ASUS ROG Strix GL753VE review – what does the 17-inch version offer that the 15-inch doesn’t?

17-inch laptops have always been pricier than their 15-inch counterparts and often we don’t understand why. The bigger chassis doesn’t come with anything more compelling except the bigger screen diagonal. There are the same storage options, no bigger battery or even better cooling. With the 17-inch GL753VE things are slightly different – the price of the laptop is negligibly close to the 15-inch model but only in some regions, like in the USA. In Europe, the price difference is more than €50 and we are still puzzled by why is that.

As we said earlier, the GL753VE comes with identical specs – Intel Core i7-7700HQ, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, at least 8GB of DDR4-2400 memory and the usual M.2 SSD + HDD storage configuration. But despite all the similarities, we expect the GL753VE to perform differently in some tests. The battery life is expected to be lower (since the unit is the same but the screen is bigger and requires more power), the cooling performance might be better (due to the extra room in the larger chassis) and the IPS screen will most probably score differently in our tests. We hope that PWM won’t be an issue this time around. Let’s dig in.

You can find the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2voDgxq

Contents


Retail package

The retail box contains the usual user manuals, AC adapter, power cord and cleaning cloth.


Design and construction

As expected, the GL753VE doesn’t differ from its 15-inch sibling in terms of design, build quality and overall appearance. Only the weight and dimensions set those two apart. While the GL553VE weighs 2.5 kg and measures 30 mm in thickness, the GL753VE goes up to a hefty 2.97 kg and measures 33 mm in height. To be fair, none of these two are actually portable so you really have to ask yourself if the larger screen is worth it.

Anyway, the lid is again made of brushed aluminum with the illuminated ROG logo in the middle. The material isn’t very resistant to pressure and torsion but it’s not so bad compared to its competitors. The screen hinges provide fairly smooth travel and allow the notebook to be opened with just one hand. They also keep the lid stable even when placed on uneven surface. The bottom of the chassis uses a generic roughened black plastic with orange-colored rubber feet and a few grill openings for cool air intake.

The sides come with the some added connectors to the standard set of I/O on the 15-inch model and this is great news because there’s another reason to opt for the bigger alteration. The left side has the usual grill for dispersing the heat, RJ-45 for LAN, HDMI, mini DisplayPort (kudos for that), two USB 3.0 connectors and a USB-C 3.1 (Gen 1). The right side accommodates the optical drive and two more USB 3.0 ports. The SD card reader is placed at the front with the two speakers on each side.

Just like the whole base, the interior is also made of plastic but this one imitates brushed aluminum. Fingerprints stick easily, just like the real deal, but the rigidity isn’t the same. There are some weak points around the touchpad and the center of the keyboard but nothing too alarming. The keyboard is awesome as always – tactile clicky feedback, long key travel and RGB backlight. Unfortunately, though, the same cannot be said about the touchpad – not the most comfortable gliding surface, a bit small for a 17-incher, sluggish and clicks feel a bit too stiff to our taste.

The overall build quality is decent and on par with most of the competition but the thing is that this laptop costs more than its rivals so we expect at least slightly better build quality. Aluminum can be found only on the lid, which isn’t very impressive in terms of rigidity as well. The base uses a bit flexible plastic but none of these issues should pose any problem during normal use. The touchpad is again subpar but the keyboard compensates with excellent feel during gaming and typing. Portability might be an issue for some users as well, although you can’t really expect miracles from a 17-inch gaming machine.

Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

There are no service covers around the bottom but it can be removed quite easily giving access to all of the internals for upgrade and maintenance. Just make sure you’ve removed all the screws around the bottom including the one hiding beneath the silicone cap in the middle.

Storage upgrades – 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, M.2 SSD

As we expected, the notebook comes with a standard 2.5-inch HDD on board and also a free – in our case – M.2 SSD slot supporting PCIe NVMe drives. The 2.5-inch HDD is an HGST 1TB spinning at 7200 rpm. Right next to the HDD, you will find the M.2 SSD slot. But if that’s not enough, you can always replace the optical drive with a caddy with another 2.5-inch drive.

