The Best 15” Gaming Laptop? Asus Strix GL502VS Review

[AlexTheGreatish]

For gaming and productivity how good is the Asus Strix GL502VS?

 

Buy the Asus GL502VS on Amazon: http://geni.us/KLSga
 
Buy the Asus GL502VS on Newegg: http://geni.us/4tDvRk

 

 

[ProjectBox153]

I have Floatplane, but I'm always behind enough that I see videos on YouTube before realizing that I could have seen them a lot earlier. This trend of mine continues here. 

[Billy_Mays]

Wish I could have that

[Bouzoo]

2.35 kg is marginally portable? Get out of here. 

 

I wouldn't call it the best, but I always dug the silver/black combo.

[Techstorm970]

What is this thumbnail? 

[Techstorm970]

1 minute ago, Bouzoo said:

2.35 kg is marginally portable? Get out of here. 

Hey, at least it isn't a Falcon Northwest cinder block!  

[Daniel644]

2 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

2.35 kg is marginally portable? Get out of here. 

 

I wouldn't call it the best, but I always dug the silver/black combo a lot.

my G750jm-ds71 is like 4.49kg and I carry it around with me every day, I don't know what these guys are complaining about, guess they are just a bunch of weaklings

[Bouzoo]

Just now, Daniel644 said:

my G750jm-ds71 is like 4.49kg and I carry it around with me every day, I don't know what these guys are complaining about, guess they are just a bunch of weaklings

I will admit, 4.5 kg is in a different category, but only 2.35 kg s way too less weight to complain. I almost bought that exact same G750jm, but went with N550jk for number of reasons, portability being one of main. I do carry so much equipment with me every day a 17'' was a no. And 17'' ROGs are among the bulkiest. 

[Daniel644]

4 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

I will admit, 4.5 kg is in a different category, but only 2.35 kg s way too less weight to complain. I almost bought that exact same G750jm, but went with N550jk for number of reasons, portability being one of main. I do carry so much equipment with me every day a 17'' was a no. And 17'' ROGs are among the bulkiest. 

if my laptop only weighed 2.35kg I would think I forgot it when I picked up my bag. Sure my laptop may be bulky, but a 17" was a requirement for me (got tired of tiny screens), I liked the cooling solution of the ROG's and I got it fairly cheap (as far as gaming laptops go, $1200 US brand new) and it's good enough to run my CAD software at the same or slightly faster level compared to the FX6300 desktop we use at the office.

[nateswartz1]

I would love to see a video on how they re-seated the fans. I own this laptop and for the life of me I cannot keep it cool. I also was wondering if they ever tried to install a clean version of windows 10 on it. When i did that I broke the ability for it to reboot, something that other people were experiencing as well.

[AlexTheGreatish]

22 minutes ago, nateswartz1 said:

I would love to see a video on how they re-seated the fans. I own this laptop and for the life of me I cannot keep it cool. I also was wondering if they ever tried to install a clean version of windows 10 on it. When i did that I broke the ability for it to reboot, something that other people were experiencing as well.

Basically just a case of remove the bottom screws to get it open, then remove the screws on the heatpipes, think there are 8 on there.  Then you can lift up the heatpipes, move them around a bit and redo the screws.  For the best results remove all of the thermal compound that's on there and replace it with IC Diamond or equivalent.

[Meaker]

@AlexTheGreatish Hey, did you actually measure the weight of the laptop? You quote 5.2lbs in the video (which is what asus quote, but all the reviewers who actually weighed it found it at 5.73lbs.

 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Strix-GL502VS-Notebook-Review.171567.0.html

[Thunderzzu]

I have the same laptop, but the 17" version - GL702VSK. 7700hq, 16gb ddr4, 1070 8gb, 256nvme, 1tb hdd, 17" panel.

The thermal throttling is real. Not just with your product. Synthetic benching pushed it up to a whopping 29% throttle. I switched the CPU, GPU paste with Noctua nt-h1, the thermal pads with gelid extreme pads, it still throttles up to 24% after half an hour, though, it went up to 29% in a few minutes before.

