ASUS ROG G551... one of the most perfectly rounded gaming laptops may have arrived...

Richdog

Richdog

Richdog

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Well, there isn't much discussion or love for ASUS laptops on the forum... which isn't so surprising as OCUK don't sell the recent ones. In fact, I think stock in the UK is unsurprisingly widespread vs the rest of mainland Europe. Odd. *shrugs*

Either way, there is a laptop out called the ASUS N550JK. This is a very balanced mid-range gaming laptop... good build quality, IPS, decent CPU, decent battery life, runs cool... only problem was that it had an 850M. A DDR3 850M. As you can imagine, that was a fly in the ointment for people like me who would not now buy a new laptop with anything less than an 860M grade GPU. It was well rated on Notebookcheck http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-N550JK-CN109H-Notebook-Review.117726.0.html

So... then they made the ASUS G550JK. This was basically the exact same laptop internally as the N550JK, except the looks had been styled to the ROG series, eg: it looked awesome, far better than the new Lenovo Y50. Problem was, it still had an 850M. Sigh. Nevertheless, this laptop is currently rated among the highest on Notebookcheck and in the Top 10 with an 85% rating http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-GL550JK-CN391H-Notebook-Review.121051.0.html

So, then I saw that at Computex, ASUS announced a new laptop called the ASUS ROG G551. This is basically the same laptop as the G550JK with the same awesome styling and all-round great features... except... yup you guessed it... an 860M! Oh yeah, and 4k option (not confirmed if 4k screen is IPS or not)! :D

Here is what the sexy beast looks like:

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You may also have heard that ASUS are bringing out a premium laptop, the ASUS GX500. That may be a little thinner than the G551 and has a 4k screen with 100& NTSC coverage, but it has a smaller keyboard and will cost a fair whack more. Believe it or not the G551 may actually have "entry-level" pricing, which will make it immense value.

In my opinion, this is an all-round better alternative than may of the main competitors, and short of a disaster happening, this will be my next laptop... it really does tick all of my boxes as a "casual" gamer wanting some productivity in a sharp looking machine.

I read an end of August release, but can't be sure. Either way, it's going to be a contender for best value gaming laptop of the year and well worth checking out. :)
 
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I'm looking at the GX500 for extreme portability and super high specs and MBPR smasher in most respects except cpu
 
RoBoT said:
I'm looking at the GX500 for extreme portability and super high specs and MBPR smasher in most respects except cpu
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But it's not "super high specs"... it's the same base specs as the G551 except with thinner chassis, better screen... and sadly a smaller keyboard without numpad. And it will cost a ton more too.
 
Sorry, higher specs than the Dell xps15 and the MBPR and the screen is the icing on the cake for photo editing etc with such amazing colour reproduction and ips to boot
 
RoBoT said:
Sorry, higher specs than the Dell xps15 and the MBPR and the screen is the icing on the cake for photo editing etc with such amazing colour reproduction and ips to boot
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The screen is the only really good thing going for it imo. The thinness will cause heat issues like with the NX500, and the (reduced size) keyboard will also have less travel due to the thinness.

However, a regular IPS with 70%+ coverage is also great for editing.
 
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so they rehash the same thing several times, chuck the rog name on it and charge a load more? awesome. make sure you buy from a good retailer because i doubt asus will help you if anything goes wrong!
 
llamadal said:
so they rehash the same thing several times, chuck the rog name on it and charge a load more? awesome. make sure you buy from a good retailer because i doubt asus will help you if anything goes wrong!
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Where does it say they are charging a "load more"? if you are privy to pricing information we aren't, then please share...
 
The thing with the gx500 is it will be light and more portable than the g551 so would suit my needs better
 
As much as I like the specs of the g551 I am still preferring the looks of the g550. Question is can I live with a ddr3 850? It can play bf4 1080p at medium settings which is the most demanding thing I play and the heat and noise on g/n550 is reported to be very good but there is always that buyers remorse that I should have got the 860....
Ahhh why do they still have to gimp cards with ddr3 in 2014!!
 
ninja2000 said:
As much as I like the specs of the g551 I am still preferring the looks of the g550. Question is can I live with a ddr3 850? It can play bf4 1080p at medium settings which is the most demanding thing I play and the heat and noise on g/n550 is reported to be very good but there is always that buyers remorse that I should have got the 860....
Ahhh why do they still have to gimp cards with ddr3 in 2014!!
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If you are thinking like that then don't buy the 850m as you will only regret it in a year when games start to struggle.

PS: The G550JK doesn't look as good, and the silver on silver keyboard is a bit of a pain in terms of visibility when typing.
 
Richdog said:
If you are thinking like that then don't buy the 850m as you will only regret it in a year when games start to struggle.

PS: The G550JK doesn't look as good, and the silver on silver keyboard is a bit of a pain in terms of visibility when typing.
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I know what you mean, that's what has stopped me so far.

And the silver is the n550, the g550 is black with red backlit keys. And totally with you with silver keys, I had a Samsung series 7, lovely laptop but you couldn't see the keys at all unless pitch black
 
ninja2000 said:
I know what you mean, that's what has stopped me so far.

And the silver is the n550, the g550 is black with red backlit keys. And totally with you with silver keys, I had a Samsung series 7, lovely laptop but you couldn't see the keys at all unless pitch black
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Ahhh sorry got a bit mixed up there! Lovely looking laptop, but I really would get the 860M., Just be a little patient, it will be worth it. :)
 
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ninja2000 said:
As much as I like the specs of the g551 I am still preferring the looks of the g550. Question is can I live with a ddr3 850? It can play bf4 1080p at medium settings which is the most demanding thing I play and the heat and noise on g/n550 is reported to be very good but there is always that buyers remorse that I should have got the 860....
Ahhh why do they still have to gimp cards with ddr3 in 2014!!
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Avoid the DDR3 version of the 850m at all costs. Its lack of memory bandwdith will be absolutely crippling, especially at 1080p.
 
Richdog said:
Ahhh didn't realise they made a black version of the N550J, sorry about that! Lovely looking laptop, but I really would get the 860M., Just be a little patient, it will be worth it. :)
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Haha, I am trying to be patient. Though even the G550 is still unavailable in the UK. I have also contemplated the p34g v2 but I don't really want a smaller screen and I am looking for a higher build quality.

oweneades said:
Avoid the DDR3 version of the 850m at all costs. Its lack of memory bandwdith will be absolutely crippling, especially at 1080p.
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Normally I would totally agree with you. I would never have bought a ddr3 650/750m back in the day but if you look at a few benchmarks of the ddr3 850 it seems to perform pretty well at 1080p. BF4 is playable at medium/high settings at 1080p as an example.
 
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