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日本ASUS N752VX review – it’s just a future-proof N751 with overall better hardware without costing too much
The last generation, N751, was a huge hit and what users liked the most in this excellent multimedia station was the design and build quality. Fortunately, ASUS hasn’t steered too far away from the previous looks but adds a few things here and there for much better user experience, performance, and features. The first thing you will notice, compared to the last generation, is the significant weight reduction and slimmer front end base unit.
On the hardware front, there are more improvements than downgrades. The N752VX now features a Full HD IPS panel, or UHD, which is optional, allowing much better multimedia experience, a new Skylake Core i7-6700HQ CPU, and, of course, support for M.2 SSD, which was mSATA in the last generation. The only thing missing here is the bigger battery and unfortunately, it’s a tad smaller now, yet this doesn’t translate into shorter battery life. There are a few more surprises down the road, so keep reading.
Check the current price and availability of ASUS N752: http://amzn.to/1T6itYn
Contents
Retail package
This year’s retail package is a bit modest as the N751 came with a small external subwoofer. Now we just have the usual AC adapter, charging cable, cable tie, user manuals, DVD with drivers, and the notebook itself. The external subwoofer from last year’s N751’s package isn’t available. That’s a bummer.
Design and construction
Again, the N752 doesn’t go too far from its predecessor in terms of build quality and overall appearance, but there are a few noticeable changes that translate in changed appearance and physical properties.
The lid is familiar – with concentric brushed aluminum plate featuring ASUS’ LED illuminated logo in the middle. The cover sinks under pressure but doesn’t cause ripples on the other side where the LCD screen is placed. In short – don’t worry about it, the material seems secure and will not cause any problems if you put something relatively heavy on top. On contrary to the last generation, the N752 now has one big hinge instead of two wide ones. The change is mostly welcomed because the center of the screen feels more secure and the movement of the lid is linear. As for the bottom layout, it’s nearly identical to the N751’s. It’s made of hard plastic, four silicone feet holding the notebook firmly in place and a big service lid located at the front giving you access to the RAM and storage (HDD and M.2 SSD).
One of the few visual changes lies on the sides. The left side houses one mini DisplayPort, LAN, HDMI, USB 3.0 and USB-C 3.1 port, while the right side holds the other two USB 3.0 ports, the 3.5 mm audio jack, and the optical drive. The SD card reader is once again positioned at the front left side. The previous N751 had curvy sides with wavy forms while this one is more in line with the ASUS UX501, for example – sharp edges, flat sides, and no wavy forms. Also, the main exhaust vent on the left is more visible. ASUS also claims that the new N752 is slimmer, which is kind of true, but not entirely. The back end of the laptop is almost the same as before measuring at around 33 mm at the back
and slims down to 30 mm at the front, so basically the most noticeable change in height is the front of the base unit. However, the weight of the previous model was 3.4 kg while the N752 has gone on a diet weighing just around 3.17 kg, which is quite acceptable for a 17-incher.
What remained mostly unchanged was the interior, and thank God. We are big fans of the keyboard, the surface around it and the touchpad. The latter seems a bit wobbly but doesn’t get in the way at all – it appears to be accurate, responsive and easy to use as before. The keyboard still adopts the 1.8 mm key travel with excellent tactile feedback. Our only complaint is the arrow keys area – it’s a bit overcrowded and we often pressed the Numpad “0” or Enter key instead of the arrow buttons. And the surface is still plastic, although gives a very good sense of an anodized aluminum finish, which doesn’t let fingerprints or smudges stick.
Yet again, we are happy with the design and build quality of the machine. It still feels a bit hefty, but this is a 17-incher after all. The design also feels a bit more minimalistic than before and the reduction in weight is fairly noticeable. The N752VX is a sturdy, well-built and elegant multimedia notebook without breaking your bank.
