Asus unveils quiet and powerful gaming laptop with G-Sync
This 15.6-inch notebook boasts beefy hardware and a custom cooling system
Asus has produced a new compact gaming laptop which is pretty thin and comes in a 15.6-inch form factor, but still packs a lot of power into the available space.
The ROG Strix GL502 offers a Core i7 Skylake CPU twinned with up to an Nvidia GTX 980M graphics solution with either 4GB or 8GB of GDDR5 video RAM. The 15.6-inch display is an IPS affair for wide viewing angles, and you get the option of either a 1080p or 4K non-glare screen in terms of resolution.
System memory can be cranked up to 32GB should you wish to really push the boat out, and as for storage, you can sail even further than that by specifying up to a 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD.
This Asus notebook is also a slick looking device, done out in black with orange trim (and orange WASD keys), and it's nicely svelte at 23.5mm thick.
Cool under pressure
And as well as looking cool, the Strix GL502 should stay cool, as it benefits from a 'dual thermal design', in other words a smartly crafted cooling system featuring copper heat pipes and a pair of fans which cool the CPU and GPU independently (and hopefully they won't kick out too much noise).
It's worth noting that if you do go with the top-end graphics option, the GTX 980M, you also get Nvidia's G-Sync technology on board to prevent stuttering and tearing from messing with your fluid frame rates.
The machine also includes Asus GameFirst III software which allows the user to prioritize network traffic to ensure games (or indeed any apps) get top billing when it comes to bandwidth.
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The top spec GL502 is a beast indeed, but will doubtless cost a pretty penny, although pricing hasn't yet been revealed by Asus.
- Also check out our 10 best gaming laptops of 2016
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).