The ASUS Republic of Gamers G751 Review: G-SYNC Comes To The Notebook Computer

Display

ASUS turned to LG to supply the IPS panel for the G751. The resolution is a mere 1920x1080, which on a panel this large works out to just 127 pixels per inch. That is certainly a low number when you see devices shipping now with UHD panels. On a gaming laptop, it would have been nice to see a higher resolution panel, but it seems that large high resolution panels are hard to come by, and all of the large gaming notebooks seem to be stuck at 1080p. Meanwhile I'm not ready to rule out the role G-SYNC played in this, as ASUS may have needed to stick to a 1080p panel for better G-SYNC support, especially given the slightly increased refresh rate the laptop supports.

The ironic thing is that a laptop with a GTX 980M would actually be able to handle a higher resolution in gaming and still get good frame rates, but unfortunately this is the state of how things are. That being said, being able to run Windows scaling at 100% is an advantage for certain applications, and games can be one of those scenarios.

But this is a gaming system, and 1080p seems to be where it’s at, but ASUS has gone with a 75 Hz panel which is a nice step up from the typical 60 Hz displays. And of course, it’s hooked up with NVIDIA’s G-SYNC technology to keep the frame rates smooth even if they dip below 75 frames per second.

The slight fog is the matte coating

In order to test the display accuracy, we use SpectraCal’s CalMAN 5 suite with a custom workflow. Brightness and contrast readings are done with an X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter, and color accuracy is checked with an X-Rite i1Pro spectrophotometer. Like our battery life tests, the display is checked at 200 nits.

In the case of the ASUS, since it has several modes, I used the Splendid Normal mode which is the closest to the sRGB color space that is the calibration target.

The G751 achieves almost 370 nits brightness, which should be plenty for any scenario where this matte panel is being used. The black levels are decent which results in a contrast ratio over just over 900:1. It’s a reasonable result, but still a ways off of the best panels out there. Still, it is a big step up on the TN panels that are still shipped on some gaming notebooks.

When looking at white levels, the red values creep up quite a bit which results in a display with a warm tone. The average grayscale is pretty good though, but the errors creep up as the brightness levels get higher. Gamma is pretty close to the 2.2 target using the Normal mode in the Splendid Color utility.

Once again we end up with a good result on saturations, but not quite perfect. According to CalMAN the panel can reproduce 88% of the sRGB color space. At 100% saturations, blue is a bit high which pulls magenta out as well.

The Gretag MacBeth colorchecker is the most comprehensive test, and with all factors considered, the G751’s panel scores over four. For reference, values under three are considered not detectable, so the G751 is close but not quite there.

In order to give a look at what these errors in color accuracy represent, the above images represent a normalized view of the colors, with the correct color on the bottom and the displayed color on the top. Just remember that any inaccuracies in your own display will throw these results out, but they can be taken as a way to put a value to the inaccuracies.

The G751 has a great display for a gaming notebook, with an IPS panel that bumps the refresh rate up to 75 Hz, and the out of the box color accuracy is very good for a system like this. It could be better, but for most end users what is available is certainly good enough for gaming.