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The Asus ROG Strix GL753VD is a bit of a conundrum. It’s a well-built laptop with attractive looks (as long as you like the ‘gamer’ vibe), good connectivity, surprisingly punchy speakers, an overall reasonable IPS screen with great brightness and viewing angles, and a visually outstanding RGB keyboard that’s pretty enjoyable to use too.
Most of the specs are nicely balanced here for the price, with a quad-core Core i5 backed by 12GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD/1TB HDD combo providing a solid base for most tasks, whether they’re related to productivity or entertainment.
However, given the Republic Of Gamers brand and Asus’ own tagline for the Strix GL753VD as providing “gaming without limits”, the choice of an Nvidia GTX 1050 graphics card is somewhat regrettable. Unless you’re the type of gamer who limits themselves to ‘casual’ and undemanding titles like Fifa 17, World of Warcraft or Minecraft, this chip just isn’t going to give you playable frame rates at high detail settings. And that goes double when you’re trying to run games at the screen’s native 1920 x 1080 resolution.
On top of this, the GTX 1050 is not classified by Nvidia as VR Ready, so if virtual reality is something you have an interest in or might want to try later, do yourself a favour and buy a laptop with a more powerful discrete graphics card. In fact, if you’re willing to settle for a TN-type display, it’s pretty easy to find a similarly specced laptop with a GTX 1060 for only a little more money. As regular KitGuru readers will already know Nvidia's GTX 1060 is very capable at 1080p.
Incidentally, the same restrictions apply to HDR, which Asus’ GL753VD cannot fully support due to its video outputs. Mind you, given the messy state of HDR support on PC and the dearth of content that’s been properly mastered to work on it, that’s currently not a significant disadvantage.
So who is the ROG Strix GL753VD good for? Aside from serving the more casual crowd who prefer looks and brand over performance, this ROG’s combination of GTX 1050 CPU with a large and bright IPS screen does at least make for a nice productivity machine. Unfortunately, the screen is not quite accurate enough that we could recommend this laptop for any kind of colour-critical work.
Keeping in mind the average battery life and audible cooling when under load, we have to conclude that the GL753VD is a jack of all trades but master of none. Yet at the same time, if its balance of features and performance appeals despite the limitations, you are getting a decent package for the money.
The Strix GL753VD as reviewed is available from LaptopsDirect for £950 here.
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Pros:
- Nice design.
- Visually arresting RGB-backlit keyboard.
- Pleasant typing and touchpad experience.
- Overall decent IPS screen with good viewing angles and brightness.
- Generous connectivity for its class.
Cons:
- GTX 1050 cannot run demanding games at close to native resolution.
- GTX 1050 is not VR Ready.
- Screen is not very colour accurate out of box.
- Very noticeable backlight bleed from screen in one corner.
- Average at best battery life.
KitGuru says: Its bright IPS screen and beautiful RGB keyboard rescue this ROG laptop from mediocrity. Not what we expect at all from the Republic Of Gamers brand.
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