Asus - Laptop / Intel® Core™ i7 Processor / 17.3" Display / 6GB Memory / 500GB Hard Drive - Black

I bought this computer on August 18 of this year and I am thrilled by its performance. A lot of what I am going to put here is a rehash of things others have posted but I figure it would be good to get them moved to the front of the forum. I don't even know how to describe this beast... I wanted to see what it could handle so I ran Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. and Just Cause 2 at the same time (in windowed mode) while I played a video in Windows Media Player, copied files to the hard drive from an external drive, and had 5 Mozilla Firefox windows open. It didn't even take a hit. The speakers are phenomenal, the back-lit keyboard is a must, and the ability to overclock on the fly by pressing a button really helps when the gaming gets intense. You have to see this laptop to believe it. In fact, I had initially ruled this out when I was trying to figure out which computer I was going to commit to. You'll read other reviews that say that people were able to play all games on max settings and I am here to tell you that this is a fallacy, regardless of how much it pains me to admit it. The games I have played so far are: • Need for Speed Shift • Prototype • Singularity • Modern Warfare 2 • Metro 2033 • The Witcher • Dragon Age: Origins • Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands • Transformers: War for Cybertron • Spore • Batman: Arkham Asylum • Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. • Just Cause 2 • Fallout 3 • Crysis • Crysis Warhead • The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom • Microsoft Flight Simulator X The first thing I need to note is that the majority of these do just fine with the graphic settings way up. That said, if you want to increase your frame rate you should go to the game options and turn both antialiasing and motion blur way down. After that, it should be okay. Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. is a great looking game, but the settings cannot be maxed out if you want a smooth and error-free experience. Need for Speed Shift can be played on max settings if you lower or disable the level of motion blur. Crysis will play with the graphics set to the second-highest level, as will Crysis Warhead. Microsoft Flight Simulator X is by far the most demanding of these games. If you are interested in a computer that will play this at its most realistic settings you are going to want to buy a gaming desktop. Otherwise, I did not find many issues with the rest of the games. I like that the cooling fans are placed at the back of the unit, but it does slightly limit the number of places you can put it because you will want adequate airflow behind it. Do yourself a huge favor and buy the Targus Chill Mat along with this unit. The price ($40) is incredible when compared to the amount of heat reduction it provides. Let's be realistic here: You just spent about $1,375 on a laptop and it seems pointless to not spend another $40 on something that will expand the life of your machine. Without the Chill Mat, there is noticeable heat to the left of the touchpad; with it, it is cool to the touch. I have had some issues with this model that need to be addressed. This is my second one because the first one had a dead pixel, one fan only worked when it wanted to, and the power cord was loose when plugged into the power brick. Also, it had a tendency to consume an inordinate amount of RAM from time to time, for no particular reason. When you buy yours, the first thing you need to do is take it to the Geek Squad desk and ask if they will open it for you to make sure it is all working properly. They will do it and there should not be a charge. The tech that I dealt with plugged an ethernet cord into the new unit and I took it online to see how it could handle multitasking. Windows Media Player has a demo video that I started and set on repeat before opening 21 separate windows in Mozilla Firefox with each one at a site that had moving video and changing photos/ads. The process manager showed 7% CPU usage with 20% RAM usage. This machine barely noticed the work I was trying to throw at it. Make sure that the fans both have air coming out if them and set the desktop background to a solid black to check for pixels that are dead or dying. People have complained about the mouse button (there is only one) being difficult to press down and they recommended that you buy a mouse because of this. I agree, but a way to remedy this problem is to press both the left and right sides down simultaneously a few times to loosen it up. Regardless of the button response, you are going to need a mouse because the touchpad does not always like to respond to your touch. In fact, sometimes it does not respond at all. Disabling the pinch-zoom feature helps a little bit. When you first turn it on, it will ask you to make a set of recovery discs. I recommend that you do this, but not when it first asks you to. Go to the manufacturer’s link and update all of the drivers from that site. The only exception I have found to this is the audio device. For some reason, the subwoofer doesn’t always respond. Also, there were times that I would plug the headphones in and the subwoofer would continue to play after the other two speakers switched off. Asus updates could not fix this, but Realtek drivers could. After you have updated everything, make the recovery discs. It will take an hour or two, but I promise that you will regret not doing it if you ever have to restore your system to the factory default. Finally, you are not going to be able to fit this into a standard laptop bag. In fact, I was unable to make it fit (Chill Mat, power brick, laptop, mouse, and XBOX 360 controller) into a school book bag. It took some doing, but I found a backpack that was used for camping that I can fit it into. If you open the picture I posted with this, you will get an idea of what this monster can do. I hope this has helped you decide. For the money, you will be hard-pressed to do much better.

