Mobile Buyers' Guide: 14" and Larger Notebooks and DTRs
by Dustin Sklavos on June 30, 2010 12:53 AM ESTFull-On Gaming Machine: ASUS G73Jh
Our final recommendation in this roundup is for the best gaming machine you can get while still paying at least a sensible amount of money, and that machine is the ASUS G73Jh. We gave it our Editor's Choice award in our review, and it's pretty easy to see why.
For a second, let's ignore the meaty hardware built into the chassis and just appreciate the subtler, solid build of the G73. The stealth-bomber-inspired design seems unusual at first, but the notebook is virtually devoid of gloss, and is vastly more attractive than its predecessors. The old ASUS Republic of Gamers-branded notebooks were great in their own right, but the build of the G73 seals the deal.
Or is it the fact that our review machine came with a Core i7-720QM, 8GB of DDR3 (in four slots!), two 500GB 7200-RPM hard drives, a 2.1 speaker system with built-in subwoofer, and one of the fastest mobile GPUs on the market, the Mobility Radeon HD 5870? Stack all that with a high-contrast 1080p screen and a remarkably low $1505 price tag and you have both a bargain and a fantastic piece of hardware. If that price isn't low enough, ASUS sells a cut-down G73Jh-RBBX05 model at Best Buy that drops the screen resolution down to 1600x900, drops 2GB of RAM and one of the hard drives, but keeps the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 and Core i7-720QM...for $1199. Good luck even finding another machine sporting hardware that powerful for that price.
The ASUS G73 is big, powerful, quiet, and priced aggressively by a company hungry for market share, and it's our pick for the best full-on gaming machine you can buy without breaking the bank.
Gaming Notebook Runners Up: Alienware M17x and Clevo W880CU
If you're looking for alternatives, you can pick up laptops with Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire for around $2500 (with a few upgrades). Eurocom has a customized version of the Clevo X8100 with 5870 CrossFire (or you can get it with GTX 285M SLI), but the Alienware M17x looks better and packs some compelling features. Topping the list of nice extras is the WUXGA RGB LED display, a $200 upgrade that's worth every penny in our book. While we have little doubt the NVIDIA GTX 480M is going to be a faster GPU than the HD 5870, there aren't any SLI notebooks with 480M yet—and that's going to be difficult to manage, considering each GPU can draw 100 watts!
But there are advantages to single GPUs, like not having to worry about CrossFire/SLI profiles for your favorite game to come out. If you want GTX 480M, you can pick up the Clevo W880CU. One of the first companies to start shipping these bad boys is AVADirect, but it's not going to come cheap. If you must have the absolute fastest, most ridiculous piece of gaming kit, the W880CU aims to satisfy, available with the scorching 100-watt TDP GeForce GTX 480M. Given the lackluster lead the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 had on the GeForce GTX 285M, it's easy to expect the 480M to claim the crown of fastest mobile GPU available. You'll pay a pretty penny for it and the cooling required is going to be decidedly bulky, but if you must have the fastest, Clevo's W880CU will deliver. We're not sold on the design of the W880CU and we'll have a review in the near future, but the 480M is the fastest current single-GPU mobile solution.
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ExodusC - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
I noticed you mentioned the HP Envy line on the last page. At $1099, the Envy 14 is looking like a fairly good deal for a premium notebook, considering the specs it offers.That being said, is AnandTech planning to review the Envy 14? I'm dying to know. I emailed Anand, but he's a busy man and I'm sure he didn't have time to respond. :) It's hard to find out how to contact the AnandTech writers/editors, honestly.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
Most of us are [name] at AnandTech.com... I'm jarred.walton; others are dustin, vivek, anand, brian, rajinder.gill, ryan.smith, and johan. The email stuff should start showing up again in the not too distant future.As for the Envy, I've asked multiple times to get one of the Envy laptops, and so far no luck. We've recently had HP ship us a couple business laptops, but they haven't sent out consumer stuff for review in quite a while for some reason. So unless that changes, it's unlikely we'll get an Envy review. :-(
Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
It's my understanding this isn't at all unusual. I started doing reviews at NotebookReview.com (and still write there regularly), and I've also written for Tech Report. HP tends to be extremely cagey with review hardware of any kind (Sony's even worse that way). Personally I don't think that does them any favors at all; Dell and Acer for example are both extremely forthcoming and proactive about getting review kit in the hands of reviewers.rwei - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
Want to borrow mine? ;) I've been enjoying my Envy 17 for a week or so now but I'm incredibly curious to see what you guys think. I might even be half serious about the borrowing.As someone who's been using (and still uses, to some extent) an A8Jm from 4 years ago, the change was very interesting.
Sure, the 17 is way bigger, but the build quality is immeasurably better, and the high quality (for my purposes, anyways) screen/keyboard make for a completely different experience. Of course, I may just be biased because both hinges on my A8Jm are half to fully broken off, and the 7600 Go can't accelerate video. I suspect that Asus' current mid-range 14" line will have similar build issues - gotta make room for those components somwhere in the price.
I did realize after reading your article I realized that I gave up my Firewire port =(. The thought didn't even occur to me when I ordered. Looks like my 2nd gen 10GB iPod will finally need to be retired...a moment of silence, please.
Milleman - Monday, July 5, 2010 - link
I just hate notebooks with 16:9 screens. Can't do anything productive through that letterbox peep hole, except watching movies or maybe play games. Bot for netsurfing, wordprocessing and other applications, it is just a pain. I want the 4:3 format back on laptops!Akv - Monday, July 5, 2010 - link
Agreed. 16:9 is an intrusion in the computer productivity world.Not everybody watches movies. Some people still write.
anactoraaron - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
What happened to that last giveaway? Up until that mousepad there was an update posted the next day and nothing now for a few days...I still think all of the giveaways Anandtech does is awesome, don't get me wrong...
therealnickdanger - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
The iPhone 4 and Laptop articles ARE the giveaways - and we all won! :)timpagden - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
Interesting snapshot of the marketplace. I am somewhat bemused by the lack of high resolution in notebooks today, a few years (3?) ago, you couldn't move for 1920x1200's in 17" AND with AMD processors! This lack of resolution has pretty much removed me and my family from the notebook marketplace, we now opt for 'transportable' PCs with 1920x1200 LCDs. For on-the-go computing & connectivity, a smartphone (854x480) with a VPN into the at-home servers is looking like the way forward - are we seeing the death knell of the notebook PC?Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
It's actually the reason I opted to replace my current notebook with a Dell Studio 17 (en route) and a netbook. At this point 17"ers are the only place you're going to get a screen with a halfway decent vertical resolution for doing any kind of media work, and actually the 17" lineup is the only place where the move to 16:9 widescreen has actually been beneficial overall. Before, 17"ers were 1440x900 standard, now they're 1600x900. It's true you lose resolution buying top end where you used to be able to snag 1920x1200, but that's not as nasty a hit as the mainstream jump from 1280x800 to 1366x768. It's amazing just how brutal losing even 32 pixels of vertical real estate winds up being for media work.