Gaming Notebook ASUS G550JK Review
The Republic of Gamers series of laptops has maximum performance. This is not surprising, given the target audience - gamers. As part of this series comes a large number of devices. In addition to laptops under the RoG brand, there are also motherboards, video cards, sound cards, mice and other devices. Today we will talk about the ASUS G550JK, equipped with a 4-core Core i7 processor with 16 GB of RAM and a Full HD screen.
Processor: Intel Core ™ i7 4700HQ 2.4 GHz 4 nuclear.
Operating system: Windows 8.1.
Chipset: Intel HM86 Express.
RAM: 16GB DDR3L 1600MHz SDRAM.
Screen: 15.6 "16: 9 IPS FHD (1920x1080) LED backlight, matte.
Video embedded: Intel HD Graphics 4600.
Video discrete: NVIDIA GeForce GTX850M 4GB DDR3 VRAM.
Built-in memory: 1TB HDD.
Optical drive: Super Multi DVD.
Network: 802.11 b / g / n, Bluetooth ™ V4.0 + HS, 10/100/1000 Base T.
Interfaces: 3.5 mm audio jack for headset, 3 x USB 3.0, RJ45 LAN, HDMI, mini Display Port, card reader (SD / SDXC / MMC).
Sound: 4 speakers + external subwoofer, 2 microphones with noise reduction functions.
Battery: 59 Wh
Dimensions: 383 x 255 x 27.7 mm.
Weight: 2.4 kg.
The laptop comes in a fairly large box with a matte finish. The black and red packaging design is characteristic of Republic of Gamers series devices.
Open the box and take out a laptop, laid in a cloth envelope.
')
Under the laptop are an external subwoofer, documentation and charger.
The charger is made of matte plastic with glossy ends. In general, the charging turned out to be quite large, 165x76x30 mm, but earlier these laptops had chargers one and a half times more.
Voltage 19 V, current 6.32 A, in the end we get 120 watts.
Usually gaming laptops get a harsh, brutal design with impressive elements. Here is a rather thin, rigorous notebook with a small weight of 2.4 kg. Only a narrow red line and the RoG logo indicate that we have a gaming laptop.
The top cover is made of brushed aluminum with an unusual texture. The surface, though matte, but collects fingerprints. True, they can be seen only at a certain angle and they are easily erased.
Under the ASUS logo is the nameplate Republic of Gamers, glowing in the dark.
The cover fastens on one big hinge. Under it is also blowing the cooling system, i.e. hot air will be blown back.
Opening angle of 120 degrees, the screen is well fixed in almost all positions.
The bottom of the laptop is covered with a solid metal sheet.
Below is the perforation of the sound system, in the center - the ventilation grill for the cooling system.
Consider the external interfaces of ASUS G550JK.
On the left side is a connector for the charger, then - the yellow output for the subwoofer. Due to the reduced thickness of the laptop, the RJ-45 connector is made with a hinged lid. To connect monitors and TVs, there are 2 connectors, these are HDMI 1.4 and mini DisplayPort 1.2. At the same time, you can connect 3 monitors, 1 via HDMI and 2 via mini DisplayPort. For peripherals, we have two USB 3.0 connectors, and a 3.5 mm audio jack for connecting a headset.
On the front end there are indicators, from left to right: power, battery status, disk activity, Wi-Fi, Caps Lock.
Almost the entire right side is occupied by a DVD drive, another USB 3.0, SD / XC card reader and a hole for the Kensington lock.
In addition to powerful hardware stuffing, the developers also took care of a good sound.
As well as in the multimedia N-series, the laptop has a remote subwoofer for better reproduction of low frequencies.
The sound system consists of 4 speakers located under the perforations in front of the notebook.
To fine-tune the sound and select ready-made presets, special software is preinstalled - “ROG Audio Wizard”.
Noise reduction is ensured by the presence of two microphones located near the camera.
Thanks to all this, we get one of the best sound systems among laptops.
Screen diagonal 15.6 inches. Before us is a high-quality IPS-matrix with a FullHD resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. Due to the combination of large resolution and a small diagonal, a very clear picture is achieved.