 

The laptop itself is horrible, and i definitely do not recommend it.

 

This is coming from a true Asus fan, but the lack of support and product quality in the last few weeks has just made me re-consider everything i knew about Asus. My support ticket has been open since november 2016 (for the previous laptop - G750JX), the new ones have been open for 2 months - NO REPLY.

The touchpad doesn't work - it lags, skips, zooms instead of scrolls, and occasionally just dies

The SD card reader doesn't work. Like at all. RIP

Throttling like crazy

If you format the PC to get rid of all of the bloatware, you can't install most of the "laptop specific" features again, as their drivers do not include them. I can not get Sound Sonic.

 

Really, get a different laptop if you're buying a new one and thought this was a good choice.

[AlexTheGreatish]

47 minutes ago, Meaker said:

@AlexTheGreatish Hey, did you actually measure the weight of the laptop? You quote 5.2lbs in the video (which is what asus quote, but all the reviewers who actually weighed it found it at 5.73lbs.

 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Strix-GL502VS-Notebook-Review.171567.0.html

I did just use the Asus quote although I'll make sure not to trust that in the future.

[AlexTheGreatish]

2 minutes ago, Thunderzzu said:

I have the same laptop, but the 17" version - GL702VSK. 7700hq, 16gb ddr4, 1070 8gb, 256nvme, 1tb hdd, 17" panel.

The thermal throttling is real. Not just with your product. Synthetic benching pushed it up to a whopping 29% throttle. I switched the CPU, GPU paste with Noctua nt-h1, the thermal pads with gelid extreme pads, it still throttles up to 24% after half an hour, though, it went up to 29% in a few minutes before. 4

 

The laptop itself is horrible, and i definitely do not recommend it.

 

This is coming from a true Asus fan, but the lack of support and product quality in the last few weeks has just made me re-consider everything i knew about Asus. My support ticket has been open since november 2016 (for the previous laptop - G750JX), the new ones have been open for 2 months - NO REPLY.

The touchpad doesn't work - it lags, skips, zooms instead of scrolls, and occasionally just dies

The SD card reader doesn't work. Like at all. RIP

Throttling like crazy

If you format the PC to get rid of all of the bloatware, you can't install most of the "laptop specific" features again, as their drivers do not include them. I can not get Sound Sonic.

 

Really, get a different laptop if you're buying a new one and thought this was a good choice.

Does it have any issues with thermal performance during realistic loads like video rendering or gaming?  The vast majority of high powered laptops on the market will thermal throttle after a half hour of full synthetic loads but are perfectly fine gaming for hours.

 

As for the build quality problems I'm not really able to comment on that since I didn't spend enough time with it, hopefully Asus gets back to you, maybe try bugging them more but idk what else you can try.

[Thunderzzu]

4 minutes ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

Does it have any issues with thermal performance during realistic loads like video rendering or gaming?  The vast majority of high powered laptops on the market will thermal throttle after a half hour of full synthetic loads but are perfectly fine gaming for hours.

 

As for the build quality problems I'm not really able to comment on that since I didn't spend enough time with it, hopefully Asus gets back to you, maybe try bugging them more but idk what else you can try.

As far as i have tried it, it does not throttle while gaming (i haven't had the time yet), though, i have played WoW quite a lot, and the performance is shit. No nicer way to say that. I do believe this is a nvidia 10th generation GPU card issue, but still. Was very disappointed. 

 

I tried live-chatting with US agents, they told me to bugg off since i live in Slovenia. I contacted UK live chat, was also told to bugg off. I do not want to send it into warranty repair, because the only official service center in Slovenia is as horrible as Asus's online support is. They are a bunch of kids that have no clue on how computers work - they needed 35 work days to diagnose that a hard drive had bad sectors and to replace it. 

 

While you were testing it, did the touchpad have the same issues? While scrolling, it takes a second to actually scroll the page, or it just zooms in, and the touchpad occasionally dies? And what about the SD card reader?

