Asus has installed itself as an esteemed player in international gaming laptops. The ROG series has given us gamers a number of the most powerful laptops cash can buy, and a number of them even come with mind-boggling RGB LED lights and eye-popping designs. Every yr Asus updates its line-up with brand new hardware inside the marketplace, and for 2019, it has achieved the identical. With the modern-day era Intel Core processors and Nvidia’s RTX collection pics playing cards inside it, the Strix Scar 2 GL504 is one of the new laptops from the employer. And boy, can it play!
A few weeks ago, I was given my fingers at the GX701 Zephyrus S and became particularly inspired with what the massive 17-inch pc may want to do. However, it fell quick on practicality — It’s too large. And very high priced. The GL504 Scar 2 looks like a greater realistic alternative for maximum gamers. Priced at Rs 1, sixty-four,990, it’s far the most inexpensive model in the Asus line-up with the Nvidia RTX snapshots cards. With this context, I picked the GL504 Scar 2 for this overview. So is it certainly the most realistic of the Asus gaming laptops this year? Read on.
Asus GL504: The Good Bits
Design:
Whether it’s a sub-Rs 30,000 notebook or an extremely effective gaming computer, Asus takes care of the layout. The GL504 isn’t an exception. At first glance, the pc sports an attention-grabbing layout, specifically with the lid that sports activities a twin-gradient brushed aluminum end. As standard, there may be a ROG brand that glows in RGB colorations. Open the lid, and you will be hit within the face with one of the most competitive designs you may ever see on a gaming laptop.
There’s a sizeable keyboard with a committed Numpad and specifically placed arrow keys. The keyboard is RGB backlit. The trackpad is massive sufficient for everyday use, and has a smooth reach. A faux carbon fiber finish with camouflage graphics and angular warmness vents makes the deck distinguishable from different gaming laptops. Some may additionally like this design whilst others won’t. The display has thin bezels on three sides, with the backside conserving a chunky bezel that also houses a webcam. There’s an RGB LED strip that runs almost the complete duration of the front — this makes for some pretty cool lights outcomes in a darker ambiance.
Connectivity:
The GL504 would not compromise connectivity options. It offers:
1 x USB three.1 Gen2 (Type-C)
2 x USB three.1 Gen1
1 x USB three.1 Gen2
1 x mDP 1.2
1 x HDMI 2. Zero
1 x RJ-forty five Jack
1 x 2-in-1 card reader
1 x three.5mm headphone and microphone mixture jack
1 x Kensington lock
Display:
The GL504 sports a fifteen.6-inch IPS LCD display, which can render at the most decision of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The show helps fairly suitable dynamic variety with decent contrasts — no longer the nice colors you would see, however desirable for most game enthusiasts. The viewing angles are huge, and an anti-glare coating makes you see more of the content in preference to your reflection. The 144Hz refresh fee with a reaction time of 3ms makes for smoother film or gaming reviews.
Performance:
At the start of this evaluation, the GL504 is a part of the new fortified ROG collection of laptops with updated internals from 2019. Inside there may be an eighth Gen Intel Core i7 8750H CPU clocked at 2.20GHz — this is the most effective processor the 2019 ROG laptops include. The variation that I was testing had the NVIDIA Geforce RTX 2060 GPU with 6GB of GDDR6 memory. There is 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a storage combo of 256GB NVMe SSD in addition to a 1TB HDD. The GL504 had no problem with all of the games I attempted on it. I attempted a few present-day titles from Steam, including F1 2018, Watch Dogs 2, Just Cause four, and PUBG. For most of these video games, I selected to stick to the highest viable settings.
The RTX 2060 isn’t always the most successful GPU, but it may supply decent frame rates of near 60 fps with maxed-out settings. Dial down the settings, and the fps count is going up. For example, in F1 2018, I noticed the RTX 2080 Max-Q render the smog and dirt particles at the racetracks quite realistically — the stuff that the RTX 2060 wasn’t superb at. While the GPU’s party-piece is ray tracing, I did not have any video games to check ray tracing overall performance. That said, the RTX 2060 does a higher task than the GTX 1060 in rendering post-processing outcomes in video games. The GL504 also has dazzling thermal overall performance. With the dual-fan cooling device, the big vents, and the plastic chassis, the pc by no means heated up uncomfortably. I turned into capable of play games for close to an hour without the keyboard emitting warmth.
Practicality:
Gaming laptops are not the maximum practical computers to live with on a day-by-day basis. However, the GL504 is as smooth to live with as conventional laptops from a few years ago. It is heavy at 2.4Kgs however, understand that this is much less than a load of what 15-inch laptops used to weigh around multiple years in the past. Also, the weight distribution in this pc is even, making it easy to carry around. The keyboard is not the best device to write — the chiclet keys are very cozy; howeve,r the jazzy images, and the glittering RGB lights are particularly distracting. The trackpad is satisfyingly responsive.
