Customer Ratings & Reviews

Nice gaming laptop for gaming! Has all the write hardware for gaming and priced right!

It's really a good product, gaming experience feels so good, in love with this!!! No issues faced till now.

The laptop is definitely worth its money! The only thing I noticed is that it definitely needs a stand with coolers! I play on maximum settings!

Bought this laptop open box for over 2 grand with tax. I went for store pickup the person handing it off said I can add warranty after pickup but it will have to be from the app. I said that's fine. I was going to just activate manufacturer warranty. Here comes the twist. I go home to register product for manufacturing warranty and I was told it was already registered. So basically whoever registered it already left me without a warranty. Reached out to best buy, Agent Samrat picked up the online chat and told me I'm covered. I asked him, how does that work when the person who registered the laptop has completely different credentials such as email and address? He referred me to some links and to call best buy instead when he realized he doesn't know what he's doing. Talk about passing the buck. The link led nowhere special. I ended up just deciding to deal with the best buy incompetence by throwing more money at the $2000+ problem and adding to add geek squad protection for 3 years for a whopping $459 or whatever they wanted and they denied that, saying I need to come in store to take a look at the laptop first. I literally picked this up barely 24 hours ago. Yesterday. And after this major screw up, they keep screwing up by not even letting me add warranty and giving them more money unless I jump through this extra hoop. So this means the Agent who told me "you can just add warranty from the app" doesn't know what he's talking about. I used to work for best buy many years ago. This level of incompetence is not tolerated well, it all falls back on the sales manager and live chat managers not training these people correctly. Train your people. Quit relying on those online modules to train them in store they aren't that effective. I honestly am just going to stick to Amazon in the future. They don't bother me nearly as much as Best Buy has with their incompetence.

The best laptop I've owned. It certainly plays whatever you put in it with all the highest settings. I enjoy it!

Amazing purchase. This laptop is a beast. I can play all games with ultra graphics and many fps

I ended up returning it because i found a better deal.

Great vr performance. Really enjoy the crisp display the gpu output.

Great computer, runs really well, I haven’t had any issues with it

Seriously perfect for gaming, no temperature spikes and can run a game all day.

I had to exchange the item for the exact same item because this was the exact item I wanted. First one had a bent screen