SlotUnitUpgrade price
2.5-inch HDD/SSD slot1TB HGST @7200 rpmUpgrade options
M.2 slotFree (2280)Upgrade options

RAM

Of course, the motherboard holds two RAM chip slots each supporting up to 16GB of DDR4-2400 memory. Our unit arrived with just one 8GB DDR4-2400 chip installed from Samsung.

SlotUnitUpgrade price
Slot 1Samsung 8GB DDR4-2400Upgrade options
Slot 2FreeUpgrade options

Other components

The Wi-Fi adapter is placed near the optical drive – Intel 7265NGW.

The battery is placed between the screen hinges and it’s rated at 48Wh.

Cooling system

The cooling system hasn’t changed and still uses only one fan and two heat pipes going across the CPU and GPU heat sinks.


Display quality

The ASUS ROG GL753VE uses the same IPS panel as the ASUS ROG Strix GL702VS – an LG-made LP173WF4-SPF3 display with Full HD (1920×1080) resolution. This means that the pixel density is 127 ppi while the pixel pitch is 0.1995 x 0.1995 mm. The screen can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from a distance equal or greater than 69 cm.

The panel provides excellent viewing angles.

We’ve measured a maximum brightness of 377 cd/m2 in the center and 355 cd/m2 as average across the surface with just 8% deviation. The color temperature at maximum brightness is 6630K, which is pretty close to the optimal 6500K. As we go along the grayscale, the average color temperature remains close to the optimal – 6670K. You can see how the results change at 140 cd/m2 (37% brightness).

The maximum color deviation dE2000 at 140 cd/m2 is 2.6 in the upper right corner. This is a relatively good result since values above 4.0 are unwanted. The contrast ratio is 1000:1 but goes down to 970:1 after calibration.

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The display covers 88% of the sRGB color gamut making it perfect for multimedia and gaming.

Below you will see practically the same image but with the color circles representing the reference colors and the white circles being the result. You can see main and additional colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut pre and post calibration.

The “Design and Gaming” profile is created at 140 cd/m2 brightness, D65 (6500K) white point and optimal gamma in sRGB mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Gaming capabilities (Response time)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 19 ms. That’s a fairly fast response time for an IPS panel.


PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

The case with this notebook’s display regarding PWM is the same – PWM occurs only sometimes at extremely high frequency (120 kHz) so practically, the panel doesn’t use PWM from 0 to 100% brightness.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SDP) graph.

Conclusion

The presented IPS panel here is of high quality and offers everything you’d need for a good gaming and multimedia experience – high maximum brightness, wide sRGB coverage, high contrast and no PWM across all brightness levels. The only things missing here are the high refresh rate and G-Sync but those are usually intrinsic to high-end gaming laptops so we can let that slide.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for ASUS ROG Strix GL753VE configurations with 17.3″ LG LP173WF4-SPF3 (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS screen and the laptop can be found at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2voDgxq

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

Mit dem Kauf von LaptopMedia-Produkten erhalten Sie nicht nur effiziente und gesundheitsschonende Profile, sondern Sie unterstützen auch die Entwicklung unserer Labore, in denen wir Geräte testen, um möglichst objektive Testberichte zu erstellen.

Büroarbeit

Office Work sollte vor allem von Benutzern verwendet werden, die die meiste Zeit mit dem Betrachten von Textstücken, Tabellen oder einfach nur mit dem Surfen verbringen. Dieses Profil zielt darauf ab, durch Beibehaltung einer flachen Gammakurve (2,20), einer nativen Farbtemperatur und wahrnehmungsgerechten Farben eine bessere Deutlichkeit und Klarheit zu liefern.

Design und Spiele

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Gesundheitsschutz

Health-Guard eliminiert die schädliche Pulsweitenmodulation (PWM) und reduziert das negative blaue Licht, das unsere Augen und unseren Körper beeinflusst. Da er für jedes Panel maßgeschneidert ist, schafft er es, die Farben wahrnehmungsgetreu zu halten. Health-Guard simuliert Papier, so dass der Druck auf die Augen stark reduziert wird.

Erhalten Sie alle 3 Profile mit 33% Rabatt


Specs sheet

The specs sheet provided below is for the model used in this review. Hardware specification may vary depending on your region.