Display and sound
ASUS N752VX features a 17.3-inch Full HD (1920×1080), IPS display with 16:9 aspect ratio, pixel density of 127 ppi and 0.199 x 0.199 mm pixel pitch. It’s manufactured by LG with model number LP173WF4-SPF3 and if this sounds familiar, it’s maybe because the new ASUS ROG G752 and the water-cooled beast GX700 share the very same panel. LG’s panel can be considered as “Retina” if viewed from a distance equal or greater than 69 cm.
Of course, the IPS panel offers excellent viewing angles from a 45-degree incline.
The maximum recorded brightness is 334 cd/m2 in the middle of the screen but the average on the surface is 329 cd/m2. This means a maximum 6% deviation while the color temperature is 6240K (6320K in the center) with only -5.5% deviation. This is pretty close to the optimal (6500K). Also, the color difference compared to the center is maximum dE2000=2.5 and the average dE2000=1.4. All results point to high-quality IPS panel.
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. Starting with 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 has been used by millions of people in HDTV and the Web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used by professional cameras, monitors and etc. used 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.
The display covers 90% of the sRGB color gamut, which means that almost all web-based colors can be reproduced, however, there’s a really small part of the green-blue and red area that cannot be displayed.
Below you will see practically the same image before calibration. Color circles represent the reference colors and white circles being the result. You can see main and additional colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut. The profile has been set to 140 cd/m2 and optimal white point – D65 (6500K).
The native contrast ratio is 1050:1 and 1010:1 after calibration. Colors appear to be pretty accurate even without calibration but the images will appear darker than usual, although the colors are a bit warmer and punchy.
Below you can see the results from the accuracy color checker with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc.
Pulse-width modulation (PWM, Screen flickering)
As expected, the display doesn’t use PWM across all brightness levels making it harmless to your eyes. There are, however, slight pulsations with extremely high frequency – 123 kHz.
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 N752 configurations with 17.3″ LG LP173WF4-SPF3 (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS screen, which can be found at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2aZpyLY
*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.
[edd_item edd_id_1=’69185′ edd_id_2=’69189′ edd_id_3=’69192′ edd_id_4=’69195′]
Conclusion
This year ASUS has taken a bit different approach on its multimedia lineup. The company introduced the N752 with IPS panel, as previous generation had a TN display, while balancing the price with slightly less powerful GTX 950M GPU. The result is decent performance and excellent image quality provided by a panel used for the making of their two flagships – the ROG G752 and ROG GX700. The panel boasts high maximum brightness, nearly optimal color temperature, excellent viewing angles, high contrast ratio, accurate colors out of the box and wide sRGB coverage. Most importantly, though, the display doesn’t use PWM across all brightness levels making it user-friendly.
Sound
As for a multimedia notebook, the sound should be good and luckily, the ASUS N752VX delivers. We have clear, crisp and full sound with slight distortions in the lows. We do miss the external subwoofer that was included in last year’s retail package.
Specs sheet
The current specs sheet refers to this particular model – configurations may differ depending on your region.
| Processor | Intel Core i7-6700HQ (4-core, 2.60 – 3.50 GHz, 6MB cache) |
|---|---|
| RAM | 8GB (1x 8192MB + one free) – DDR4, 2133 MHz |
| Graphics card | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M (4GB DDR3) |
| HDD/SSD | 1TB HDD (7200 rpm) + optional M.2 SATA 2280 SSD |
| Display | 17.3-inch (43.94 cm) – Full HD (1920×1080), IPS matte |
| Optical drive | DVD burner |
| Connectivity | LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0 |
| Other features |
|
| Battery | 4-cell 48Wh |
| Thickness | 30-33 mm (1.18-1.30″) |
| Weight | 3.17 kg (6.99 lbs) |
Battery
Interestingly enough, this year’s battery capacity has been reduced a little (from 56Wh on the N751 to 48Wh on the N752) but this doesn’t translate into shorter battery runtimes. Our tests indicate just about the same battery life as before with a smaller unit. This might be due to the more energy-efficient Intel Skylake chip (Core i7-6700HQ) compared to the old Haswell silicon (Intel Core i7-4720HQ). The CPU appears to compensate not only for the smaller battery capacity but also for the more demanding IPS panel. We ran our test as usual – Wi-Fi turned on, power saver mode turned on and screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2.