One of the best OOBE (out of box experience) I've ever had with a laptop. Love the graphics on the inner box, and love how, flipping down the side, it acutally TILTS UP the laptop for easier grabbing in the box, as well as pulls out the box under the laptop to make it easy to get at the power brick. Other than some sheets of paper for regulation stuff, that is all there is in the box - laptop and power brick and power cord. No bad pixels anywhere I can see. Keyboard feels alright for a chicklet keyboard. I generally like something a bit more mechanical feeling for gaming, but this feels similar to the 1 year old Alienware M17 R5 laptop I've been using for games. Trackpad feels good as well. And other than three annoying stickers to peel off the keyboard surface, it looks great. One thing people may NOT like is the fact that there are no ports on the back. Some people like them on the back to help hide things out of the way. For me, it's a benefit. Personally I prefer them on the sides so this is a design choice that works for me. I know they did it to facilitate the heat dissipation with the fans but I'm glad I will not have to tilt the screen down to try to find where to plug something in. I got it on my wireless network just fine, keyboard and trackpad working well. It installed some updates and got the Windows account set. I know I've seen people asking if the ROG symbol on the back of the display was LED - it is NOT. No LED's anywhere on the back of the computer. Just the glowing effects under the front lip, and down the side lip underneath for about two inches, and the LED lit keyboard. Love having the 10 key on the side, but it throws off my touch typing for now until I'm used to how offset the keyboard is from the screen. And they did something really poorly with the function keys - they offset them so that they do NOT line up the way every other keyboard lines up. This means that someone like me, who touch types and uses Alt+F4 a LOT, will have problems since this is the ONLY keyboard that does not align with the normal setup. Fortunately, Alt+F3 doesn't seem to break anything when I'm hitting it incorrectly all the time. But I never cheer a company that alters actual STANDARDS for layouts for things like a keyboard. I don't mind the extra keys, I applaud them, but the ones that are on every single keyboard, leave them alone and don't mess with their locations. System is just about completely silent sitting in my house with no other ambient sounds other than occasionally the furnace fan going on randomly for air circulation. I love the dedicated volume buttons, and dedicated home / end / page up / page down. Even has a dedicated button for the fans, and the ROG symbol on another to launch the Armoury Create program. The fan button allows you to choose between silent, turbo, and performance. And even at turbo, it's surprisingly quiet. It's not a common annoying fan sound, it's just an airflow sound, not a real FAN sound. I absolutely LOVE that there's an LED for hard drive activity. That is something I got used to back in the 80's with the old IBM PC's before computers started showing up in people's homes. And it's one thing I miss on hardware the last decade or more. For gamers, there is the "home" bump on the W key to let you find it without looking. Great for keyboard/mouse gamers. I do wish gaming systems would add an IR component to the webcam though for Windows Hello... Finally got through all the updates, and logged in to the desktop. And the screen is outstanding. Much wider viewing angle compared to my Alienware screen. I played a few movies and some music, to compare the speakers to my Alienware - much better bass response on the ROG laptop, not nearly as tinny. Can't wait to hear how that comes across in Destiny or Horizon Zero Dawn. The Asus software found some updates, and updated the BIOS as well. I had seen in the ROG Strix Facebook groups that some people had it appear to brick when they did this, so I was a bit nervous, although I had seen there were steps to try to get it to continue even after it hung. But it processed fine, no issues. I didn't have to mess around with a Function key lock to get alt+F4 to work, unlike most systems lately. Yippee. I installed my Oculus Rift software and got everything set, then installed Steam and my games. After I'm done testing I'll put in another 1TB drive in here to help with space issues, but for now the 2 TB drive is sufficient. I had to replace the Wi-Fi card in the Alienware when I first got it, the network performance was so horrible. I'm glad to see this ROG works rock solid with my Wifi6. Got the Oculus software installed for my Rift S, set up went fine. Oddly enough, when I reopoened the Oculus software, I see it shows that my computer doesn't meet the updated minimum specifications. Which I find to be hilarious considering the specs on this system. But everything I did ran smooth. My Alienware had issues even in the default room where you launch things from. The GAMES on the Alienware ran fine, but the room with the fireplace, it just couldn't handle for some reason. So far, this ROG has handled everything I tried in VR. Steam installs and Vortex mod went fine. The first thing I tried then was Horizon Zero Dawn. And it was flawless. On my Alienware I'd get anywhere from 140 to 165 FPS. On the ROG, I'm bouncing between 200 and 220, with an occasional drop down to 175 or 180. This is at the highest quality settings. Then I did the same thing with Destiny 2. This had a much bigger difference, I'm guessing Zero Dawn isn't as complex so it was easier on the less powerful Alienware. But Destiny 2, the Alienware gave me 95 or so at the highest, clipping down to 50 in the intensely graphic areas. On the ROG, I saw 136 as the LOWEST number I saw on highest quality, and I averaged 165 to 170 during gameplay in the same spot that the Alienware ran at 80 on average. And both of these comparisons are with the Alienware running at its native 1920x1080, and the ROG running at the native QHD 2560x1600 resolution. The difference went up even more for Destiny when I changed the ROG to 1920x1080, reaching 200 and more usually. USB ports, the A and C, all work well, no issues. I like to test with my USB SSD drives, and file copy speeds were all fast, just where they should be. The chassis is solid, there's little flex when picking it up by one of the front corners, or when pressing down hard around the keyboard and edges and corners of the base. My Alienware makes a creaking sound when I rest my left palm on the front corner, which was just one of those annoyances you deal with, but no such issues here. But the trackpad apparently sits a bit loose. I prefer to lightly tap it for use, not actually clicking the button built inside of it, since that generally is less noisy when I'm working. But this one, that looseness means it makes a loud noise then when I do that, since it's floating a bit and then you get the plastic on plastic knocking sound. But it won't impact me at all for gaming as I'll be using either my Logitech gaming mouse or an Xbox controller. So I can live with that small annoyance. I'll include my 3DMark results here as well, both photos and the text details here. Time Spy Score was 17,843, which put this better than 89% of their total results. Fire Strike score was 31,269, better than 95% of their total results. Night Raid score was 78,718, which was better than 97% of their total results. Not bad at all for a laptop with a 4080 GPU. I wished I could've grabbed a system with the 4090 but those were all unavailable, so I ended up with this 4080 based system. Battery - If you're buying this laptop, you clearly aren't looking for an all day laptop. I've been playing around with it on battery and I've still got things to learn apparently. Despite everything showing the Nvidia 4080 as the active GPU, Armoury Crate showing it in Ultimate GPU mode, and all settings on Horizon Zero Dawn set to ultimate and best quality, I only get about 34 or 35 FPS when I have this on battery. So somewhere there's some kind of throttling happening on battery only. Plugged in I get over 200 FPS, on battery, low 30's. I'm going to assume there's still tricks I have to learn. But right now, it's only got 65% of the battery left already, and it tells me that will give me anywhere from 37 minutes to an hour and 17 minutes, depending on what is happening in the background. No programs running but a file explorer and this text file in notepad. So for simple things when I just need to get some work done, I could run this unplugged for a bit and be fine. I'm sure someone can really get down into the tiny details and disable a lot of things to make it last more, but for me, this is a gaming laptop. I'm not going to work hard to make the battery last in a low power mode, I'm going to have this puppy plugged in and screaming at the top of its lungs. I've been working with computers since the early 80's, and have had probably 30 or more PC's and 25 personal laptops up to this point. This laptop is absolutely my favorite computer I've ever owned. It's just an absolute thing of beauty in just about every respect. I don't mind the lack of LED on the back of the monitor - I'm not a big fan of the garish LEDs on everything, and I can't see back there anyway when I'm using it. I like when the companies focus on the things that really MATTER and not the eye candy. And this one delivers everywhere I need a gaming laptop to deliver. From the excellent cooling setup and the much quieter fans, to the quality of the display and the speed of the graphics and CPU - it's simply stunning in every respect. The surface on the top around the keyboard is an absolute fingerprint magnet, unfortunately, but I can live with that.

