ASUS G73Jh: Today's Top Gaming Laptop
by Jarred Walton on April 17, 2010 2:25 AM ESTG73Jh: Good Laptop LCDs Exist
Thankfully, the ASUS G73Jh doesn't succumb to the old flaw of stuffing a poor quality LCD into an otherwise great notebook. The 1080p panel in the G73Jh looks awesome, and the objective testing confirms our impression. It's not the brightest LCD we've ever used, and color gamut is only above average, but it's one of the highest contrast LCDs we've seen in a laptop.
Some of you are going to wonder why the W870CU does so poorly, and it's simply a result of our test unit using an inferior HD+ (1600x900) LCD panel. Our understanding is that most (all?) of the W870CU 1080p panels are the exact same HannStar HSD173PUW1 that's in the G73Jh. That doesn't change the fact that the 17.3" panel looks great and performs better than most other laptop panels. The high water mark is still the RGB LED panel in the Dell M6500 (with a matte coating to sweeten the deal!), but RGB LED backlighting currently costs far more than WLEDs so you won't find that WUXGA panel in notebooks costing under $2000. The M6500 needed a target setting of 1.8 gamma before we could unlock its potential for color accuracy; we've tried a variety of settings on the other laptops and the best result on the G73Jh is still the default settings in ColorEyes Display Pro.
The viewing angles are still about the same as most other TN panels. From the side the display is easily viewable, but there's a narrow vertical range before you get severe color shifting. We'd love to see a 1080p equivalent of the IPS panel used in the iPad, but barring that we'll take a good high contrast TN panel over the junk shipping in most midrange laptops.
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anishannayya - Monday, April 19, 2010 - link
Just though you might want to know.JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 - link
Added a new link to a laptop drive. They're hard to find in stock! :-)layman_user - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 - link
Can you guys also test the laptops for thermals? My friend bought a laptop recently and it "burns" when running games. Can you include some tests in your analysis to measure temperatures of chassis and cpu? It would be nice to know the "cool" laptops out thereJarredWalton - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 - link
Page 2 has the temperature information. If the exhaust is cool and the noise levels are low, it's pretty safe to say that the CPU and GPU aren't running hot.layman_user - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 - link
Thanks Jered. Can you guys do a comparision of 5 popular laptops for thermals? It would be interesting to see which laptop out there is the "coolest" .. Thermals is a huge factor these days and we hardly see any comparisions across notebooks for thermalsjfmeister - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 - link
Sorry to come in late, I haven't gone all the way through the comments, but I would really like to see a MSI GX640 Review or at least some comparison. It seems to be a great compromise in size, battery life & performance.Thanks!
FesterSilently - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 - link
Um...what about the Toshiba Qosmio Q870?http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=qosmio+q8...
Same price (~$1,400), slightly different specs:
Intel Core i7 720qm
2 x 2GB PC 10666
nVidia 360m (1GB GDDR5)
1680 x 945 native resolution*
1 x Hitachi 500GB HDD (7200rpm)
Mitsumi Blu-Ray burner
I mention this as an alternative/comparison gaming laptop...well, mainly because it IS! ;-D
I'm curious as to how the 360m compares (in general) to the mobile 5870, though...DX11 aside.
*I understand the (aesthetic and practical) difference between 1920 x 1080 and 1680 x 945, but I think of it as a benefit: a) that's some TINY goddamned font, etc. on that hi-res/tiny 17" screen, vs. b) better GPU performance because of the slightly lower resolution on the Toshiba, neh?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 - link
It's not just the resolution that changed, though. That LCD may be a good contrast ratio or it may not. By and large, 95% of LCD panels for laptops right now are crap, so the odds are against it. For $1400, it's not a bad laptop, and the Blu-ray drive makes it a viable alternative. As a gaming laptop, though, the G73Jh is clearly the superior choice based on specs alone. Even if the LCD is the same quality, I'd still go for the ASUS.As far as performance, the GT360M is a 96 SP part with 128-bit RAM, so the GTX 280M in the Clevo W870CU is going to perform about 30% faster at a guess. Whether the particular unit has GDDR5 or GDDR3 is going to be pretty important... The Toshiba has 1GB GDDR5, so all told it's about the same bandwidth as the GTX 280M but still nowhere near as much shader processing power. It will be slower than the GTX 260M as well, and we have results for that on 3DMark at least (page 6).
FesterSilently - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 - link
Interesting (and, if you hadn't guessed, I *own* said Qosmio, and, I lovelovelove it...except for the dark, murky screen...you are correct) - thanks for the reply, sir.jjcpa - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 - link
I am not a gamer and use laptop for photo editing (photoshop). Is G73 a good buy for my purpose? The spec and price is very attractive. Only concern is display. Other laptops meet my need are Dell M6500/M17, Lenovo W701, HP Elitebook 8740p, but cost for them over $3000 if the displays are RGBLED or IPS. The only option left in my price range is Dell XPS 16 (1645). But XPS 16 with RGBLED and similar spec as G73 are over $2000. And I can get G73 at $1550 Canadian dollar. I saw your comparison for display. Except gamut, compared to XPS 16, G73's display is ok. I would like to hear your opinion in this area.My current laptop is Lenono T61 with WUXGA. Any opinion how this compared to G73's screen
thank you very much