Asus ROG G752VS OC Edition Review

Powered by a new generation of mobile graphics starring Nvidia's brand-new GTX 1070 graphics card, Asus' ROG G752VS OC's offers record-breaking gaming performance for hundreds less than older notebooks featuring Nvidia 900-series GPUs. And despite the savings, Asus hasn't skimped on other features, as the G752VS features a massive 32GB of RAM and a bright, 17.3-inch full-HD display in a refreshingly sleek gray-and-copper body. And while there's a number of other 1070-powered systems yet to come, for $2,499, Asus' ROG G752VS OC has set a new standard for high-powered gaming rigs. 

Design -- A welcome deviation from black and red

Clad in gunmetal gray and copper, the ROG G752VS OC sets itself apart from all the red-and-black gaming laptops we've seen from Acer, Lenovo and MSI. Asus even pulled off a futuristic spaceship vibe without treading on Alienware's territory, although I must admit I'm still not a fan of the overly edgy ROG logo. It kind of looks like the logo for Bad Boy clothing, which isn't a good thing. 

The back of the G752VS OC features my favorite design choice on the whole system: glowing red lights that shine through the copper and red venting. While some may think these lights are a bit silly, they remind me a bit of a Lamborghini Reventon. 

Inside, you get a two-tone gray-and-black deck, highlighted by copper and red accents. Although I wish Asus had stuck to its guns and gone whole hog with the copper color scheme. 

Measuring 16.4 x 12.7 x 0.8-1.5 inches and weighing 8.9 pounds, the G752VS OC sits between behemoth 10-pound machines, such as the Origin Eon17 SLX and the 8.4 pound MSI GT72 Dragon Edition. Even if it were a little lighter, you wouldn't want to drag a system this size around on a regular basis.

Display -- Bright, but could be richer

The 17.3-inch full-HD G-sync display on the ROG looks so sharp that sometimes it seems like it has a higher resolution than it actually does.

The screen made watching the new Rogue One trailer an absolute delight as it recreated every nook and cranny on the Death Star and Star Destroyers. Although, if I have to nitpick, I must say that I noticed that its colors were slightly off, which caused the red cliffs in the beginning of the trailer to look a bit faded.

At 326 nits, the G752VS OC's screen is a tier brighter than other VR-ready gaming laptops. Its closest competitors are the Acer Predator 17 X and the MSI GT72 Dragon Edition, which both sported brightness of 288 nits, while the Origin Eon17 SLX was further behind at 275 nits.  

The G752VSOC's color accuracy is pretty exemplary, too, as it notched a Delta-E rating of 0.88 (numbers closer to zero are better). We generally consider any number under 1 to be pretty solid, and only the MSI GT72's score of 0.7 was better. While still good, Origin's Eon17 SLX and Acer's Predator 17 X were a touch less accurate with Delta-E's of 00.9 and 1.13, respectively. 

The Asus' screen covered 114 percent of the sRGB spectrum, which is quite good. The Predator 17 X, the Eon17 SLX and the MSI GT72 also featured color ranges spanning between 112 and 114 of the sRGB spectrum.  

Gaming Performance

With the newest generation of graphics in its Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU, the ROG G752VS OC is practically begging you to put it through its paces. Complemented by 8GB of blazing GDD5 video RAM, we found that the ROG's gaming performance is 10 to 15 percent faster (or more) than systems with Nvidia 980 GPUs, which were already pretty potent. 

On 3DMark's Fire Strike graphics test, the G752VS OC scored 13,916, higher than the previous top mark by the Origin Eon17 SLX (12,011). And with scores of 10,970 and 7,667, what were once jaw-dropping numbers from the Acer Predator 17 X and the MSI GT72 are now just pretty good. 

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And it's not just synthetic tests that give the G752VS OC an edge, either. In Rainbow Six: Siege at 1920 x 1080 and very high settings, the G752VS OC pumped out 187 frames per second. That's nearly 50 fps ahead of its next closest competitor, the Predator 17 X, which reached 129 fps. 

It was the same story in even more demanding games such as Metro: Last Light, where the G752VS OC got up to 70.3 fps at full-HD resolution and very high settings. Once, again the Predator 17 X was the closest at 63 fps, but definitely still behind, while the MSI GT72 and the Origin Eon17 SLX struggled to crack 60 fps, at 49 and 57 fps, respectively.  

When you compare the G752VS OC to another system with Nvidia 1070 graphics in MSI's GT62VR 6RE, the Asus maintains a slim lead over its 15-inch competition. On Rainbox 6 at full HD on high settings, numbers were identical as both systems reach 187 fps. However, in Metro: Last Light on very high, the G752VS OC pulled slightly ahead as it reached 70.3 fps versus the MSI's 65.

Finally, with a score of 10.5 on Steam's VR performance test, the G752VS OC isn't just VR-ready, it's VR-hungry. By comparison, the Nvidia 980-powered Predator 17 X notched a score of just 8.1, which was already classified as very high by the benchmark. 

