ASUS G73Jh: Today's Top Gaming Laptop
by Jarred Walton on April 17, 2010 2:25 AM ESTASUS G73Jh: Hail the Conquering Hero
The short story is that while the G73Jh isn't without competition, it's easily the best bang for the buck among current gaming laptops. There are a few flaws like missing features—if you want FireWire, eSATA, USB3, or ExpressCard you'll need to go elsewhere. We also would have liked a Blu-ray combo drive, although it sounds like that will be available with other models (it should add ~$100 to the price). I'm sure opinions on the aesthetic are going to be highly polarized as well. Like most gaming laptops, the G73Jh is quite large, but it makes no appolgies for its size and it manages to do a lot with the added girth.
High on the list of great design decisions is the inclusion of four SO-DIMM slots. You can get 2x4GB of DDR3 in competing notebooks, but the price premium over the 4x2GB in the G73Jh adds another ~$300. Another great element is the Radeon Mobility HD 5870. NVIDIA is going to have a difficult task pushing DX10 hardware when all the latest hype revolves around DX11, and just as Fermi/GF100 was six months late we expect mobile DX11 parts from NVIDIA to be quite a few months away. NVIDIA's ace in the hole has been Optimus, but on high-end laptops no one is doing Optimus anyway, and the top GTX 260M/280M/285M don't support the feature. Alienware's M17x still supports SLI with switchable graphics, but then you have to worry about driver updates so it's not a great solution.
When we look at the whole package, the simple fact of the matter is that there's nothing else that competes with the G73Jh that doesn't cost at least $500 more. Say what you want about the G73's "Stealth bomber inspired" design—and it's definitely a bomber and not a fighter!—but it feels a lot more solid than the Clevo W870CU and it looks a lot better (i.e. less tacky) than the 18.3" M980NU/X8100. We're certainly not going to downgrade our rating of the G73 just because some people will think it's ugly—and they will. The G73 is big, and big can be beautiful for the right user. Besides, the large chassis happens to do an excellent job at cooling and noise control, with the result that this is one of the coolest running and quietest laptops we've ever tested, in spite of the high-end components.
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At this point, you should know whether the G73Jh is for you or not. It's not without flaws or omissions (see above), but it gets all the important stuff right. If you've been looking for a great gaming laptop that won't cost over $2000, the G73Jh has what you need. It can handle virtually every current game at high quality settings and 1080p while staying above 30FPS. (Crysis continues to struggle unless you drop to Medium/Mainstream quality, but what's new?) What's more, the LCD is a pleasure to use and the keyboard works well and has backlighting to make gaming in the dark easier. If you're a frequent LAN party attendee, the G73Jh would be an excellent weapon of choice, and it even comes with the necessary gaming mouse and backpack if you get the A2 package (which is what we'd recommend unless you can find the G73Jh for closer to $1450). In short, for mobile gamers it tops our current list of recommendations, and we're pleased to award the ASUS G73Jh-A2 our Gold Editors' Choice award.
If you have no interest in gaming notebooks, of course, there's little reason to consider such a beastly notebook. Similarly, if $1500-$1600 is too much for your pocketbook, ASUS has another slightly $1200 downgraded model at Best Buy. That $1200 gets you the same performance, but it comes with a single 500GB HDD, 6GB RAM (2x2GB + 2x1GB), a 1600x900 HD+ LCD, and no mouse or backpack. All of those extras add up to the ~$400 price difference, and the LCD is very likely not of the same calibre as the 1080p model, but $1200 is also a great deal for a gaming laptop that doesn't pull any punches. If $1200 is still too much, then we'd suggest taking a closer look at the $750 Acer 5740G. It may not have the build quality or high contrast LCD of the G73Jh, but performance with the native 1366x768 panel is only surpassed when you get into $1000+ laptops. For those interested in battery life and gaming, the Alienware M11x is still a good option, though the driver situation still concerns us. And for everyone else, we have plenty more laptops lined up for review over the coming weeks.
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jasperjones - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
It looks like the Blu-Ray combo drive you link to on page 1 is actually a desktop, not a laptop model.Other than that, superb review!
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
Whoops! Totally spaced that. I've updated to a notebook Blu-ray drive. :-)Oxford Guy - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
I second the 1680x1050 screen option, too.JarredWalton - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
The system supports 32nm CPUs, but the particular model uses a quad-core i7 processor. Considering the size of the notebook, I'm not sure many people are going to be interested in lowering performance just to cut power draw a bit. The i5-540m and i7-620m might be a bit faster in some games as their Turbo Modes can exceed the 2.80GHz of the 720QM, but those are the only two dual-core CPUs I'd consider. As mentioned, there will be other variants of the G73Jh down the road, with Blu-ray and dual-core CPUs, if that's what you're after.notext - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
Jared,Just going by how they look to you, which do think is a better display, the XPS 16 or the G73Jh?
