and compared to other laptops in the segment, it is a bit smaller in dimensions. But then, with a 7.1 pounds weight, perhaps it adds to the laptop’s portability. Laptops like the Origin EON 17-X weigh 9.8 pounds and measures 16.4 x 11.6 x 1.5 inches that isn’t portable at all. Though Acer’s very own Inspire V17 Nitro Black Edition has a weight of 7 pounds and measures 16.7 x 11.7 x 1.1 inches.
Ports
The added benefit of a larger screen display means there is more room for laptop ports. Therefore, the Strix does not fell short when it comes to ports. On the left side, there is the Ethernet Jack, along with a mini Display Port, an HDMI output, a USB Type-C port, a USB 3.0 port, and a headphone jack. On the other hand, the right side houses a lock slot, two more USB 3.0 ports, and an SD card slot.
Display
The display is yet another strong point about the device, since the display offers better colors and is bright and sharp. The detail is much accurate, and you can enjoy much crisp video quality. Not only this but the sRGB gamut stands at 119 percent, which is better, but still less than the desktop replacement average of 130 percent. Although the Aspire’s sRGB gamut is lesser at 118 percent, but not quite less. The gaming giant Eon has a sRGB gamut of 192 percent.
Though, in contrast, the laptop has much better brightness, with a record 341 nits, and that’s way above the industry average of 286 nits. The Eon, on the other hand, has 289 nits and the Aspire stands at 264 nits.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard has just 1.3 millimeters of travel, quite less when compared to other gaming keyboards. Though with 76 grams of required force, expect your typing speed to be great since the keys respond much quicker. On the 10fastfingers typing test, we got an average of 107 words per minutes, which is great.
The keyboard is backlit but only in red, and there is no way to change the backlighting. Compared with other laptops, there usually is RGB backlighting.
The trackpad, on the other hand, is rather spacious measuring 4.1 x 2.8-inches. Not only this, but it is rather smooth and responsive, even when you have to move the cursor all the way from one corner of a 17-inch display to another corner across the diagonal. Furthermore, the multi-touch gestures are equally responsive and accurate.
Audio
The audio from the speakers is pretty great, and courtesy the Sonic Radar Studio App, you will not be disappointed even with it being a laptop speaker. Also, the speakers are loud enough but maybe not that loud when you are running extensive applications which make the fan go crazy and emit louder noise.
Graphics
Housing the latest AMD’s Radeon RX580 GPU, the laptop can play most of the new games courtesy the 4 GB of dedicated Video RAM. Though, these games might not be played at the best of the settings.
Performance
The Asus ROG Strix GL702ZC houses a desktop CPU, so is a gaming power horse. The AMD’s 3.0 GHz, eight-core Ryzen 7 1700 CPU combined with a whopping 16 GB of RAM is a gamer’s dream. Not only this, with 256 GB of M.2 SATA SSD and a 1TB, 5,400-rpm HDD, you get faster read/write access and plethora of storage space.
Battery Life
The battery life is perhaps the only place where the Strix lacks. What’s the point of all that portability when the battery just lasts, 1 hour and 20 minutes, when you are continuously using the laptop to browse the internet. This is considerably less than the industry’s average of 4 hours and 30 minutes.
Heat
Don’t put the laptop on your lap, I repeat, don’t. This is because the laptop generates excessive heat, so you are better off putting it on a desk. With the heavy specs the laptops boast, it is not surprising for it to get hotter than usual. With such heat comes the fan noise, which you shall also have to deal with if you prefer to work in a calm and peaceful environment.
Price
The laptop is available for a starting price tag of $1499 directly from Asus’s website. Considering that most gaming laptops fall under the same or even heavier price category, this might be a good buy. Although to be honest, if it were up to us, we would go for the laptop which has Intel processor rather than AMD’s.