Thanks to Nvidia's GeForce 10 series, gaming laptops are a reasonable alternative to gaming desktops these days. For those that want portability merely don't want to sacrifice gaming performance, in that location are a ton of suitable options on the market covering a wide diversity of cost points and functioning levels. Nosotros've covered a number of decent options on TechSpot throughout the by vi months, and this latest product from Asus is no different.

The Asus ROG Strix GL502VS sits towards the top end of the performance and price scale. It doesn't accept any ludicrous dual-GPU setups inside, merely its GeForce GTX 1070 discrete graphics chip offers better performance than your typical gaming laptop or even desktop. Information technology packs a 15.6-inch 1080p G-Sync display and a range of other solid hardware in a course gene that nonetheless makes it somewhat portable, unlike a few other laptops I've reviewed with similar hardware.

My review unit, which retails for around $ane,700, came with an Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor, 16GB of DDR4 memory, a 256GB SSD plus a 1TB difficult drive, and of course, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 GPU. These are standard specifications for a gaming laptop in 2022; y'all won't find as well many GTX 1060 or GTX 1070 laptops that stray from this CPU+RAM+storage combination.

The GL502VS is slightly larger than a typical xv.six-inch gaming laptop, although that's due to the beefier cooling solution required to satisfy the GTX 1070. This laptop is around 30mm thick, only still manages to keep its weight to ii.2kg, making information technology thicker than most 15.6-inch GTX 1060 laptops but no heavier.

Compared to its GTX 1070 competition, the GL502VS competes strongly. It's the lightest laptop available in its price form, and only the electric current Gigabyte P35Xv7 is slimmer; options from MSI, Acer and Alienware are all larger, sometimes significantly so. That's not to say a 2.2kg, 30mm thick laptop is outrageously portable, but for those that want to behave around something this powerful, the GL502VS is your best option.

As always, keep in mind that the GL502VS requires a pregnant power brick to employ the GTX 1070 at its full capabilities. This is the instance with all GTX 1070 laptops, and so retrieve to factor in the additional 650 gram brick in your portability calculations.

To go along this laptop light, Asus has used plastic for most its structure. This leads to a pretty inexpensive await and feel, with the exception of the hat which is actually metal. The brushed plastic used around the keyboard tries to imitate the metal lid, merely it just ends up looking like a budget knockoff. The actual feel of this wrist rest is reasonably difficult and harsh, which is in contrast to the pleasant feel that other metal-bodied gaming laptops provide.

I like the use of a black body with vibrant orange highlights, though this color scheme and some angular patterns used effectually the body do fall into 'gamer style' territory. Merely in case y'all had forgotten which keys to use while gaming, the WASD keys are orangish with black text, while the rest are blackness with orange text. This laptop is besides bachelor in a silver base color, though from Asus' product images, the blackness model looks significantly better.

Equally with most gaming laptops, the entire rear of the laptop is a massive vent used to exhaust hot air. The hinge design on the GL502VS, which partially blocks the back edge while fully open, means that the vents direct air somewhat downwards and into your desk-bound. Surprisingly small vents forth the lesser draw in cool air.

Round the edges you'll detect an Ethernet port, mini-DisplayPort, HDMI, USB 3.0 and a USB 3.1 Type-C port on the left; and an SD bill of fare slot, 2 USB three.0 ports, and a 3.5mm audio jack on the correct. It's disappointing Asus has just included one 3.5mm audio jack, which makes information technology hard to employ headsets with ii 3.5mm connectors for the speakers and microphone. Thunderbolt 3 would take been squeamish as well, though USB-C is decent notwithstanding.

The keyboard included on the GL502VS is okay, though it's far from the best gaming laptop keyboard I've tested. In a laptop that'southward 30mm thick, I expected better travel distance from the keyboard, only instead the GL502VS' keyboard is closer to an ultrabook than other gaming laptops in terms of tactile feedback. One positive is the reasonably clicky experience from the rubber dome keys despite the curt travel distance.

As for keyboard layout, the keys are adequately sized and the left modifier keys are large enough to easily hit them while gaming. Asus has squashed in full-sized arrow keys, though, which reduces the size of the correct modifiers. There'due south too a numpad for those that practice a lot of number crunching on their laptop.

The trackpad is decent, and provides a good tracking feel. It's not something you'll exist using particularly often on a gaming laptop, simply at least Asus has resisted the urge to include terrible ELAN hardware here.

The GL502VS is equipped with a xv.half-dozen-inch TN LCD with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. This display is well suited to gaming thanks to its 120 Hz maximum refresh charge per unit and 1000-Sync support, making it a groovy pairing for the GTX 1070. With this GPU, you lot can often run games in the lx to 120 FPS range at 1080p, which makes this screen the perfect choice.

This LCD is capable of 323 nits of brightness at its peak, with a decent contrast ratio of 1220:1. Unfortunately the display is far too cold by default, which leads to poor grayscale accuracy and mediocre color accurateness. sRGB gamut coverage isn't slap-up at just 92% either, although the display looks decent (though far from fantastic) in full general. Calibration can improve performance slightly, but I wouldn't recommend this display for any sort of color accurate work.