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The Asus G71 was designed to answer the clamor for a laptop that is suited for gaming. Gamers in particular require a very powerful platform that allows them to run their heavy games without a glitch. When conducting this review, we had to ask ourselves whether the Asus G71 is able to deliver what gamers need. Or if they should opt for another laptop?

SPECS	AVAILABLE OPTIONS
CPU	Intel Core 2 Quad 2.53GHz
RAM	4GB DDR3-1333
Screen Size	17.1-inch 1920×1200 LCD
Operating System	Genuine Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition, 32-bit
Battery Life	1 hour and a half
Graphics	512 MB GeForce 9700M GT

Pros

Speed and power are what defines the G71 Quad-Core laptop. These qualities are necessary because of the laptop’s designation for pure gaming. With a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300 coupled with an equally powerful Nvidia GeForce 9700M GT, this laptop will enable gamers to reap the benefits of the G71’s capabilities. Due to its powerful graphic card, the system is able to dish out game resolutions of 1920×1200. Gamers can surely appreciate the greater attention to details and clarity, a necessity when playing 3D games and some of the most popular non-3D games in the market today. Packed with a lot of gaming-friendly features, the G71 complements its speed and graphics power with its 4-gigabyte memory.

 

The Asus G71 gaming laptop is a vision due to the number of light-emitting diodes in the entire assembly, including the track pad. This is the current trend for gaming laptops, and the Asus G71 is no different. The track pad lighting is especially useful, as the keyboards and track pad have a solid black finish that could make it difficult for some users to find the track pad in the dark. The designers likely realize that certain people may find this assembly of LEDs to be annoying and so there is an option to deactivate these lights.

 

Another feature that sets the G71 apart from its cousins is the Linux environment that allows users to boot quickly for a quick peek at the Internet. While this may seem useless to others, it could come in handy during situations where users would want to quickly browse the Internet and don’t have the time to waste on booting fully into the Windows Vista OS set into the system.

 

Cons

The main drawback to the G71 is its low battery power. Tests indicate that the notebook can only last for up to an hour and a half on full usage with all the power saving settings off. This makes it inferior to other gaming platforms, which can last for at least 4 hours like Gateway’s P-7808u FX. The G71 cannot be played on for a long enough time off the hook and this is very disappointing.

 

While the G71 has numerous light emitting diodes in its assembly that we consider practical, Asus has neglected to put these lights into another important part of the laptop: the keyboard. While the laptop is flooded in lights, it’s noticeable that the G71 does not have a backlit keyboard. This would have been useful, considering the solid black finish for the keys.

 

The speakers are underwhelming compared to the other features of this excellent laptop. The sounds that come out of them are rather dull and muffled, which can make playing certain games a somewhat deficient experience.

 

Conclusion

Clearly, Asus has beefed up this laptop in order to give a satisfactory performance for gamers but we found that it neglected to take care of a few details. Our verdict — if you can afford the $5,000 tag for this gadget and are willing to disregard the flaws in its design because of its otherwise excellent performance, then go ahead. The Asus G71 is a top-of-the-line gamers’ laptop but it falls short on delivering everything that gamers want.

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1. Gateway P79003FX Core 2 Quad – Review
2. ASUS G51VX-A1 15.6-INCH – Review
3. Asus UX50V – Review
4. Asus K50IJ-RX05 – Review
5. Asus G51J – Review

Tags: Asus, gaming laptop, quadcore laptop

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 3:31 am and is filed under Asus, and is tagged with Asus, gaming laptop, quadcore laptop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.