we cover all kinds of laptops and notebooks around here everything from
ASUS's Monster g750 Series gaming beasts
to our upcoming MacBook 2015 video but today's gaming laptop the g501 is not
about extremes but rather balance trying
to find the perfect Middle Ground has
ASUS done it well I guess we'll find out
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if I'm going to make a statement like um
this is a you know balanced laptop I
guess I'd better back it up objectively right under the hood our machine is
kitted out with the cor I 7 4720hq
that's typical of mobile gaming rigs these days 16 gigs of RAM so plenty but
not Overkill a 15.6in display size
squarely between the 14-in blade 14 and
a 17-in monster like the gs70 from MSI a
GTX 960m with 4 gigs of vram that lives
squarely between entry-level discret graphics and the legitimately high-end
970 and 980m and I guess I probably sound like a broken record by now which
like a broken record by now which like a broken record by now which like a broken
record by now which but I digress the g501 does have some things that really
set it apart from the crowd first and foremost the config I have in front of
me is equipped with a 512 gig PCIe 4X
based SSD that I've nicknamed the
wrecker next up is the I/O on the front
we've got these kind of Neato indicator LEDs on the back is just ventilation on
the right we find nothing of note 3 and 12 mm combo Jack an SD card reader and
two USB 3.0 ports then on the left we find nothing of note again well hold on
a second line is why did you say the io was exceptional ah there's a mislabeled
port here that's a USB 3.0 port and HDMI
ports a standard power in and a Thunderbolt 20 gbit per second Port
disguised as a mini DisplayPort Port
it's a feature with very little relevance to many users but one that
could be a key selling point for Creative Pros who use Thunderbolt in
their daily lives and finally we've got the display I mentioned the size but I
specifically didn't mention anything else at the beginning of the video now
it wasn't long ago that every gaming laptop had some kind of poop tastic
1080p TN panel in it not today and while
maximum brightness is not as high as I'd personally like to see the IPS display
in the g501 manages the higher contrast
and great viewing angles that I've come to expect with a 3840 by 2160 Ultra HD
native resolution to boot so let's take
the rest of the physical tour then shall we build quality is again what I would
describe as high to midrange although a
couple of years ago it would be somewhere between very good and
exemplary which goes to show how far we've come with a brushed aluminum top
cover sporting a shiny ASUS and slightly less shiny but definitely more red Rog
logo a similar brushed aluminum base
that can be removed to reveal the single upgradable dim slot to complement the
four or8 gigs of soldered RAM and a
solid blasted anodized aluminum unibody style keyboard and touchpad surface that
would have combined with a bezel made of anything other than plastic pushed the
device into outstanding craftsmanship territory if it didn't have quite so
much give to it when I press down or rest my wrists on it the track pad is
again average it's unfortunately not glass which is what makes it sort of not
premium but the good news is it does feature a pretty satisfying plastic
surface and on the keyboard travel distance is good although that is
something that's admittedly easier on a laptop like this rather than on a Super
Hyper slim one like the you know 2015 MacBook but I did find the backlight
brightness a little low and the tactile bump could be less mushy the really good
news though is that there were no cardinal sins committed in the layout
and while I person person Al prefer home end page up and page down to be bound to
function in the arrow keys versus their slightly inconvenient or altogether
absent location in the top right the inclusion of a number pad and proper up
and down arrow keys at all is great if you're a productivity minded person who
also wants to game a bit but this is
where we get into the first unbalanced
aspect of the g501 configuration the
gtx960m GPU is just plane not suitable
for gaming at 4K like at all it's very
unusual for me to say in this case I think uh downgrading the spec would have
been just plain better but a 1080p IPS
panel with great contrast and a bit more brightness would have actually been
preferable for me in this case now you can simply run it at 1080p in games as I
did in these comparative benchmarks versus the Razer Blade 14 2015 which
gives us an idea of how the 960m compar to the 970m but if you're going to do
all your gaming at 1080p in the first place then the question is why not just
use an HD display anyway which I guess
leads pretty well onto the whole who is the g501 made for conversation as a
gaming device it delivers a good experience better than the vast majority
of last generation gaming laptops even ones with much thicker profiles but
actually it's its general purpose mobile
computer utility that's more likely to sell it to folks who are shopping for a
new laptop since its battery life for productivity was great compared to most
gaming machines and it can actually game
a bit so the bottom line is this I compared it to the Razer Blade 14 2015
for a couple of reasons number one is that I happen to use that as my daily
driver so the comparison is convenient and number two is that at its old price
of $2,000 the g501 was actually somewhat
price competitive with the blade 14 making it a pretty tough sell from a
performance and construction perspective but at the new price not to mention the
included Mouse and headset the conclusion actually changes a lot and
now for someone looking for a good-looking laptop that delivers great
usability for productivity and a good if
not exemplary gaming experience the g501
becomes a quiet cool running compelling value as long as you don't mind spending
20 minutes removing the unnecessary float wear seriously ASUS I just bought
your laptop I don't need like an ASUS
gift box like deals app are you for
real look at this
thing it takes forever to
load all right so that's pretty much it guys like the video if you liked it
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