It’s a very good gaming laptop in my opinion def worth it.

Not worth the price. I bought yet my 2nd laptop from asus and it was a disaster. The bios is not letting laptop to get fully turned on without lag. Multiple times on powering laptop on it crashed and returned to restarting and crashed again. Defects are among all of asus laptops which I recommend not to take as a joke.

My current laptop was bordering a little over 3 years old. It's been a great system and supplemented my high-end desktop (RTX 4090) really well, when I wanted to be elsewhere in the house. Given the amount of time I've had it, I felt that since it was my first laptop and I've put it to good use, I was due for an upgrade! Enter the new 2024 Asus Rog STRIX G18 (18"). My other laptop was a 15" (1080p), so I wanted to take this opportunity to increase the screen size, as some games I play, I just much prefer a bit higher resolution and screen size. Plus, getting older stinks, what with the eyesight changes, haha. Well, let me say that the size of this thing does NOT disappoint! It's definitely bigger than I expected it to be, but not "too big", if that makes snese? I was really torn between this model and the Zephyrus G16 one, but I chose the Strix because of the bigger screen size, improved cooling and higher power output due to the design of the system - given that I don't really need the portability. It never leaves the house, only from room to room, periodically. I usually keep my laptop setup on the kitchen table and that still works well with this system. As for hardware, this thing is loaded. This system has an RTX 4080, 14th gen i9-14900HX, 32GB RAM at 5600Mhz, 2560x1600 18" IPS Display, 2 TB Primary SSD (Wow, it's even a Western Digital drive!), WiFi 6E, and Windows 11. Inside the box is literaly JUST the laptop and power brick - nothing fancy and pretty basic - although I do love the box itself and the artwork, which was a nice touch. It weighs areound 6.5 lb, which is pretty hefty, but it doesn't feel as bad as it sounds. I also did flip it over and install a Western Digital 2TB SN850x NVME SSD. This process went great and it was immediately recognized and detected in Windows 11 Disk Management. Once I set it up there, it's been great. This is where I install all of my Steam games and such. Other Launchers, such as Battle.net, Epic Games, etc, I just install those games to my main SSD (C: Drive), since it's also a 2TB. This allows me to split up my games in an organized manner and gives Steam it's own drive, since that's where I own and play most of my games. Epic and Battle.net are usually only 2-3 games each, so not a big deal, there. The only issue I had when installing the drive was after removing all of the screws (except the bottom right one, which remains attached), it was very tough to get the panel to pop off - I had to take one of my solid metal credit cards and wedge it in between (after watching some YouTube how-to's) and angle it in such a way that it popped out and just had to go all the way around like that. So, it's secure, for sure! Zero issues gettting it popped back on, either. Not mentioned above with the specs I listed are the two biggest advertised "features", which are a bit of a letdown to me: The "Crystal Clear Audio" and the 720p Camera. I'd have loved to seen better speakers and camera, but I guess that's what the upcharge of the Strix SCAR model is for. To hit on the lows first (since every other feature of this system is OUTSTANDING), the speakers do seem "Ok", but nothing special and I even prefer my other laptop speakers over these. It just struggles a bit in the mids and highs and sounds a bit "tinny" at the higher volumes. As for the camera, even if it is 720P, having Windows Hello face recognition support would have been great...but it doesn't even offer that. Video is just "OK". Nothing to write home about, really - not an issue for me as this is strictly a gaming system and I'll probably never use it. Also, I wish there were a privacy slider for it. As for the screen, the 18" format in the laptop is really nice. It is an IPS panel with a resolution of 2560x1600 and a 240hz refresh rate. There is the usual "IPS Glow" backlight bleed, which I didn't expect, as Asus advertises it as a super high quality "Nebula Display". I'm honestly not seeing what makes this display stand out from any others, to be honest, as it seems farily standard for an IPS display. But, the colors are great, seem pretty accurate and the overall image quality is pretty crisp and clear. I do like the slim borders areound the edges, as well. Since this supports G-Sync and goes up to 240hz, you'll definitely want to ensure you're taking full advantage of this feature, as it makes all the difference in the world for me. So, in order to set up G-Sync properly: You right-click on the desktop, click "show more options" and select "Nvidia Control Panel", from there. Then, you go to "Set up G-SYNC". Within that panel, you'll select "Enable G-SYNC, G-SYNC Compatible" and ensure the radio button beside "Enable for Full Screen Mode" is