Asus’ new gaming laptop packs a ton of power and a slick screen

Asus has unleashed a new gaming notebook which boasts a 120Hz display that benefits from G-Sync, and is backed by some blistering hardware including a chunky Core i7 CPU and GTX 1080 graphics solution. It’s on sale over in the US now starting at $3,099 (around £2,500, AU$4,140).

Asus says the Rog G701VI notebook is the first in the world to have an IPS panel (for wide viewing angles) which offers a 120Hz refresh rate along with Nvidia’s G-Sync technology to help combat stuttering and tearing, and make for smoother gameplay all round.

It’s a 17.3-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 resolution) screen which is driven by an Intel Core i7-6820HK processor overclocked to 3.8GHz (which you can push further to 4.1GHz if you desire) and twinned with a GeForce GTX 1080 GPU with 8GB of GDDR5X video memory (with the card clocked at 1596/1796MHz).

Depending on whether you go for the G701VI-XB72K or G701VI-XB78K, you get either 32GB or 64GB of DDR4-2400 system memory respectively, and either a single 512GB NVMe SSD for the former model, or a pair of these SSDs in RAID 0 with the latter more expensive notebook.

These are the only two differences between the two models of the G701VI – all the other specs remain the same.

The laptop is 34mm at its thinnest point and weighs 3.6kg. It boasts a built-in subwoofer and speakers, plus an ESS Sabre DAC and amplifier to make the best out of your gaming headphones if you’re going that route.

There’s also dual-band 2x2 802.11ac Wi-Fi on-board and in terms of connectors you get a pair of USB 3.1 Type-C ports (one supports Thunderbolt 3) and three USB 3.0 ports. There’s also an Ethernet connector, HDMI port and Mini DisplayPort.

You can bag this notebook right now with the G701VI-XB72K running to $3,099 (around £2,500, AU$4,140), and its bigger brother the XB78K will set you back $3,699 (around £2,980, AU$4,940).

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).