The image looks sharp, the screen perfectly conveys colors and has high contrast.
Traditionally, the IPS-matrix has large viewing angles, the colors do not grow dull and do not distort.
Also a big advantage of the screen is a matte finish that does not glare and is not covered with fingerprints.
Keyboard island type with good impact and large keystroke. Thanks to the large case, an additional numeric keypad fits to the right.
In favor of the overall ROG design, the characters on the keys are made in red.
On the left there is a separate button to which you can assign the launch of a specific application.
The keyboard is convenient to use, in the lower part there is a lot of space for wrists, hands do not have to keep on weight.
Fans of playing in the dark will love the keyboard backlight, glowing in red.
The characters on the keys are laser engraved, due to this, it is not the keys that shine, but the symbols themselves.
The brightness of the backlight is changed by hot keys, all available 3 levels. In the absence of pressing the keyboard, the backlight goes out after a while.
The large touchpad with dimensions of 10.5 by 7.5 cm is pleasant to the touch and has good sensitivity. He works out all the strokes well and filters out “false” touches.
In Windows 8, all system gestures work, Multi-Touch is supported. The pre-installed ASUS Smart Gesture software will help you more finely tune your touchpad experience.
The most important thing in a gaming laptop, of course, is its hardware stuffing. The heart of the ASUS G550JK is the Intel Core i7-4700HQ, the high-performance Haswell latest generation processor. It can work simultaneously with 8 threads thanks to Hyper-Threading technology. Each of the 4 cores operates at 2.4 GHz, which can increase to 3.4 GHz in Turbo Boost mode. This processor is one of the most productive mobile solutions on the market.
The amount of RAM is 16GB, 1600MHz DDR3. Such a large amount is enough for all games, and in order to score all the memory will have to really try.
ASUS G550JK carries 2 video adapters on board. Integrated Intel HD 4600 works as usual, when no graphics is required. Accordingly, when using the integrated video, the laptop will last longer from the battery.
In games, the main NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M graphics card is connected. The amount of DDR3 video memory is 4GB. To improve performance, the video card is slightly overclocked.
3DMark 06
3DMark 11
3DMark Professional
The main drive is a HGST HTS721010A9E630 hard disk with a capacity of 1TB and a spindle speed of 7200 revolutions per minute.
Disk performance in the program CrystalDiskMark.
Having tested several games in FullHD resolution, we got the following results:
Battlefield 4 at high settings gives quite comfortable 30-50 FPS. When setting the settings to Ultra mode, the frame rate drops to 20.
It is not clear why, but World of Tanks manages to slow down at high settings and gives about 35-40 FPS.
Assassins Creed Black Flag is quite comfortable playing at high settings, yielding 30-50 FPS on land and at sea.
Demanding even for Watch Dogs desktop systems at high settings shows about 25 FPS. To play normally, you have to set the average settings.
During the game, the top of the laptop and the right side of the keyboard heat up. Usually in games, the left hand lies on the WASD keys, the wrist to the left of the touchpad. In these places, the heat is not marked, play quite comfortably.
The cooling system consists of two fans. They work pretty quietly. With a moderate volume, they are not even heard.
The built-in battery has a capacity of 59W * h. With such a voracious gland, it is difficult to show record numbers. Yes, and in such a compact case is not easy to fit quite capacious battery.
When watching HD-video with an average brightness, the laptop lasted 3 hours.
With an average screen brightness and surfing the Internet, the work time was 3.5 hours.
If you turn off the network, set the minimum brightness, turn on the energy-saving profile and limit your work to office applications, you can reach 4 hours.
In productive games with average brightness, the battery lasts only 1-1.5 hours.
It takes 2 hours to fully charge the battery.
The new gaming laptop from ASUS demonstrates a different design concept in the direction of reducing the size of the case with maximum performance. Now, a high-performance computer is not a ponderous monster who once again does not want to be taken out of the house, but a completely ordinary laptop of light weight and stylish, strict design. Of course, with such power consumption it is difficult to save a long battery life, and you will be tied to an outlet. Intel Core i7-4700HQ is one of the fastest notebook processors. ASUS G550JK will find its users not only among gamers, but also those who require the full return from the mobile computer.
