I’ve reviewed a lot of Asus gaming laptops, and while I’ve liked a lot of them a fair bit, I don’t think anyone of them comes close to the feeling that the ROG G703GXR evoked inside me. To use a cliché, it was like love at first sight. But at Rs. 3,99,990, the question that arises is this — does the G703GXR gaming laptop offer enough to justify that price, and should you consider buying this laptop? Well, that’s the decision I’ll be helping you make today with my review of the Asus ROG G703GXR gaming laptop.
Design and Build
The Asus G703GXR is a bulky laptop, let’s just get that out of the way right now. It’s not the most portable machine out there, but with specs like that, you wouldn’t expect it to be a thin and light machine anyway, now would you?
All of those good looks carry on when the lid is opened, as long as you can forgive Asus for the huge bezels on this thing. Still, the black of the laptop, with silver accents looks nice, the keyboard is well laid out, with the macro keys on the top instead of the side, which I like, and a trackpad that’s big enough. Plus, I also really like the power button — it’s just different from most other laptops and it looks cool.
Anyway, moving on from the design, let’s take a look at the display here. Apart from the giant bezels that wrap around the display on the G703GXR, the display itself is actually decently good. It’s a big 17-inch FullHD display, which means you get great sharpness in consuming media content and games. Textual content does look slightly rough, especially if you’re sitting close to the laptop as you’re likely to do, but otherwise, it’s a perfectly nice display.
Coming to things where I have absolutely no complaints at all, the G703GXR is an absolute beast when it comes to performance. The laptop packs in a 9th-gen Core i9 processor, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD + 1TB HDD, and the RTX 2080 GPU. So yeah, if you’re thinking this laptop just flies through everything, you’ve basically summed up this section.
In terms of actual, real-world performance, once again, the G703GXR doesn’t disappoint. In Far Cry 5 at 1080p Ultra, the laptop got a maximum frame rate of 140FPS, averaging at 113FPS which is insanely good. Switching graphics down to 1080p High got a maximum frame rate of 148FPS and an average of 119FPS — not much of an improvement, but there you have it.
PUBG saw a similar performance on this thing with the laptop getting well over 125FPS at almost all times. There were sudden drops to around 100FPS when the game rendered smoke, or explosions, but overall, PUBG runs smoothly on this at maximum settings which is great.
Keyboard and Trackpad
The G703GXR has a full-size keyboard, complete with a numpad. Now I, personally, don’t really use a numpad nearly enough to actually want it on a laptop, but hey, it’s not bad to have it and on a 17-inch laptop there’s definitely enough space to fit that in.
Still, the fact remains that the G703GXR has a nice keyboard that’s good to type on, has ample travel to not be fatiguing but still have a tactile feeling, and since it’s not mechanical, it’s quiet enough too.
Moving on, the port selection on a laptop this thick should be impressive right? Well, take a look. There’s a USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 port, 3 USB 3.0 Gen-2 ports, a mini-display port, and HDMI 2.0a, an RJ-45 ethernet port, an SD card reader, a 3.5mm headphone jack/mic combo port, a 3.5mm mic port, and a Kensington lock. That’s definitely quite a lot of ports, and you wouldn’t really run out of options here.
Personally, I only found myself using one USB Type-A port, and the headphone/mic combo port (when I was gaming), and that’s it. Even if you do want to connect your laptop to an additional monitor, and maybe even an ethernet cable, you’ll still have plenty of ports on the ROG G703GXR to let you add more accessories should you need them, so it’s definitely more than enough.
One thing I really liked about the audio experience on the Asus ROG G703GXR is the fact that it has speakers right there in the bottom bezels of the laptop. That means, the speakers fire right at your face, and that should be pretty good. However, somehow, the G703GXR provides an underwhelming audio output. It’s not loud, it’s not good at bass, and it’s basically only decent at best.
I would call these speakers decent for gaming, but then again, the fans are so loud that they easily overpower the speakers, and most gamers would be using headphones anyway, so the speakers don’t really matter much in that scenario.
What do I even say about the battery on this laptop. It was always fairly obvious that this laptop wouldn’t get anything close to a decent battery life what with all the hardware packed inside. There’s a 9th-gen core i9 processor, an RTX 2080 GPU, and those things by themselves would devour battery and that showed in actual usage of the laptop.
Pros and Cons:
Pros:
Cons:
Asus ROG G703GXR: Should You Buy It?
Honestly, the question here is not whether you should buy this laptop; it’s more about who would buy it. After all, at a price of Rs. 3,99,990 this laptop is clearly aimed at people who absolutely don’t want a desktop, or already have one but need a laptop with that sort of capability. If you’re one of those people, sure, get this laptop. It will get you desktop-grade gaming performance along with some semblance of portability. However, for everyone else, a laptop as bulky as this machine isn’t really something I would recommend going for. If you’re just looking for portable gaming, there’s the Asus ROG Strix Scar III G531GV that comes with the RTX 2060 for Rs. 1,54,990. There’s also the MSI GL63 9SEK with the RTX 2060 that comes in at Rs. 1,47,389, and believe me, the RTX 2060 will afford you great AAA gaming at less than half the price of the G703GXR.