selected. Once done, you'll then go over to "Manage 3D Settings". From here, you'll want to ensure "Vertical Sync" is "On", "Monitor Technology" is "G-SYNC" and "Low Latency Mode" is set to Ultra (Nvidia just released a driver update a month or two ago that now eneables that for DX12 games!). Also, make sure V-Sync is disabled on the game-by-game level, since it's already on at the system level. Overall, I'd give the screen a 4 out of 5 stars. It would be a 5 all the way, if there were perhaps less backlight bleed (which is all located in the corners, but you can only really see it on black screens) and an obvious difference between this and any other similar screen, given Asus calls it thier "Nebula Display". For all the other hardware, everything is excellent! I've had zero issues, except one thing, which I will touch on last. Performance is golden. Games I've tested so far have been Baldurs Gate 3, Last Epoch, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Diablo IV and of course, Vampire Survivors and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivors. Now, you may be asking..."why the last two"? Well, yeah, these games obviously run at the full 240 FPS and are not hardware intensive. But I do know that with these type of games, if there are any sort of micro-stutters, tearing or any other graphical/performance issues, you'd be able to tell with these games more easily Vs. others. Both Survivor gamees performed admirably with zero hitching, micro-stutters or other graphical anomalies. Here's how some of the games I've tested so far fare, as far as performance goes: Baldur's Gate 3: Aabsolutely fluid at max graphical settings and I'm getting roughtly 100-110 FPS, on average - 90 or so at the absolute lowest, when a lot is going on. This is with Quality set to Ultra and DLAA scaling. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3: Gets around 120 on average in Multiplayer with graphics set to "Extreme", with DLSS Frane Gen "On" and Upscaling set to "DLAA" mode. As CoD is currently the most demanding game I've tested, my GPU temps were getting around 85 C. In an effort to lower this, I purchased a pair of rear "feet" off Amazon to prop up the back of the system a bit (by about 1" or a hair over). Since then, my average GPU temps are now around 81-82 C. Diablo IV: With Graphical settings at Ultra, Frame Generation "On" and Resolution Scaling for "NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution" set to DLAA, I'm getting an average of 145-150 FPS, with it dipping down to 120-125..ish in hectic battle moments. Last Epoch: Around 100-110 FPS with everything maxed out. Runs great, no issues other than the normal "loading" microstutter, which I've gotten across all 3 systems I've played it on (it's the game, not the sytem). Similar for Path of Exile, as well, but just higher FPS and no micro-stutter. So, gaming on this rig is supurb and I expect it to be able to run most everything on max settings for the next 2-3 years, at least (as this was the case with my previous laptop and it was a 3070). I give performance and thermals (after adding the little feet on the rear) a solid 5 out of 5. I definitely do receommend propping the back up by an inch or so, as to accomodate a bit better airflow. I also want to get Helldivers II (once they allow cross-progression) and Dragons Dogma II to try out on this rig, in the future! Now, on to the one "major issue" I had, that I mentioned earlier. Out of the box, the right side of my front RGB Light Strip was flickering. Only that side. My initial thought was it was hardware related, as it acted more like a short or something. I updated Armory Crate fully over the course of time that I've had and tested this system and it never corrected it. I've had times where the light bar AND keyboard goes out completely and I have to shut it down, reboot, unplug and plug back in the power cable multiple times, etc, just to get it back to working. Thankfully, Asus has been awesome and are working on getting me a replacement (agreeing that it's a hardware issue), but it'll take a week or two. Otherwise, the system fucntions without flaw. One other thing I wanted to mention is Armory Crate. I've seen so many folks say they hated it and it has so many issues, but I've personally never really had any problems. Granted, I've not used it to make crazy changes and customizations or anything, so for me, it just "works". Also, MyAsus has a "Battery Saver" feature that keeps the charge topped off at 80% instead of 100%, as to not degrade the battery so quickly. Don't worry, though - as the charge indicator light still remains white, showing "fully charged" at 80% with this feature enabled. Overall, I'd give this system a 4.5 out of 5. However, since we can only do whole star reviews here, I'm just gonna give it a 5! I also love the fact that I can add an additional warranty through MyAsus to the system that also includes accidental damage for a number of years and it's not too pricey! Once I get my replacement, I actually plan on plunking down the money for the additional peace of mind!

