Alright alright, if you’ve made it to the reviews for this machine then you may be considering spending the insane amount of money it costs to buy it. I figured I’d leave a non bias and straight forward review. I’ve been building PCs for two decades, and have had gaming laptops on and off for travel. It’s safe to say I know how the tech works on desktops and laptops. I’ve also used parts from essentially every manufacturer at this point, so I’m not here for cherry pick brands. With all that said, let’s get into the review.
Design 4.5/5
- The laptop is made primarily of very high grade ABS plastic that is incredibly durable, and feels good. The RGB accent bars around the laptop, keyboard, and logo are nice and have great brightness. The weight is heavy for a laptop, but that’s to be expected at 18 inches. It’s not as heavy as other top gaming laptops, but it definitely isn’t the lightest. Port access are in the expected areas (power is on the left, where as USB in on the right). So why the 4.5? Honestly it’s the ABS plastic. Sure it feels very durable and looks really nice, but compared to the metal on the Legion series, it’s not as nice. At this price point, having all plastic seems a tad cheap.
Keyboard/Mousepad 5/5
- Both of them feel and respond wonderfully. There is no noticeable input delay with either, and the keys, while not being mechanic, still feel exceptionally good. Typing it very easy, and I instantly found myself sinking right into the keyboard. This is by far one of my favorite keyboards in a laptop.
Screen 5/5
- If you’ve done your research then you know that this monster packs the best MiniLED out of any laptop into it. The only rival is the Legion 9s 3.2k miniLED and MSI Titans 4k MiniLED. However, neither of those screens having the brightness peak in HDR/SDR, and the Asus has the most backzones. Another perk is the resolution. At QHD+ (2560x1600), you are able to run games maxed out and get much more frames, and honestly, at 18 inches, you are not seeing a difference in detail between QHD+ and UHD. At 240hz and Gsync, this thing is unbelievable paired with the CPU and GPU. Honestly, at this point I am probably rambling about how good this screen is, but I must add one more thing. This is the first non OLED screen I’ve ever seen that looks better. That’s thanks to no aggressive ABL, nearly the same perceiving contrast, and ridiculous brightness. Also, I’m not sure how ASUS did it, but there’s nearly zero MiniLED blooming.
GPU/CPU 5/5
- This is self explanatory. I don’t feel like I need to explain why the 14900HX and mobile 4090 got 5/5 here. This machine can run any modern game maxed out and get great frame rates, that’s to be expected. I’ll add one thing in the event people are wondering. The GPU in this machine maxes out at 150w, but still pushes the same frames as other top end contenders who push there’s to 175. You can overvolt/overclock if you’d like but it’s not necessary.
Temps 5/5
- This laptop runs markedly cooler than its rivals (especially the Titan Pro), and it impressed me. As a desktop builder im used to the beauty of low temps thanks to AIO cooling and fans. I was surprised when I saw temperature under stress stay between the high 60s and low 80s. I have yet to see temps on either the CPU or GPU go above 90, unless I’m benchmarking.
Battery 3.5/5
- unfortunately the battery in this beast isn’t the best, even under lite loads such as simply browsing or doing office work. You can tweak power settings in windows and armoury create, but it doesn’t help much. Average battery life without gaming and lite work is around 1.5 hours with moderate screen brightness. If you dim it down to 20% you’ll get an extra thirty. I wouldn’t even consider doing any demanding gaming without being plugged in, unfortunately with great hardware counts great power drain. This is issue with all current top end gaming laptops, not body this one. However, it could be better while doing simple work.
There you have it. Hopefully this helped you either buy it out decide to go elsewhere. For me, this thing is exactly what I want out of a mobile gaming machine.
| Standing screen display size | 18 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 2560 x 1600 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 2560x1600 |
| Processor | 5.4 GHz intel_core_ultra_9 |
| RAM | DDR5 |
| Hard Drive | 2 TB SSD |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ax |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
