Asus ROG G750JX Review, Specs, Price
Laptop Asus ROG G750JX is perfect for gamers laptop with skin 17.3" , Asus ROG G750JX has suported with Intel Haswell inside along with the very impressive NVIDIA GTX 770M with 3 gigs of DDR5 VRAM. This quad core beast can chew through the latest games on high settings without breaking a sweat. It stays remarkably quiet and cool when gaming: yes you'll hear the fan but it won't roar and blot out your game's audio track, no it won't toast your hands or singe the hair off your legs. Though at 8.75 lbs. you probably won't be gaming with the G750JX on your lap.
If you are is Republic of Gamers machine, you get good value and our G750JX-RB71 2.4GHz Core i7-4700HQ model with a matte full HD display, 12 gigs of RAM, the GTX 770M graphics card, WiFi 802.11AC, DVD burner and a 750 gig 7200 RPM HDD retails for $1,499. You'll find other variants, including models with a gloss 3D full HD display, a 128 or 256 gig SSD plus HDD setup, a Blu-Ray drive and up to 16 gigs of RAM (32 gigs is max for this machine). Bluetooth 4.0, an excellent backlit keyboard, stereo speakers with a subwoofer, a DVD burner and a full HD display are standard features. The ROG has two 2.5" drive bays and two easily accessible RAM slots (the other two slots require a lot of disassembly for access). It has 4 USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and mini DisplayPort/Thunderbolt that worked fine with our Apple Thunderbolt Display.
This looks every bit the ROG, which is to say a hunky, chunky gamer with unique lines and a soft touch black finish. The keyboard deck has a unified matte finish rather than the faux metal keyboard surround and matte black wrist rest of the outgoing ROG G75. The Asus G750 isn't as understated as the Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 and Y510 crossover gaming-multimedia-general purpose powerful 15.6" notebook, but it's much more staid looking than the glossy, red Toshiba Qosmio that screams gaming. And the front end looks like a normal notebook vs. the aggressive front edge plus multi-color LED lights of the Alienware 17. For those who want their gaming rig to flaunt its identity, the ROG might seem ever so slightly well mannered looking, but for those of you who will take this to the office or college, it's just the ticket... though no one will mistake it for a standard laptop.
The G750 feels well made and solid and there's no flex in the keyboard deck. It has four USB 3.0 ports (two on each side), an HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45), a mini DisplayPort/Thunderbolt port that worked fine with our Apple Thunderbolt monitor, 3.5mm stereo out with SPDIF, 3.5mm mic and a VGA port. The 8 cell battery is removable.
The backlit keyboard with number pad is very good and I find it at least as comfortable and responsive as the SteelSeries keyboard on the competing MSI GT70, though it doesn't have enlarged gaming keys (WASD, Control and Space). There's no annoying flex, key travel is good, tactile feedback is pleasing and it's a pleasure to type on as well as game with. The very large Elan trackpad with right and left mouse buttons is very responsive and worked well with multi-touch gestures. The trackpad has a slight hint of texture and overall we found it much more usable than the tiny trackpad on the competing MSI GT70.
We'll let our gaming demo tell the story. We test out several of today's demanding 3D games: BioShock Infinite, Skyrim, Crysis 3, Batman Arkham City and Mass Effect 3 at full HD resolution with graphics settings on high (we show you the settings used for each game). Suffice it to say it can handle any hot 3D title fluently on high to ultra settings except Crysis 3 where we had to drop down to medium settings at 1920 x 1080 to keep frame rates in the low to mid 40's. The ROG G750 lives up to its promise, and it stands in nicely as a gaming desktop replacement.