I'd first like to say that this is a GREAT PC. I'm not going to address all the good things about this PC because I think the other reviewers here have done a decent job of that. What I am going to address is the problems plaguing this unit right out of the box. Problem 1: If you hold FN + Esc the unit will completely freeze, requiring a hard shutdown. Problem 2: If you enable the bass boost settings in the Creative software and access the Ease of Access settings in the control panel the unit will freeze. To further esculate this problem install Steam, enable bass boost in Creative and open Ease of Access. Problem 3: The Bestbuy G73JH models come with different screens. Some come with the AUO screen and some come with the superior LG screen. Problem 4: I currently am on my 4th G73 because of build quality, GPU Failure, lockup straight out of the box and Auo screen quality. My current unit is decent. Problem 5: Asus customer service is awful with trouble shooting Asus computers. They also ofter recommend Asus RMA at the customers inconvience that usually don't address the problem nor resolve the issues that lead up to the RMA. Even though this computer is very good for the price, I can not recommend it due to inconsistencies in manufacturing, poor programming and poor customer service.

I've had 2 gateway FX laptops the last 2 years.... I've had 2 ASUS G60 laptops the last 3 months... Asus finally hit a homerun with this laptop! All FPS games thrown at this laptop are easily devoured! The laptop never breaks a sweat, fans never kick into high speed and temperatures are kept so well in check. I've never been able to play demanding FPS games on my lap and not feel like I'm cooking myself - it stays remarkably cool under loads. Wrist pad is cool, the entire unit is very well constructed and designed - very sturdy, no case flex. They really did have the mobile gamer in mind when they engineered the G73. Highly recommended. No bugs.. .no problems... stock gpu and cpu bench marks attached... solid gaming !

What? Are laptops like lumber? You throw the chrap in with all the good ones and then let the poor saps who get a bad one go through the pain of having to deal with it? Between the crashes with the internet crashing, bluescreen crashes, and white screen requiring cold reboots, I'm pulling my hair. AND this happends every 30 - 60 minutes. Contacted ASUS and they said i'd need to send it to them - I said no way!!. These problems started from the get-go. I've spent hours researching to see if there was some known quick patch but I've found nothing. ASUS said it probably a hardware issue. This is BS. I don't know what Best Buy will do when I take it back; it's within 14 days but they have that chrappy restocking fee. The concern me and if it weren't for the credit card terms, I wouldn't even be dealing with them.

Just picked this up so I could upgrade from my very old IBM T40. Wow. The machine is blazing fast, and looks really nice. I spent almost a month researching laptops, and for the i7 processor, included RAM, and the Ati 5870 graphics card, the system is a great deal. The system has dual fans, so this machine stays very very cool compared to other gaming systems, and runs dual hard drives, which is something that I had running in my old laptop. 500GB is a good amount of storage, so you'll have plenty or room. Since this laptop wasn't designed for portability, weight and battery power are going to be an issue, and the overall size is really big. The rear end is about 2" thick, so if you need to take this somewhere, you'll need to grab a backpack or find a laptop case that's at least 17" wide and 13" high. The pictures online don't do it must justice...it's way bigger in person. It comes with a build-in SD card reader at the side which is great for me since I take plenty of photos. A lot of people have been saying that it would have been nice to have the blu-ray player, but that tags on another 3-400 bucks, and with that money you can just buy a nice external one. Also, the screen is pretty bright, although it's not as vibrant as some of the other screens out there. Again, not a big deal. The system is a processing powerhouse. Highly recommended if you're looking for a desktop replacement.

