The ASUS ROG Strix GL502VS Review: Mainstream GTX 1070 with G-SYNC

Wireless

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.