The ASUS ROG Strix GL502VS Review: Mainstream GTX 1070 with G-SYNC
by Brett Howse on December 9, 2016 8:00 AM ESTWireless
ASUS outfitted the GL502VS with the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260 network adapter, and it has been in quite a few notebooks this year. This is easily Intel’s best network adapter yet, combining solid connections with impressive speed. They have an 8265 model which we should be seeing soon, adding the MU-MIMO features they have been missing on previous cards.
The ASUS implementation is very solid, offering transfer rates that can peak well over 600 Mbps, and sustained transfer rates are quite good as well. It doesn’t quite match the 3x3 solution that Dell offers on the XPS 15, but for a 2x2:2 adapter it is easily one of the best out there.
Audio
ASUS has two speakers which fire up towards the user. There are small red speaker grills on the keyboard deck which fit in well with the overall theme of the notebook design.
The speakers get reasonably loud, with measurements of 83 dB(A) while playing back a music track with the SPL meter one inch over the trackpad. The sound quality is not great though, with the typical flat sound of a notebook that struggles to reproduce much of the audible range. As with most notebooks, headphones would be a wise choice, especially with the fan noise.
Thermals
Keeping everything cool in a gaming laptop is clearly a “must have” on anyone’s list. Unlike some burst workloads, gaming sessions can easily span hours. ASUS uses a dual-fan solution which has copper and heat pipes to help move the heat away from the GPU and over to the fans. One design choice which gets in the way slightly though is the display hinge, which causes the bottom of the display to swing behind and cover some of the vent.
Running Dragon Age at maximum settings for an extended period of time shows that the thermal solution is adequate in that the GPU does not thermally throttle under its base clock. In the test, the temperature peaked at 86°C, and the GPU was able to manage about 1550 Mhz.
The chassis did get very warm though, thanks to the display hinge design. With some of the hot exhaust air being blocked, and redirected forward, the top of the laptop got very warm, with an average of around 50°C above the keyboard, with some sections closer to 55°. ASUS is certainly not the only company to do this, but a hinge-forward design like they use on the ASUS G752 would really help here.
The fan noise was high as well, especially under sustained load where it was measuring 51 dB(A) with the SPL meter an inch over the trackpad. This is quite loud and would necessitate headphones for most gaming scenarios. At idle, the fans do run all the time, with a constant 40 dB(A) measured in the same location. The fan pitch is low enough where it is not distracting, but it is certainly audible.
Software
ASUS has a couple of utilities included, with the main one being the ROG Gaming Center. This utility allows you to quickly and easily monitor CPU and GPU frequency and temperature, and adjust things such as disabling the Windows Key.
There are several profiles which you can set up as you like, and the switch to them later to quickly set the laptop to a baseline for a particular task.
The software is pretty simple to use, and effective enough. What it is missing though is the ability to bind macros to the keyboard, which is something that some gamers do use, and it would be nice to see this as an option.
The ROG Gaming Center can also be used to launch into other utilities, such as the ASUS Splendid utility, which is a tool they bring to adjust the display. There are four modes, with normal, vivid, and custom as the typical ones, with custom allowing you to change the display color temperature. The fourth is their Eye Care mode, which eliminates the blue levels, and the amount can be adjusted with a simple slider.
Overall the ASUS GL502VS is fairly light on software, which is a good thing. There is the basic utilities, an install of XSplit Gamecaster, and not much else, which is a welcome change from many devices.
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milkod2001 - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
$1600 is not mainstream by all means but it has very decent specs that that price. It should last at least 3 years no probs. The only thing i would want to change is screen size, should have been 17''.Brett Howse - Sunday, December 11, 2016 - link
They do sell the GL702VM as a 17.3-inch model, but only with GTX 1060. ASUS has the GTX 1070 and up in the G752 which is a nice machine.BrokenCrayons - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
Mainstream is different for everyone, but I agree that even on the low-end of its price spectrum that this laptop is absolutely not mainstream. However, I understand when you're a writer you're compelled to throw something out there that ultimately can end up the subject of unforseen debate. Let's try not to get overly hung up on it since, really, its as unimportant as calling a penguin a fish. The only thing that's changed is the label. Nothing fundamental about the squishy inside bits of the penguin are made different in doing so.SharpHawk - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
No thermal data on the CPU?shelbystripes - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
I got the GL502VM on sale from Amazon for a ridiculous $899 on Black Friday. At that price it's an utterly amazing system, and even at regular price is one of the cheapest Nvidia 10-series systems around, though I have some comments about its performance that this article fails to mention. The article makes it seem like it's just a GL502VS with a 1060 instead of a 1070, and that's not the case:1) The GL502VM doesn't come with G-Sync. At least, the lower end models don't.
2) The base model uses a quad-core i5, which is slightly slower, but more importantly lacks hyperthreading. I've found HT to historically not make a huge difference, but it's worth noting.
2) The GL502VM comes with 8GB RAM soldered on. It has one SODIMM slot, so if you buy a 16GB model it includes one 8GB DIMM plus the soldered-on RAM. Max memory capacity is limited to 24GB, since you can't swap out one channel of 8GB for 16GB later.
3) The GTX 1060 inside is the 3GB model, which actually has not just less RAM but fewer cores than the 6GB model. Still sufficient for 1080p gaming in a lot of games, especially for a budget gaming laptop, but worth noting it's about more than just the RAM. (I'm not sure if there's a similar discrepancy between the 4GB and 8GB GTX 1070 models available in the GL502VS, but at least you can get the higher end model there.)
4) This is really a comment on both machines, but the base models come with a mechanical HDD only. There's still an M.2 slot in the base models, it's just unpopulated. Still, I snagged a cheap 2.5" SATA SSD on Black Friday, and just a little simple surgery (not difficult, but 10 screws just to open it up, plus 8 screws for the HDD mount!) later, I had a MUCH faster system than I would have otherwise.
And lastly, a general tip when self-upgrading to save money: Windows 10 doesn't come with activation keys, it syncs your system unique ID to your Microsoft account. Microsoft made clean-installing Windows 10 much easier, you can download a tool from Microsoft's website to make a Windows 10 USB installer, but you'll need to boot the system at least once on the mechanical HDD to activate the copy of Windows 10 it comes with and link it to your Microsoft account. Then you can yank the HDD, swap in an SSD, and do a clean install (even if you're adding an M.2 SSD and keeping the HDD, you may want to do a clean install onto the SSD to get rid of the crapware anyway) without any problem. Just log into your Microsoft account during the reinstall and it'll recognize you have a Windows 10 license for that device. If (like me) you were clinging to Windows 7 on your last machine, I figure this knowledge might be new and useful to you.
sundragon - Friday, December 23, 2016 - link
Thank you! I may do this on my 502VS.label47 - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
If you play heavy games the Battery will drain while plugged in...https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?88742-GL...
jsntech - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
Yikes. Wonder what happens when it gets down to 0%? The ASUS rep responding to one of the bunches of people with the same complaint is unfortunate: " I've PM you a message, please check your inbox, thank you". Like they're trying to run interference instead of just openly acknowledging and working with customers. "Support" like that is one of the reasons I am hesitant to go with ASUS and others like them (though the bigger players are no better...sigh).kvnobrien - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
"ASUS would have much better battery life if it just had a bigger battery" - quote of the year. Thank you this made me chuckle. I get the point you were trying to make it's just funny though.marco89nish - Friday, December 9, 2016 - link
I fail to see usefulness of G-Sync on 60Hz 1080p display with GTX 1070. It should be very challenging to drop 1070 to under 60 fps in next few years. Adding 75/90/120Hz display instead of G-Sync would yield much better value in my opinion.