Asus has been producing amazing products for Gamers under the Republic of Gamers (ROG) series and their latest launch is targeted at Gamers who are always in search for the best gaming laptops which do not put a hole in their pockets. Asus has introduced the ROG GL552 gaming laptop which is not just powerful but cheap as well giving the best gaming experience at an affordable price of Rs. 82490.
With most of the Gaming laptops in India are priced over Rs. 1 lakh the ROG GL552 with the 70k price tag has surely got every gamers attention, but will it be able to satisfy the power hungry gamers requirements, let’s check it out.
Design and Build Quality:
On first glance, you get the look of a rugged laptop which is built for the game, with the backlit ROG logo accompanied with the faux metallic finish it is pretty amazing to look at. But once you open the lid it does not carry the ruggedness of the looks into the feel. But this helps in keeping the weight of the laptop on the lower side helping in making it easy to carry around, at 2.5kgs it is almost similar to other regular laptops in the market. If you have seen the ROG GL551J you will see the resemblance. The backlit keyboard is also a gamers delight which comes with different brightness levels to choose from.
The keyboard is built for gamers giving you the best gaming experience be it the backlit lighting options, the responsiveness or the layout it is one of the best features of the laptop. Make sure that you do not rely on the trackpad to do any of your gaming as it is not up to the mark, you better carry a mouse with you all the while. The Red and Black color combination really gives the laptop premium gaming laptop feel.
Overall the ROG GL552 in the design and build quality segment is impressive except for the trackpad which is not that great for a gaming laptop but we all know that Gamers do not use the trackpad.
Display:
The GL552 comes with a 15.6-inch Full HD resolution display having 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution. The display is good not just for Gaming but also while watching movies and other stuff it is satisfactory.
But to get the best of the display you need to play around with the settings as the default settings were not perfect and with some tweaking around with the brightness, contrast and color settings it turned out to be pretty good. The display comes with 272 nits of brightness and has a color range spanning 116.2 percent of the sRGB spectrum.
Software
The ROG GL552 runs on Microsoft Windows 10 OS along with some pre-installed software like Asus Live Update to keep your system updated with latest changes, the Splendid Utility which lets you customize your display, and the Game First III app to give you the best gaming experience. There is not much Bloatware included in the ROG GL552 which is a good thing to keep your system all ready for the gaming experience it is intended to be.
Performance:
With the laptop meant for gaming, we had been using it not just for gaming but as my primary laptop for all the other daily work which was usually done on my assembled desktop. And I can say that the performance was smooth, with my daily usage including gaming, watching videos, some photo editing and regular browsing etc.
One thing I can say is, it never lagged while doing any of the above stuff even for extended periods of time. There was this occasional heating which was pretty obvious when used in a room without AC and also in the absence of any cooling pad the heating was more obvious. With a 2.6-GHz Intel Core i7-6700 HQ CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB HDD at its heart which is almost similar to that of a high-end gaming laptop the performance is impressive for the price at which it is being sold.
The 7,200 RPM HDD storage speeds make sure that you get transfer speeds of close to 98 Mbps which is quite good. Most of the games were easy to play and did not face any issues with them, but with high-end games like the GTA V, you need to tone down the graphics settings to get the best of the game. We must say you cannot expect it to perform like a high-end gaming laptop
Battery:
The one thing which is not that great as its performance is the battery life. The average battery life of the ROG GL552 is around 2 hours 30 minutes with full charge to 0%. Again, the gaming laptops are never meant to give a good battery life because it is all about the performance and you have to connect the laptop to the charger almost always.
Conclusion:
If you are a gamer and looking for an affordable yet good performing Gaming laptop, the Asus ROG GL552 is a good option which is good on your wallet as well. In case you are a high-end gamer look away as although it performs well, it is not the best when playing games at high graphic settings.
At the price range it is in, it certainly is the better looking and performing device in the sub $1000 segment. It is not the best in battery life aspect but overall performance is worth the price. The other aspect which you need to consider is the heating problem which is a bit of a concern and the trackpad is not meant for gaming. Keep all this in your mind if you are on a budget and need a great performing Gaming laptop which is ready for the set of games coming in the future 1-2 years, then the Asus ROG GL552 is a good choice and it should be great for non-gamers of occasional gamers as well as you are getting more than the price you are paying for it around Rs. 82490.
Specifications of ASUS ROG GL552 at a glance.
- Intel CoreTM i7-6700HQ Processor 2 GHz (6M Cache, up to 3.20 GHz)
- 16GB DDR4 RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M (N16P-GT)
- 15.6-inch LED backlit, 300 nits, Full HD display with 1920 x 1080 pixels
- Intel HD graphics 530
- Video memory: GDDR5 4GB
- Optical drive: [SATA] 8.9″mm 8X Super Multi with Double Layer
- Wireless: 802.11ac+Bluetooth 4.1 (Dual band) -Intel WIDI
- Dimensions: 38.4(W) x 25.6(D) x 3.23 ~ 3.31 (H) cm
- Battery: 48WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion Battery Pack
- Storage: SATA 1TB 7200RPM 2.5′ HDD + SATA3 128G M.2 SSD
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit, Includes 1 month Trial for New Microsoft Office 365 Customers