I had been waiting for dell to upgrade the video on the XPS line before jumping on one for the RGBLED but if this is really close or better it would be just fine.
It is kinda hard to tell just by looking at numbers, I wish I could view a bunch of these laptops side by side.
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
Judging by the technical data, the Dell RGBLED display is "better", but unless you need a higher color gamut there's not much point in the added cost. If it were a choice between glossy G73J and matte RGBLED, then I'd probably go for the RGBLED. The Studio XPS 16 is also known to have issues with throttling on i7 CPUs (at least according to emails I've received), the RGBLED doesn't appear to be an option right now, and the HD 4670 is nowhere near as fast as the 5870. But then, the XPS 16 isn't as large and bulky as the G73Jh either. Given the choice, for gaming I'd definitely go with the G73Jh. Running cool and quiet with a gaming notebook is always a good sign in my book, and that usually means you need a bigger chassis.FXi - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
Imagine a product where as many as you produce you sell every single one of them. Do you think that product is made by Nvidia? No, no! AMD can literally sell as many 5870 mobile chips as it can make. And it performs, very admirably! Can you possibly imagine what a Crossfire pair of these is going to do inside a M17X R3?AMD has sold 6 million cards while Nvidia slept. Mobile machines are 50% of PC sales. So while Nvidia continues to sleep AMD continues to make huge leaps in the market. I'm extremely pleased you gave this machine a go and moreover, you didn't falter it badly for missing features. What it does, it does extremely well. Any gamer should be proud of this machine. If the desktop Fermi is hot and takes huge amounts of power, you can well bet that it will be many quarters before Nvidia can wake up and smell the coffee. Meanwhile developers are making games and they aren't making them TWIWMTBP, because there are next to no NV cards on the market.
Nice screen, great cpu, and superb GPU along with a competent mobile driver program. And the whole package is priced right to boot. Nice review, lovely machine and an example to the entire industry of how things "should be done".
:)
tom.j - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
There was no included software to enable the use of the blu ray drive.... there is blu ray software available on the asus website for free download, but at this time it is not a version compatible with windows 7 64bit. Otherwise a great machine, but it should have been disclosed prior to sale that you would have to buy software to make full use of the machine...and blu ray software is NOT cheap. Openoffice and shredder (64bit version of Thunderbird mail client) works great on here. I'll buy a second one when it comes with blu ray software and add an ssd. Excellent screen, easy to read at its native resolution. Nice backpack too.tom
GTVic - Sunday, April 18, 2010 - link
In Canada the G73JH-X1 $1670 comes with the DVD and the G73JH-A1 $1820 comes with the blu-ray and a mouse/case. I saw one listing for G73JH-A2 $1670 comes with DVD so it looks identical to the X1.X1, A1, A2 links
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82...
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowPr...
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowPr...
Rambon3 - Sunday, April 18, 2010 - link
I would like to see more reviews of gaming laptops as the price/performance ratio is plummetting this year. Another machine that is worthy of high expectations a nd praise is the MSI GX740. It has similar specs but a lower price, at least here in Canada.MSI GX740
Price: $1444.68 Canadian @ PCcanada.com (if you can find one in stock)
CPU: Intel Core 17-720QM 2.8Ghz 1333Mhz 6MB cache
Display: 17.0" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) Glossy
System Memory: 4GB (2x 2GB) DDR2 667 SDRAM - 0 open slot MAX. 4GB
Video: ATi Radeon HD5870 Broadway XT GDDR5 1GB
HDD: 500GB, 7200PRM SATA
Optical drive: Blu Ray DVD Combo Drive
Battery: 9-cell li-ion battery: up to 3.5 hours life depending usage
Network: 56Kbps,10/100/1000, 802.11AGN wireless LAN
Interface ports: DC-in, RJ-45 LAN, VGA, 4-in-1 Card Reader
headphones/speakers/line-out, microphone-in, eSata, ,HDMI
four USB 2.0, IEEE 1394, BUILT-IN 2.0MP WEBCAM. Bluetooth
Pointing Device:Touch Pad with onboard numeric keypad
Weight: 7.04 lbs
OS Preload: Microsoft® 7 Home Premium Bilingual
Warranty: 3 year Limited Warranty with 1 Year Global
This machine has less memory and hard space but does include a Bluray combo drive and is hundreds of dollars cheaper than the Asus. A review of this machine would be appreciated. Has anyone heard if there are plans for a mobile 58xx crossfire laptop? That would be a sweet portable system !!!