The Asus ROG Strix 18" sure deserves serious consideration for gaming and design, and well overall use if you want to show off a big powerful laptop. One of the most noticeable things is that it comes with an 18" screen, big enough to not require an external monitor, and better yet, capable of a 240Hz refresh rate. With its RTX 4080 GPU and other physical characteristics, I think it is one of the most powerful laptops out there. In addition, it comes with a full keyboard, with a numeric pad, which was one of the reasons I chose it. The sound is crisp and clear if you choose to use its speakers. It is a little heavy, but given its screen size and specs, it is not an obstacle for choosing it. Almost all in this machine merits a thumbs up. This is my first Asus ROG gaming laptop, and I am very happy with it. I have other gaming laptops from other manufacturers and an Asus ROG gaming PC machine, and this machine has been an awesome upgrade as it outperforms them all (well this is expected as it has newer and more powerful hardware). I had mixed feelings about giving this a 4 or a 5 rating, but from an overall view of the device capabilities and experience with it so far, I chose the latter. - Pros: big 18" screen size, powerful i9 CPU, new RTX 4080 GPU, high RAM 32GB, plenty of storage 2TB, high refresh rate 240Hz, numeric pad. - Cons: numeric keyboard a little small. >> Setup Initial basic setup was about half an hour. After signing on the computer with my Microsoft account, there were lots of updates applied, both for Windows and Asus apps, as well as BIOS updates, with multiple restarts. So, all in all it took over an hour to get the laptop with all the updates, and this time doesn’t include what was needed for installing Games and Video apps. A little surprise here since I thought setup would be faster. Some notes: - I chose to set up Windows as a new machine. I have an Asus gaming PC and other gaming laptops, from which I could have imported a lot of the stuff, but I preferred to have a clean setup. - Easy Asus registration in the setup process. I usually don’t register my products, but in this case, there was just a single form with name, email and phone. - The laptop comes with a 3-month XBox ultimate license. I already have one 12-month pass, which I can extend with this 3-month pass. - It looks like the machine already came with Windows 11 23H2 (or I didn't notice it getting updated). >> Gaming I had a “small” hiccup the first time I tried to play games on this laptop. After installing Xbox and applying any pending updates, I installed the Forza series (Motorsport and Horizon) to play. I started Forza Horizon and the laptop stopped responding all together. The fan went up very high and the machine got really hot. It became unresponsive, with the keyboard flashing red on a black screen. I had to manually turn off the laptop (crossing fingers that nothing got ruined). I decided to do a quick diagnostic on the hardware using the BIOS setup diagnostics utilities (Hint: press Esc to get into the BIOS). I ran all the Asus system diagnostics tests and besides the storage test one, that was taking over the half hour estimated time and I had to cancel, all tests passed. I tried the cancelled storage test once more, and this time it took a couple of seconds to finish, well this was very odd. Well, after that initial experience, so far, the machine has been performing great with the couple of games and design apps I’ve tried so far. >> Designing Given that Gaming Laptops are also used for designers and architects, and especially this one that has a big screen that appeals to graphics designers, I decided to give a shot at Lumion Software and see how this machine performed rendering different videos. It does its job extraordinarily well. The machine still is responsive while the GPU is cracking at the video generation, so this is great, as it allows multitasking with multiple monitors. >> Performance This machine is awesome and seems to perform at the highest level, but hard numbers are needed to have a more accurate view of this machine’s performance. Images attached show the different results in PCMark10 and 3DMark for reference. >> Hardware Overall, the machine feels well built. The 18” screen size with 60Hz and 240Hz settings is perfect for playing games and creating and consuming media. In terms of connectivity/ports, it comes with a HDMI and USB-A and USB C ports, plus a network interface for added network speed and reliability. I've used the USB-C port with a high refresh rate external monitor and the signal coming out of the USB-C port could be tuned at 60Hz or 120Hz, not 240Hz but not bad at all. A special section needs to be devoted to the keyboard. One of the reasons I chose this machine was that it featured a numeric pad, which is usually lacking in most laptops. I've seen it available in laptops with big screen sizes (as this one is), though. I assume most people (including me) will have this machine connected to an external full-size keyboard and mouse, a good chunk of time. But in cases where none of the former are not available, having the numeric keyboard makes a huge difference. For example, for entering numbers, assigning shortcuts for your games, and using the Alt+code for special characters. I frequently use the Alt+code feature to write especial characters in Spanish, and it is a problem if there is no numeric pad. I'd bet it'd be something similar for people writing in other languages. Of course some would say, why not change the keyboard layout, well I am not fond of that as I want when I press a key to clearly see what key it is. The only critique to the keyboard is the size of the keys, they are small for the main panel and very small for the numeric pad. I think people with fat fingers might have issues typing. >> Random Notes - I only had one perceivable freeze while playing Forza Horizon 5, it was clear that the video froze for perhaps a second or so, but it was clearly noticeable. Hopefully nothing will go wrong in the coming future. - Aesthetically, the laptop overall feels a little "rough" when turned off, just the feeling of the case and overall appearance. Once it comes to life, then it changes into this beautiful machine. - One thing that I still need to replicate is that after some usage time the laptop got really sluggish with some of the Asus software reporting errors/warnings in the Event Windows System. Overall the machine was very slow at responding, opening new apps, typing, clicking the mouse, etc. Task Manager didn’t report any resource being consumed highly. After rebooting, the machine was up and running smoothly again. I wonder what it might be, the only thing that comes to mind is that the machine was up for a long time and in that period o

