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Asus ROG Strix GL753VD Packaging & Accessories
The Asus GL753VD comes in a fairly plain box, where its most significant accessory is the slim yet rather large power brick. While it’s always nice to see a selection of bundled extras, gamers may already have many of these and, on a value-oriented product, it makes sense to keep unnecessary trimmings to a minimum.
Asus ROG Strix GL753VD Design
As befits an ROG product, there’s a distinctly ‘gamer’ vibe to the GL753VD. It has a brushed black metal lid with a subtle angular design and red LED insets flanking the ROG logo. While we appreciate that red is ROG’s signature colour, it would have been nice to be able to change the colour, especially to match the flexible RGB keyboard and any gaming peripherals you might be attaching.
Incidentally proving that PC gamer preferences (at least in the minds of gaming laptop designers) are remarkably similar, with its lid closed the ROG Strix GL753VD bears a striking resemblance to some of rival brand MSI’s portable gaming machines, such as the MSI GT80 Titan.
The GL753VD is relatively slim for a dedicated gaming laptop with optical drive, but given the modest specifications, a more Ultrabook-like profile wouldn’t have been beyond the realm of possibility – especially since Nvidia’s Max-Q initiative, as found on Asus’ own ROG GX501VI Zephyrus, looks like it may make thin and stylish gaming laptops the norm at the high end.
Opening the GL753VD up reveals a brushed metal-look interior with no metal in sight. Again subtle angles highlight the keyboard area, while a slightly recessed touchpad is demarcated in red. Though the touchpad doesn’t feature any type of lighting the keyboard more than makes up for this, as Asus’ ROG Aura Core utility allows you to light it up like a Christmas tree with an impressive variety of colours, patterns and zones – but we’ll get to that in the keyboard section.
The screen’s bezel is a lightly textured matt plastic, meaning no distracting reflections. Thankfully this bezel and the keyboard surround are fairly good at resisting fingerprints, though alas the same can’t be said for the lid or touchpad. Finally the base is also matt black plastic but livened up by bright red angular feet, which makes for a playful touch on this rarely-seen area.
Asus ROG Strix GL753VD Build
Build quality is quite decent. The plastics used generally feel solid, and though there’s some flex on the lid and on a few areas around the keyboard, it’s not accompanied by the nasty creaking that can mar cheaper chassis. Neither is opening the laptop up, which is a smooth process that can be achieved with one finger if so desired.
Not unexpectedly, the only area of minor concern is around the tray-loading optical drive, where a strong grip can meet some significant give. To be fair to Asus though, this tends to be a weak point for most laptops with optical drives in non-metal chassis.
Unscrewing the GL753VD’s bottom panel – it has 10 cross-head screws holding it together – gives access to most upgradeable components, including the optical drive, hard drive, and RAM.
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