Republic of Gamers has gained quite a bit of fame now in the gaming community. Asus ROG delivers mid to high range gaming laptops at an affordable budget. Today, we’re gonna look at one of the newer releases in this series, Asus ROG Strix GL703VD-DB74 featuring the low end 1050 GPU. Let’s go then.
Check out the latest price for the Asus ROG Strix GL703VD-DB74
Specs:
- CPU – Intel Core i7 Quad-Core (7th Gen), 2.8 GHz
- GPU – 4 GB DDR5, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
- Memory – 16 GB (1 x 16 GB) DDR4
- Screen – 17.3-inch Full HD IPS (1,920 x 1,080)
- Storage – 1 TB SATA HDD + 256 GB SSD
- OS – Windows 10 Home edition
Benefits:
- Performance – It features a latest Intel Core i7 processor and 16 gigs of RAM. The 256 GB SSD is responsible for speedy data transfer. But the jewel in the crown is the NVIDIA GeForce 1050 GPU. Even though it’s not a proper gaming graphics card, it can handle almost all the older games like Grand Theft Auto V (>150 fps), Battlefield 1 (90 fps) and Civilization VI (80 fps) pretty easily. Some of the newer games like can be made run at the high and mid quality like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt; the frame rate would not be anything near splendid though. Bottom line is you’d have a hard time running graphics heavy games.
- Feel– The keyboard is pretty good for typing comfortably. The keys have a good travel distance of 0.6 mm which is greater than the average of 0.5 mm. The keys are backlit. The lights are fully customisable to any colour of the spectrum (Yay!!). And they also include the extra 10 numeric number keys. I find it pretty annoying to just ignore them as you can see in many laptops. The trackpad is pretty sensitive as well.
- Audio – The speakers are just sublime. They are loud enough to fill a small room as well as clear and crisp. Even in the full volume, there is no humming noise or statics. The bass can be heard clearly. To describe them in one word- awesome.
Downsides:
- Lower end GPU – As stated earlier, Asus ROG Strix GL703VD-DB74 comes with a NVIDIA GeForce 1050 graphics card. Now, is that enough? Unsurprisingly NO, it isn’t. If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last few years, you would know that it hardly is enough for the latest games. It would have been much sweeter if it came with a GTX 1060 GPU as it is a proper gaming graphics card (like some of the laptops such as ASUS FX502VM-AS73, MSI GP72VR Leopard Pro and Alienware AW15R3-5246SLV-PUS that comes in this price range). Even a GTX 1050Ti could have been a better choice as it, in general, shows better overall performance as well as touts almost the same price tag (merely $40 to $50 costlier than the 1050). Many recent budget laptops like MSI GP62X Leopard Pro and Eluktronics N870HK1 Pro employs this GPU for an improved graphical performance than the former.
- Weight – Even though it’s pretty thin, at only 0.9 inches, it does weigh a bit making it somewhat inappropriate to carry here and there. Again being a gaming laptop I think a 6 pounds is not that much of a big deal either. I mean, we have already seen many gaming laptops way heavier than this (search Acer Predator 21 X if you don’t know what I mean).
Verdict:
First of all, Asus ROG Strix GL703VD-DB74 is a budget gaming laptop. But still, exclusion of a better graphics card than 1050 really is a big hit to the performance, if you ask me. Had they added a better GPU, the cost would have increased in parallel as well. So, if you are kinda short on the budget, this can be your choice.
Check out the latest price for the Asus ROG Strix GL703VD-DB74