Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware our box today we're looking at two new gaming laptops from a suits that were announced at Computex last month and these laptops that a few of you guys have been asking about it's the Isuzu rog strict SCARA - and the ROG Strix hero - which don't really reinvent the wheel as far as gaming laptops are concerned but there are some nice improvements compared to the previous iterations of these systems both discs are - and hero - a pretty similar in fact they're so similar that for the gtx 1060 models both have the same model name the GL 504 GM the hero 2 is only available with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1016 side while the scar 2 is also available as a GL v o4 g s which packs a gtx 10:17 that's essentially the main difference i have the gtx 1060 hero 2 and the gtx 1070 scar 2 on hand to review so i have some nice updated gaming laptop data to get to later aside from those GPU differences the two laptops are basically the same the general construction of the laptops is the same the other internal hardware is the same the displays are the same the i/o is the same and so on the reason why we have both the hero 2 and scar 2 is i guess to make things confusing for customers but also a Sulis the scar is being suitable for FPS esports games while the hero is more suited to mobis considering both are basically the same from a design and hardware standpoint I don't really see why seuss needs to list one for FPS gamers and the other for mobiles or why the scar is the only one that has a gtx 1070 option most esports tiles run really well on the gtx 1060 anyway nevertheless a Seuss's made to very similar laptops and call them different things that's the way it is and to be fair to assist there are some cosmetic differences between hero and the scarred hero uses a metal lid that's half brush and half matte along with a brushed and lined cyberpunk design around the keyboard the heat sinks are painted red for this model and it's the qwe are keys that are transparent this guy has a fully brushed metal lid and a camo pattern around half the keyboard plus black heat sinks and transparent WASD keys those are literally the only differences I could spot so I think choosing between the two it comes down to personal preference on what design you prefer especially for the GTX 1060 models I'm not a huge fan but the camo designs myself so the hero 2 is more up my alley but both are a bit heavy on the gamers style anyway I prefer more minimalist gaming laptop design whereas the Strix laptops aren't hiding what they're designed for in any way while the hero and sky differ on a visual style slightly the construction is identical both laptops use a metal lid and largely plastic elsewhere and when combined with a relatively chunky body 26 millimeters thick and 2.4 kilograms heavy for a 15 inch machine I don't really get the impression of a high-end build this is more your mid-range or entry-level laptop chassis and that's perfectly fine just note that with these Strix laptops you're not getting an all-metal build like with some higher-end gaming laptops there is one significant design update to the hero 2 and scar 2 and that's the use of slimmer bezels around the display while not the slimmest bezels I've ever seen the reduction in bezel size helps give the laptop a smaller footprint and better highlights the display the first gen variants of this laptop had massive ugly bezels so this is definitely a welcome upgrade unfortunately the shifter smaller bezels has completely shafted the webcam into a horrible position below the display and offset from the center I actually think the bezels are just large enough to have the webcam above the display like in the msi gs70 notional vision camera position instead the rest of the build is pretty generic just a typical gaming laptop with typical features all the i/o is found on the sides the rear is saved for exhaust vents while there's also a vent on the right side but some intakes above the keyboard and on the bottom on the right you'll find a USB port and SD card slot while on the left there are two other USB ports a USB C port HDMI 2.0 mini DisplayPort Ethernet and a 3.5 in the audio jack the USB C port doesn't support Thunderbolt 3 which is a bit of a disappointment and bizarrely one of these three USB ports features USB 3.1 gen2 speeds while the other two USB 3.1 gen there alone is not that desire to the fact that the gen 2 port is not marked any differently to the gen 1 port so there's really no way to visually know which port is Gen 2 that's just a straight-up bad design oversight of course it wouldn't be in a soos gaming laptop ridiculous amount of RGB the keyboard features for RGB zone standard for a mid-range laptop as per key RGB is typically left to more expensive machines but there's also an RGB a sooth logo on the lid and an RGB strip along the front edge too much RGB for me but it's there if you want it the keyboard itself again it's pretty average neither particularly good nor bad the travel distance is great but the response to each key is a bit spongy for my liking it just lacks that solid click I enjoy from a good keyboard that said the layout is fantastic you get a full numpad without compromising the arrow keys and there's dedicated volume control buttons and it's complemented by a fantastic responsive trackpad with separate left and right click buttons often companies choose the worst track pads they can find for