General Performance -- Everyday tasks are child's play

If you have the self-control to turn off the games and get some actual work done, the G752VS OC offers blindingly fast productivity speeds as well. With a base 32GB of RAM and an overclockable Intel Core i7 6820HK CPU, there's effectively no limit to the number of browser tabs you can have open. In multitasking situations, for example, playing a game while downloading another in the background wasn't even a challenge.  

On Geekbench 3, which measures overall performance, the G752VS OC busted out a pretty impressive score of 15,554. That figure is almost 15 percent higher than what we got from Acer's Predator 17 X (13,763) and MSI's GT72 Dragon Edition (13,869), although Origin's Eon17 SLX still holds the top spot with a score of 18,779. 

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And when you want to crunch some numbers, the G752VS OC has you covered there, too. On our spreadsheet test, the Asus sorted 20,000 names and addresses using Open Office in just 3 minutes and 23 seconds. That's slightly faster than the Predator 17 X (3:35) and the MSI GT72 Dragon Edition (3:31), even though they also have the same 6820HK CPU. However, the Origin Eon17 SLX and its Core i7 6700K CPU was a bit quicker with a time of 2:46. 

The G752VS OC's 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD is no slouch, either, as it posted a transfer rate of 848 MBps when we asked it to duplicate a DVD's worth of mixed media files; a number that's on a par with other laptops in this range. 

Keyboard and Touchpad -- Where are the colors at?

With key travel measuring 2 millimeters and an actuation weight of 62 grams, the G752VS OC's keyboard feels pretty great. It's crisp and springy in a way that feels like it's asking for more. However, the one thing I'm missing is the RGB backlighting that you get on other premium gaming laptops, because on this ROG, all you get is red. 

The keyboard also features a set of full-size arrow keys and a number pad on the right, along with five macro keys and a dedicated screen-recording button on the top left. 

The 4.7 x 2.6-inch touchpad sports an appealing trapezoidal shape with a smooth matte surface and fast and accurate gesture recognition. Below that, the mouse buttons feature separate discrete buttons, but because they felt a little loose, clicks were never as smooth or as crisp as I would have liked. 

Audio

Equipped with Asus' own Sonic Studio speakers, the G752VS pumped out decent, but unimpressive audio. Compared to systems such as Acer's Predator 17 X which features a full 4.1 setup complete with its own subwoofer, the Asus' bass was often a little lacking, as was overall volume, which made listening to anything from Ratatat to REO Speedwagon less than exciting. 

Battery Life -- It's a superfast gaming machine, what did you expect?

With a time of 3 hours and 42 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test (continuous web-surfing over Wi-Fi), the G752VS OC's longevity isn't good, but it's not worse than other high-powered gaming laptops, like the MSI GT72 (3:31), the Origin Eon17 SLX (2:54) and the Acer Predator 17 X (3:13). 

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While it doesn't have the same gaming chops, the Nvidia 980M-powered Alienware 17 lasted almost twice as long with a time of 6:07.

Heat

During everyday use, the 752VS OC's thermals were well in check. On the Laptop Mag heat test (15 minutes of streaming HD video), the hottest spot on the laptop was the plastic paneling on its bottom that measured 94.5 degrees, which is safely within our typical 95-degree comfort threshold. The spaces between the G and H keys and the touchpad were even cooler at 89.5 and 87 degrees, respectively. 

However, after a session of intense gaming, temps on the notebook's rear vent rose to nearly 130 degrees. Thankfully, excess heat is pretty much isolated to the two rear vents, because while temps on the bottom rose a bit to 105, the touchpad and keyboard remained under 90 degrees. I still wouldn't use the G752VS OC on my lap while gaming, but the same could be said of pretty much any superpowered gaming notebook.  

Software -- Overclocking made simple

Asus knows better than to gunk up a system like the G752VS OC with unnecessary bloat, which means you get a pretty clean install of Windows 10 along with a handful of helpful apps and utilities.

The most important of these is Asus' ROG Gaming Center, which gives you an easy-to-use interface for overclocking the laptop, and the ROG Macro key app, which helps you assign what the programmable keys do when you hit them. I'm also a big fan of the Eye Care Switch app, which helps reduce excess blue light, so you suffer from less eyestrain during late-night gaming sessions.  

Configurations -- Do you really need that much RAM?

There are two basic models of the G752 OC: the $2,499 version we've reviewed here, and an even higher-end $2,999 model that doubles the RAM and the size of the SSD to a whopping 64GB and 512GB, respectively. 

Bottom Line

If you were considering buying a laptop with a Nvidia 980 GPU, stop. Because the G752VS OC offers gaming performance 10 to 15 percent better than last-gen systems for hundreds less.

The $2,499 Asus also sports a sleek and refreshing gunmetal and copper design, a bright, 17.3-inch full-HD screen and a ton of customizable settings and overclocking utilities, thanks to the ROG Gaming Center app. As new gaming laptops with 1070 GPUs come out this fall, the G752VS OC has set a higher bar for what other laptop makers will have to beat. 

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