I bought the now broken MSI laptop on Amazon and this ASUS model came from there too. The hefty price tag was pretty consistent across the board, but the one for sale on Amazon was the only one I found with Windows 10 PRO installed instead of the standard Windows Home edition. That was an important consideration for me because of the beta testing I do on Windows 11 PRO. I will be getting the upgrade from Win 10 to Win 11 on the ASUS whenever Microsoft gets around to it and I did not want the Home edition for beta testing. Plus, I'd have to pay for an upgrade.
The model is GX701LWS and is a fairly standard configuration no matter where they sell these machines. It's classified as a gaming notebook with the nVidia RTX2070 video card installed. Some very similar systems come with the RTX2060 instead. One of the selling points for this video card is that it has a refresh rate capability of 300Hz. That's no advantage when you are looking at photographs on Brainformation, but when you are playing an animated game with a lot of detailed graphics, the smoothness at that refresh rate is absolutely startling. Non gamers can get that same FPS when looking at high resolution streaming off YouTube and other places. It's truly remarkable what that video card can do. And, of course, it has the regular Intel graphics adapter built into the motherboard. You may recall me complaining about Linux not being able to keep up with the Optimus software that switches between these two graphics engines. Some distros fixed that, but there are laggards. My observation is that a lot of today's gaming machines have two adapters and use only the one required for the software being run.
ASUS has a magnificent cooling scheme that no doubt is needed when running that high refresh rate at overclocked speeds. The system can automatically adjust the fan speed, but there is an ASUS control panel wherein you can fine tune just about every component.
The area between the keyboard and the monitor is huge; larger than the keyboard footprint. It's a meshed metal above the nVidia card and system fans. You would expect something like that from a hot board, but the ventilation does not end there.
You might have to look close to see what is going on in this side view. The bottom housing cover is resting on the desktop, but the computer chasis is elevated up by that hinged cam. Thus when the monitor panel is upright an open air gap is created underneath the graphics card. Lower the monitor to the shut position and the gap closes. This genius design was never described in the literature, but then I was a bit hasty when I did the search. In any case I never saw a notebook with this kind of cooling system. We have some high end gaming potential here, obviously.
Having said all the above, I must also report that all is not good in River City, or O'Fallon.
You might think it's a grand idea for the touch pad to be off to the side as it is. And, it is a great idea. Unlike many laptops, typing is a lot easier given the keys are at the edge of the top where they should be. That touch pad can be converted into a number pad by pressing one of those buttons along it's top. I REALLY like the idea that the number pad has multiple functions.
The I/O ports are as follows:
- HDMI
USB 3.2 Gen 2 port
USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C®/DisplayPort combo port
Headphone/Headset/Microphone jack
USB 3.2 Gen 1 port
USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C®/Thunderbolt 3/DisplayPort/Power Delivery combo port
and, the usual DC input port
Also missing is an optical drive. That is just as well give that USB flash drivers have more or less replaced them.
This is obviously a high performance machine that came to be the norm over the last five years since I built my last computer. I doubt that I will do much gaming on it, but I will be beta testing Windows 11 at max speed, whenever they give it to me. As spiffy as this machine is, it's truly mid tier compared to what else is available. I consider myself lucky to be able to buy this netbook at the MSRP. Just about all the shops I looked into have them on back order. Apparently there is a boatload of them in San Francisco Bay, but nobody knows when those boats will be unloaded.
Oh, and by the way, the silly mind numbing games that caused me to buy this machine in the first place ... work very well. Thank you.