Specifications
Processor: Intel Core ™ i7 4700HQ 2.4 GHz 4 nuclear.
Operating system: Windows 8.1.
Chipset: Intel HM86 Express.
RAM: 16GB DDR3L 1600MHz SDRAM.
Screen: 15.6 "16: 9 IPS FHD (1920x1080) LED backlight, matte.
Video embedded: Intel HD Graphics 4600.
Video discrete: NVIDIA GeForce GTX850M 4GB DDR3 VRAM.
Built-in memory: 1TB HDD.
Optical drive: Super Multi DVD.
Network: 802.11 b / g / n, Bluetooth ™ V4.0 + HS, 10/100/1000 Base T.
Interfaces: 3.5 mm audio jack for headset, 3 x USB 3.0, RJ45 LAN, HDMI, mini Display Port, card reader (SD / SDXC / MMC).
Sound: 4 speakers + external subwoofer, 2 microphones with noise reduction functions.
Battery: 59 Wh
Dimensions: 383 x 255 x 27.7 mm.
Weight: 2.4 kg.
Equipment
The laptop comes in a fairly large box with a matte finish. The black and red packaging design is characteristic of Republic of Gamers series devices.
Open the box and take out a laptop, laid in a cloth envelope.
')
Under the laptop are an external subwoofer, documentation and charger.
The charger is made of matte plastic with glossy ends. In general, the charging turned out to be quite large, 165x76x30 mm, but earlier these laptops had chargers one and a half times more.
Voltage 19 V, current 6.32 A, in the end we get 120 watts.
Appearance
Usually gaming laptops get a harsh, brutal design with impressive elements. Here is a rather thin, rigorous notebook with a small weight of 2.4 kg. Only a narrow red line and the RoG logo indicate that we have a gaming laptop.
The top cover is made of brushed aluminum with an unusual texture. The surface, though matte, but collects fingerprints. True, they can be seen only at a certain angle and they are easily erased.
Under the ASUS logo is the nameplate Republic of Gamers, glowing in the dark.
The cover fastens on one big hinge. Under it is also blowing the cooling system, i.e. hot air will be blown back.
Opening angle of 120 degrees, the screen is well fixed in almost all positions.
The bottom of the laptop is covered with a solid metal sheet.
Below is the perforation of the sound system, in the center - the ventilation grill for the cooling system.
Interfaces
Consider the external interfaces of ASUS G550JK.
On the left side is a connector for the charger, then - the yellow output for the subwoofer. Due to the reduced thickness of the laptop, the RJ-45 connector is made with a hinged lid. To connect monitors and TVs, there are 2 connectors, these are HDMI 1.4 and mini DisplayPort 1.2. At the same time, you can connect 3 monitors, 1 via HDMI and 2 via mini DisplayPort. For peripherals, we have two USB 3.0 connectors, and a 3.5 mm audio jack for connecting a headset.
On the front end there are indicators, from left to right: power, battery status, disk activity, Wi-Fi, Caps Lock.
Almost the entire right side is occupied by a DVD drive, another USB 3.0, SD / XC card reader and a hole for the Kensington lock.
Sound
In addition to powerful hardware stuffing, the developers also took care of a good sound.
As well as in the multimedia N-series, the laptop has a remote subwoofer for better reproduction of low frequencies.
The sound system consists of 4 speakers located under the perforations in front of the notebook.
To fine-tune the sound and select ready-made presets, special software is preinstalled - “ROG Audio Wizard”.
Noise reduction is ensured by the presence of two microphones located near the camera.
Thanks to all this, we get one of the best sound systems among laptops.
Screen
Screen diagonal 15.6 inches. Before us is a high-quality IPS-matrix with a FullHD resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. Due to the combination of large resolution and a small diagonal, a very clear picture is achieved.
The image looks sharp, the screen perfectly conveys colors and has high contrast.
Traditionally, the IPS-matrix has large viewing angles, the colors do not grow dull and do not distort.
