Asus STRIX ROG GL553VD laptop review: Game on!

Just half a decade ago, critics and reports suggested PC gaming and laptop gaming was on its way out. However, thanks to games like Counter Strike: GO and DOTA 2, PC gaming remains a favourite, with millions of gamers playing every day. Console gaming has seen a slight dip, while PC gaming has come up again. With the upward growth, the PC and laptop manufacturers are thickening their arsenal of gaming rigs and notebooks. The Taiwanese major, Asus, is one of them, who has brought the Asus STRIX ROG GL553VD gaming laptop to India. They passed it to us to run it through our review test bench. This is what we could make of it.



Design


Asus STRIX ROG GL553VD laptop is built around a 15.6-inch full HD screen. The display has viewing angles of 178 degree laden with matte finish. This enables the users to share the screen with fellow gamers without ambient light distractions. Above the screen, users get the HD webcam with multi-directional microphone support. The bottom part of the Asus ROG GL553VD laptop has a large chicklet keyboard (with numpad), which has a great tactile feel. The keyboard is also multicolour backlit with 4 RGB light support.

Though the trackpad is large, it is slightly erratic to work with. Users get all the usual functions keys (doubling up as the multimedia keys) with a dedicated ROG app and power buttons as part of the keyboard. This (on certain occasions) was accidently pressed, since usually the delete key is placed at that position on most keyboards. The SD card slot along with the speakers, are placed in the front portion of the Asus STRIX ROG GL553VD laptop.
Users also get 3 USB ports (two USB 3.0 and one 2.0) placed on the left and right sides of this gaming notebook. A USB C port is available too, for connecting latest mobiles and devices. The left side of the laptop has the HDMI, Ethernet, Audio and power ports. The right side has the DVD writer, too. Spin it around and you immediately see a large ASUS ROG backlit logo in red, adding to the show.


Performance


Setting up the Asus STRIX ROG GL553VD laptop was quite simple. It comes with Windows 10 on board that has a simple few steps setup procedure. After that the laptop asks the users which additional apps they need on the machine. These are pre-loaded in the system and include everything from a free Anti-Virus to office suites and utility software. This along with the ROG software (which has every setting a gamer might need for the perfect game experience under one roof) enhances the overall appliance experience.

We had a terrific time with the machine and it hardly gave us any problems during the performance tests. Under the hood the Asus STRIX ROG GL553VD laptop has an Intel Core i7 7700HQ seventh gen CPU, 16 gigs of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 graphic card, 1 TB HDD and 256 GB SSD. Together they keep the system boot time extremely low. We could restart the system in under a minute (with 6-7 system apps loaded). This is something the Apple notebooks do and were quite surprised to see a Windows machine replicate.
We stress tested the Asus STRIX ROG GL553VD laptop with games like Dues Ex, which did run at max settings, but we got better frame rates at medium settings. Popular games like DOTA 2 and CS: Go ran at max settings with over 100 FPS. However, for that you need to have the charger plugged in always. Only then the NVIDIA graphic card takes over fully for extreme performance. We also found the front to be slightly sharp. A softer palm rest as well as the front edge would have been so much more comfortable.
To test it further we ran 3D Mark Fire test where it scored 6,014 points. On PC Mark 8 it scored 4,212 points. Both show not extreme, but near extreme performance figures. Asus STRIX ROG GL553VD laptop has a 4-cell battery that is not up to the scratch. Under nominal use we were only able to get 3.5 hours of battery life; this drops further if you are playing a game. Our suggestion is to always keep the charger handy.

Verdict

Weighing at 2.5 Kg the Asus STRIX ROG GL553VD laptop is not a machine you can lug around every day. Nevertheless, it is a good option for gamers who want portable performance (at times) or want to participate in a gaming night out with friends. Yes, there are a few drawbacks to the machine like the battery life and an unpredictable trackpad; but, these are not deal breakers. What can play a spoil sport is its price. At Rs 1,36,990 the Asus STRIX ROG GL553VD gaming laptop has stiff competition from MSI, Acer and Dell.