We Brits have one up on our foreign friends, however, thanks to the included Blu-ray combo drive. Using this to watch Blu-ray flicks on the laptop itself won't reap you any huge rewards, but you can always pipe the video signal through the HDMI port on the left of the laptop to a 'full HD' TV for an splendid Media Center experience.
Asus wants users of the G50 to go nuts and install as many games as they please -- it has supplied two 320GB hard drives, totalling 640GB of storage. We've seen more storage in the media-oriented M70, which comes with 1TB of storage, but this amount of disk space is nothing to be sniffed at -- particularly in a laptop.
You'll find this space comes in handy when you realise the laptop ships with a digital TV tuner that can record television. In our review sample this used a DIB 7700 chip, which can receive Freeview signals, digital radio Teletext and subtitles. Unfortunately it doesn't come with a remote control or any dedicated software, but you can at least use it with Windows Media Center.
The G50 package is rounded off with Bluetooth 2.0, 8022.11b,g,n Wi-Fi and a copy of Microsoft Windows Ultimate edition. Sadly, no games are included.
Performance
The G50 is quick. Its 2.26GHz CPU and 4GB of RAM helped it achieve a healthy PCMark 2005 score of 5,774. That's on a par with the 5,830 achieved by the Dell XPS M1730, which used a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo T7500.
Graphics performance was impressive, too. Its Nvidia GeForce 9700M GS graphics card guided it to 6,923 in 3DMark 2006. For reference, the Dell XPS M1730 achieved 8,870, but that was with two Nvidia GeForce 8700M graphics cards running at once.
The G50 is not a truly portable laptop. It lasted just 1 hour and 10 minutes in our BatteryEater classic test, which isn't enough to watch a feature-length movie. We'll give it some credit though, it doesn't get very hot or noisy and it can be comfortably used on your lap.
Conclusion
The G50 is an attractive, well-constructed laptop with decent, if hardly stunning performance. It isn't the best gaming laptop we've seen, but its HDMI output and Blu-ray combo player make it a solid Media Center machine.
Edited by Marian Smith
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Stevennickel 5 December 2008
Good: Flawlessly runs Crysis.
Bad: ehhh..ermm... ugh.... deh? no remote? xD
Comment: Okay, first of all I think there should be a parody for the review since my laptop barely shares any of the same specifications. I guess I bought a more media centered one- because I have a DVD-RW drive w/ Lightscribe- not a blu-ray, not that i'm complaining... blue ray's overrated.
My machine actually gets about 95 minutes of battery life- not good at all but given the performance i find very acceptable. uh let's see... 4 gigs of ram- yes, PROCESSOR= Intel Core 2 Duo- 2.0 ghz (overclockable to 2.26+)... not advertised as 2.6.
What else? Operating systems... Yea, my Asus g50 came with vista 64bit premium, Windows Media Center, and an Asus Express operating system that you can activate via the touch L.E.Ds with the laptop off. Very cool I think. The hard drive is 200 gb total (2 x 100gb)- not too bad.
I respect the review for what it is- laughed out loud when i read the part about the shiny black top- very exaggerated by the manufacturer, yes, and sexy for approximately 10 seconds after a fresh windex'ing.
The laptop's a beast- just because it's not an XPS doesn't mean it isn't an incredible machine. When overclocked via the touch L.E.D. Republic of Gamers options- to 2.2 ghz, it flawlessly runs Crysis... bragging rights to any laptop these days. My graphics card is actually the GeForce 9700 M GT- not the awesome-est ever but VERY high up the ladder.
Sound card is great- forgive me for not remembering the basics on it but who really cares? it's about as awesome as your external speaker set can be- like always.
Forget that jazz they wrote about the touchpad being too far right. It is... obviously, but not to the extreme they say- only about 1/4 inch of your right thumb is overlapping the pad, and only on the scroll bar portion of the touch pad. It's not so bad, and i've never messed up a page with it accidentally.
The review bashes the screen- i wouldn't know any better- but i can tell you I about jizzed on myself when i ran crysis for the first time and the EA games logo displayed with my surround sound. I find the graphics outstanding. who knows-
The camera's not too great on it... I use it for SKYPE and it's a little grainy, but gets the job done. I'm pretty impressed with the little bit of optical zoom it has for a mounted camera on a laptop- and microphones are great.
OH! it's pretty cool to set your own custom phrases and taglines scrolling across the top of your keyboard as reminders, etc due to the RP.G l.e.d screen up there. That's fun.
Too make a long story come to an abrupt end- the laptops great for the money. You're not going to whine nearly as much as the rich snobs that wrote the review after fondling the higher ranked Dell. This is an incredible machine. And for the record, if you have the 64bit vista like i do, the laptop will find ways to utilize all 4 gb's of ram during extreme gameplay. Great machine.
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