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日本ASUS ROG Strix G18 (G814, 2023) review – as good as portable gaming gets
Design and construction
Like the 16-inch model, this notebook features a metal lid and an all-plastic body. However, the material feels really smooth, while the chassis is quite strong itself. Looking directly toward the device, you can see a bright LED strip below the base, which can be configured in the Aura Sync app.
In terms of dimensions, the device is quite chunky. It stops the scales at 3 kilos flat, while the thickness goes from 23.1 to 30.8mm. Although these numbers are quite substantial, this is to be expected from an 18-inch proper gaming laptop.
Here, the lid can be opened easily with one hand. The hinges look like they pop out of the base and are fairly stable. As you can imagine, including an 18-inch display inside this chassis is quite a challenge. This is clearly seen by the extremely thin bezels around the panel. ASUS even needed to include a notch in order to accommodate the 720p Web camera.
In contrast, the base offers a ton of free space. The manufacturer has used some of them for design purposes, but the majority is taken by the keyboard. It is a Per-key RGB backlit unit with long key travel and clicky feedback. Up top, you can see five additional shortcut buttons. They are responsible for volume control, microphone mute, performance preset toggle, and Armoury Crate.
Below the keyboard, you get a glass touchpad, which offers a really smooth gliding experience. Its tracking is accurate, while the response rate is quite quick.
Moving to the bottom panel, we see the two speaker cutouts, as well as the ventilation grill. As expected, there are two exhaust vents on either side of the machine, while the entire back is used for heat exhaust too.
Ports
On the left side, there is the power plug, a 2.5Gbit LAN port, an HDMI 2.1 connector, a Thunderbolt 4 port, a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port with Power Delivery and DisplayPort capability, as well as an Audio jack. Then, you get two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 2) ports.
