Asus ROG Strix GL502VT-DS74 Notebook Review

Maintenance

Serviceability is relatively easy as the entire bottom panel can be removed with a single Philips screwdriver to reveal all the core motherboard components. It's worth noting that both the CPU and GPU are soldered and that this is one of the few gaming notebooks where only one SODIMM slot is available for expansion.

Warranty

Asus offers 12-month limited warranty as standard while resellers may offer lengthier extensions. This is compared to Gigabyte who offers a global 24-month warranty to most new notebook purchases. There is no "Zero dead pixel" policy in effect for the Asus.

Keyboard

The full-size (34.5 x 10.5) Chiclet keyboard includes three levels of red backlight and no dedicated Macro keys to speak of. The individual keys offer 1.6 mm of travel compared to 1.5 mm on most gaming notebooks, 2.2 mm on the Gigabyte P55W, and 1.2 to 1.3 mm on most Ultrabooks. The keys are firm with satisfactory feedback and are relatively quiet with little clatter. Gamers who are accustomed to mechanical keyboards, however, may find feedback to be on the soft side. The NumPad and directional keys are smaller than the QWERTY keys and have even softer feedback in comparison. Essentially, anyone who has used a keyboard on an ROG notebook should find no surprises here as it is essentially identical to the ones of the GL552 or UX501.

Touchpad

The smooth touchpad is adequately sized (10.5 x 7.5 cm) and responsive with no cursor jitters or major latency. Two-finger scrolling is easy enough, but pinch-to-zoom is a bit more difficult and must be done in quick motions or it will not be recognized. This makes precision zooming more difficult than it ought to be on the Asus.

Meanwhile, the integrated clickpad provides a very shallow travel as is common on notebooks with no dedicated mouse keys. Feedback is firm and with a loud auditory click when pressed. The force required to input a click is on the low side, so one can easily click multiple times in quick succession without fatigue.

Our measurements with an X-Rite spectrophotometer reveal a very high sRGB coverage of 98.1 percent compared to around 80 percent on many competing gaming models and 60 percent on less expensive Ultrabooks that utilize cheaper panels. This means deeper colors on the GL502 that may satisfy digital artists, though this is of little value to core gamers. Even wider color coverage spanning more of the larger AdobeRGB spectrum is generally reserved for mobile workstations and costlier gaming systems.

Note that Asus advertises 100 percent and 80 percent sRGB and AdobeRGB coverage, respectively. It's possible that Asus is referring to the UHD panel as our measurements on the FHD panel shows a much smaller AdobeRGB coverage of 63 percent.

Colors and grayscale are average out of the box and could benefit from a quick calibration. Color temperature becomes warmer while RGB Balance flattens for a much improved display. The panel's near perfect coverage of the sRGB spectrum means excellent accuracy across all tested saturation levels. 

Outdoor visibility is average if under shade and on the maximum brightness setting. Glare is less of an issue due to the matte screen and wide viewing angles available from the IPS panel. The display becomes washed out if under direct sunlight and should be avoided if possible. Contrast and colors do not shift dramatically unless if viewing from extreme or abnormal angles.

Raw CPU performance from the Core i7-6700HQ is nearly identical to the Core i7-5700HQ as the jump from Broadwell to Skylake brings only minor boosts to CPU power. Going even further back to the Haswell Core i7-4700HQ in the Ideapad Y50 shows an advantage of about 16 to 37 percent depending on the processing load. The desktop-class Core i7-6700K is almost 30 percent faster at over twice the TDP (45 W vs. 91 W).

See our dedicated CPU page on the Core i7-6700HQ for more benchmarks and comparisons.

PCMark benchmarks rank the Asus in the same ballpark as other notebooks sporting the same or similar CPU and GPU combination. We experienced no unusual latency issues or notable hardware or software problems during our time with the test unit.

The GTX 970M is significantly more powerful than the GTX 960M according to 3DMark benchmarks and pairs up perfectly with a native 1080p screen for High to Ultra settings on even the most demanding of titles. 3DMark 11 shows the GL502 to be 90 percent faster than the GTX 960M in the MSI Prestige PE70 while the GTX 980M in the EVGA SC17 is just over 30 percent faster than our GL502.

The super-thin Asus G501 and its GTX 960M GPU disappointed us during our stress test benchmarking, but the GL502 thankfully delivers with better results across the board. The CPU is able to maintain a Turbo Boost of 3.0 GHz when under Prime95 stress or 100 MHz slower than the rated multi-core maximum for the Core i7-6700HQ. Running both Prime95 and FurMark simultaneously strips away any CPU Turbo Boost benefits for a constant base clock rate of 2.6 GHz. Interestingly, CPU and GPU temperatures cycle by a few degrees in tandem with the speed of the internal fans, so fan noise and core temperatures are not always constant under extreme loads. The GPU also cycles between 300 MHz and 810 MHz, which is an uncommon behavior. Thankfully, these synthetic benchmarks are not representative of gaming loads.

Running Unigine Heaven results in consistent CPU and GPU Boost performances and stable core temperatures hovering below 80 C. Running on battery power will throttle both CPU and GPU power. A 3DMark 11 run on batteries returns Physics and Graphics scores of 7799 and 6516 points, respectively, compared to 8347 and 9824 points when connected to mains.

The GL502 is nearly as thin as the GS60 and that had us worried going into this test since the MSI equivalent is notorious for its surface temperature development. When idling, the front half of the notebook remains cool while the back half is comparatively warmer by almost 8 or 10 C depending on the side and quadrant. Since the battery is upfront and the heat pipes are closer to the rear, the temperature rise will be concentrated towards the back of the unit.

We were able to record surface temperatures as high as 61 C on the front of the notebook and 70 C on the bottom. Fortunately, these hot spots are above the keyboard and away from palms and fingers. The WASD keys also remain cool relative to the center of the keyboard in contrast to the GS60. Nonetheless, the temperature gradient on the GL502 is quite steep due to the short heat pipes and close proximity of the CPU and GPU to one another other.

Runtimes from the non-removable 64 Wh battery are very good considering the fast hardware underneath. Users can expect just under 6 hours of constant WLAN use on the Balanced profile and with the integrated GPU active. Asus is advertising 6 hours as well, so the manufacturer estimation holds true according to our tests. Both the Acer Predator 15 and Asus UX501 can last for longer in comparison, but these latter notebooks are equipped with higher capacity batteries. Sitting idle on the desktop and on minimum display brightness will net users just under 10 hours of runtime.

Charging from empty to full capacity will take approximately 2 to 2.5 hours.