ASUS - ROG GL502VM 15.6" Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 12GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 - 1TB Hard Drive - Black

At the $1000 price range this laptop is a very solid deal. Quite impressed at the performance of the GTX 1060 on an inch thick device. Great quality screen with an anti glare finish. I wish the keys were a little more clicky but they are fine. Not too much bloatware from Asus which I like. They give you the option to install when you first set up. This thing runs only a bit slower than my 2 year old Asus G11 i7 6700 GTX980 desktop. Quite remarkable given the size of the laptop. I can pretty much run any game on high settings at 1080p locked at 60fps. Anything the desktop can handle the laptop can just not with ultra settings. You can do it on ultra but you will be in the mid 50s fps wise. All that power in such a small package comes at a cost. This laptop runs hot while gaming. Had temps on the CPU get up to 91C while trying out FarCry 4. Max temp for the CPU is 100C so a bit troubling. On average it would be in the low to mid 80s when playing taxing games. The fans kick in when gaming and get fairly loud. The speakers are nothing to write home about and the fans make it hard to hear your game. Headphones necessary to enjoy your gaming experience. To address the heat issue I just downloaded the Intel Xtreme Tuning utility and stepped down the core voltage slightly. Also set max CPU usage to 98% in advanced control panel settings to disable hyper threading which heats things up. Now my temps don't go over 77C. 3DMark Firestrike score drops from 9425 to 8842 with these tweaks but performance is still great. Overall I'm quite pleased. Unreasonable to expect super performance, quiet operation and low heat in such a small form factor. Other similar laptops with better cooling are heavier and more bulky. I get to use my laptop like normal and the 20% of the time I decide to use it to game I can run FarCry 5 on high settings v-sync @ 60 fps buttery smooth.

The other day, i bought this computer. I missed out on the sale, but I don't feel too bad about that. I went through and removed random bloatware from asus and windows 10 (except some of the republic of gamers software). I am playing every game on ultra settings and pushing games like skyrim special edition with texture overhaul mods. There is no lag, and a super high fps rate. I chose this laptop because it was within my budget. However, the trade off was no ssd in this one. The computer starts remarkably fast for an HDD and so do games. The fan is semi loud but i wear a headset so i dont care, and it does get hot between the keyboard and screen, but only when there is a very high detailed game playing like fallout 4/skyrim. Also, the bottom of the laptop gets hot, but all you need is a small pillow or a laptop pad that sits on your lap (i forget what its called). The keyboard and the logo on the back of the laptop glows an evil red which looks so cool and completes the laptop. It is compatible with xbox one controllers wireless (bluetooth), and wired. Also, i was able to plug in my turtle beach 420x headset usb reciever/transmitter and use it as if i was on my xbox with NO problem. The keyboard feels really nice, and the screen looks spectacular. The man who sold me it at best buy told me that it was an IPS screen, which was something i had wanted. Trackpad doesn't work perfectly, but it works. If you're going to use a mouse or controller, it doesn't matter. I also wanted to add, every time i first started a game, it said it would check the hardware for reccomended graphics setting. EVERY TIME it put the game on ultra high. I love this computer and i haven't found a better deal for one anywhere even when its not on sale. For $1,249.99 (1,357.80 with NY tax), you're getting a comfortable 15.6" size that's very portable, a 1920x1080 ips screen, a nicely built laptop, good feeling keyboard, a gtx 1060 3gb, gsync, 12gb ram, 1tb HDD 7200rpm, an i7 7700hq 2.8-3.8 ghz processor, VR ready, and not too heavy considering it's size. I carry this and a 2012 macbook pro everywhere i go and i may be crazy, but it's not that bad. I reccomend this to anyone looking for a solid gaming laptop. Also, remove all the "notify windows" features when setting up the laptop. It will increase performance, and decrease background activity which is important for gamers. Feel free to ask questions! I'd be happy to answer, and i apologize for my poor grammar.

I sold my desktop, which had GTX960 graphics (amd fx-8300 with 16 gb ram). I bought it open box, so the price was cheaper than upgrading that CPU. I also had an MSI dragon GT70 laptop, which i sold last year. I missed the mobility of my laptop, so when I saw this on special, I couldn't resist. Since, I paid half of the MSRP, I didn't deduct or add points due to price. I replaced the harddrive with a 500gb SSD. If you don't add an M.2 drive or boot from an SSD, the laptop can feel slightly sluggish. But in 2018, I think most if not all boot drives should be SSD. The speed difference is amazing. 12 GB RAM is enough for most applications. I wanted to add 4 more GB, but you have to change the 4 into 8 GB. So, the cost keeps going up, if you replace or add an SSD and then the RAM. Unless if I am using GIMP, I don't really notice the need for more memory though. Cooling is alright on it. They could have designed it a bit better, since the back air ducts are heating the bottom of the monitor. depending on the angle you are using it, the ducts are even blocked a little bit. This issue depends on what angle you are using the screen. Keyboard is fine, but i disliked the trackpad. I am using external mouse, but it would drive me nuts, if i had to rely on it. Battery life is a bit weak, but this is a thin gaming laptop. So, with some tweaks, I think it's average for it's class. Screen is decent quality. Overall, this is a good laptop. It has alright sound.

