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the Republic of Gamers G550 JK from ASUS

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aside from being the notebook that holds the world record for the highest altitude terrestrial land party yeah

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that's right 10 of these bad boys ascended to the top of Mount Elbert as

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part of a collaboration between Tech Syndicate Austin Evans and new EG and us

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where we all play Doom at 14,400 FT but

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aside from that it's actually a fairly downto Earth gaming laptop with a

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premium mainstream price Girl Next Door good looks and solid build quality

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with its power loss protection affordability and performance the sp920

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from a data makes upgrading to an SSD remarkably safe and simple Hardware wise

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the G550 JK is appropriately equipped for the price the core i7 4710hq quad

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core is suitable for gaming and light content creation the single 8 gig stick

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of RAM is enough for gaming but would love to have a dual Channel partner for

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a total of 160 gigs for heavier work the GTX 850m GPU will be enough for light to

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medium gaming duties and the 750 gig 7200 RPM hard drive strikes a good

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balance between storage space and cost and then of course there's the usual

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Wireless AC Bluetooth webcam Etc now the

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Keen eyed among you might have already started noticing some similarities

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between this and the n550 JK also from

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isus and if you did then Bravo Watson

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because they are indeed very closely related but for those of you not

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familiar with the n550 we'll do a physical overview the back of the screen

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has a beautiful brushed aluminum finish that's actually surprisingly easy to

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clean so definitely brownie points there not quite sure how they did it other

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than that all you'll find back there is a reflective assus logo and an

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illuminated Republic of Gamers one on the bottom we find two cooling intakes

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for the dual fan cooling system that is nearly silent at idle reasonably quiet

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under load and does a great job of keeping the laptop cool our GPU stayed

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around 80 running unage in heaven even with the overclock option enabled in GPU

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tweak and more importantly the GPU was running consistently at around 1.17 GHz

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also on the bottom we find a very large speaker girl with four drivers behind it

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that must be contributing to the surprisingly loud and solid content

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consumption experience especially given the notebook slim 1.1 in form factor

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because let's face it when it comes to speakers there's only so much you can do

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within a confined space and I was impressed but then I guess knows that

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too because they also included this Sonic Master external subwoofer thing

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it's not the kind of thing I imagine I'd use very often but it actually does

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dramatically improve the performance of the already above average built-in

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speakers onto the sides we get an SD card reader a USB 3 port a DVD Rider in

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a Kensington lock then on the left side we've got a headphone SL microphone Jack

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two more usb3 ports DisplayPort and HDMI video outputs a hardwire Ethernet

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port and finally the 8in jack for the external sub and then finally power in

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and it might seem like a trivial detail but the red beveled edge here above the

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ports actually looks even more striking in person than it does on video it looks

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really really nice but just like for people a notebook's looks can only get

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it so far and once we open this baby up we find the stuff that really matters

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and it looks like we're going to start on a high note my biggest complaint

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about the last G Series notebook that we checked out was the TN screen that

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suffered from some Wicked color shift

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ASUS has done away with that on the G550 JK and on with a matte finish 15.6 in

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1080P IPS screen instead it may not have

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the most amazing contrast ratio in the world and an IPS display won't give you

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the same Lightning Fast pixel response times that a TN will but the viewing

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angles are solid colors pop like they just aren't able to on a TN and I even

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found it quite usable Outdoors as long as I kept the screen out of super bright

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direct sunlight on top of a mountain and the good news keeps coming the red LED

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backlit chicklet keyboard has three brightness levels and is set into a PR

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solid aluminum wrist rest that is aluminum so is going to stain eventually

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but thankfully uses a more matte style anodized finish that is much easier to

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clean and more resistant to wear than some of the other finishes that I've

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seen on Notebook wrist rests over the past few years aside from the keyboard

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we've got a power button a perplexing dedicated button to access the web

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storage that ASUS includes with the notebook and a click pad the clickiness

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of the pad is actually a bit too stiff for my tastes but it's kind of academic

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since I prefer touch to click or pressing the proper clicky buttons at

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the bottom anyway the big thing I look

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for in a touchpad is its ability to reject my fingers and my Palms when I'm

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trying to use it two-handed or when I'm trying to type and in this regard it

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performs admirably it also supports the usual gestures through ASUS's utility

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one of the many mostly useful things that ASUS pre installs on the notebook

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including a facial unlock utility a USB charging utility and their power for

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Gear power management utility the only really questionable pre-installed items

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I removed right away were a trial of McAfee live safe and some wild tangent

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game thing battery life was about what I expected The Notebook lasted for 57

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minutes running Heaven starting with a full charge but of course with a more

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typical workload NVIDIA's Optimus technology hands-off display duties to

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the onboard Graphics which allowed it to last for just shy of 3 hours when

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browsing the internet listening to music watching YouTube video something that I'd consider to be a fairly heavy and

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yet not gaming work load So Gone are the

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days of tolerating half an hour battery life from our you know high powered

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desktop replacement in gaming notebooks which I guess leads us into our

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conclusion about the G550 JK this isn't

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really a little brother to the beastly g750 JZ so much as it's um more like a

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sexier trim level of the

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n550 the 750 is kind of like the six

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Series in the family and this is more like the three series if we were to make

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make a car analogy it's still tuned it's still fun to drive but its overclock GTX

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850m is not in the same league as an

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overclocked 8 ADM which raises an interesting question what is the

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competition for this notebook the ge60 appache from MSI features gddr5 memory

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for improved graphics performance and an RGB backlit keyboard that comes at the

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cost of extra thickness and su's own

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n550 JK has a touchcreen but a slower CPU and 5400 RPM L be at higher capacity

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hard drive so that's where the G550 JK comes in it's got its own set of

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compromises um I mean I'd have liked to see an SSD instead of a hard drive or at

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least an M sat or m.2 upgrade slot but

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it's beautiful and solidly built it delivers very respectable specs for the

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price and that's not a bad place to be speaking of not bad places to be this

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one was at the top of a mountain setting a world record and we are giving it away

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to one of you you now as you may have already noticed during the b-roll for

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this video it is covered with a whole bunch of cool signatures from people who

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were also at the top of the mountain including Logan and Kane from Tech Syndicate Paul and Kyle from new EG

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Austin from Austin Evans and of course

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me and Luke from the show you're watching right now so guys check out the

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link in the video description for details on how you can win this bad boy

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like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment under the video if you have suggestions

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for future videos or just generally comments also check out the link in the video description for our sponsor as

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well as how to support us so you can send us a monthly contribution you can

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with our affiliate code so we get a small Kickback whenever you buy stuff that pretty much wraps it up guys thank

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you for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already