Our model has the matte full HD 1920 x 1080 60Hz display. There's a model with a glossy full HD 3D 120Hz display for those who prefer those options. Having gamed with the glossy full HD on the second generation HP Envy 15 for 2 years, I vastly prefer the matte option to gloss when it comes to seeing details in typically dark game worlds. The matte display is brighter than average at 350 nits, and it's 100 nits brighter than the last generation Asus ROG G75. The greater brightness combined with the lack of glare make for wonderful gaming and movie watching, and contrast is excellent at 950:1. Color gamut is also very good and the display covers 95% of sRGB and 74% of Adobe RGB, making it workable for graphics and video pros. In fact, it matches the excellent displays on the Sony Vaio Pro 13 and Sony Vaio Duo 13 for color gamut. Games look rich and vibrant and movies have lively color and good detail in dark areas thanks to good black levels. Our only complaint is that the anti-glare coating creates some grain that's apparent on white backgrounds like web pages and Word documents. Viewing angles are better than average among non-IPS displays, but this isn't an IPS display, so you won't get 180 degree viewing angles. That said, viewing angles are sufficiently wide that you won't have to move the display back and forward with excruciating exactness to find the sweet spot, and side viewing angles are good enough for three people to watch a video together.
Here's where the Asus ROG G750JX shines, as do other serious gaming laptops. The full mobile 2.4GHz (Turbo Boost to 3.4GHz) Intel Core i7-4700HQ quad core CPU with 6 megs of level 2 cache walks circles around ULV Ultrabook Core i7 CPUs, and it's perfect for gaming, HD video editing, CAD work and number crunching in Excel. Combine that with the high end NVIDIA GTX 770M graphics card with 3 gigs of DDR5 memory and you've got one of the top laptop gaming machines on the market. In the NVIDIA line, the GTX 770M is bested only by the significantly more expensive, hotter and more power hungry GTX 780M in graphics performance and it's a powerhouse even if the 780M beats it at considerable cost, power and thermals.
The G750 has the latest generation 2.4GHz quad core i7-4700QQ Intel Haswell CPU and that's more important for battery life than performance. Granted, Intel integrated graphics on their fourth generation platform show improvement, but that's irrelevant here since the G750 runs full time on dedicated NVIDIA graphics. There's no NVIDIA Optimus switchable graphics here, and we're not complaining much since this is a gaming machine and we don't have to fuss over graphics settings to ensure that a program or game is using our dedicated graphics card. When unplugged, the G750's graphics will switch to a lower wattage for better battery life, that's surprisingly comparable to Intel HD 5000 graphics for performance and battery life. Plug in the AC adapter, and you'll get maximum performance.
PCMark 7: 3804 (6163 with Samsung PM 840 SSD boot drive)
3DMark 11: P5019, E1715
Geekbench 2: 15,140
wPrime: 8.3 seconds
Windows Experience Index:
Processor: 7.9
RAM: 7.9
Graphics (for desktop): 7.6
3D Gaming Graphics: 7.6
HDD: 5.9 (8.1 with Samsung PM 840 SSD)
The laptop has a headphone amplifier, and sound through headphones or a good set of speakers is excellent. The ROG has stereo speakers that fire from under the keyboard and a fairly large subwoofer on the bottom (enlarged from the G75). Overall, built-in speaker audio was surprisingly quiet for a 17" gaming machine, but sound quality is balanced with a bit of bass thanks to the subwoofer and none of the shrillness you hear from small laptops. We did note a bug that when gaming, the speakers would crackle (just loud enough to notice) and muting then unmuting the speakers via the Fn key got rid of the crackling until the next reboot. That tells us it's a software bug and not a hardware issue. Asus uses MaxxAudio with a variety of customizable settings, and we found the gaming setting the best for overall use.
Asus G750 has decent battery life for this class and at 50% brightness with WiFi on it averaged almost 4 hours of unplugged use time for productivity work (not gaming, you don't want to game unplugged and give up performance). The machine has a removable 8 cell, 5900 mAh Lithium Ion battery, and that's not very large in terms of capacity or physical size, so we're surprised at the passable runtimes. Haswell is good at conserving power and NVIDIA's graphics card power management gets the job done.
