Asus ROG G701VIK Notebook Review

At first glance, the G701 heavily resembles the 17-inch sibling, the G752. The externals of the case are dominated by silver surfaces made of either brushed aluminum (lid) or textured plastic (bottom). Opening the case reveals a combination of black and silver. To heighten the comfort, or rather improve the feel to the touch, the palm rest was coated with a soft-touch finish, which, as usual, quickly becomes dirty (fingerprints, etc.).

Regarding the design, we are a bit torn. On the one hand, the color accents create a fresh and friendly appearance; on the other hand, many elements appear rather playful and simply thrown together. The no less eye-catching Alienware notebooks (compare for example the 15 R3) are more noble and coherent in our eyes. This impression is also related to the manufacturing, which leaves something to be desired with the Asus G701. Our test device had several gaps between the bottom plate and the metallic sides, resulting in unhandsome edges. Speaking of edges: Some of the port holes are so sharp that you could theoretically injure your fingers or damage cables. Asus should improve this in order to justify the luxury price.

In terms of stability, the case delivers perfectly: The base unit can hardly be pushed in, even when applying strong pressure. We also liked the hinges. Even though the lid can be opened with one hand without any issues (maximum opening angle 130 °), the display remains stable in bumpy situations.

One of the biggest weaknesses of the G701 is its hefty weight. The 17-incher is, at 4.0 kg, one of the heaviest gaming notebooks on the market, although some rivals, such as the MSI GT73VR and the Acer Predator 17 weigh even more. The size is also not bad: Compared to slim gamers (for example, the Aorus X7 DT v6), the G701 appears exceptionally thick. Including the rubber feet, we measure 4.5 cm.

Acer has thought of all the important ports. Besides the notebook-typical compulsory ones (3x USB 3.0 Type-A, RJ45 LAN, card reader, headphone jack, microphone jack), the G701 also offers two USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C ports, one of which is Thunderbolt 3 capable. In case the built-in graphics chip should prove to become slow someday, external solutions could give it a power boost. Classic monitors connect via the HDMI port or Mini DisplayPort.

The port placement is less convincing. Since all ports - aside from the Kensington lock slot and the (tricky to use) charging port - are placed in the front or middle area of the side, the action radius of a mouse is potentially considerably limited, whether you are left or right-handed. Most ports would be better off more towards the back or at the rear. Other gaming notebooks have a more carefully considered port placement.

Asus makes no mistakes with the card reader. With a maximum of 246 MB/s (sequential reading), our Toshiba reference card, which can supposedly transfer up to 260 MB/s, is almost completely pushed to its limits. Most rivals have to take their hat off, whether it is the Aorus X7 DT v6, the Acer Predator 17, or the in-house G752VS. Even the lightning-quick card reader of the MSI GT72VR or the GT73VR is slightly slower.

The radio performance is in the middle of the pack. While receiving at 675 MBit/s is a very good figure, the sending speed of 354 MBit/s (1 m away from the router) is only second-rate. The MSI GT72VR and the MSI GT73VR achieve almost twice that speed with their Killer chips. The G701 comes with the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260 that supports, as the name already implies, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WLAN with a maximum speed of 867 MBit/s. Bluetooth 4.2 is on-board as well.

To satisfy the power hunger of the GeForce GTX 1080, the 17-inch device comes with a massive 330-watt power supply. It is about 20 x 10 x 4 cm big and weighs 1.3 kg. There is also a small manual in the box, as well as a warranty card, a cleaning cloth, and a cable strap. Receiving no recovery and driver DVDs is normal nowadays (no optical drive). However, most manufacturers also save the cost of appropriate USB sticks.

We would not necessarily describe maintenance on the G701 as comfortable. Before you can take off the bottom shell, you have to remove 10 rubber covers and the screws beneath them. In addition, the "Republic of Gamers" strip has to be removed; it sits behind the hinges and hides two more fixing screws in the middle (see last picture in the gallery). Only then can you laboriously remove the bottom from its fixing.

Nevertheless, the effort is worth it: Besides the screw-fastened battery and the wireless module, the cooling system (a total of six heat-pipes) and both fans are then also accessible. Moreover, we discover an M.2 slot and two unoccupied RAM slots. The secondary M.2 slot and the remaining RAM slots are most likely on the other side of the motherboard (below the keyboard).

The warranty extends over two years. Please see our Guarantees, Return Policies and Warranties FAQ for country-specific information.

The touchpad can hardly be criticized. The mouse replacement is satisfyingly large at 11.5 x 6.5 cm. Thanks to the pleasantly smooth surface, fingers can slide very well on the touchpad. We could not find any special software on the test device to customize the gestures. Nevertheless, Windows 10 natively supports two-finger zooming and scrolling, which functions decently in everyday use. 

Since the touchpad has no backlight, most buyers will be pleased with the subtle lowering. This way, the mouse substitute can be found relatively quickly in the dark as well. We were not so happy with the dedicated mouse buttons. The spongy feedback and the clattering sound do not live up to the premium standards.

The Asus G701 is one of the first notebooks with a 120 Hz panel based on IPS. The biggest advantage of IPS technology is the wide viewing angles. Though OLED panels offer even wider viewing angles, the built-in Full HD display with the identification B173HAN01.1 (AUO119D) is noticeably superior to classic TN panels.

Regarding the response time, the latter notebooks are clearly ahead. The Asus G701 takes almost three times longer (20 vs. 7 ms) to switch from black to white. Another downside is the mediocre illumination level. Our test device had some unpleasant halation on the edges.