gaming laptops but this is one area as soos has over the competition both this car too and hero to use one of the new 15.6 inch 1080p 144 her 2 IPS LCD laptop panels and aside from a few slight differences in color reproduction they are effectively identical neither laptop features g-sync but the panels high refresh rate is a welcome addition though a lot of other gaming laptops are using similar display so it's not a super unique feature that said the older hero and scale models do not have this display so it's one area that has received an upgrade I'm not going to go into detail on the color performance of this display other than to say brightness is good at around 300 nits and I achieve just over a 1,000 to 1 contrast ratio color temperature and color accuracy are quite good as well with Delta is below 3.0 which was a bit of a surprise considering some other gaming laptops I've reviewed in the past for gaming it's a great display and outside of gaming it still holds up pretty well let's talk performance both laptops come standard with the core i7 a 750 H and that's what was used in the morals I reviewed although some low-end configurations will use the i5 8300 instead there was also 16 gigabytes of dual channel ddr3 666 in the hero 2 to go along with the gtx 1066 gigabyte while the scar 2 with the gtx 1070 bump that up to 32 gig in my configuration although i believe 16 gig will be the standard option in terms of cpu performance the i 78758 he performs roughly on par with the previous 80 758 laptops we've tested so there's not a lot of point rehab a lot of what was talked about in my original 87 58 review if you want more detailed information on this CPU and how it performs in a variety of tests go check out my dedicated review of that processor but I will say here is the 8750 H in the hero 2 is on average ever so slightly faster than our gigabyte error 50 next test platform to the tune of 3% across a range of tests that's pretty close to the margin of error and it's also worth noting the hero to perform slightly better than the scar 2 also to the tune of 3% across the range of tests that are not GPU bound for those upgrading from an older laptop say with the quad core Core i7 7700 HQ the 6 core cry 78758 and either the Hero 2 or scar 2 will provide around 40 to 55 percent more performance in CPU limited multi-threaded workloads that's a significant jump in processing power so if you're using an older laptop it's definitely worth considering an upgrade to one with the 87 50 H as for gaming the GTX 1060 and 1070 aren't exactly new GPU so there's not a whole lot to say that hasn't already been said however this is the first time I've had a chance to benchmark either of these GPUs the fully fledged variants not the limited max-q models when paired up to the kora 78758 so I'll be showing how this laptop performs in a handful of games and then show a performance round up at the end the first game I'm showing here is hitman which is the most CPU intensive game in our test suite and really benefits from the increase in power provided by the cross of an AC 750 H here the hero 2 with the gtx 1060 is 20% faster in average frame rates and 6 % faster and 1% lowers compared to a laptop with the same GPU but just the quad core Core i7 7700 HQ interestingly the gtx 1070 sky 2 is actually slower when comparing 1% lows but more than 30% faster on average and that's something we'll discuss a little bit later next up we have assassin's creed origins another game that benefits significantly from the 8750 h at least when it comes to 1% lower frame rates the hero 2 keeps a much more consistent frame rate posting nearly double the 1% low frame rate compared to a laptop with the 7700 HQ though average frame rates are just 3% higher the GTX 1017 laptop approves upon the gtx 1060 reserve by a slim margin in Star Wars Battlefront - there is not much difference between gtx 1060 laptops with the 7700 HQ or 87 58 inside the hero - here is just 4% faster in 1% lows the gtx 1070 scar - improves the average frame rate by a decent 25 percent although 1% low is only marginally improved compared to the gtx 1060 Middle Earth shadow of what is another game it's mostly GPU bound so there's no real difference here between the hero 2 and older 7700 HQ laptops that said it's one of the better performers for the scar - boasting 38 to 40 percent more performance than the 1062 laptop when looking at the ultra preset lastly we have Wolfenstein 2 and here the 87 50 H provides a decent performance uplift of 9% on average and 7% in 1% lows the gtx 1070 laptop pulls ahead by a huge 48 percent margin on average but only marginally is ahead in 1% lows looking across all the games I tested when comparing the hero 2 with the gtx 1060 and 8750 h2 the ASA predator Triton 700 which uses the gtx 1060 and 7700 HQ the hero 2 is 3 percent faster in average frame rates and 6 percent faster in 1% lows many games are entirely GPU limited and show no difference when playing at Ultra settings while others are more affected and show closer to a 10 or even 20 percent uplift as you move down to more medium is quality settings the 8750 h comes more into play and it's there you'll more often see gains in that 10 to 20 percent region the GTX 1070 sky 2 is more interesting when looking at average frame rates the laptop performs as expected it's 33% faster than the GTX 1060 Hero 2 across a 14-game average in GPU bound scenarios however when looking at 1% low performance which is an indicator of