The Asus ROG G750JX has wired Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 4.0 and Broadcom dual band WiFi 802.11ac (some models have 802.11n). Wireless with our 802.11ac adapter was well behaved with no drop outs and good throughput, even when 25 feet from the router with two sheetrock walls in between. It typically held onto a 300Mbps connection at that range.
Website: www.asus.com
If you are is Republic of Gamers machine, you get good value and our G750JX-RB71 2.4GHz Core i7-4700HQ model with a matte full HD display, 12 gigs of RAM, the GTX 770M graphics card, WiFi 802.11AC, DVD burner and a 750 gig 7200 RPM HDD retails for $1,499. You'll find other variants, including models with a gloss 3D full HD display, a 128 or 256 gig SSD plus HDD setup, a Blu-Ray drive and up to 16 gigs of RAM (32 gigs is max for this machine). Bluetooth 4.0, an excellent backlit keyboard, stereo speakers with a subwoofer, a DVD burner and a full HD display are standard features. The ROG has two 2.5" drive bays and two easily accessible RAM slots (the other two slots require a lot of disassembly for access). It has 4 USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and mini DisplayPort/Thunderbolt that worked fine with our Apple Thunderbolt Display.
Design, Keyboard and Trackpad
This looks every bit the ROG, which is to say a hunky, chunky gamer with unique lines and a soft touch black finish. The keyboard deck has a unified matte finish rather than the faux metal keyboard surround and matte black wrist rest of the outgoing ROG G75. The Asus G750 isn't as understated as the Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 and Y510 crossover gaming-multimedia-general purpose powerful 15.6" notebook, but it's much more staid looking than the glossy, red Toshiba Qosmio that screams gaming. And the front end looks like a normal notebook vs. the aggressive front edge plus multi-color LED lights of the Alienware 17. For those who want their gaming rig to flaunt its identity, the ROG might seem ever so slightly well mannered looking, but for those of you who will take this to the office or college, it's just the ticket... though no one will mistake it for a standard laptop.
The G750 feels well made and solid and there's no flex in the keyboard deck. It has four USB 3.0 ports (two on each side), an HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45), a mini DisplayPort/Thunderbolt port that worked fine with our Apple Thunderbolt monitor, 3.5mm stereo out with SPDIF, 3.5mm mic and a VGA port. The 8 cell battery is removable.
The backlit keyboard with number pad is very good and I find it at least as comfortable and responsive as the SteelSeries keyboard on the competing MSI GT70, though it doesn't have enlarged gaming keys (WASD, Control and Space). There's no annoying flex, key travel is good, tactile feedback is pleasing and it's a pleasure to type on as well as game with. The very large Elan trackpad with right and left mouse buttons is very responsive and worked well with multi-touch gestures. The trackpad has a slight hint of texture and overall we found it much more usable than the tiny trackpad on the competing MSI GT70.
Gaming Laptop
We'll let our gaming demo tell the story. We test out several of today's demanding 3D games: BioShock Infinite, Skyrim, Crysis 3, Batman Arkham City and Mass Effect 3 at full HD resolution with graphics settings on high (we show you the settings used for each game). Suffice it to say it can handle any hot 3D title fluently on high to ultra settings except Crysis 3 where we had to drop down to medium settings at 1920 x 1080 to keep frame rates in the low to mid 40's. The ROG G750 lives up to its promise, and it stands in nicely as a gaming desktop replacement.
Display G750JX
Our model has the matte full HD 1920 x 1080 60Hz display. There's a model with a glossy full HD 3D 120Hz display for those who prefer those options. Having gamed with the glossy full HD on the second generation HP Envy 15 for 2 years, I vastly prefer the matte option to gloss when it comes to seeing details in typically dark game worlds. The matte display is brighter than average at 350 nits, and it's 100 nits brighter than the last generation Asus ROG G75. The greater brightness combined with the lack of glare make for wonderful gaming and movie watching, and contrast is excellent at 950:1. Color gamut is also very good and the display covers 95% of sRGB and 74% of Adobe RGB, making it workable for graphics and video pros. In fact, it matches the excellent displays on the Sony Vaio Pro 13 and Sony Vaio Duo 13 for color gamut. Games look rich and vibrant and movies have lively color and good detail in dark areas thanks to good black levels. Our only complaint is that the anti-glare coating creates some grain that's apparent on white backgrounds like web pages and Word documents. Viewing angles are better than average among non-IPS displays, but this isn't an IPS display, so you won't get 180 degree viewing angles. That said, viewing angles are sufficiently wide that you won't have to move the display back and forward with excruciating exactness to find the sweet spot, and side viewing angles are good enough for three people to watch a video together.
