Asus owns the ‘Republic of Gamers’ brand of laptops. The company recently impressed the market with the king-size, 18.4 inch W90 but the 16 inch G60J has more manageable proportions with high performance. It has a Intel Core i7 processor that promises to make this device the fastest laptops ever seen. It costs about 1700 pounds. The Asus G60J actually goes like a rocket and looks surprisingly low key for a gaming laptop. Its specification is impressive but it has a screen of relatively low resolution.
Style often takes a back seat with gaming laptops. This does not mean that bulky machines can’t be good-looking, but rather the manufacturers seem to think brash designs are what sell in the present day market. Thankfully, Asus has shown some restraint with the G60J and while it apparently has a robot-inspired design, this equates to little more than a few angular edges on the inside of the case. On the outside, the G60J is just a big slab of laptop measuring 375 by 41 by 265mm, and weighing 3.3kg. It has a relatively compact footprint which means it fits easily into a standard 17-inch laptop bag. The lid is the only part of the G60J that’s received any decoration. The model has a glossy, two-tone blue plastic which is complete with a small, glowing Republic of Gamers shield and is quite agreeable. But the black and white checked pattern on the model looks like an unsightly scrape in the paintwork from a distance. The G60J is much more restrained inside. It has brushed aluminum surrounding the track-pad and there is the use of rubberized plastic for the wide wrist rest. This means that it doesn’t get too sweaty under the wrists in long gaming sessions nor does it show greasy fingermarks. The keyboard is full-size with large, well-spaced, chick let-style keys, but the separate numeric keypad is slightly narrower than normal to fit into the available space. The keyboard is solid and very comfortable to use, but there is rather too much flex in the middle.
The keyboard is also backlit which is a welcome touch on a laptop that’s likely to be used in dimly lit rooms, but we doubt many gamers will be aided by the direction arrows on the W, A, S and D keys. In many cases, 16-inch screens offer the same resolution as 15-inch ones, so the only real benefit of the extra inch is that everything appears slightly bigger. This is certainly the case with the G60J’s display, which has a relatively low resolution for a high-end gaming laptop. The screen is as crisp and vibrant as any glossy display we’ve seen. Also, the G60J’s Core i7-820QM is a quad-core chip. Intel’s on-chip Turbo Boost technology constantly monitors processor load, power consumption, temperature etc and will automatically overclock the cores if it thinks it’s safe to do so. Hence, the G60J works at a breath taking speed! It is the same with 3D graphics. The NVIDEA GeForce GTX 260M chipset resulted in a dazzling score of 12,019 in 3DMark06. This puts the G60J among the top five gaming laptops. The battery lasts to up to 1 hour 18 minutes in the Battery Eater’s test.
Hence, we can conclude that The Asus G60J may lack a brash design but it packs more than enough punch to make light work of even the most demanding 3D games. It is the best laptop for gamers who are looking for a no compromise machine.