They send me a secondhand laptop and still have someone account in it. Its not right with the prices of $2400. They give me secondhand laptop. And when it come. Its dirty and the label have been opened. I got scammed for sure.

I bought the open box "Excellent condition". It is supposed to be like new in original condition in original packaging with accessories. It arrived in a plain box with hardly any packaging with a power supply without a power cable. Needless to say, it was damaged. I took it to the store and was told they could not replace it, only refund. Waste of time

I’ve been wanting to try out one of the bigger 18” screened laptops and happen to get the chance to try out the new Ausu ROG Stix G18. Unboxing and First Impression; The laptop came in a heavily logoed box, which true to gaming fashion, was made to sit on one of the short ends and had the carry handle on the short side, sort of making it look like an ammo crate “or gas can”. The end flips down so you can slide the inner tray out holding the laptop and included power supply, power cord, and some literature, that’s it. The laptop itself is large, no kidding, it’s big, larger than our Alienware X17 by a good bit, but it actually weighs a good bit less. The outer casing is a nice matte finish with a thin “Republic of Gamers” strip and ROG logo very subtly placed on the LCD lid. The bottom is very heavily textured with some ROG references and 5 heavy duty rubber feet and 1 hard plastic one in the middle toward the front edge. There are a lot of ventilations slots here too allowing a lot of airflow through the bottom. Around the edges there’s nothing but ventilation on the back, the front has a LED light strip, on the right side there are two USB A ports, and on the left there’s a power port, a RJ45 port, a full-sized HDMI port, a Thunderbolt 4 port, a USB C port and a headphone jack. The keyboard is a full sized keyboard typical of all the Asus laptops I’ve used lately, with the numeric pad and FN keys being scaled down. The keyboard itself is easy enough to type on and has a nice bit of travel with just the right amount of resistance. I can pretty much type on anything so I’m not hugely picky about how the keyboard feels but I can tell you the switches aren’t mechanical as compared to my desktops keyboard. The trackpad is huge as trackpads go, it’s very sensitive and is very easy to use although the button clicks may be a little stiff for my taste, I’ll be using a wireless gaming mouse anyway. Setting up: After unpacking everything and plugging in the power supply to let the device charge it was time to power up and get things set up. There’s the usual Windows first time setup then getting the Asus software setup we immediately had windows do a update check and yep there were a lot of updates so we let that run. We went into the update software in the Armory Crate software and there were additional updates to all the ASUS preinstalled software so we let it run. Finally after getting all the updates finished, it was time to get to testing this out. Using: Wow this G18 is a beast, I installed a few games to try out like Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher 3, The Outer Worlds, and Borderlands 3, all of these are pretty taxing on any system. First was Cyberpunk 2077 with all the recent updates installed, the resolution was set on 2560X1600 with Ray Tracing on “Ultra”, DLSS to “Super” and the laptop performance mode set to “Turbo”, during testing and using the built-in benchmarking utility in CP we were getting 68fps average, not bad at all and fully playable, the image looked outstanding. We did try out changing the resolution down to 1080 but that only upped the framerate to 74 and the image wasn’t as clear so we set it back to 1600. Next was Borderlands 3, set to 2560X1600, all graphic settings set to “Ultra” and in the “Floodmoor Basin” we averaged 85-107 fps, and again the image just looked outstanding with no tearing during fast fight scenes. Next up was The Witcher 3, also set to 1600 resolution, with R/T set to “Ultra”, DLSS set to “Ultra”, and all graphics settings set to “Ultra”, almost all scenes and areas averaged 96-117fps, just outstanding and made the game look so good. Last game tested was “The Outer Worlds”, this one doesn’t have R/T but all the graphic options were set to “Ultra” and the resolution on 1600 we averaged 165fps, this is a game that would probably benefit from R/T as the scenery would look so much better “already looks great though”. So this G18 can definitely handle any game thrown at it and we’ll be playing plenty on it now. The “Nebula” display is just simply amazing, no it’s not OLED but it is so clear with very very wide viewing angles, it also doesn’t have “this one doesn’t” have any light bleed at all and a black background looks completely smooth. Blacks are nice and black, “not OLED black” but very close and the refresh rate is high enough you won’t see any flickering or tearing during gaming. The screen also gets very