Web browsing
In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for to automatically browse through over 70 websites.
Average result, but not lower than before – 300 minutes (5 hours).
Video playback
For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.
Surprisingly, the result here is slightly better than before – 240 minutes (4 hours).
Gaming
We recently started using F1 2015’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.
As expected, the gaming test took a toll on the battery with only 103 minutes (1 hour and 33 minutes) of play time.
CPU
Intel Core i7-6700HQ represents the Skylake H family and is considered a high-performance chip with high voltage – 45W TDP. This is a step down from its direct predecessor – Core i7-4700HQ, but matches its short-lived predecessor, Core i7-5700HQ. The Core i7-6700HQ has four cores ticking at 2.6GHz and can go up to 3.5 GHz for one active core and 3.1 GHz for four active cores. The silicon supports the so-called Hyper-Threading technology that emulates one virtual core for each physical, thus establishing a total of 8 threads.
Furthermore, the chip is manufactured using a 14nm FinFET process and integrates Intel HD Graphics 530 GPU with 24 EU (Executable Units) clocked at 350 – 1050 MHz. The memory controller supports up to 64GB of DDR3 or DDR4 RAM at 1600 or 2133 MHz, respectively. The CPU is suitable for heavy applications and gaming.
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-i7-6700hq/
Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)
Results are from the Fritz chess benchmark (the higher the score, the better)
Fritz
Fritz is a chess benchmark that tests the computing capabilities of the CPU with various chess moves. The Intel Core i7-6700HQ managed 12.371 million moves per second. By 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
The GeForce GTX 950M is a direct successor to last year’s GTX 850M and it’s placed in the upper-mid range class. It is commonly used as a multimedia GPU and light gaming as its properties can handle some more demanding applications. The GPU core is the GM107, similar to most Maxwell NVIDIA graphics card and it’s clocked at 914MHz and can go up to 1124MHz. It has 2GB DDR3 memory and the effective clock speed of the memory is 2000MHz, while there are other variants of the GPU with GDDR5 memory.
However, the memory width is 128 bit with 16 ROPs, 40 texture units and 640 CUDA cores (or shading units). It also features increased L2 cache size, which is now 2MB. Supports features like Battery Boost, GameStream, ShadowPlay, GPU Boost 2.0, Optimus, PhysX, CUDA, SLI and GeForce Experience.
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 we’ve tested with this GPU: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/nvidia-geforce-gtx-950m-2gb-ddr3/
Results are from the 3DMark: Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Heaven 3.0 benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Gaming tests
All gaming tests were performed using NVIDIA’s latest drivers at the time of this review – 359.00 WHQL.
| Tomb Raider (1080p, Low) | Tomb Raider (1080p, Medium) | Tomb Raider (1080p, Max) |
|---|---|---|
| 107 fps | 42 fps | 23 fps |
| F1 2015 (1080p, Low) | F1 2015 (1080p, Medium) | F1 2015 (1080p, Max) |
|---|---|---|
| 46 fps | 35 fps | 26 fps |
| Thief (1080p, Low) | Thief (1080p, Medium) | Thief (1080p, Max) |
|---|---|---|
| 48 fps | 42 fps | 23 fps |
| GTA 5 (1080p, Low) | GTA 5 (1080p, Medium) | GTA 5 (1080p, Max) |
|---|---|---|
| 78 fps | 27 fps | 8 fps |
| Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (1080p, Low) | Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (1080p, Medium) | Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (1080p, Max) |
|---|---|---|
| 47 fps | 33 fps | 22 fps |
| Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (1080p, Low) | Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (1080p, Medium) | Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (1080p, Max) |
|---|---|---|
| 121 fps | 103 fps | 75 fps |
Temperatures
The two-staged stress test might not be the best way to represent real-life usage, but gives a good grasp of the overall stability of the system and cooling capabilites.
