ASUS RoG GL552V 15.6″ Gaming Notebook Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing 

The price on the ASUS RoG GL552VW 15.6″ Gaming Laptop is certainly competitive, clocking in at £899.99, with some retailers having that +/- £50 through various promotions. The hardware isn’t the latest or the greatest, but in terms of the complete package, it’s going to be hard to beat the price vs performance ratio on offer.

Overview

There’s a lot to love about this system, and what little things it doesn’t quite get right are easily brushed aside. Let’s get the tricky stuff out of the way first. This is a gaming laptop first and foremost, so it makes sense that this is the most important aspect of our decision. Equipped with a GTX 960M, it’s hardly going to take the wind out of many high-end gaming desktops anytime soon, but let’s give the 960M some credit, as it put up some decent figures in our benchmarks today and proved it can be more than enough for 1080p gaming @ 60 FPS, so long as you’re not pushing most modern games to Ultra. If you want ultra, dig deeper in your wallet for a higher grade GPU/CPU combo. We saw favourable frame rates in many tests and without a doubt, it’s going to get you gaming on the go, just don’t stray far from a plug socket.

Gaming laptops are legendary for chewing through battery life like a rabbit through carrots, and the latest from Asus is no exception here. The battery is quite small and that’s not going to get you through a marathon gaming session on a long journey. However, you will break the two-hour mark for browsing the web, Skype calls, day-to-day work, which isn’t bad at all and the smaller battery does help keep the weight a little lower on an already fairly heavy system.

A 128GB boot drive was nice and fast, although the capacity provided can be a little limiting on a gaming system, especially if you’re wanting that drive for your game installations, but the addition of a 1TB 7200RPM drive takes some of the pressure off of your storage needs and that drive itself wasn’t that slow either. In terms of overall performance, the 960M performed right where we expected it to, which is good, and the i5-6300HQ has enough grunt for work and gaming, backed up with the more than sufficient 8GB of memory.

The best part for me, aside from the performance, is the overall build quality and aesthetics of this system. The keyboard looks great with its LED backlighting, and feels pretty comfortable to type on too, the trackpad doesn’t feel completely useless, there’s a built-in card reader, all the ports you’re likely to need, and the clarity and colour range on the screen looks excellent. The speakers could do with a bit of extra kick, but that’s true of virtually all laptops. Overall, it’s easy to see why this system is proving so popular.

Pros

• Comfortable keyboard
• Cooler and quieter than expected
• Good all-round performance in work and gaming tasks
• Competitive price vs performance
• Great aesthetics
• Free gaming mouse included

Cons

• Battery life isn’t fantastic, but that’s to be expected on a gaming system
• 128GB SSD is quite limiting for game installations

Neutral

“While not the fastest gaming laptop on the market, it’s hard to beat the style, build quality and performance on offer at this price range. The CPU and GPU make a great pair for 1080p gaming and there are enough features to make it just as much fun to use for work and pleasure. Highly recommended for those looking for a versatile day-to-day system.”   

Thank you ASUS for providing us with this sample.