bright and we had no issue playing/using in a brightly lit room at all. The 16:10 aspect ratio we haven’t seen in a long time and it makes the screen taller “squarer” which leaves plenty of room so you aren’t scrolling nearly as much as the usual 16:9, although if you are watching a movie, you’ll have larger bands at the top and bottom of the image but this is a 18” screen and there’s plenty of room and image size anyway. We also benchmarked this comparing it to other systems and the new i9 14900HX CPU simply blew everything away, this is one fast processor that has 24 cores, giving a total of 32 threads, simply amazing that there are so many cores. Geekbench 5 had the CPU registering 1970 for the single core and 19871 for multicore, this beats everything we have and have tested lately. The GPU averaged 175555 in GB 5 also, it’s not as fast as our desktop system with a 4080OC but that one is overclocked and the G18 was not for testing but it’s close enough to hold it’s own, especially for a laptop. We also ran Cinebench 2024, the “Single Core” scores completely blew away everything in their list with a score of 120, with the “Multi Core” score coming in at 1181 giving it 4th place overall against some very high end non laptop CPUs, the C/B GPU score was 18578 besting everything shown in their comparisons in C/B also. We also benchmarked the SSD with Crystal Disk Mark and the WD Black drive is one fast drive easily testing in at over 5k MB/s read and just under 5k MB/s write. Noise and heat wise: While gaming I set our Extech professional DB meter directly in the middle of the keyboard, with the fans running very hard they only registered 58.3db, which for a laptop this is very quiet and we could easily hear our game on the built-in speakers “although we’d be gaming with headphones most of the time anyway”. Heat buildup was never an issue, and after an hour of gaming / benchmarking the hottest spot was just above the keyboard below the screen @ 119F, and the WASD keys averaged 85.3F, which is pretty cool as far as gaming laptops go, and we both noticed there’s a noticeable breeze being pulled through the keyboard helping to keep that keyboard cool and you can see it in the thermal image I attached, and can even see where my wrist was sitting on the keyboard warming up that spot. The underside definitely gets warm too at 118F and I wouldn’t want to be setting that on my lap anyway as you really need to keep those vents clear. The backside vent was the hottest hitting 133F, this shows a lot of heat is being exhausted out the back. Upgradeability; I did take the bottom off the laptop to see just what could be upgraded and to access for service and cleaning. After removing all the screws, “take the bottom right one out last as it is not completely removeable and is used to pop the bottom up away from the frame so you can get a spudger in there to release the rest of the clips. Once off everything is accessible, memory, SSD drives, wireless adapter, battery. The memory slots “2 of them” are populated but on this model 32gb should be enough for anyone. There’s also an empty M.2 slot for adding a second drive if you want more storage space. Other than that, you’ll be able to access the wireless adapter just in case that needs replacing and same for the battery, although you’ll have to remove the small middle fan just to get to the power connector for it. Conclusion; This is one beast of a gaming machine, it’s huge and fast handling everything we threw at it with ease. And if you are wanting a dedicated gaming laptop with a huge but beautiful screen this G18 should be put high on your shopping list. It’s not perfect but it’s really close. The things we wish Asus had included was some sort of Biometric login with either a fingerprint reader or Hello compatible camera, my Alienware has the IR camera and it’s something we’d miss. I added a small USB fingerprint reader and have it installed on the right side and it’s not in the way of the mouse. I also wish they would have added a SD card reader and this is one of the first laptops I’ve had that doesn’t have one, sort of an odd design choice. The very small FN keys are ok, but there’s plenty of room to make them full size so they are easier to see and the keypad is sort of cramped since it doesn’t use full sized keys either, should have made those full sized also. The only other issue we are having is getting the RGB per key lighting to work, as the Aura Creator software sees the laptop but states that it’s not currently supported and we are working with tech support trying to get this issue resolved “and should have worked out of the box anyway”, so if the per key lighting is important to you “it is to us” then you may want to check that this issue has been resolved. So we are deducting 1 star mainly for the lack of a SD card reader, any type of biometric security feature, and the smaller FN/Keypad keys, the RGB lighting should be able to be fixed and is totally aesthetic so not taking away because of that.