Also a big advantage of the screen is a matte finish that does not glare and is not covered with fingerprints.
Input Devices
Keyboard island type with good impact and large keystroke. Thanks to the large case, an additional numeric keypad fits to the right.
In favor of the overall ROG design, the characters on the keys are made in red.
On the left there is a separate button to which you can assign the launch of a specific application.
The keyboard is convenient to use, in the lower part there is a lot of space for wrists, hands do not have to keep on weight.
Fans of playing in the dark will love the keyboard backlight, glowing in red.
The characters on the keys are laser engraved, due to this, it is not the keys that shine, but the symbols themselves.
The brightness of the backlight is changed by hot keys, all available 3 levels. In the absence of pressing the keyboard, the backlight goes out after a while.
The large touchpad with dimensions of 10.5 by 7.5 cm is pleasant to the touch and has good sensitivity. He works out all the strokes well and filters out “false” touches.
In Windows 8, all system gestures work, Multi-Touch is supported. The pre-installed ASUS Smart Gesture software will help you more finely tune your touchpad experience.
Performance
The most important thing in a gaming laptop, of course, is its hardware stuffing. The heart of the ASUS G550JK is the Intel Core i7-4700HQ, the high-performance Haswell latest generation processor. It can work simultaneously with 8 threads thanks to Hyper-Threading technology. Each of the 4 cores operates at 2.4 GHz, which can increase to 3.4 GHz in Turbo Boost mode. This processor is one of the most productive mobile solutions on the market.
The amount of RAM is 16GB, 1600MHz DDR3. Such a large amount is enough for all games, and in order to score all the memory will have to really try.
ASUS G550JK carries 2 video adapters on board. Integrated Intel HD 4600 works as usual, when no graphics is required. Accordingly, when using the integrated video, the laptop will last longer from the battery.
In games, the main NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M graphics card is connected. The amount of DDR3 video memory is 4GB. To improve performance, the video card is slightly overclocked.
3DMark 06
3DMark 11
3DMark Professional
The main drive is a HGST HTS721010A9E630 hard disk with a capacity of 1TB and a spindle speed of 7200 revolutions per minute.
Disk performance in the program CrystalDiskMark.
Having tested several games in FullHD resolution, we got the following results:
Battlefield 4 at high settings gives quite comfortable 30-50 FPS. When setting the settings to Ultra mode, the frame rate drops to 20.
It is not clear why, but World of Tanks manages to slow down at high settings and gives about 35-40 FPS.
Assassins Creed Black Flag is quite comfortable playing at high settings, yielding 30-50 FPS on land and at sea.
Demanding even for Watch Dogs desktop systems at high settings shows about 25 FPS. To play normally, you have to set the average settings.
During the game, the top of the laptop and the right side of the keyboard heat up. Usually in games, the left hand lies on the WASD keys, the wrist to the left of the touchpad. In these places, the heat is not marked, play quite comfortably.
The cooling system consists of two fans. They work pretty quietly. With a moderate volume, they are not even heard.
Battery and working time
The built-in battery has a capacity of 59W * h. With such a voracious gland, it is difficult to show record numbers. Yes, and in such a compact case is not easy to fit quite capacious battery.
When watching HD-video with an average brightness, the laptop lasted 3 hours.
With an average screen brightness and surfing the Internet, the work time was 3.5 hours.
If you turn off the network, set the minimum brightness, turn on the energy-saving profile and limit your work to office applications, you can reach 4 hours.
In productive games with average brightness, the battery lasts only 1-1.5 hours.
It takes 2 hours to fully charge the battery.
Conclusion
The new gaming laptop from ASUS demonstrates a different design concept in the direction of reducing the size of the case with maximum performance. Now, a high-performance computer is not a ponderous monster who once again does not want to be taken out of the house, but a completely ordinary laptop of light weight and stylish, strict design. Of course, with such power consumption it is difficult to save a long battery life, and you will be tied to an outlet. Intel Core i7-4700HQ is one of the fastest notebook processors. ASUS G550JK will find its users not only among gamers, but also those who require the full return from the mobile computer.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/236543/
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