We kick off with 100% CPU load for about an hour and the software recorded temperatures around 77 °C wihout any signs of thermal throttling. 3.1 GHz is the operating frequency of the chip with four active cores. And we also noticed that the notebook runs pretty cool when idle as the silicon’s temperatures were a little above 20 °C. You can see the green line below representing the CPU load and the red one standing for CPU temperatures.
Along with the CPU load, we turned on the GPU stress test as well but things didn’t change as much. Temperatures rose to around 87 °C but the CPU was still running in the Turbo Boost range – 2.7-2.9 GHz. The GPU also ran pretty cool – 77 °C without throttling.
The temperatures on the surface were excellent as well, despite the extreme nature of the test.
Verdict
The ASUS N752VX is more of a multimedia-oriented notebook than its predecessor ever was. We really like that the company went for the nearly identical design with just a few improvements over last year’s model. It’s now slightly thinner, but way lighter than before. The keyboard and touchpad are nearly identical to what we saw last time, although, the touchpad is a bit wobbly but somehow doesn’t affect the overall usability in a negative way. The only drawback compared to the N751 is that the battery is not user-replaceable anymore.
Speaking of, the battery is rated at 48Wh compared to last year’s 56Wh unit but interestingly enough, that doesn’t seem to affect battery life as much. It appears that the updated Core i7-6700HQ deals better with power consumption compared to its Haswell counterpart from the N751 and thus compensating for the lowered battery capacity. The GPU, on the other hand, is the same as before but the supported RAM is the next generation DDR4-2133. Another upgrade worth mentioning is the added M.2 SSD support jumping from the half-sized mSATA drive.
And, of course, last but not least, the updated IPS screen, which now boasts excellent properties all-around. It uses the same LG panel as its bigger gaming brothers ROG G752 and GX700 without the use of PWM. Still, if 17 inches aren’t enough for you, the notebook offers tons of other connectivity options, including HDMI, mini DisplayPort and next-gen USB-C 3.1 port.
So at the end, the notebook appears to be one of the best 17-inch multimedia stations currently on the market, but if you are more into gaming, we suggest you spend a few extra bucks for the more powerful Acer Aspire V17 Nitro Black Edition or for the ASUS ROG GL752, although the latter has significantly detestable screen compared to the N752. And, of course, if you are willing to sacrifice a few inches off the screen, the similarly priced 15-inch options with GTX 960M could be a better choice – Acer Aspire V15 Nitro Black Edition, ASUS ROG GL552VW/G552VW. Anyway, if multimedia + 17-inch form factor is your top priority, look no further than the ASUS N752VX.
Check the current price and availability of ASUS N752: http://amzn.to/1T6itYn
Pros
- Slightly improved sleek design
- Considerably lighter than before
- Good keyboard and touchpad experience
- Excellent high-quality IPS panel
- No PWM across all brightness levels
- Added M.2 SSD support
Cons
- Battery isn’t user-accessible anymore
Great review as always.
Im very interested to know if this M2 slot supports NVMe drives like Samsung 950 pro ?
Congratulations!
High quality and in depth reviews!
Will you be reviewing the UHD display on this model?
Do you know when it will be available the FHD or UHD 17″ models in Portugal?
Will you review EVGA SC17?
Hi
Please email me detail specification, release date, product availability, prices, after sales service, return/refund/repair policy and deiffernce amongst the following ASUS VivoBook Pro N752VX:
1. GC193T
2. GC256T
3. GC256R
4. GC279R
Regards
Waheed
This review was very helpful! but still I have issues in deciding between ASUS N752VX and ACER VN7-792G (using mainly for photo editing – no gaming). Both models I found on the market have the same configuration, at the same price. Can you please help me in deciding which is better? Thank you!
The Acer model is more compact and portable while everything else is just on par with the N752VX. Maybe you will benefit from the slightly more powerful GTX 960M found in the Aspire V15 Nitro Black Edition.
My ASUS N751JX has the same ips panel, M2 slot, 7200 rpm hard drive, GTX950 with 4GB and the external sub woofer. Not much changed since this model.