Asus Republic of Gamers GL552VW (ROG) review - mid-range gaming

Asus’ Republic of Gamers series of gaming laptops have never been known for their subtlety. Generally speaking, though, the GL552VW is certainly one of the more understated laptops I've seen in this range recently, especially when you sit it down side by side with the behemoth G751JT I reviewed at the end of last year.

This gargantuan laptop had a protruding rear when you lifted up its massive 17in screen, but the GL552VW's smaller, 15.6in lid stretches across the whole length of the chassis, making it feel positively svelte by comparison. However, with a weight of 2.6kg and a chassis measuring 35mm thick, it’s not something you'll want to carry around with any degree of regularity, but you'll probably be all right throwing it in a backpack for the occasional gaming session at a friend's house.

The GL552VW still has plenty in common with the G751JT, though, as you’ll find the lid has the same soft-touch finish and identical Asus ROG logos emblazoned on its central brushed aluminium panel. The upper chassis showed a few signs of flex, but nothing too concerning.

Keyboard and Touchpad

There’s a spacious palm rest area below the keyboard, but it picks up greasy palm prints quite easily, which rather spoils its overall look. The keys are backlit, though, and you can adjust the brightness of its red LEDs - perfect for those late-night gaming sessions. 

The keyboard's surprisingly pleasant to type on, too, as it has a reasonable amount of travel and provides good level of feedback on each key stroke. Asus hasn't messed with the layout of the keyboard, so everything's where you'd expect it to be, and it's even made room for a dedicated number pad. There aren’t any gamer-specific macros, however, and the only gamer-centric customisations are the highlighted WASD keys.

It’s a shame some of the shortcuts and macros available on other ROG laptops haven’t been included here, particularly when there’s so much space above the keyboard. Asus hasn't left this area completely barren, thanks to its supposedly Mayan-style patterning, but there's no denying it could be put to better use. 

There’s also a good-sized touchpad, which was both responsive and easy to use. Swipes glide across the surface with minimal resistance, and taps and multitouch gestures were detected without any issues. The integrated buttons had a good click action, too.

Of course, most gamers will immediately abandon the touchpad in favour of a mouse, so you'll be pleased to hear Asus has actually included one in the box. However, you'll probably still want to swap it out for your own mouse, as this ergonomically designed Asus ROG-branded model isn't without its problems. It fits comfortably enough in your hands, but I found it was very easy to hit its side Back and Forward shortcuts accidentally with my thumb. 

Rather annoyingly, Asus doesn't include any pre-installed software that lets you disable these buttons either. Instead, you have to download the drivers separately (the mouse model is GX850) from Asus' website. Once you've done this and opened up the mouse menu, you'll find you can also configure the buttons to act as macro shortcuts, but given how irritating they are, I wouldn't be surprised if most people ended up simply disabling them. 

Performance and Battery Life

Inside the GL552VW is a quad-core Intel Core i7-6700HQ running at a base clock speed of 2.6GHz with the ability to Turbo Boost to 3.5GHz. This is paired with 8GB of RAM and a 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M dedicated graphics card. For storage, you have a generously-sized 256GB SSD as well as a 1TB hard disk.

The i7-6700HQ is a more than capable performer regardless of what you intend to use it for, as it managed an impressive score of 101 in our tough 4K-based benchmarks. However, while this is still an excellent result for a laptop, it's worth noting that this is still about 10 points slower than in the Dell XPS 15 and Chillblast Samurai. These systems do have double the RAM, however. 

Meanwhile, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M is a mid-range mobile graphics card, so more recent games will require a few compromises on image quality to get playable framerates. In Metro Last Light, for instance, it couldn’t cope with Very High quality graphics and SSAA, producing just 14.5fps. Turn off SSAA and you can eke out 30.7fps, but tone the graphics quality down to High and you'll get a much more comfortable 40.7fps.

Older titles, however, shouldn't prove so much of a problem. In Dirt Showdown, for instance, it managed 47.1fps at a 1,920x1,080 resolution, 4x anti-aliasing and Ultra quality graphics, which is pretty respectable for its price. It’s worth noting, though, that the graphics card’s fans work up to quite an audible whirr when gaming, and a lot of heat is expelled from the side of the system.

Battery life was surprisingly decent considering it only has a 4-cell battery, but it still won't last that long away from the mains. In our video playback test with the screen set to 170cd/m2 brightness, it lasted 4 hours 20 minutes, which is much better than most other gaming laptops I've tested recently. You’re going to want to be plugged into the mains for gaming, but knowing you have the option to run off battery power for a reasonable length of time is always welcome.

Display and Speakers

While performance is about what you would expect given the specifications, it's clear that a few corners have been cut to get its price down to £1,000. Unfortunately, that happens to be the display, which is mediocre at best. The matt, 15.6in display has a standard 1,920x1,080 resolution, but its contrast is terrible, measuring just 357:1. This is due to a combination of very high 0.64cd/m2 black levels and a low maximum brightness of 230.9cd/m2. Taken together, it all makes for a rather washed out, dull and lifeless display.

Colour accuracy, too, left a lot to be desired at just 61.6% of the sRGB colour gamut. Viewing angles were also narrower than I would have liked. All in all, the display lacks the ability to produce the visual excitement you would want from gaming, and it doesn't have the accuracy you'd need for heavy-duty image editing. The speakers aren't much cop, either. They do a decent-enough job, but you'll want to invest in a good gaming headset or pair of headphones for the best audio experience.

Connections

There’s no shortage of connections, at least, as it comes equipped with an HDMI output, an SD card reader, two USB3 ports, one USB2 port, and even a USB 3.1 Type-C port. There’s also Gigabit Ethernet if you prefer not to use the 802.11ac, as many gamers well might, and it comes with a DVD-RW optical drive as well.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to like about the Asus ROG GL552VW considering its price. Its build quality and specifications are both great for the money and I was particularly pleased to see Asus hasn’t skimped on storage. However, the display ultimately lets the system down, which is a real shame.

The GL552VW is still great value overall, but if you do have the extra budget, you should probably spend a little more on the admittedly larger MSI GE72 6QF Apache Pro, which can be bought for about £200 more. As a gaming system, it’s better positioned with a superior 3GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M chip and a vastly superior display.