Gadgetory

hey how's it going guys this is Dave - Dee and this is my review of the GL 5/5 - so this is like the smaller 15-inch version of the GL 75 - I did a review of that a few weeks ago but I want to share my thoughts about this one as well let's do it it's got similar packaging to its 17-inch brother it's got a Redbox laptop inside AC adapter and then the standard a C's pamphlets cord ties and a cleaning cloth the top surface comes in two finishes again a plastic finish and then the metal finish that I have here which is really nice and it doesn't show fingerprints too readily the bottom surface is made of plastic and you can see that there's some air intake slots and then the exhaust vent on the side there isn't a subwoofer on this one like the bigger 17 inch version and the battery is removable you slide some switches and then it can come out and I haven't actually used a laptop with a swappable battery in a very long time this is like old-school cool and then there's that easy access hatch again you can remove a couple of screws and you can pop that hatch off to gain access to the RAM slots the SATA Drive socket and a PCIe MT socket all three of these are removable replaceable and obviously upgradable the screenflex is minimal there's less flex on this laptop than most 15-inch gaming laptops at this price range and it's probably because of that aluminum shell build quality overall is pretty good there's minimal flex on the keyboard chassis area and the hinge feels really well built as well there's a lot of plastic on this device but that's just the nature of the ROG laptops from ACS there's a lot of plastic but it's a good build it's a little smaller than GL 75 - in all dimensions but it has almost identical specs and performance it's just a difference in form factor the ports on the 5 v 2 are a little different so on the Left we have the power connection exhaust vent a USB 3.1 type C HDMI port Ethernet jack and a pair of USB 3 ports and on the right we have audio jacks a USB 2 port and the DVD drive the front of the device has that SD card socket which goes on pretty deep and there's some light up status indicators the red ROG logo on the lid also lights up from the back light again this review unit is running a 2.6 gigahertz skylake i7 a 15 inch 1080p non-touchscreen a gtx 960m that's 16 gigs of ram a one terabyte hard drive and a DVD drive and all this for around $1,000 us the keyboard and trackpad are identical to the GL 7 v 2 it's a pretty good keyboard once you get used to the number pad shifting the keyboard over to the left the key travel is nice and the backlighting is that ROG read the trackpad though isn't great I've mentioned this in the GL 7 v 2 review basically the trackpad skips a lot more than I'd like it's not the worst trackpad out there but I'd recommend a mouse for gaming anyways the screen is a 15 inch 1080p panel the color gamut brightness contrast and viewing angles everything across the board is OK it's a pretty average screen for a laptop in this price range the 17 inch screen on the GL 7 v 2 I felt was slightly better but the one here is still decent it's not the best for a color accurate work but it's good for gaming it's a 7200 rpm Drive so it's very usable for gaming but if you want a faster experience I totally upgrade to an SSD the gaming performance is solid it's a 960 M so most modern games will run pretty well you'll stay above 60 frames per second in light to medium games even with everything turned up and these new Nvidia drivers really helped with the rainbow 6 frame rates but something heavy like witcher 3 you're going to need some run on lower resolution to be really smooth because at 1080p even with everything turned down i was only getting around 35 frames per second it's still playable it's just not very smooth now a quick note on battery life it's a small 48 watt hour battery mostly because that DVD drive took up all the space and it's got the same size battery as the 17-inch version which is little weird but we're getting better battery life than the 17-inch version because we're powering a smaller screen so on regular use I was getting a little bit less than three-and-a-half hours of use with the screen at 75% brightness and when I was playing games on battery I was getting just shy of an hour and a half with screen at max brightness the speakers are top facing the sound good and they get pretty loud and they actually sound very similar to the ones on the 75 tube but just with a little bit less bass fan noise is reasonably quiet when it's idling so mechanical drives aren't completely silent it's around 25 decibels on idle but with fans at full tilt it hits around mid to high 30s the thermals are very similar to the bigger 17-inch version it just breaks 100 Fahrenheit at max temperature so overall the GL 5 v 2 has pretty good build quality with an aluminum top and plastic everywhere else the 15 inch screen is decent it's good for gaming but not ideal for color accurate work speakers are pretty good the keyboard is comfortable despite that number pad shift and the trackpad is the same as the GL 75 - not the best on the inside we have a skylight i7 and a GT 960m which are very capable for handling most modern games a DVD Drive that takes up a lot of space in a 15 inch footprint 16 gigs of upgradable RAM 2 physical storage drives which is great for a game recording or video editing and lastly there is a small 48 watt hour battery that lasts about three and a half hours of regular use there's quite a few 15-inch gaming laptops in that $1000 price range and that's really great for the consumer right there's a lot of good options to choose from but what separates this from the others two things come to mind first is that DVD Drive it's not something I would use personally because all my games are on Steam or battlenet but if you have like a big disk-based collection there's very few laptops or gaming laptops right now that have a disk drive anymore so this is one of very few options for you the second is that removable battery again it's not something I would use but if you're interested in the ability to kind of swap out batteries as you go and if you want to travel and just want to bring several battery packs with you this is once again one of very few options but even if you're not interested in either of these like bonus features this is actually a really good laptop for its price that's the end of this review hope you guys liked it thumbs if you liked it subs have you loved it it's been nice I'll see you guys next time