Asus ROG G752VY review – a gaming behemoth

The first thing you notice about the Asus ROG G752VY is the sheer size of it. With its massive footprint of 416x322x45mm and colossal weight of 4.4kg, you certainly won’t be taking this anywhere in a hurry. Indeed, the rear exhaust looks almost more suited to being the front grill of a supercar than anything else. However, despite its bulk and hefty dimensions, there’s no denying that the G752VY feels distinctly premium as a result.

With its silver and brushed copper highlighting and cyber-punk styling, the G752VY is unashamedly a high-end gaming laptop. It’s so huge, in fact, that it’s practically an all-in-one PC. It’s definitely got the hardware to rival a desktop, as Asus has equipped it with a quad-core 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-6820HK, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M graphics chip and 32GB of DDR4 RAM, with room to expand to 64GB if you wish.

Performance and benchmarks

With this kind of power behind it, it’s no surprise that the G752VY is one of the fastest gaming laptops around, as it tackled even our most demanding benchmark tasks with ease. A perfect choice for the power user, it completed our demanding 4K benchmarks with an overall score of 117, beating our reference Core-i5-4670K desktop processor by 17 points.

This beats the similarly priced Aorus X5S v5 Camo and the Dell XPS 15, but that’s not to say it’s entirely without competition, as the £1,050 and significantly more compact Gigabyte P55W v5 scored 118 in the same tests.

However, the G752VY trounced the P55W v5 in our graphics benchmarks, as its GTX 980M chip proved to be significantly more powerful than the P55W’s GTX 970M chip in both our Dirt Showdown test and our Metro Last Light benchmarks. Whether that’s worth an extra £1,000 is debatable, but with a frame rate of 64.8fps in Metro on Very High settings with SSAO turned off at 1,920×1,080, it certainly makes a compelling case. Older games should be able to run at a full 60fps as well, as I saw an average of 80.4fps in Dirt Showdown with everything turned up to max at 1,920×1,080.

Admittedly, the Aorus X5s Camo sailed past these scores when I turned its fan setting up to max, as it managed a highly impressive 90.8fps in Metro on Very High at 1080p with SSAO turned off. In reality, you’re never going to get more than 60fps due to the screen’s refresh rate, and on its normal fan setting it only managed 40.9fps.

The G752VY, on the other hand, doesn’t have any fan settings, but the fact it produced 64.8fps without its fans having to kick up a fuss suggests its internal cooling is likely to be far superior to that of the Aorus. It certainly didn’t get as hot as the Aorus under load, which I suspect is probably down to Asus’ Vapor Chamber thermal cooling fans and copper heatpipe. It was never hot to the touch, for example, unlike the Aorus, and it never made playing games feel uncomfortable.

Keyboard and touchpad

The large keyboard below is more promising, as it’s very comfortable to use for long periods of time and its well-spaced, tactile keys provide plenty of travel. They’re backlit, too, with three different lighting options available. Admittedly, the backlighting isn’t particularly bright, even on its max setting, but it should be absolutely fine if you’re gaming in a dark room.

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I did, however, notice a significant amount of flex on the left hand side of the keyboard around the WASD keys, as the Blu-ray drive underneath leaves a lot of dead space between it and the main keyboard. It isn’t bad enough that it will affect your typing or gaming, but it’s nevertheless a little disappointing to see given that so much thought has clearly gone into the rest of its design. That said, it was clear our review sample had been through the wars a bit, as there were several places where its silver and copper finish was either chipped or had worn away.

Keyboard flex aside, though, I was pleased to see a set of five programmable macro keys on the G752VY which you can program using Asus’ built-in software. There’s also a record button, which takes you straight to XSplit Gamecaster, that lets you record your gameplay highlights on the fly with very minimal effort. Likewise, the Asus button on the number pad acts as a shortcut to its ROG Gaming Centre software, enabling you to check the frequency and temperature of the CPU and GPU, along with different profile customisation options.

The touchpad, meanwhile, is quite sizable, and it certainly makes the most of the large space below the keyboard. This provides plenty of room for swipe gestures, which all worked perfectly fine, and its dedicated left and right mouse buttons are a welcome extra.

Display

As you’d expect with a massive gaming laptop, the G752VY has a huge 17.3in screen. Sadly, its image quality is rather lacking compared to other gaming behemoths I’ve tested, as our colour calibrator showed it was only displaying 85.5% of the sRGB colour gamut. It’s far from the worst laptop display I’ve seen, but I was expecting more given the price, especially since its closest rival, the Aorus X5S managed to cover a more impressive 93.1%.

A saving grace is its surprisingly high brightness levels, which peaked at 360.8cd/m2. Its contrast ratio of 927:1 was also respectable, but again, hardly revolutionary. Still, our test images looked perfectly good in our subjective tests, and the high level of detail on show should definitely help highlight those dark shadow areas in dimly-lit shooters.

There’s also Nvidia’s G-Sync on offer here too, which helps to smooth out visuals and reduce screen tearing by synchronising frame rates with the GPU. Turning on G-Sync in the Nvidia Control Panel didn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference in terms of performance, though, with only a couple of frames gained here and there.

Battery life

Of course, I’d never expect such a powerful laptop to last long away from the mains, but its 8-cell 6,000mAh battery still lasted a reasonable 4h 9m in our continuous video playback test with the screen brightness set to our usual measurement of 170cd/m2. This compares well with the Aorus X5s Camo, which lasted just over 3 hours, but it can’t touch the Gigabyte P55W v5 , as this lasted just under 6 hours in the same test.

Ports and speakers

You’re certainly not left wanting for ports with the G752VY, as you’ll find a Thunderbolt 3 USB3.1 Type C port, a regular USB3.1 Type-C port and four standard USB3 ports. There’s also an SD card reader, separate 3.5mm headphone and mic jacks and an HDMI port for external display connectivity. You shouldn’t struggle to connect online either, thanks to 802.11ac wireless and a Gigabit Ethernet port, as well as Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.

The stereo speakers found at the back of the G752VY behind the display would best be described as modest at best. There’s some decent sound balance on offer here, helped in part by the dedicated soundwoofer on the underside of the laptop, and there’s plenty of volume to fill a large room, but I often felt sound was muffled a bit from time to time. Turn the laptop facing away from you and you don’t have this problem, so you’ll probably want to plug in a pair of headphones for the best audio experience.

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Conclusion

All in all, the Asus ROG G752VY is a monstrously powerful laptop that keeps its cool even when it’s under pressure from the latest games. It’s expensive, but its performance is exemplary, making it a much better buy than the similarly-priced Aorus X5s Camo.

That said, the Gigabyte P55W v5 puts up a pretty decent fight as its main competitor, even if its gaming performance isn’t quite as fast or as smooth. Still, with a difference of around £1,000 separating the two, a slightly lower overall frame rate is definitely worth the saving in my eyes, and it just edges ahead of the G752VY as our top gaming laptop recommendation. However, if you’ve got the budget and want something to show off to your friends, the G752VY certainly won’t disappoint.