how smooth the game is the scar 2 is only 11 percent faster on average but it's more interesting than that as the breakdown shows some games get next to no benefit in this metric from the faster GPU while others benefit by as much as 40% which is more in line with the performance uplift in average frame rates and this is why benchmarking with 1% low frame rates is so important because it highlights something that the average frame rates do not and that's namely how can the gameplay experience is and with the sky - there were times where frame rates are noticeably dropped or even studded briefly in some titles and it was an issue I couldn't really nail down or resolve that said not all games were affected as the charts show and I was running a fully updated system with the latest drivers installed in any case the typical experience from the gtx 1070 in the sky - is gtx 1060 level performance at worst and in the best cases upwards of 30% more performance of course one of the key things about a laptops performance is how loud and hot the cooler gets as soos is using a dual fan design he with the single heatsink provided for the CPU and two heat sinks for the GPU though there is a shared a heat pipe between the two thermal performance was really strong achieving some of the lowest temperatures we've synced to this hardware and with the gtx 1070 only heating up by a few degrees more than the gtx 1060 surface temperatures were well in check - with most of the keyboard area sitting below 30 degrees and there were just a few 40 degree hotspots in non-critical areas the strong cooling performance does come at the expense of noise though the sky and hero are quite loud under load most of our max Q test laptops are noticeably quieter that said the noise profile is decent without any high-pitched whining so it's reasonably easy to drown out with game audio a quick note on storage here the hero 2 review unit came with the Toshiba 256 gigabyte PCIe nvme SSD and a Seagate Barracuda pro one terabyte hard drive while the sky packed a Samsung PM 9 81 512 gig nvme SSD with a Seagate fire CUDA one terabyte sshd the PM 9 81 is a faster SSD so it had the edge across our storage performance tests while the sshd is also a better option for game loading from spinning disk storage internally there is just one MDOT 2 slot and a 2.5 inch drive base so your upgrade options are limited to replacing what these laptops come with out of the box both doom slots are also populated however it's extremely easy to remove the base of this laptop and have access to these slots so you should have no trouble upgrading either the RAM or storage if you want while the design of the Hero 2 and Skaar 2 is nothing to get excited about there are plenty of things to like about these new mid-range options from a soos performance particularly for the GTX 1060 Hero 2 is great and with the chorus of an a7 eh inside both laptops are much faster in productivity workloads the CPU doesn't have the massive impact in games but in the most CPU limited scenarios you will see a performance improvement you're also getting a new 1080p 144 Hertz display with slimmer bezels and it Cooley is not going to limit performance of either the CPU or GPU though that does come at the expense of noise unfortunately everything good about these laptops comes crashing down when looking at the price the hero 2 as reviewed costs a whopping 1,700 u.s. dollars while this gtx 1070 scar to will set you back two thousand dollars in australia prices start at $2,700 e dollars for laptops with a mid-range build and for the hero 2 in particular mid-range Hardware these prices if I'm honest a pretty outrageous there asa predator Helios 300 with a very similar hardware configuration to the Hero 2 will set you back just 1,200 u.s. to be fair there's no 1 terabyte hard drive inside but that'll cost you less than $50 to add in yourself sure the Helios 300 doesn't give you an RGB keyboard or slim bezels but there is no way those features are worth $500 and there's no shortage of other equivalent options for much lower prices including the HP omen 15 inch and the MSI GP 63 I mean for just $100 more than the Hero 2 you could get the msi ge62 5 stealth in one of my favorite gaming laptops of this generation with the far superior thin and light design and near equivalent internal hardware the pricing for the hero - basically destroys its competitiveness amongst these other options your options are a bit more limited if you want the gtx 1070 and the OS 78758 combo provided by the sky - but once again I'd point you towards the msi GP 63 for several hundred dollars less sure you're only getting a 120 Hertz display instead of 144 Hertz but it offers far better bang for your buck in is similar chassis and I haven't even talked about i7 7700 HQ laptops there are often a few hundred dollars less than the a 758 laptops but provide a very similar gaming experience for the most part and the pricing situation is a real shame the ROG Strix car - and hero 2 a well made laptops that delivered the exact performance and features most gamers want and if pricing was competitive with other systems I'd be able to recommend them but when you can get similar hardware for literally 30% less money I'm sorry your soos but you've taken yourself out of the race that's it for this review hope you enjoyed it consider supporting us on patreon where you can get access to exclusive discord chat don't forget to subscribe and I'll catch you in the next one