CPUIntel Core i7-7700HQ (4-core, 2.80 -3.80 GHz, 6MB cache)
RAM8GB (1x 8192MB) – DDR4, 2400GHz
GPUNVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB GDDR5)
HDD/SSD1TB HDD (7200 rpm)
Display17.3-inch – 1920×1080 (Full HD) IPS, matte
Optical driveDVD burner
ConnectivityLAN 10/100/1000 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11a/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
Other features
  • 4x USB 3.0
  • 1x USB-C 3.1 (Gen 1)
  • 1x USB 2.0
  • 3.5 mm audio jack
  • LAN
  • HDMI 1.4
  • mini DisplayPort
  • card reader (SD, MMC, MS)
  • customizable LED RGB backlit keyboard
Battery4-cell 48Wh
Thickness33 mm (1.29″)
Weight2.97 kg (6.55 lbs)


Software

We used the pre-installed Windows 10 Pro (64-bit) for the writing of this review but if you wish to perform a clean install of the OS without the bloatware, we suggest downloading all of the latest drivers from ASUS’ official support page.

Battery

To be honest, we weren’t surprised by the poor battery performance considering the fact that the GL553VE is a 15-inch laptop with fairly small battery capacity and scored borderline satisfactory while the GL753VE has an identical battery unit that has to light up a considerably bigger IPS display. Our tests confirm that the 48Wh unit just isn’t enough to keep the lights on for longer than we would like. In fact, the endurance of the machine is subpar by any means.

All tests were run with the usual settings – Wi-Fi turned on, screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2 and Windows power saving mode turned on.

Web browsing

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

Unsatisfactory web browsing runtime – 260 minutes (4 hours and 20 minutes).

Video playback

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.

Even lower score here and barely enough for a full movie – 145 minutes (2 hours and 25 minutes).

Gaming

We recently started using F1 2015’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.

It’s quite unlikely that you will start a gaming session without being close to a power source, but it’s good to know that you can play for more an hour – 73 minutes (1 hour and 13 minutes).

CPU – Intel Core i7-7700HQ

The Core i7-7700HQ is Kaby Lake’s top-shelf direct successor of the Skylake Core i7-6700HQ offering slightly higher clock speeds on the almost identical architecture and TDP. While Intel markets Kaby Lake’s architecture as “14nm+”, the Core i7-7700HQ is still on the same 14nm node with the only significant update being in the iGPU department. That’s why the slightly altered clock speeds (2.8 – 3.8 GHz vs 2.6 – 3.5 GHz) bring not more than 10% increase in performance compared to the Core i7-6700HQ. We still have the supported Hyper-Threading technology with 4/8 – core/thread design, the same 45W TDP and 6MB cache.

However, the Kaby Lake generation boasts an updated video engine for the iGPU, although, its performance is just about the same. Branded as Intel HD Graphics 630, the GPU offers slightly higher clock speeds (350 – 1100 MHz vs 350 – 1050 MHz) compared to the Intel HD Graphics 530 and support for H265/HEVC Main10 profile at 10-bit color depth and the VP9 codec for full hardware acceleration. In addition, the HDCP 2.2 is also supported allowing Netflix’s 4K video streaming.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-7700hq/

Fritz

Fritz is a chess benchmark that tests the computing capabilities of the CPU with various chess moves. The Intel Core i7-7700HQ managed to get 13.399 million moves per second. For comparison, one of the most powerful PCs, Deep(er) Blue, was able to squeeze out 200 million moves per second. In 1997 Deep(er) Blue even beat the famous Garry Kasparov with 3.5 to 2.5.

GPU – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB GDDR5)

NVIDIA’s GTX 1050 Ti for notebooks is almost identical to its desktop counterpart but offers different clock rates. What’s more, the Ti variant uses more CUDA cores than the standard GTX 1050 version – 768 vs 640 but both GPUs use the same GP107 chip, which differs from the other NVIDIA high-end solutions. The GP107 chip is manufactured by Samsung, not TSMC, and it’s built on the 14nm node on contrary to the 16nm from TSMC.

Anyway, the GTX 1050 Ti also offers significantly higher clock rates than the normal GTX 1050 versions well 1493 – 1620 MHz vs 1364 – 1493 MHz. This contributes to a significant performance boost over the standard version but the rest of the specs remain the same. The GPU offers 4GB of GDDR5 memory connected via 128-bit interface and transfer rates as high as 112 GB/s.