Performance Asus ROG G750JX
Here's where the Asus ROG G750JX shines, as do other serious gaming laptops. The full mobile 2.4GHz (Turbo Boost to 3.4GHz) Intel Core i7-4700HQ quad core CPU with 6 megs of level 2 cache walks circles around ULV Ultrabook Core i7 CPUs, and it's perfect for gaming, HD video editing, CAD work and number crunching in Excel. Combine that with the high end NVIDIA GTX 770M graphics card with 3 gigs of DDR5 memory and you've got one of the top laptop gaming machines on the market. In the NVIDIA line, the GTX 770M is bested only by the significantly more expensive, hotter and more power hungry GTX 780M in graphics performance and it's a powerhouse even if the 780M beats it at considerable cost, power and thermals.
The G750 has the latest generation 2.4GHz quad core i7-4700QQ Intel Haswell CPU and that's more important for battery life than performance. Granted, Intel integrated graphics on their fourth generation platform show improvement, but that's irrelevant here since the G750 runs full time on dedicated NVIDIA graphics. There's no NVIDIA Optimus switchable graphics here, and we're not complaining much since this is a gaming machine and we don't have to fuss over graphics settings to ensure that a program or game is using our dedicated graphics card. When unplugged, the G750's graphics will switch to a lower wattage for better battery life, that's surprisingly comparable to Intel HD 5000 graphics for performance and battery life. Plug in the AC adapter, and you'll get maximum performance.
Benchmarks
PCMark 7: 3804 (6163 with Samsung PM 840 SSD boot drive)
3DMark 11: P5019, E1715
Geekbench 2: 15,140
wPrime: 8.3 seconds
Windows Experience Index:
Processor: 7.9
RAM: 7.9
Graphics (for desktop): 7.6
3D Gaming Graphics: 7.6
HDD: 5.9 (8.1 with Samsung PM 840 SSD)
Sound
The laptop has a headphone amplifier, and sound through headphones or a good set of speakers is excellent. The ROG has stereo speakers that fire from under the keyboard and a fairly large subwoofer on the bottom (enlarged from the G75). Overall, built-in speaker audio was surprisingly quiet for a 17" gaming machine, but sound quality is balanced with a bit of bass thanks to the subwoofer and none of the shrillness you hear from small laptops. We did note a bug that when gaming, the speakers would crackle (just loud enough to notice) and muting then unmuting the speakers via the Fn key got rid of the crackling until the next reboot. That tells us it's a software bug and not a hardware issue. Asus uses MaxxAudio with a variety of customizable settings, and we found the gaming setting the best for overall use.
Battery Life
Asus G750 has decent battery life for this class and at 50% brightness with WiFi on it averaged almost 4 hours of unplugged use time for productivity work (not gaming, you don't want to game unplugged and give up performance). The machine has a removable 8 cell, 5900 mAh Lithium Ion battery, and that's not very large in terms of capacity or physical size, so we're surprised at the passable runtimes. Haswell is good at conserving power and NVIDIA's graphics card power management gets the job done.
Networking
The Asus ROG G750JX has wired Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 4.0 and Broadcom dual band WiFi 802.11ac (some models have 802.11n). Wireless with our 802.11ac adapter was well behaved with no drop outs and good throughput, even when 25 feet from the router with two sheetrock walls in between. It typically held onto a 300Mbps connection at that range.
Price Asus ROG G750JX: $1,499
Website: www.asus.com
