By Dan Ackerman, CNET.com
07/01/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/notebooks/0,39050488,40616239p,00.htm

Asus regularly wows us with innovative products such as the ultraportable S$598 Eee PC and experiments with secondary SideShow displays, but how does the company fare building a typical 17-inch gaming system? While high-end gaming rigs from Alienware in the US can run more than S$5,000, the Asus G1s gives you a decent set of specs--a few steps down from the top-of-the-line--for a reasonable S$3,588. The G2's unique look is a nice change of pace from the corporate design philosophies, but serious gamers will need more video-card muscle than the included Nvidia GeForce 8600 will provide.

Editors' note : This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Please check directly with your local distributor for details.

Design

The G2s has a decidedly industrial flair, with a brushed-metal lid and wrist rest and black interior. The black keyboard tray, upon closer inspection, reveals a subtle crosshatch pattern, which adds some pleasing depth to the flat surfaces of the laptop. Metal accents in the lid on the hinges add an industrial flavor, but the red lights on the sides of the lid are a bit too bold for our tastes. Many of these design touches are the same as those found on Asus' 15-inch G1s gaming laptop.

The crosshatch pattern extends to the touchpad, while a plastic red-backlit eyeball logo sits between the mouse buttons and stares at you in a slightly menacing way. In case you forgot this was gaming laptop, the W, A, S, and D keys--the main control keys for many PC games--are thoughtfully highlighted in red. The interior surfaces are uncluttered, but there's a Webcam above the display and a row of basic media control buttons along the front edge.

Features

The 17-inch widescreen LCD display offers a 1,920 x 1,200 native resolution, which is what we want to see in a gaming laptop, and is higher than most 21-inch LCD computer monitors. Asus offers several display presets (called "Splendid Video Intelligence Technology") for watching movies or playing games, but we preferred the default settings. The screen also has an 8ms LCD Response Time--most laptops are closer to 12ms--which some gamers say is important for fast-paced games.

Adding an HDMI output to the usual VGA-out and S-video outputs is a welcome extra, as is the eSATA jack, for plugging in external hard drives. These features are common on more expensive laptops, but at the under S$4,000 price point, we wish more laptop manufacturers would follow Asus' example.

Performance And Battery Life

The 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 CPU is close to the top of the line, and it was nearly as fast as laptops with T7700 and X7900 (Dell XPS M1730) Intel CPUs, although the slower 5,400rpm hard drive held back the G2s in our Photoshop CS3 test. But for a system marketed at the gaming crowd, it's the GPU that counts, and we were surprised to see only a single Nvidia 8600M GT GPU--while larger 17-inch systems from other vendors offer twin SLI GPUs, or faster single-GPU options. The G2s offers decent frame rates in slightly older games such as Quake 4 and F.E.A.R, but those seeking to play upcoming games such as Crysis at higher resolutions should look to more expensive laptops, such as the Dell XPS M1730.

On our DVD battery drain test, the Asus G2s ran for 1 hour 24 minutes--about the same as other 17-inch laptops such as the Dell XPS M1730. That's not very impressive, but we don't expect a system of this size to spend much time not plugged in. Bear in mind that our DVD battery drain test is especially grueling, so you can expect longer life from casual game playing, Web surfing, and office use.













System configurations:


Asus G2s
Windows Vista Home Premium Edition; 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce Go 8600M GT; 160GB Toshiba 5,400rpm

Dell XPS M1730
Windows Vista Home Premium Edition; 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; dual 512MB Nvidia GeForce Go 8700M GT; 200GB(x2) RAID 0 7,200rpm

Service And Support

Asus offers a two-year limited global warranty with all its notebooks. Should a problem occur with the unit, you can send it to any Asus service center around the world for the first two years and get it repaired using the warranty card. Issues during the third year of coverage can only be resolved in Singapore service centers. For users who travel overseas often, having a global warranty is important. However, the Asus service overseas centers should be checked for accessibility. Asus Web site provides software support and updates as well as a telephone hotline number.