Gadgetory

the asus strix GL 502 feels like it's part of a dying breed of laptops it isn't thin it isn't light it doesn't feature fancy materials like carbon fiber or magnesium and wait what no RGB but was the old formula really that bad or did it just need to be tweaked a little with its proudly displayed VR ready sticker is a Zeus's latest Strix laptop ready for the 2017 consumer let's find out cooller masters 25th anniversary edition cosmos 2 features a unique dual curved tempered glass side panel check it out now at the link below at just under an inch the GL 502 vs is not exactly a thin in light but that does seem to be the standard thickness shared by most gaming laptops these days and at 5.2 pounds it is a whopping 1.4 pounds less than the Alienware 15 putting it more comfortably into the marginally portable category the outer finish is a combination of brushed aluminum like plastic and real brushed aluminum that ends up looking good while avoiding feeling cheap though it does fall a bit short of feeling premium there is some flexible and trackpad and the screen and hinge are solid but could be better so in summary although the Strix doesn't have quite the robust build quality of the Alienware 15 for the same specs it comes in at a whopping six hundred and forty five dollars less so I'm sure some folks will find themselves asking well data I really need that magnesium I owe is also strong with three USB Taipei's and a high-speed USB type-c although Thunderbolt 3 would have been really nice here along with everything that most people will need to keep a dongle off their keychain for at least another year the specs are highlighted by a quad core Core i7 7700 HQ a powerful gtx 1070 graphics card and an nvme boot drive that while small is fast so we should be getting a pretty awesome gaming experience out of this device assuming it can keep all of that cool one pit stain on this otherwise great laptop was that out of the box thermals were awful it does seem to be an isolated issue with our machine though and it was solved by reseeding the cooler so we aren't sure if it was a problem with a Seuss's thermal paste application or perhaps a less than gentle shipping company but at least we know that it doesn't overheat by design like some devices with that said under synthetic loads on both CPU and GPU we did see a little bit of thermal throttling but under realistic loads like gaming there was no adverse effect on performance whatsoever which is good because there is lots of performance in this guy its gtx 1070 was able to smash through the 60 FPS threshold in our triple-a gaming benchmarks at very high details at the screens native resolution of 1920 by 1080 and what's really nice is that when it does go over 60 FPS you don't have to worry about those frames getting wasted it runs it up to 120 Hertz with g-sync variable refresh rate technology and thanks to a Seuss's choice of an IPS panel it's not just a delight to game on but it's good enough for productivity too it's nice and bright and although I wouldn't recommend it for professional color sensitive work it trounces the 120 Hertz TN display on the Alienware 15 making doing anything from watching youtube videos to writing in word to video conferencing with relatives just plain a better experience and the keyboard is a contributing factor it's one of my favorite things about the Strix it's scissor switches have a long travel distance and excellent tactile feedback for a notebook and perhaps equally importantly this feel is consistent across the whole deck the red backlighting and tactile knobby on the W key are also nice touches and unlike some gaming oriented keyboards this is one that I wouldn't mind using to write up an essay to top off the usability asus has and kind enough to include a numpad something that can no longer be taken for granted on a 15-inch laptop so the only minor gripe then is that it's a little bit easy to accidentally open up the rog gaming center when you're aiming for the backspace now the enthusiasm gets kicked in the head a little bit because the trackpad I mean it's usable but it's not nearly as amazing it's a click pad but the force required at the top is much higher than at the bottom the way it's recessed into the chassis makes two finger operation a little bit less comfortable than necessary and it's high input leg gives it kind of a sluggish feel so forgetting a mouse on the go is a little unfortunate but with that said not nearly as bad as forgetting your charger in fairness to a soos this is about what we expect from a high powered gaming laptop though noise wise the Strix remains at a comfortable volume while gaming and at no point got close to being obnoxious and the speakers while not the loudest that I've heard on a laptop are surprisingly punchy and remain clear at full volume so although you wouldn't be using them for your next house party they're more than enough to throw on some tunes while you're fixing up supper so then in summary Strix is not a perfect laptop but it gets what it needs to write and it does so for a great price the excellent screen and outstanding keyboard make using the Strix a great way to be productive IRL or in games so the bottom line then is recommended are you a small business owner or freelancer would you rather spend your time actually doing work instead of fussing around with complicated accounting software while FreshBooks is built for you it's the simple way to be more productive more organized and most importantly get paid quickly you can create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds you can set up online payments with just a couple clicks to get paid up to four days faster you can accept deposits through the platform and you can accept payments through the platform and this is the biggest one for me you can even see when your client has seen your invoice and put an end to that back and forth yeah I didn't get it can you send me another one and then maybe I'll pay you in a while no no no more of that so for an unrestricted 30-day free trial go to freshbooks dot-com slash tech tips and enter Linus tech tips in the how did you hear about us section so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button maybe consider subscribing yeah that's right wait I already said that also you can check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured at Amazon in the video description and the other link to our community forum which you should totally join