This is the gaming computer I’ve been wanting literally my entire life. I have been heavily considering a gaming computer for several years but was torn between the upgradability of a desktop vs the space saving/portability of a laptop. After discussing with my best friend I settled on a laptop, but still waited. Low and behold one day, I was searching deals on bestbuy.com and found this beauty with an i7 processor 12gb of ram and the 1060 graphics card that, through research, I determined was what I wanted for my gaming needs. At the sale price I caught this machine on ($899) there was nothing that could compare to it. I’m not a heavy gamer on the pc as the majority of my gaming is done on PS4, but did want to try to play some older games (reading that can be an issue with windows 10) and some pc only games. First thing I downloaded and played was counter strike GO and man did my childhood of endless nights comeback. This machine handled every aspect of that game in high detail and no frame rate drop. Very very pleased.

After looking at numerous laptops and knowing I didn't want to go down the MacBook route I landed on this beauty here. Since I bought it I haven't stopped using it. The machine can run practically any game you want on high or ultra settings at the price of a little more noise from the fan but you get used to it. Just the raw power it brings to the table has allowed me to get involved more in making music, Photoshop and video editing. Overall I love this laptop and would recommend it to anyone.

Not a good judge of gaming laptops, there are so many out there. Got this one for my son’s Christmas because it had the 1060 GeForce video and an empty SSD slot. I installed a Samsung 960 Pro 512GB SSD and migrated the OS off the spinner to the SSD...VERY responsive now. The 1060 is a stronger graphics card than the 1050, and although this one has 3GB VRAM it seems to be enough. I’ll bump the RAM up from 12GB to 24GB later...if it seems necessary for a boost.

For the price it's the best you gonna get. Runs all games I throw at it flawlessly aswell as browsing the web and rendering on blender. Screen gets this weird little power surge line when playing certain games when charging but it's nothing crazy at all. Definitely love it worth the price good luck finding another laptop with a gtx 1060 and i7 7700hz for the price.... you won't unless you drop a few more hundred. Love it

My laptop search came down to the HP Omen 17 and the Asus ROG GL502VM Kaby Lake Edition. It was literally $1100 vs $1200, but was the difference large enough for me to justify spending the extra money. Let me say, I still game, but I don’t game nearly as much as I used to and I really wanted a machine that I could do everything on and one that would allow me to load up multiple VMs so I could train on the go. With the HP I would get the more powerful and more power hungry GPU with its R9 580X GPU, and I would get larger screen real estate it’s 17” screen. My Brother owns this laptop, so it wasn’t like I was unfamiliar with the device. Now the Asus has a 15.6” screen and a GTX 1060 That only features 3 Gigs of GDDR5 RAM, yet it has the 1280 Cuba cores that the 6GB Card has. It also features a beautiful wide gamut screen with G-Sync (This is not cheap as it requires additional hardware to implement in the display) and a Thunderbolt 3 port (This is only in the Kaby Lake edition of the 15.6” model, if I’m not mistaken). Neither Unit has an SSD in their base model and both feature painfully slow 1TB SATA drives that don’t feel like they’re even close to the 7200 RPM sticker they have on them. Basically, adding in the SSD into the open NVME slot is pretty much a must for either unit. In the end, I went with the Asus as the better display, G-SYNC technology, and fairly close gaming benchmarks for games was closer to what I was looking for and having the higher speed TB3 port meant having a high speed dock option as well. Of course, after purchasing the laptop I realized that the drive made the whole thing feel horribly slow and painful. So, I had no choice but to spend a little extra and throw in an SSD, but having 2 drive bays made it easy to go with a smaller 128 Gig drive for the OS. This upgrade really made the whole experience exactly what I was expecting when I purchased the unit. Battery life is between 3 and 4 hours for every day tasks with VM’s and training videos running, but drops down to just above 2 when gaming. It’s not the most ideal, but it isn’t unexpected for this type of machine with G-SYNC enabled. Overall, I’m very pleased with the laptop and after reading the impressions that people have of the Omen screen, I’m glad I opted for the Asus as it was not only cheaper, it actually offered me a lot more of what I was looking for.