The G50V, one of ASUS’ newest gaming notebooks, is the $1,699 sequel to its successor, the G1. Its 15.4-inch display may fool you into thinking this is a mainstream notebook, but the G50V’s gaming hardware, glowing lights, and neon orange accents—not to mention performance scores—will make fraggers give it a second look.
Design
The brightly colored orange and black G50V screams gaming laptop, but its 15.4-inch display is much smaller than the typical 17-inch gaming systems we’re used to. And at just a hair over 6 pounds, it’s not too heavy to tote around occasionally, either. The keyboard is large, and a small number pad is on the right side. However, the keys take a bit more force than we’re used to; the system didn’t always recognize every letter we hit. The touchpad and buttons both offered great feedback, and we like that these keys have a brushed metal finish, which felt sturdy under our fingertips.
Four soft-touch buttons reside above the keyboard: The first launches the ASUS console for overclocking, changing the lights, and customizing the messages; the second opens Windows Media Center in Vista or ASUS’ ExpressGate quick-boot operating system; the third button switches between three power performance profiles; and the fourth toggles the touchpad on and off.
Display and Audio
We like the G50V’s 15.4-inch, 1680 x 1050 high-definition display; colors looked crisp and the picture was bright overall. Even better, though, is the system’s secondary 3.1-inch OLED, placed just above the keyboard. You can use this screen to display system resources, including available memory and CPU task percentage, or display a custom message. In our case: “Todd Rules the School.” There’s also the option to turn on an e-mail indicator icon, if you’re running Microsoft Outlook, and support for Windows Live Messenger alerts.
Our system came with a DVD burner (a Blu-ray option is available as well). The G50V also has an eSATA port, a single HDMI port for outputting video and audio to an HDTV, and an HDTV tuner, but an antenna was not provided so we were unable to test its performance. ASUS said that HDTV tuners will not be included in mass production units.
The ASUS G50V has two Altec Lansing speakers directly below the display and a single down-firing speaker underneath the unit, which produced crisp audio, but lacked strong bass. In Call of Duty we could clearly hear the shouts around us and our footsteps, and gunfire and explosions weren’t overly tinny. We also listened to Common’s Be; his voice was perfectly clear, and the synthesized beats in the background were just as sharp. We do wish the speakers were louder; they pumped out enough noise for us while sitting at a desk, but they won’t be loud enough for entertaining groups.
ExpressGate On Board
ExpressGate is ASUS’ version of Splashtop’s instant-on environment powered by Linux, which you can launch by pressing a small lightning bolt key above the keyboard when the G50V is off. ExpressGate allows you to do the basics, such as chat, surf the Web, listen to music, and make Skype calls. We liked having the option to boot up quickly and send off an e-mail, access our music quickly, and check sports scores, but we didn’t use it that often because of its limited use. While it takes only 8 seconds to launch ExpressGate—compared with the 1 minute and 19 seconds the G50V took to boot to Windows—gamers will want access to the OS.