The Asus G701 is one of the front runners in the CPU benchmarks thanks to its overclocking. Both in Cinebench R15 and Cinebench R11.5, the 17-incher lands in first place. The second place goes to the MSI GT73VR, whose Core i7-7820HK is overclocked to 4.0 GHz. Notebooks with the Core i7-6820HK are about 10% slower, laptops with the Core i7-7700HQ are almost 20% weaker. On a side note, the integrated graphics unit (HD Graphics 630) cannot be used for energy-saving purposes due to G-Sync. The GeForce GTX 1080 is permanently active.

The state-of-the-art and mighty powerful components guarantee excellent system performance. Neither in PCMark 7 nor in PCMark 8 can a comparison device surpass the Asus G701. As is usual for notebooks with an SSD, the operating system boots extremely quickly and has very fast response times in general (launching applications, loading times, etc.).

Asus also gets the performance crown in terms of storage devices. To outdo other high-end devices, the manufacturer combines two PCIe SSDs into a RAID-0 array. It is based on the brand-new Samsung SM961 that already excited us in the Nexoc G734IV. In a double pack, the performance is another notch higher. The M.2 drives sequentially achieve more than 3000 MB/s (reading) or 2000 MB/s (writing). Normal SATA-III SSDs, such as the one in the MSI GT72VR, attain only a fraction of that.

The fact that Asus foregoes 2.5-inch slots, despite there being enough room inside the notebook, is somewhat incomprehensible. This would be a low-cost way to expand the storage volume with HDDs or SSHDs, if needed. Although the G701 can be purchased with a total of 1024 instead of 512 GB, some customers will expect and/or need more in times of large movie and game collections (Call of Duty Infinite Warfare alone takes up around 70 GB). After all, not everyone wants to carry around an external hard drive all the time.

The most expensive component of the G701 is likely the graphics card. Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 offers so much performance that a Full HD display tends to be undersized. A GeForce GTX 1070 would easily suffice for 1920x1080 pixels in most cases. However, the GTX 1080 is perfect for those who want to exhaust 120 Hz and maximum settings at all times or connect an external 4K monitor. The DirectX 12 model has, as its desktop equivalent, over 2,560 arithmetic units as well as 8 GB of GDDR5X memory, attached via a 256-bit interface.

Thanks to the powerful cooling system, the GeForce GTX 1080 can reach its full potential. A maximum of 1974 MHz in the render test of the GPU-Z tool and an average of 1910 MHz in the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark are excellent values (1873 and 1820 MHz respectively @Turbo Gear Standard).

Now to the graphics tests, at which the Asus G701 excels once more. The heavily overclocked GPU makes the laptop several percent faster than the MSI GT73VR or the Aorus X7 DT v6, and approximately 30 to 50% faster than notebooks with a GeForce GTX 1070.

With 3DMark 11, we tested to what extent the Extreme mode improves the performance. Instead of 19,860 points (overall score @Standard), it achieved 9% more; 21,727 points, to be precise.

Aside from the synthetic graphics performance, the gaming performance is also beyond any doubt. All tested games ran smoothly in the native resolution of 1920x1080 pixels at maximum settings and activated edge smoothing. The 100-fps mark is often cracked, so the 120 Hz display is not unchallenged. As the chart and the games list below show, the top model of Nvidia's Pascal line has usually enough reserves for UHD, meaning 3840x2160 pixels.

We could do without the Extreme mode of the Gaming center. The performance increase is disproportionate to the extreme noise emission. Performance under standard settings is perfectly sufficient for Full HD.

Note: Because the preinstalled GPU driver (369.59) was criticized for its age by some titles, we used ForceWare 378.66, which was current at the time of writing, for our gaming tests.

The G701 is considerably quieter when idling. The case fans either shut off completely or run with a very subtle noise level of 31 dB. They occasionally speed up and reach 36 dB, but this is still acceptable. This cannot be said of the Extreme mode, though. The cooling system often works unnecessarily intensely in idle mode, which can be very annoying. Under load, the overclocking is also responsible for a higher noise level than we measured before.

The heat development of the components, on the other hand, is not so good. Even without the Extreme setting, the CPU and GPU reach 90 °C under full load. However, our stress test with FurMark and Prime95 is an extreme scenario that should not occur in everyday use. Furthermore, the G701 has to be given credit for never throttling. The Core i7-7820HK attains approximately 3.1 GHz, excepting some short drops to 800 MHz that only last a fraction of a second. The GeForce GTX 1080 stabilizes at around 1650 to 1670 MHz.

At least Asus gets extra points for its elaborate audio software called Sonic Studio II. It contains several profiles, an equalizer, a microphone adjustment and special modes for video and streaming recordings (see screenshots).

Frequency diagram comparison (checkboxes above are selectable/deselectable!)

Because the G701 cannot switch to the graphics chip of the processor, its power consumption is above average even in idle mode: 24 to 38 watts is usually undercut by devices with Nvidia's Optimus technology.

However, the notebook only really gets down to business under load. With a maximum of 320 watts, the 17-inch device consumed considerably more power during the stress test than the three comparison devices on a GTX 1070 basis (184 to 223 watts). The difference is smaller in normal 3D operation. The G701 needed almost 100 watts in 3DMark06. It is somewhat curious that the battery discharges under full load. The 330-watt power supply is technically powerful enough.

Gaming beasts such as the G701 are generally not renowned for their long battery life. Even though Asus equips the 17-inch device with a very powerful battery with 93 Wh, the device cannot stay unplugged for long. We measured between 1:23 h (3D test with maximum luminance) and 5:42 h (idle test with minimum brightness) with the tool Battery Eater. Browsing the web via WLAN at medium brightness for about 4 hours is also not an exciting result, though it has to be said that many rivals fare even worse. The MSI GT73VR lasted only 2.5 h in our WLAN test, which is no wonder, since its battery offers only 75 Wh.