ASUS ROG STRIX GL703VD 17-inch

The ASUS ROG Strix GL703VD DB74 17-inch gaming laptops has received positive reviews for its sturdy, slim and premium looking design, its large 1080p display that most noted as being beautiful, great 1080p gaming performance, its large amount of storage thanks to the SSD and HDD combo, and its great price. It also has a great battery life for a gaming laptop according to reviewers. However, it runs and the fans loud during heavy gaming sessions. Furthermore, it doesn’t come with G-Sync, a feature that came with its predecessor’s design. However, the ASUS ROG Strix GL703VD DB74 17-inch gaming laptop offers excellent value for the money, and it has found a fairly decent balance between style, price and performance.

ASUS’s new ROG Strix GL703VD DB74 is a entry-level to mid-level gaming laptop that’s budget and travel friendly thanks to its reasonably lightweight design of 6.7 pounds (light by gaming laptop standards at least). It has an all black exterior and a fairly large orange-backlit ROG logo on the brushed aluminum lid, and it feels solid and sturdy, but while the design is fairly subtle when compared to other aggressive looking gaming laptops, it may still draw some attention when compared to non-gaming ultrabooks.

Most have found that it delivers a great 1080p gaming performance thanks to its powerful hardware including the GTX 1050 GPU by Nvidia, the blazing fast Intel i7-7700HQ quad-core processor and 16GB of RAM that combine to easily deliver enough power for videographers and photographers, running demanding editing applications easily. The 1920 x 1080 IPS 17-inch display is said to have some pretty good color representation, but we are sad to see that there is no G-Sync support, which was what made the previous generation ASUS ROG Strix GL502VM-DB71 such an appealing buy. It has a full size island-style keyboard that has great tactile feedback, and it does feature the four-zone RGB Aura backlighting, but some reviewers did notice some keyboard flex.

While it may not be per key RBG backlighting, it beats the single red backlighting of the Acer Predator Helios 300 G3-571-77QK 15.6-inch. You get a fair selection of connectivity options, with 4x USB 3.0 ports and a single Type-C USB 3.1 (Gen1) port, along with a mini DisplayPort, HDMI port, and an SD card reader. You will have storage space thanks to ASUS opting for dual storage. You get a fast 256GB SATA SSD that will have your system files and essentials on, and you get an additional 1TB HDD that can store your larger game folders. Notebookcheck’s battery life test, which involves continuously web surfing until the battery drains, showed that it managed 7 hours and 9 minutes before completely draining, which is impressive for a gaming laptop. This is partly due to Optimus, which utilizes the integrated GPU as opposed to the discrete GPU when not gaming.

• Weight: 6.7 lbs
• Processor: Intel Core i7-7700HQ 2.8GHz
• Display Size: 17.3 inch
• RAM: 16GB DDR4
• Operating System: Windows 10 Home
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050