Asus Republic of Gamers G750JW review

It’s a bit of a push to describe Asus’ G750JW as a laptop; weighing almost 4kg and measuring 50mm thick, this is more a battery-powered desktop PC than something you’d dare put on your lap. As a super-powered desktop replacement, however, the G750JW has exactly what it takes: with a quad-core Intel Haswell CPU and an Nvidia GeForce 7 Series graphics chipset, it’s been designed to survive the most epic of gaming sessions.

It would be tough to mistake the Asus G750JW for anything but a high-end gaming laptop. The burly, wedge-shaped chassis, finished in soft-touch matte-black plastic, sits menacingly on a desk, and the huge exhaust vents at the rear would look more at home on a gargantuan gaming PC. With the chunky 180W PSU upping the weight to 4.8kg, you’ll need a large, sturdy rucksack if you’re planning to lug it around.

On the inside, a quad-core Intel Core i7-4700HQ CPU and 8GB of RAM means it’s incredibly quick: it smashed its way to an overall score of 0.93 in our Real World Benchmarks. Thanks to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M GPU, its gaming performance was equally impressive. Most laptops grind to a halt when tasked with Crysis at Full HD and High quality settings, but the Asus managed a smooth average frame rate of 46fps. With Crysis cranked to Very High quality, it managed a playable 30fps.

The large exhausts at the rear keep the beefy CPU and GPU cool under pressure, which is no small task. We ran Prime95 and FurMark – two applications that push systems to their limits – and after two hours the CPU temperature settled at 90˚C, while the GPU peaked at 65˚C. The fans spun audibly, but not aggravatingly so – the raucous internal speakers are capable of drowning out the constant whoosh of air.

The downside to such capable performance is short battery life. With the screen dimmed to 75cd/m[sup]2[/sup] and the CPU ticking through a handful of offline web pages, the Asus clung on for only 5hrs 3mins. With the CPU working flat out, and the display dialled up to maximum brightness, it lasted 2hrs 49mins.

Bear in mind, too, that the GPU automatically downclocks itself while running on battery power – if you fancy a spot of Crysis 3 on the train, you’ll have to knock down the detail settings to get it running smoothly.

Asus hasn’t skimped on the display. The 17.3in, Full HD panel has a matte, anti-glare coating to reduce reflections, and it reaches a maximum brightness of 325cd/m[sup]2[/sup]. Contrast is good, too – we measured it at 878:1 – and while it isn’t the most colour-accurate display we’ve seen, its tendency to lighten the darkest tones is ideal for gaming.

The connectivity is bang on. There are four USB 3 ports, HDMI and D-SUB video outputs, and – in a first for a Windows 8 laptop – a Thunderbolt port that doubles as a mini-DisplayPort output. There’s also a pair of 3.5mm audio inputs and outputs, one of which provides an optical S/PDIF output for a speaker set or AV amplifier. Wired networking stretches to Gigabit, and a dual-band 802.11n wireless chipset is accompanied by Bluetooth 4.

The huge chassis accommodates a DVD writer on the left-hand flank and a pair of 5,400rpm 500GB hard disks. There’s even a modicum of upgradability: replacing the existing drives with SSDs, or replacing the existing pair of 4GB DDR3 DIMMs, takes only minutes.

While the G750JW is an impractical laptop for everyday use, it’s a hugely capable gaming machine. It’s possible to spend more on models with Blu-ray drives, faster GPUs and other fripperies, but the G750JW strikes a sensible middle ground: there’s ample power for modern games, wrapped up in a burly chassis, at a price that compares well to rivals from Alienware. If you can live with the over-the-top styling, this laptop is highly recommended.

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