My first exposure to the Asus G73JH was the A1 version, which runs about $1,650 and seems to be on eternal world-wide backorder so that even ebay sellers are asking for more than MSRP. Upon further investigation, I found 7-Versions (A1, A2, X1, X2, X3, RBBX09, and RBBX05) with the A1 having the greatest features and RBBX05 having the best price. The A's and the X's are the same except for having different hard drive and optical drive configurations. Also, the A1 and A2 come with an Asus ROC (Republic of Gamers) mouse and backpack. The RBBX's are Best Buy exclusive models and differ from the non-Best Buy models by having a slightly lower screen resolution, no Blue Tooth, a lower pixel camera, and a reduced warranty. . I purchased the RBBX05 because it offers huge bang for the buck. In all fairness, this reflects my values. Although they are cool freebies, I have little use for the mouse and backpack that come with the A1 and A2 versions. The lower screen resolution is a drop from 1920x1080 to 1600 x 900. Such a drop would make a difference on a 52" TV, but I am hard pressed to notice the difference on a 17" laptop. By the way, I can still plug into a 52" and get 1080p if the TV supports it. Blue Tooth... I have it on my old lap top and have not used it for 4-yrs. The camera on other models is 2.0 mega-pixels while the RBBXs are 1.3 mega-pixels. Fine by me. Warranty; I suspect Best Buy reduced the Asus warranty from 2-yrs to 1-yr to increase demand for the warranty options they sell (grumbles) or possibly to reduce the wholesale cost they pay to Asus. . Why the RBBX05 and not the RBBX09: The 05 has 6GB RAM and a 500 GB HD, while the 09 has 8GB RAM and 2-500GB HDs. You can start with the 05, add another 2GB RAM for $60, add a second 500GB HD for $90, have the same features as the 09 and pocket the $250 savings. . About the RAM. This bad boy uses DDR3, which is significantly better than DDR2 or older versions of RAM. Laptop DDR3 comes with either a clock speed of 1066 MHz (PC8500) or 1333 MHz (PC10666 or PC10600). This computer is listed as having 1066 MHz DDR3 but the one I received actually has 1333 MHz DDR3. Sometimes computer manufacturers will substitute a faster RAM when the slower RAM is no longer available. I got lucky :) Also a HUGE bonus of this laptop is that it has 4-slots for RAM and the operating system is Windows 7 Home Premium edition. So, both the hardware and the operating system will support up to 16GBs of RAM. I am not aware of any other laptop with capacity beyond 8-GBs. . Shhhhhh... minimal fan noise. The larger the fan, the quieter the machine. Two large rear fans coupled with good air-flow design keep this laptop cool and quiet. . The GPU (Radeon HD5870 video card) is impressive. 1-GB of DDR5 memory devoted to processing graphics. DDR5, not DDR3 or less. Also, this card processes DirectX 11. This is one serious graphics card! . The CPU is the Intel Core I7-720QM. The four cores can help with multitasking or combine to boost a single application. You can also fit the I7-820QM or the I7-920XM into the slot though that is presently impractical due to prices.

First, the negatives. * Very short battery life (about 2 hours) but I knew that when I bought it. Since I don't travel with it, it's not a killer. * I can't stand the shiny reflective display. It's a bear to use outdoors but since nearly all displays now are shiny, I didn't have a choice. Apple makes a model with a matte finish for an extra $50 but I didn't want to pay over $2200 for a laptop with the same size display. * No manuals either written or on the computer. I figured out on my own (by accident) that if you use the touchpad like an iPhone or a Mac that you can expand or contract a web site. Squeeze two fingers together to contract the web site, or spread two fingers apart to expand the font size. What else does the touchpad do? Without a manual or searching the Internet, I'll never know. * Comes with no disks. Make certain that you immediately make the Repair and Recovery disks . I also made a full backup to an external hard disk. * This drives me nuts: The display hinges don't go back far enough to provide the optimal viewing angle resulting in lower contrast and color. What technical reason would have precluded the designers from having the display angle back an another 1/2" to 1"? * This annoys me: The power cord is on the wrong side (the right side next to the DVD). * The touchpad is flaky. Sometimes it will scroll a page, sometimes not. Sometimes it will expand a web site (using just one finger), sometimes not. Use the touchpad (or is it a scroll pad) only if you must. * The mouse buttons are very stiff. I find I've got to exert a lot of pressure to get them to respond. Use the mouse. * As someone else noted, pressing the Ctrl (or is it the Function key?) and the Esc key will lock up the computer. I tried it and sure enough, the computer locked up. Now, the positives: * I love the lighted keyboard. I'm a marginal touch typist and there are too many keys that I have to look for. When the ambient light gets low, it's very easy to see the lit up keys. For this reason alone, I bought this model. * While no keyboard will ever respond as well as the original IBM keyboard with metal springs, this isn't too bad. It doesn't make an awful sound and responds with a fairly light touch. * The monitor is big and very crisp. I've found that the fonts are razor sharp. This is one of the sharpest monitors that I've ever used. If I could tilt the monitor back an additional 1" or so, it would be utterly fantastic. * Fast. Although I don't play games I bought this for the overall response time. I brought back a Dell laptop because everything took forever. This is as fast, or perhaps faster than my desktop computer. * Wireless connectivity is great. I have a n router and using speedtest.net, my download speed is only slightly slower than being plugged in. * I really like the matte finish on the case which hides fingerprints. * For whatever reason, my laptop came with zero bloat ware. Using several programs, I also scanned for spyware and found nothing. * I like the way the heat comes out of the back of the unit. I can sit with the laptop on my lap for hours and barely notice the warmth. But since I don't play games, I don't tax the CPU. * The laptop weight isn't too heavy -- probably because of the tiny battery. Aside from the few negatives I've mentioned above, I've very satisfied with this laptop.