It's been many years now that you've seen ads claiming a laptop to be a replacement for a gaming desktop. Well, this may be the one that convinces you to set aside your current gaming hardware. First off, it's just the sheer gaming real estate that you're getting. When I opened the lid for the first time, something just struck me as being "different." The reason for this is the decision Asus made to change the standard aspect ratio. The majority of laptops are in a 16:9 format, this ROG presents a 16:10 ratio, giving it a more squarish appearance. Just wanted to point that out up front, as you may have a preference dependent upon your usage. In my case, when not gaming, I do a lot of side by side screen splits with different browsers, I found this afforded me the ability to have to do less scrolling as it presents more of each page lengthwise. The downside of this would be if you're streaming, you'll be getting a slightly larger letterbox on the top and bottom of your screen. But you're dealing with an eighteen inch screen, so your actual picture still has more screen space than a standard 17". In my case, this is a replacement for my Alienware M17, I can say that I'll never want to go back to the old format. Your opinion/needs may vary, but that's why I wanted to highlight this feature which you might not immediately pick out when browsing through multiple ads. While unboxing, the first thing to mention is the box itself. It's in a slideout format, which is handy in the event you do want to transport the unit. Easy to use; compact, not much bigger than the unit itself, and has a carrying handle. Good design. As for the setup, you have of course the standard Windows updates; the Asus updates took some bit of time consisting of their Armoury crate, and it also required a Bios update. I'm always apprehensive when doing a Bios update for fear of bricking a unit, after the download and install procedure was done it took some minutes staring at a blank screen; far longer than I've ever experienced previously before it rebooted; which had me a bit nervous, but it finally did start up without a hiccup. Whew! The ROG has a nice lighting strip along the front of it, and the keyboard is nicely lighted, all of this had a myriad of different effects; via the Armoury Crate & Asus Aura. There is a choice to hand this over to Windows Dynamic Lighting; however I'll need to do some research as to how all this integrates. For the moment I set the keyboard backlight to my preferred color & level, I'll do a deep dive when I get the time. There is no lid lighting ala the alien had, but that's ok. Another feature I immediately noticed are the lid hinges. Unlike other laptops I've owned, they are very robust, as is the screen frame itself. This is a very weighty and solid unit; there is no flex when raising & lowering the lid, it has a very reassuring feel. Also reassuring is the abundance of ventilation ports. Aside from the two USB ports on each side there is the RJ45 and power input. There is no card input. As a result, the entire back, bottom, and most of the sides are dedicated to making available space for this puppy to breathe, which is what you want in a power laptop. The charger itself is sizable, and in the time I've been using it, did not appear to become unreasonably warm. There was an option in the settings to only charge the battery to 80% to increase its lifespan, I enabled this as I've previously had laptops where the lithium battery started to expand; it's one less thing to worry about. If there's something to pick at, I would've preferred the keyboard to be slightly larger given the space available; however, the trackpad is oversized, certainly the largest I've ever seen. As for performance, the specs on this unit speak for themselves - it's just a powerhouse. While I don't do first person shooters that require high frame rates; my personal gaming preference is for Civilization 6, which after loading my Steam account, I raised all the lighting and shading effects to their upper levels. I can say that when I've gone late game with an expansive world, my M17 would start sounding like it had emphysema; the ROG took it all in stride. All in all, Asus has put together a great package that's hard to beat in its class. Very well built, and should provide me with many years of service.