Edited June 7, 2017 by Thunderzzu
Added smth

[AlexTheGreatish]

52 minutes ago, Thunderzzu said:

As far as i have tried it, it does not throttle while gaming (i haven't had the time yet), though, i have played WoW quite a lot, and the performance is shit. No nicer way to say that. I do believe this is a nvidia 10th generation GPU card issue, but still. Was very disappointed. 

 

I tried live-chatting with US agents, they told me to bugg off since i live in Slovenia. I contacted UK live chat, was also told to bugg off. I do not want to send it into warranty repair, because the only official service center in Slovenia is as horrible as Asus's online support is. They are a bunch of kids that have no clue on how computers work - they needed 35 work days to diagnose that a hard drive had bad sectors and to replace it. 

 

While you were testing it, did the touchpad have the same issues? While scrolling, it takes a second to actually scroll the page, or it just zooms in, and the touchpad occasionally dies? And what about the SD card reader?

A 1070 should be able to tear though WoW without even breaking a sweat, not sure what could be causing that.

 

As for the support in Slovenia I definitely am not in a position to comment on how that works.

 

I as for the touchpad, it isn't the best I've used but no issues like you're describing.

[Thunderzzu]

4 minutes ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

A 1070 should be able to tear though WoW without even breaking a sweat, not sure what could be causing that.

 

As for the support in Slovenia I definitely am not in a position to comment on how that works.

 

I as for the touchpad, it isn't the best I've used but no issues like you're describing.

Yea, a 1070 *should* be able to tear through... I thought so aswell, but after i got the laptop, i contacted the support regarding having ~30fps with very high settings in Dalaran on a 1070 and they said the gtx 10 series cards have some issues with WoW that they can't explain lol.

 

Ugh i guess i'll really have to send it to the repair centre...

[Thunderzzu]

2 hours ago, nateswartz1 said:

I would love to see a video on how they re-seated the fans. I own this laptop and for the life of me I cannot keep it cool. I also was wondering if they ever tried to install a clean version of windows 10 on it. When i did that I broke the ability for it to reboot, something that other people were experiencing as well.

If you want, i can send you a complete quite on repasting the CPU and GPU and switching the thermal pads. Also if you want, i can write up a quick guide to reinstalling windows on it. I believe you had difficulties because of the safe boot options.

[Citizen_no7]

As a GL702(1060 model) owner I can confirm most of what's mentioned on the video. However...
My unit was missing screws from the third fan(wow, QA much on 2k$ units?) so I had to attach that one myself, and CPU had to be undervolted by 100mV to stop the throttling. GPU still thermal throttles if I let it rip past 60fps(killing the benefit of having 120hz panel for most heavy games)
Also, you can get _up to_ 5 hours from the battery while watching movies/browsing web if you configure maximum power saving on from windows power management manually, which is really nice(even shuts off the fans)
Need to look into the thermal issue, order some new paste or get dremeling and install watercooling heat-exchanger to some diy dock
oh and some models do come with Thunderbolt 3 (Type C), atleast mine did

[Suika]

tfw my thin and light gaming laptop doesn't CPU thermal throttle with stock settings but this ASUS with twice the thickness thermal throttles. Huh.

[XiKai]

I just bought this laptop less than 30 days ago, and from my experience, if you have a little more budget, you definitely want to buy a better cooling laptop instead of this one, I don't think two heat pipe can hold a GTX1070 and a 7700HQ, it do get VERY HOT when you even try to push it. Also, mine have some series backlight bleed and I didn't expect that on a laptop at this price range. I decide to return it, and switch it to something else, especially there are some new gaming laptops announced at Computex 2017.

[yathis]

Lay us a price # in listed currency in the 1st post pls

[Guest lilbman]

7 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

2.35 kg is marginally portable? Get out of here. 

 

I wouldn't call it the best, but I always dug the silver/black combo.

Linus must be pretty weak, I haul an 8 pound Alienware 15 R3 daily and it's not even that heavy.

[Holleke]

Are there more people with the heat problem ? I have almost the same laptop (gl553vd), and how did/would you solve that ?