I've had this laptop for a little over a month now. If I had to pick one word to describe it: FAST(est)! Just 10 months prior to this purchase I picked up a Sony Vaio at Best Buy also(VGN-FW560F). It had an Intel Core 2 Duo(dual-core) w/ 4GB RAM, ATI HD 4650 and 500GB HDD running Win 7(64-bit). The ASUS G73 blows it away in speed and performance. The Sony takes about a good 45-60 secs to bootup. The ASUS takes only 10-15 secs to bootup. I actually thought it was having problems locking up since it had "stopped" accessing the HDD on bootup, but it was FINISHED booting up! Also, the Sony Vaio was $999 and the ASUS is $1299 and I purchased the Sony 10 months prior to the ASUS, so price-wise it's a steal really considering everything you get in the package. Plus, if you're a Best Buy Rewardzone member, you get 1300 points for the purchase, and at 250 points you get a $5 gift certificate so that translates into $25 in gift certificates in 35 days(time it takes for the points to post in RewardZone) which you could use towards any accessories you wanted to purchase for your new laptop. It's aesthetically pleasing to look at being designed after a F-117 stealth fighter, complete with that radar absorbing material "feel", literally. Other than being a bit cumbersome, this laptop has been a homerun purchase! If you want a laptop bag for it, go with the Targus CityGear Miami Messenger Laptop Case(SKU 6710026). It's the one I purchased for it and it fits snuggly inside. The thing to remember is even though it's a 17"(17.3" actually) display the display opens on it's hinge about 1.5-2 inches in front of the the actual rear of the laptop. I also looked into backpacks and found that the Targus CityGear Backpack Laptop Case(SKU 9944209) will also work, especially if you want to pack more items that are also bulky along with the ASUS G73. I purchased the Targus Chill Mat(SKU 9427042) to help keep the laptop cool since, when this thing really gets going into some graphics intensive games, it can start warming up even with the oversized heatsink and dual-fan/exhaust ports in the back. Don't get me wrong, it still stays within acceptable limits, however I would recommend spending the $40 to prolong the life of your larger investment of the laptop. The touchpad can be a bit quirky. It sometimes doesn't respond consistently to touch(sorta defeats the "touch" part of it being a touchpad) and the button(s) is actually one long button that rocks or pivots at the center but also bends to enable simultaneous button push inputs as well but makes it a bit stiff to push them. So, I recommend a mouse of any kind to supplement the touchpad. I personally purchased the Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500(SKU 9930491). The backlit keyboard is awesome and can be turned off and has 3 different lighting intensity levels. The speakers sound great and the RealTek HD audio also comes with the Soundblaster's proprietary EAX 4.0 environmentalaudio effects which is awesome. The video is an ATI HD5870 w/ 1GB VRAM which is dedicated memory, so that's in addition to the 6 GB of RAM which blows away nVIDIA's current best video card. Also, ATI's video cards and technology are just inherently better at having fewer, if any at all, problems with driver problems with games. Just look at any readme file upon installing a game to look at compatibility problems with nVIDIA compared to the number of ATI's number of compatibility problems. It has on the fly one button overclocking for added performance (should you ever need it in the future) and has that oversized heatsink in the back along with dual-fans and dual conduit exhaust flow(I like to call it dual exhaust ;) ), so it stays cool but just make sure upon purchasing it to have GeekSquad take it out and make sure both fans are working okay. You wouldnt want one to be bad and let it overheat, that just creates a whole can of problems you don't want. The 4 USB ports are nicely placed with two on each side. I has an SD card reader, HDMI port, external monitor port, which is great since the ATI HD5870 supports multiple monitor functionality. The only thing it doesn't have is Blu-ray. But really, that would've added another couple hundred bucks on the pricetag easily and how many people watch Blu-rays on their laptops anyway, I watch mine on the bigscreen on my dedicated DVD/Blu-ray player, like most people I imagine. In all, not only is this a great laptop, but it can easily be a desktop replacement because of its performance and capabilities in comparison to what most desktops are capable of and used for as well. I hope this review helps you decide whether or not this laptop is the one for you.