You can browse through our top GPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook with this GPU that we’ve tested: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1050-ti-4gb-gddr5/


Gaming tests

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)Full HD, Low (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Max (Check settings)
Average FPS155fps81 fps30 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Low (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Max (Check settings)
Average FPS90fps60 fps32 fps

Far Cry PrimalFull HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average FPS59 fps52 fps45 fps

Temperatures

Of course, the stress tests don’t really represent real-life usage or even gaming sessions but they get pretty close to the latter. The torture tests are still the best way to assess the overall stability of the cooling system and its longevity.

We started with the CPU stress test for about an hour and we were pretty delighted by the relatively low temperatures that the system was able to provide for the chip. The Core i7-7700HQ was running rock-solid at 3.4 GHz and within the 75-85 °C range. However, we have noted that such big difference in temperatures between cores isn’t good – one of the cores reports 75 °C while the other 85 °C. This might be due to bad thermal paste or heat sink design.

When we ran the GPU stress test, things didn’t change much for the CPU but the GPU didn’t reach its maximum potential. While the GL553VE prioritized GPU performance over CPU clock speeds, the GL753VE did exactly the opposite. In our stress test, the GL553VE utilized the full performance of the GTX 1050 Ti while keeping the CPU lower than its base frequency. The GL753VE, on the other hand, kept the CPU at its base frequency and didn’t push the GPU beyond 835 MHz which is almost half its usual clock speeds. Interestingly, the GTX 1050 Ti’s temperature was exceptionally low at 68 °C so it’s clear that the GPU can go much faster. We are not sure what’s the culprit of the problem here but a future BIOS update might sort this out. It might also be an isolated problem with the unit we got.

Even though the system uses a single fan design, which is insufficient for such powerful hardware, the surface temperatures were even lower than on the 15-inch model. Quite impressive if you ask us.


Verdict

Our opinion on the 17-inch variant doesn’t deviate too much from our initial thoughts on the GL553VE – generally solid all-rounder, which is slightly more expensive than the competition but at least you know what you are getting here. But most of the complaints from the 15-incher remain – questionable build quality, wobbly touchpad, a bit hefty construction and a cooling system that needs improvement (higher inner temperatures).

However, the keyboard is excellent not only for typing but for gaming as well. We also liked the expanded I/O – more connectivity than the 15-inch GL553VE and retains the good picture quality thanks to the excellent IPS panel. We would have appreciated a bigger battery because the 17-inch screen draws considerably more power resulting in less than stellar battery performance.

Anyway, the GL753VE is currently one of the few mainstream 17-inch laptops with GTX 1050 Ti on board so your choice is limited. But is it better compared to its 15-inch sibling or its rivals? Well, ASUS has makes a compelling case with the GL753VE, except the bigger screen, of course – a wider range of I/O, keeps surface temperatures even lower than the GL553VE and the screen doesn’t use PWM across all brightness levels. You still have to consider the added weight, dimensions and lower battery life, though, so it’s really up to you if you want the bigger screen.

You can find the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2voDgxq

Pros

  • Excellent keyboard with customizable RGB
  • Wide range of I/O
  • Very bright IPS panel with wide sRGB, high contrast and optimal color temperature out of the box
  • No PWM across all brightness levels
  • Keeps the interior cool even under heavy workload


Cons

  • A bit hefty
  • Questionable build quality
  • Subpar battery life
  • GPU throttling under heavy workload, CPU cores maintain largely different temperatures
  • Bad touchpad

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User
User
6 Jahre vor

Are there any other budget/medium laptops with a relatively good screen and GPU you would recommend?

I am looking for a desktop replacement that could run less demanding games (X-Com 2, strategy games) and could be a 2nd screen for photo editing (when a standalone display is not available).

It seems it’s this (I know gtx 1050 Ti may be an overkill) or Dell XPS 15, which offers better screen for higher price and weaker GPU – a weaker GPU is OK, but the price difference is quite big.

Simeon Nikolov
Admin
6 Jahre vor
Antwort an  User
angelo
2 Jahre vor

Hi,
Is it possible to change the graphic card with a newer one? I have the 1050Ti with 4GB